Crystals or Action, choose your own adventure | Open

[youwonscience]

FORM: Sending crystal plus (see notes).
SENDER: Cosima
RECIPIENT: Rifters (others opt-in)
NOTES: Catch-all for threads about amputation (so content warning for that being discussed, though I don't expect anything too bloody). Happy to match prose or brackets, as ever. See further notes under the cut.

Cosima wouldn't flatter herself she knows everyone in Riftwatch well, but she's been here a long time and she's been leading a division for a respectable bit of that now. She has names and faces for everyone, and at least a vibe on most of the people she doesn't know well. That makes this slightly easier, but only slightly.

The entire point of seeking people out one-on-one is that making an official announcement will give the discussion she wants to have too much official weight. But that does mean tracking everyone down individually (though at least Research members who aren't in the field will come to her for their normal check-ins, if nothing else). Still. She's put this off too long, and it's not going to get any simpler if she continues to procrastinate.

If she hasn't gotten to you yet, you may notice her walking through the Gallows with a bit of extra purpose. Nothing seems to be immediately on fire, at least.


[OOC: Choose your own adventure with this very un-formatted flow chart:

1.) RIFTERS who want a thread: Good news, Cosima is tracking down every one of you to talk about amputation and anchor shards! She'd lean in person, but OOCly if you'd rather a network thread, we can just handwave that your character is out on an assignment and do it by sending crystal instead.

2.) RIFTERS who don't want a thread right now: You can assume Cosima tracked you down (unless you took truly extraordinary measures to avoid her). We can either handwave or talk OOCly about it, as you like.

3.) NATIVES with anchor shards: If you want to chat too, Cosima's not hunting you down but wouldn't avoid a conversation if you clocked what she's up to and want one.

4.) NATIVES without anchor shards: Look, if you want to talk about anchor shards for some reason, hmu. (Otherwise her inbox is open.)

For all of the above, just jump in if you'd like. If you'd like me to write a more customized starter, reach out on plurk or discord and I'll take care of you.]

Comments

[youwonscience]

There's a split second that Abby may or may not register as who? before Cosima catches up to who that must mean. (She's never been close enough to Gwenaëlle to hear, much less use, the nickname, but the organization isn't so large that it's not clear once she has a second to think it through.)

"No. I mean thanks for the apology, but I get it. And you have a point, about native shardbearers." A beat. "Everyone's got their own right to choose. But it's still a little bit ... I mean, it happened to me. Vanishing. And I don't mind talking about it, but it seems like this big thing no one wants to look at directly, sometimes."

[armd]

"It did?"

She didn't know this before or she might have asked Cosima about it earlier. It's almost hard to know where to begin with this new information and then she says, "You didn't know you were going to vanish," which is not a question at all.

If Ellie had known she would have said something to, at the very least, Clarisse, but this is still something that Abby wants — needs — to know for certain.

[youwonscience]

"No, definitely not. I went to bed one night and, I gather, I was gone the next morning." Her voice is a little sofer, but she doesn't seem reluctant to answer. "I would have ... there are some things I would have said to people, if I knew I was going. But nothing felt unusual that day."

[armd]

Abby relaxes a little. She exhales, "Yeah."

She thought so. Hoped so. It's not entirely reassuring — this means that, eventually, she will disappear without any warning and upend the lives of the people around her — but it in a way it removes the culpability from it. It won't be her fault when it happens. (This of course, now has to go both ways: it was not Ellie's fault that she left either, even though when she's thinking about it, she sometimes likes to blame Ellie just to make herself feel better.)

"You remembered everything when you came back, right? What was it like?"

[youwonscience]

"It was fucking weird," was frank. "Because it wasn't only that I remembered everything from here, though I did. I also had new memories from home. A bit less than a year's worth, but I also remembered not remembering Thedas, which was a little bit disorienting. It felt like less time had passed for me than had passed here, which would have been weird on its own. But it..."

Cosima exhales. "It's why I really do believe we're our own people, here in Thedas. Like, we're people who come to be in a unique way, for sure, but I think there's a Cosima who never left Earth, and I got a new batch of her memories when I came back with my own. We used to be functionally the same person, but we're not anymore." A beat, then she adds: "I can't prove that, it's a theory; it's possible I physically went back and forth, and just couldn't access my Thedas memories while I was there. But it seems less likely to me. Personally." She realizes that's not incredibly comforting, probably.

[armd]

"That is fucking weird," Abby mumbles, not able to look at Cosima while she talks. It sounds a lot like the dream she has that was too real to be a dream, one she knew was the truth, but until now she'd never had cause to believe she'd ever actually left her Thedas bed. What if she did? Maybe it doesn't matter. What happened would have been the same.

It's not comforting, but Abby doesn't think there is an explanation that could be.

"I think I believe that too." She sort of has to. She explains a little more, voice soft. Hands clasped together, pressed between her knees. "I left someone back home... and maybe I really did disappear but I hope I didn't, 'cuz I wouldn't want him to be on his own. You know? It was just the two of us when I came here. So it's better if part of me came here and part of me stayed."

She used to hate thinking about that, used to be so envious, but time has worn on that pain.

[youwonscience]

"Yeah. I know that feeling exactly. The first time I left, my sisters and I were all sick but I was the only scientist they could trust, you know? Since it was personal for me. And we, they... there was a time element to figuring it out." It had eaten at her, a bit. Whether her disappearance had been a death sentence for one or more of the ones she'd left behind.

"But there was no gap. You know? My memories that I added ... I was never gone, there. And I think that is comforting. To me. This life is real too, and I love the people from there who I remember. But it helps to know they're not doing without me, at the same time." A complicated feeling, certainly, but a comprehensible one.