"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."
Stephen’s gone two years without mentioning this to anyone outside of Gwenaëlle; but after having done it the once, it seems it’s a little easier to crack the door open the next time, to shake off all that rust and dust and touch on the wound you’ve been avoiding for decades straight.
“Donna,” he says, after his own pause. His own offering.
It’s just a small skip in the record, but they do manage to recover after that; the conversation finds its flow again and continues its chaotic sauntering path, the night wearing on until the elfroot runs out, the conversation a little less heavier for having shared it.
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portalling) wrote2022-04-02 01:17 pm
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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?”
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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?"
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“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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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🎀
“Donna,” he says, after his own pause. His own offering.
It’s just a small skip in the record, but they do manage to recover after that; the conversation finds its flow again and continues its chaotic sauntering path, the night wearing on until the elfroot runs out, the conversation a little less heavier for having shared it.