Deductive reasoning had suggested Christine is the person he'd talked with her about before, but it's nice to have it confirmed. She nods with a rueful smile. "I'm glad. It sounds nice, you know. Being friends with an ex. Love that on paper. But if I manage it with Herian, it'll probably be the first time. I mean ... to be clear, not because I'm out here refusing to do it, but. OK do you want a kind of objectively ridiculous counterexample? It does involve weird clone shit."
There's so much of her pre-Thedas life that sounds normal and wholesome when she brings it up, but that's largely because she leaves out the year or so right before she arrived. The people who'd seen the Fade's imitation of her home world, or those with enough longevity to have met Sarah or Helena, could probably fill in some gaps, but it's not something Cosima raises routinely.
Then again, if anyone can handle weird clone shit, it's probably the sorcerer from a world where half the population vanished for five years.
Stephen takes another puff of elfroot and then does a thing he almost never does: he reaches out with his spare hand to lay it over hers, a grandiose gesture.
He keeps his expression straight-faced, so serious that it actually circles back around to shit-eating again, as he says with all somber gravitas: “Cosima Niehaus, with all my heart, never doubt this about me: I am always going to want to hear an objectively ridiculous counterexample involving weird clone shit.”
orphan black spoilers but also: S3 aired 9 years ago, what have you been doing
It make her laugh in spite of herself. "Alright, man, you asked for it," with a bit of a lingering grin, even if it's rueful.
"So. The partner back home I mentioned, Delphine. Let's ... OK, shit, this involved a lot of complicated parts and I gotta sort out which ones you need to understand. So. Almost all of the clones were in the general population, unaware of our origins. The people who designed this experiment, they wanted us to be exposed to a whole range of environmental factors and they wanted that exposure to be indistinguishable from how a non-clone would experience them. Close as they could get at least. But. You've probably spotted the problem with that from an experiment design point of view, right? If you've got individuals in your study all over the world and they don't know they're in your experiment, how do you get data? I assume in countries with less robust privacy laws, they were just out here harvesting stuff from routine medical appointments, but hard to do that in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, etc. without drawing unwanted attention."
She shifts, tucking one of her legs up and letting the other swing free. "Enter the concept of monitors. You get people involved in the experiment to insert themselves into clones' lives to get close to them. Friend, roommate, romantic partner, whatever makes sense. And once you're close enough a clone will let her guard down with you, clandestine measurements. I don't know who all of mine were but I found out at least one of my exes was." So, you know. That's fine and normal. And this is all still setup.
The mood see-saws a little; there’s the ghost of amusement in the air still between them, but Stephen’s expression tightens at the corners of his eyes, concerned about what he’s hearing. They’ve broached the unethical nature of these cloning experiments before, but this is a whole other level —
“Jesus christ,” he says. “Someone was dating you to measure you? To gather data?”
"Oh yeah. Fucks you right up. Especially because, once we clones were adults, romantic partner seemed to be an especially popular choice for monitors. You know, access to where you live, reasons to stay over at night without raising suspicions. And also a huge fucking betrayal. Sometimes the people running the experiment tricked the monitors into what they were doing: One of my sisters' husbands thought he was participating in some sort of long-term sociology experiment." She doesn't say bless, but it's in her tone. Donnie loved Alison but was also a man who'd look for "gullible" written on the ceiling.
"But sometimes people were working for the company, and then they'd get close to a clone actively knowing why. That happened to my sister Beth. And it's how I met Delphine. She was posing as an immunology student at my university. Trying to get close to me on purpose, it turns out. Ironically, not romantically as far as I know. She thought she was straight when we met." Funny old world. "But she was really hot, I've got to emphasize that to you. French accent, great hair, brilliant brain. So we hooked up, and then I figured out she was working for the Dyad Institute and it immediately got complicated."
This is, like, one-third of the way through the point she was trying to make, sorry Stephen. It's a little bit that she's getting stoned, but mostly that this entire story is unhinged and it's hard to tease out just the part she wants.
He tilts slightly back in his chair as he listens, more nonchalant than most people get to see from him, but he’s still riveted to the tale even as the chairlegs lift off the floor, relaxed.
“French accent, great hair, brilliant brain,” Stephen repeats with a laugh: “Sounds like we’ve similar taste in women. Whouldathunkit.”
The chairlegs drop back down and hit the stone floor of the office. He’s still listening. Locked in, as they say.
"Yeah, look, when I say nice work if you can get it about being a kept man," is a tease, but also it's not like he's wrong about Gwenaëlle being Cosmia's type on paper.
"So. I dumped her, but then we got back together and we were trying to work the problem of my illness together at Dyad, the company she was working for. Mixed successes there, fully. But the whole reason I brought up Delphine and this long-ass story is that at one point, she got promoted in Dyad to a point where she could really do a lot of good for all of us clones as a whole. But she broke it off with me, because she said she felt like she couldn't love us all equally the way I asked her to if she was also with me and that the greater good was more important." Cosima's not a shrinking flower normally, but the flow of conversation is distinctly easier now. Even if the topic isn't, quite.
"I mean, given all the setup, it could have actively been worse."
Maybe less comforting than it might be, and especially so given what she's about to say.
"So I met someone and it was ... nice, you know? Nothing Earth-shaking, just like normal first few dates stuff. But I wasn't exactly going to lead with by the way, I'm the result of an illegal human cloning experiment and my sisters and I are in the middle of fighting a biomedical corporation for our bodily autonomy and I also have a potentially fatal health condition. I felt like that was a little bit too much for even, like, date three." She sighs. "But, uh. Delphine took an interest. Had the two of us surveilled, did a whole background check on this woman — Shay — and told me that she had a military background she hadn't mentioned, strongly suggesting that she was a spy working with an organization who'd ... not important, but Delphine thought I was in danger."
There's really no way to finish the story while covering anyone in glory, but they've come this far. Still, Cosima's regret is clear. "So, uh. Delphine showed up and interrogated Shay in her home, and apparently at one point threatened to kill her and make it look like a suicide. I later learned. And after all that, Shay was just a normal woman who'd decided her military service wasn't third-date material either because, shockingly, she found it turned a lot of women off before they got to know her. So, uh. That all. Could have gone much better."
So "could be worse" presumably encompasses Shay was actually a spy for real and/or Delphine did kill her, among other things.
The dating apps were already daunting to begin with — Stephen had been teetering on the edge of just a bit too old for them, measuring their convenience versus his aversion — but considering Cosima’s experiences, he had envisioned something more calamitous. Shay turning out to be yet another spy, more trust issues to field, more betrayals. Cosima can see his brow crinkling as he measures those pros/cons. He waggles his hand.
“Could’ve gone better, could’ve been worse,” he says, echoing her thoughts. “On the one hand, all of your experiences mean some paranoia is fairly justifiable and warranted. On the other: okay, yeah, way to have your ex absolutely kill your shot at a future love life.”
"Poor Shay. Got the hell out of Dodge which is, like, the most understandable reaction. Delphine and I had a big fight about it, and then I thought she was dead. Delphine. And it was just ... it was extremely fucked." A beat, and then: "She isn't, though. At home. She did get shot, but it turns out not fatally, and then she got kidnapped, so. We eventually made it up before I came back to Thedas again. Or like, Cosima prime did, I guess, but I remember all of it, so." Just rifter things.
She takes a drag and then seems to come up for air a bit. "...wow, I'm sorry, this has got to be way more than you bargained for when you let me bribe you with drugs earlier." She finds she doesn't mind that she's told him, exactly, but she feels like she's now been talking for an extremely long time, all told.
“In fairness, I always ask for the long story,” Stephen points out, amiably. “My own life has been so batshit weird that I welcome anecdotes that are anywhere near the same. Solidarity, etc.”
He’s ruminative after a moment — everything sliding into that comfortable loose where he’s not quite so anal about his privacy, less neurotic about cracking open the box and swapping these stories, dipping into each others’ personal lives. Cosima’s one of the few he doesn’t mind doing this with, it turns out. Not something he would’ve predicted when he first arrived here, but so it goes.
“It’s not exactly weird clone shit,” he offers, “but if it makes you feel any better, I have a story about meeting an alternate universe version of my ex?”
"I guess you did ask," she allows. But the offer of a return story gets her attention. "Oh man, what was that like? I feel like everyone imagines clones are like meeting alternate universe versions of yourself, but it really isn't, it's like ... twins, but there's a ton more of you and you didn't even have the same parents. Like, Alison," who he could have "met" in the Fade, in theory, giving this a particular slant, "and I have the same DNA but we aren't the same person in any way. Alternates are something else again."
She's the farthest thing from a physicist, but you don't spend as long as she has in an actual other world without getting curious about the possibility of a multiverse, at least not with Cosima's background.
It’s exactly the sort of topic which animates Stephen: hands gesturing, voice going a mile a minute, contemplating the existential implications. Sometimes people were into it, other times they just gave polite nods while he went on. But now that he’s stopped to think about it, Cosima has a unique perspective to offer here.
“Yeah, I suppose all of this is the most concrete example of nature vs nurture. All of you being raised by different people, in different environments. With alternates, ironically, I think there’s a little more commonality: you might’ve still been born to the same people and with broadly the same experiences except for one crucial alteration in your history, or there’s some element in your world which is fundamentally different. Which results in butterfly effects. Exactly how much does your world influence your own personality and self. She was a redhead, for some reason.”
Which isn’t the most important thing about all this, but. They’ve definitely reached the part of the evening for metaphysical weed conversations.
“Anyway. I was on the run across the multiverse with a young girl in tow, and this other Christine tagged along and helped us out. Saved our asses a few times. And she felt… the same. Does that make sense? Like the most crucial part of her was the same as the woman I knew, the clever and compassionate and brave parts of her.”
A wince, teetering on deciding whether or not to mention the worst part, before he decides, fuck it, they’re being honest here and confiding in each other: “But technically, strictly speaking, this woman was a complete stranger to me. I’d just met her earlier that day. And at the end of it, I told her that I loved her in every universe.”
An embarrassed pause.
“She was pretty kind about it, all things considered.”
Her side thought ("maybe that universe just has especially convincing methods of dying your hair") goes unspoken first because Stephen is off to the races, and then because what he says is fascinating.
"Shit. I mean... I get it. It feels." A pause, here for a moment. "Less like clones and more like it feels when someone who's been here before comes out of a rift but didn't keep their memories from the first time in Thedas. It's happened a time or two." She'd thought about it, when she returned: The relief that she'd know everyone who remembered her. "Sometimes they're a little different in other ways, sometimes it's just that they lose their Thedas experiences. But either way, they're sort of a new person, but also the same person. It's wild. Or," to that point, "my sister Sarah was here in Thedas, years ago. But at the time, she was from my future. So to her, it felt like I had a chunk of amnesia, for the stuff she'd experienced but I hadn't yet. But I was still me. It sounds like that but more extreme, right?"
“Yeah, I think so,” Stephen concedes, his face ruminative, examining it from both angles.
“You and your sister Sarah did have some shared history and shared experiences, though, right, until you branched? Like…” He gestures with his fingers, trying to illustrate a timeline being pinched off and splitting into two diverging paths. If he still had the right magic, he could depict the diagram in glowing fiery lines, but he can’t, so:
“Tributaries in a river of time. This is more like I was the Thedas person in the equation, and Christine was the one coming in blank, with no memories and shared experience of me, this version of me, specifically. She and— I? Stephen? The other Stephen. They didn’t date, in their world.”
Does any of this make any sense anymore? Hazy as he is, it makes perfect sense. Kind of.
"But she'd met him?" It's making enough sense for her to ask pertinent follow up questions at least. If the earnestness is dialed up some because she's also high, it's a matter of degree not kind. She'd want to know either way.
“Yeah. They worked together and were… friendly, from what I could tell? But she said they never really quite figured out what they were to each other.”
Cosima nods. "I think that might be easier, if I were in that position. Like ... relationships are weird, you have to hit the timing just right. I can imagine the world where the good feeling was still there, I still liked that person, but the stars just didn't align, you know? Not saying it wasn't wild for you."
But then again, in a very different way, with Herian's return she sort of has an idea of "person you cares about knows who you are but doesn't feel the way you'd expect them to." It's different, but close enough to make an imaginative leap.
"...on the run across the multiverse, huh?" Because that is quite the sentence to throw in as an aside.
There is a small part of him that recordscratches and pauses when Cosima asks about it, because: oh shit, Wanda. She just showed up, is he going to have this conversation now, he was finally ready to talk about his romantic drama but the finer nuances of this particular adventure are best buried deep deep underground —
So there’s a brief fleeting trepidation that flickers across Stephen’s face; unusual, for a man who’s usually such a motormouth and ready to talk about any sort of bizarre, distressing adventure that might make a Thedosian child faint.
After a moment, he manages to fit some words together, and says, “That one’s… complicated. I’ll have to tell you the full details another day, I think, I’m too goddamn blitzed right now. But yeah. It’s also why I wasn’t particularly fazed when I first showed up in Thedas: I’d done the world-hopping thing before, after all, and met other versions of myself. Seen a world which was really big on sustainable greenery and pizza balls. Saw a dying world split into pieces. Another where everyone was just kind of blobs of paint. The multiverse is, genuinely, astounding.”
She takes the evasion gracefully; either they'll talk about it later, or she'll grant him the out. "It's so wild. I mean, physics isn't my area, but I knew about the possibility of the many-worlds theory. But it took me a week or two to feel fairly sure I wasn't hallucinating when I first came to Thedas. It's unreal to imagine coming through a rift when you already knew your world was just one among many."
Cosima smiles, and adds, "I don't know if this is at all consistent with your experience but like ... it was kind of weirder seeing a New York with superheroes or a Seattle overrun with zombies than getting used to Thedas. I mean, they were Fade projections, but they felt real enough for it to be unsettling. Does that make sense? I mean, don't get me wrong, it was plenty weird. But starting from whole cloth in a lot of ways was like, okay, I'm here now, let's learn the new rules. I didn't have to, like, imagine if there was a version of me in the world already who died from fungus zombies or if that world never had a me at all. And here you've straight-up met alternative yous."
“I could see that,” Stephen muses. “Like a whole uncanny valley thing. When the situation’s more vastly different from what we know, at least we can meet Thedas on its own terms instead of scrutinising where it does and doesn’t differ from our own history. But also I will point out that technically you’ve met wayyy more alternative yous than I have.”
Which begs the next question: “Do you have a favourite? Out of them. Your sisters. Your sister-yous.”
Her laugh is big, genuine as it is surprised. "Oh my god, OK, first of all, do you consider identical twins alternates of each other? Because clones are way more like twins than we are anything about alternate universe. And second of all you can't just ask people who their favorite sibling is, that's the most only-child-ass question I've ever heard."
She doesn't give him a little shove, though it seems for a moment like she might. She has also not denied having a favorite.
"I guess... I've met a bunch of them, but there are three who are really, like, part of my life on an ongoing basis. Well. I'll say four. One of them died, but I'd still count her. And like, with the asterisk that I say my life but it's you know, the Cosima back in Toronto. Since none of them are here right now. But you know what I'm trying to say." Possibly.
There’s a tug at the corner of Stephen’s mouth, a grim bleak little smile that he can’t quite fix into place.
“I wasn’t always,” he says. “An only child, I mean.”
This is what happens when you’re habitually, incorrigibly, pathologically secretive about your personal life, Stephen, people make assumptions —
But he’s still mellow enough that there’s no bite to it, and that well of grief feels shallower today and easier to face. He seems to waffle on whether to say anything or simply hurry the conversation along and stuff it all down to face it another day, but since Cosima just mentioned it herself too, it feels like there’s no better time:
“Dead sister club. But yeah, I suppose there’s— maybe notsomuch favourites, but the ones you’re closest to. She died when we were kids, but I still count her, too.”
"Oh shit." She's aware of having stepped in it, even if it wasn't quite her fault. She's not going to press, but she does say: "...Beth. Beth was my sister who died." A little offering of sorts; she hasn't talked about Beth to many people in Thedas, and it feels as if he's earned the right to that much. "They do till count."
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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There's so much of her pre-Thedas life that sounds normal and wholesome when she brings it up, but that's largely because she leaves out the year or so right before she arrived. The people who'd seen the Fade's imitation of her home world, or those with enough longevity to have met Sarah or Helena, could probably fill in some gaps, but it's not something Cosima raises routinely.
Then again, if anyone can handle weird clone shit, it's probably the sorcerer from a world where half the population vanished for five years.
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He keeps his expression straight-faced, so serious that it actually circles back around to shit-eating again, as he says with all somber gravitas: “Cosima Niehaus, with all my heart, never doubt this about me: I am always going to want to hear an objectively ridiculous counterexample involving weird clone shit.”
orphan black spoilers but also: S3 aired 9 years ago, what have you been doing
"So. The partner back home I mentioned, Delphine. Let's ... OK, shit, this involved a lot of complicated parts and I gotta sort out which ones you need to understand. So. Almost all of the clones were in the general population, unaware of our origins. The people who designed this experiment, they wanted us to be exposed to a whole range of environmental factors and they wanted that exposure to be indistinguishable from how a non-clone would experience them. Close as they could get at least. But. You've probably spotted the problem with that from an experiment design point of view, right? If you've got individuals in your study all over the world and they don't know they're in your experiment, how do you get data? I assume in countries with less robust privacy laws, they were just out here harvesting stuff from routine medical appointments, but hard to do that in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, etc. without drawing unwanted attention."
She shifts, tucking one of her legs up and letting the other swing free. "Enter the concept of monitors. You get people involved in the experiment to insert themselves into clones' lives to get close to them. Friend, roommate, romantic partner, whatever makes sense. And once you're close enough a clone will let her guard down with you, clandestine measurements. I don't know who all of mine were but I found out at least one of my exes was." So, you know. That's fine and normal. And this is all still setup.
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“Jesus christ,” he says. “Someone was dating you to measure you? To gather data?”
Talk about future trust issues.
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"But sometimes people were working for the company, and then they'd get close to a clone actively knowing why. That happened to my sister Beth. And it's how I met Delphine. She was posing as an immunology student at my university. Trying to get close to me on purpose, it turns out. Ironically, not romantically as far as I know. She thought she was straight when we met." Funny old world. "But she was really hot, I've got to emphasize that to you. French accent, great hair, brilliant brain. So we hooked up, and then I figured out she was working for the Dyad Institute and it immediately got complicated."
This is, like, one-third of the way through the point she was trying to make, sorry Stephen. It's a little bit that she's getting stoned, but mostly that this entire story is unhinged and it's hard to tease out just the part she wants.
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“French accent, great hair, brilliant brain,” Stephen repeats with a laugh: “Sounds like we’ve similar taste in women. Whouldathunkit.”
The chairlegs drop back down and hit the stone floor of the office. He’s still listening. Locked in, as they say.
no subject
"So. I dumped her, but then we got back together and we were trying to work the problem of my illness together at Dyad, the company she was working for. Mixed successes there, fully. But the whole reason I brought up Delphine and this long-ass story is that at one point, she got promoted in Dyad to a point where she could really do a lot of good for all of us clones as a whole. But she broke it off with me, because she said she felt like she couldn't love us all equally the way I asked her to if she was also with me and that the greater good was more important." Cosima's not a shrinking flower normally, but the flow of conversation is distinctly easier now. Even if the topic isn't, quite.
"So I tried to go on the dating apps."
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“—I’m girding myself for whatever horrifying turn this is about to take,” Stephen says.
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Maybe less comforting than it might be, and especially so given what she's about to say.
"So I met someone and it was ... nice, you know? Nothing Earth-shaking, just like normal first few dates stuff. But I wasn't exactly going to lead with by the way, I'm the result of an illegal human cloning experiment and my sisters and I are in the middle of fighting a biomedical corporation for our bodily autonomy and I also have a potentially fatal health condition. I felt like that was a little bit too much for even, like, date three." She sighs. "But, uh. Delphine took an interest. Had the two of us surveilled, did a whole background check on this woman — Shay — and told me that she had a military background she hadn't mentioned, strongly suggesting that she was a spy working with an organization who'd ... not important, but Delphine thought I was in danger."
There's really no way to finish the story while covering anyone in glory, but they've come this far. Still, Cosima's regret is clear. "So, uh. Delphine showed up and interrogated Shay in her home, and apparently at one point threatened to kill her and make it look like a suicide. I later learned. And after all that, Shay was just a normal woman who'd decided her military service wasn't third-date material either because, shockingly, she found it turned a lot of women off before they got to know her. So, uh. That all. Could have gone much better."
So "could be worse" presumably encompasses Shay was actually a spy for real and/or Delphine did kill her, among other things.
no subject
“Could’ve gone better, could’ve been worse,” he says, echoing her thoughts. “On the one hand, all of your experiences mean some paranoia is fairly justifiable and warranted. On the other: okay, yeah, way to have your ex absolutely kill your shot at a future love life.”
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She takes a drag and then seems to come up for air a bit. "...wow, I'm sorry, this has got to be way more than you bargained for when you let me bribe you with drugs earlier." She finds she doesn't mind that she's told him, exactly, but she feels like she's now been talking for an extremely long time, all told.
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He’s ruminative after a moment — everything sliding into that comfortable loose where he’s not quite so anal about his privacy, less neurotic about cracking open the box and swapping these stories, dipping into each others’ personal lives. Cosima’s one of the few he doesn’t mind doing this with, it turns out. Not something he would’ve predicted when he first arrived here, but so it goes.
“It’s not exactly weird clone shit,” he offers, “but if it makes you feel any better, I have a story about meeting an alternate universe version of my ex?”
no subject
She's the farthest thing from a physicist, but you don't spend as long as she has in an actual other world without getting curious about the possibility of a multiverse, at least not with Cosima's background.
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“Yeah, I suppose all of this is the most concrete example of nature vs nurture. All of you being raised by different people, in different environments. With alternates, ironically, I think there’s a little more commonality: you might’ve still been born to the same people and with broadly the same experiences except for one crucial alteration in your history, or there’s some element in your world which is fundamentally different. Which results in butterfly effects. Exactly how much does your world influence your own personality and self. She was a redhead, for some reason.”
Which isn’t the most important thing about all this, but. They’ve definitely reached the part of the evening for metaphysical weed conversations.
“Anyway. I was on the run across the multiverse with a young girl in tow, and this other Christine tagged along and helped us out. Saved our asses a few times. And she felt… the same. Does that make sense? Like the most crucial part of her was the same as the woman I knew, the clever and compassionate and brave parts of her.”
A wince, teetering on deciding whether or not to mention the worst part, before he decides, fuck it, they’re being honest here and confiding in each other: “But technically, strictly speaking, this woman was a complete stranger to me. I’d just met her earlier that day. And at the end of it, I told her that I loved her in every universe.”
An embarrassed pause.
“She was pretty kind about it, all things considered.”
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"Shit. I mean... I get it. It feels." A pause, here for a moment. "Less like clones and more like it feels when someone who's been here before comes out of a rift but didn't keep their memories from the first time in Thedas. It's happened a time or two." She'd thought about it, when she returned: The relief that she'd know everyone who remembered her. "Sometimes they're a little different in other ways, sometimes it's just that they lose their Thedas experiences. But either way, they're sort of a new person, but also the same person. It's wild. Or," to that point, "my sister Sarah was here in Thedas, years ago. But at the time, she was from my future. So to her, it felt like I had a chunk of amnesia, for the stuff she'd experienced but I hadn't yet. But I was still me. It sounds like that but more extreme, right?"
no subject
“You and your sister Sarah did have some shared history and shared experiences, though, right, until you branched? Like…” He gestures with his fingers, trying to illustrate a timeline being pinched off and splitting into two diverging paths. If he still had the right magic, he could depict the diagram in glowing fiery lines, but he can’t, so:
“Tributaries in a river of time. This is more like I was the Thedas person in the equation, and Christine was the one coming in blank, with no memories and shared experience of me, this version of me, specifically. She and— I? Stephen? The other Stephen. They didn’t date, in their world.”
Does any of this make any sense anymore? Hazy as he is, it makes perfect sense. Kind of.
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But then again, in a very different way, with Herian's return she sort of has an idea of "person you cares about knows who you are but doesn't feel the way you'd expect them to." It's different, but close enough to make an imaginative leap.
"...on the run across the multiverse, huh?" Because that is quite the sentence to throw in as an aside.
no subject
So there’s a brief fleeting trepidation that flickers across Stephen’s face; unusual, for a man who’s usually such a motormouth and ready to talk about any sort of bizarre, distressing adventure that might make a Thedosian child faint.
After a moment, he manages to fit some words together, and says, “That one’s… complicated. I’ll have to tell you the full details another day, I think, I’m too goddamn blitzed right now. But yeah. It’s also why I wasn’t particularly fazed when I first showed up in Thedas: I’d done the world-hopping thing before, after all, and met other versions of myself. Seen a world which was really big on sustainable greenery and pizza balls. Saw a dying world split into pieces. Another where everyone was just kind of blobs of paint. The multiverse is, genuinely, astounding.”
no subject
Cosima smiles, and adds, "I don't know if this is at all consistent with your experience but like ... it was kind of weirder seeing a New York with superheroes or a Seattle overrun with zombies than getting used to Thedas. I mean, they were Fade projections, but they felt real enough for it to be unsettling. Does that make sense? I mean, don't get me wrong, it was plenty weird. But starting from whole cloth in a lot of ways was like, okay, I'm here now, let's learn the new rules. I didn't have to, like, imagine if there was a version of me in the world already who died from fungus zombies or if that world never had a me at all. And here you've straight-up met alternative yous."
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Which begs the next question: “Do you have a favourite? Out of them. Your sisters. Your sister-yous.”
This really is remarkably good elfroot.
no subject
She doesn't give him a little shove, though it seems for a moment like she might. She has also not denied having a favorite.
"I guess... I've met a bunch of them, but there are three who are really, like, part of my life on an ongoing basis. Well. I'll say four. One of them died, but I'd still count her. And like, with the asterisk that I say my life but it's you know, the Cosima back in Toronto. Since none of them are here right now. But you know what I'm trying to say." Possibly.
no subject
“I wasn’t always,” he says. “An only child, I mean.”
This is what happens when you’re habitually, incorrigibly, pathologically secretive about your personal life, Stephen, people make assumptions —
But he’s still mellow enough that there’s no bite to it, and that well of grief feels shallower today and easier to face. He seems to waffle on whether to say anything or simply hurry the conversation along and stuff it all down to face it another day, but since Cosima just mentioned it herself too, it feels like there’s no better time:
“Dead sister club. But yeah, I suppose there’s— maybe notsomuch favourites, but the ones you’re closest to. She died when we were kids, but I still count her, too.”
Even as he never speaks of her.
no subject
🎀