A/N: This idea just came to me one day so I sat down and spent a couple of hours just letting it happen.
Just a little one-shot. Hope you like it :)
A small, but effective, sliver of light made Cosima groan and pull the duvet up and over her face. She hated mornings. Since she was an infant, she hated mornings. Although, to be fair, if she and Sarah hadn't stayed out so late last night she probably wouldn't be hating it quite so much this morning.
There was a light tapping and then a quick beep from the kitchen followed shortly after by the shower turning on. Her love played dirty, but Nope. Even coffee wasn't going to get her out of bed this morning no matter how good the imported French coffee was. And it was good. However, the smell quickly made its way into the room and under the covers, thanks to the door being left wide open, and the smell alone gave perked the brunette up enough to pull the covers down and sit up. With another groan she reached her arms up over her head for a good stretch.
"Shit." She laughed at the protest of her muscles. She wasn't as young as she once was. While fun at the time, a night of light drinking and dancing with her sister came with more issues than it once did. Not that they really did this when they were younger. Maybe once they had. Before Cosima's disease. Before DYAD. Before Topside and Neolution and the Island of Dr. Moreau.
Stretching her neck from side to side, Cosima's eyes fell on a framed picture sitting on her nightstand. A smile instantly came over her face. Was that really taken over two years ago at this point? Right after they had confirmation that Cosima's disease had been one-hundred percent cured. No more coughing, all bloodwork well within normal ranges, all polyps and masses completely gone. And yet it it still felt like yesterday.
Two and a half years ago she and Delphine had made it off that island. She had been cured. With the help of a few friends of Sionhan's, they had gotten access to a great lab and reproduced the cure and administered it to all the sisters they knew even if they weren't showing symptoms. It was in their DNA so even if they weren't currently sick, at some point they would be. Everyone got the cure except Sarah and Helena, of course, as they were immune. Somehow through her oddly incredibly connected network of people, Siobhan had found many more sestras and sent cures to them as well. What she told them and whether or not they knew they were clones she wouldn't say, but they had all been cured. There was no way of knowing whether or not they had found all of sestras out there. That information was long gone at this point, but they made sure to keep the cure safe for any others they found.
None of them wanted to know who these other sisters were. If they ran into one on the street someday they would worry about it then, but Cosima, Sarah, Helena, Alison, Krystal, MK, Charlotte, Tony, Rachel … that was enough for all of them. Yes, even Rachel had gotten the cure despite many protests, mostly from Sarah and, surprisingly, Delphine. Thankfully after that she disappeared who knows where and none of them had had to deal with her after that. Probably holed up somewhere with Ferdinand nursing her severely bruised ego after her plan to rise to the high ranks of Neolution and restart human cloning backfired so beautifully. Once again thanks to Sarah and her self aware sisters. They really were much more of a threat to everything than they had once thought.
The coffee machine beeped three times in the other room signaling the pot was ready. Cosima sat and listened, noticing that the shower had been turned off during her mind's wonderings. She heard the soft sound of barefeet moving on the hardwood floor in the kitchen.
It was funny. It was so mundane - waking up, making coffee, having a shower, going to work, coming home, having dinner or maybe going out, relaxing on the couch or coming home, then going to bed just to wake up and do it all over the next day. It was routine, boring even, but to her it was everything. Cosima had fought – they all had fought - so hard to have such mundane, routine and boring lives.
There was a time when every day, every minute, had been a struggle. A struggle to breathe, a struggle to survive. Not knowing where to go, who to trust, constantly looking over their shoulders, second guessing every thing and every one. Not knowing whether they would survive to the end of the day or not. Waking up not knowing what fresh hell the day would bring. Was today the day the disease would finally take her? Was today the day Sarah wouldn't come home for good? Was today the day Alison wouldn't be able to protect her kids any longer? Was today the day Helena would stop fighting?
Fortunately none of that happened. They were safe. All of them. They had won. No one was coming after them anymore. Castor had died. Mayflies indeed. No disease was slowly going to wipe them out. So many people had been killed. So much bloodshed and lives lost, but they were finally, finally free. So Cosima cherished the mundane. She cherished the routine. She cherished the boring. Nothing could be more thrilling and life affirming to the scientist. She was alive. They were all alive.
She looked back to the picture and smiled. Similar pictures were all over the house. On bookshelves and walls, the refrigerator, the cork board in the kitchen that also held reminders, apointment cards and the grocery list. Pictures of her and Delphine doing anything and everything the past two and a half years. Snapshots in time reminding them how far they had come. Also joined by pictures with Alison and Sarah and Helena and Kira, Gemma, Oscar, Charlotte, Donnie, Felix, Mrs. S, Scott – their family. There was a big group picture of them hanging over the fireplace in the living room. All of them there as well as Cal, Art, Krystal, MK, Tony and even Benjamin. That had taken a bit of explaining for the photographer, but Felix had offered something from his "party mix" of pills and she quickly forgot to question it. Or how to take a decent picture, but they made it work.
Delphine entered the bedroom as she was putting an earring in. Dressed for work in a silver silk blouse, black skirt that stopped a few inches above her knee (her days of short skirts were over - mostly), matching black stilletos with her hair collected low on the back of her head, a stray golden curl hanging from the right side where it always seemed to come loose. She noticed the faraway look on Cosima's face. "Are you okay?"
Cosima shook herself out of it and took a deep breath. In the grand scheme of things two and a half years wasn't very long, but so much had happened. Aside from them finally being free for the first time in their lives, that is. After taking sometime to just be after everything had happened, she and Delphine had moved back to Minnesota so Cosima could finish her doctorate. She was now, proudly, Dr. Niehaus. Delphine had taken a short-term position at the university teaching while they were there. Not that they needed the money. MK had split up the money she took from Ferdinand between them. After that they had immediately returned to Toronto to be close to their family, found jobs they loved – safe jobs, bought this house they were currently in and started planning for the future. A simple, boring future.
The world still didn't know about clones or all that they had been through, had fought for, the many people who had died, but the sisters no longer hid. If they were in public together and anyone asked, they would say they were triplets or quadruplets or quintuplets depending on how many of them were together at the time. No one questioned it. And they were happy. All of them.
While the cure hadn't been able to reverse their infertility it had removed the masses from their reproductive organs. So while they were still unable to ovulate on their own as they were created to not have their own eggs, Alison had been able to use an egg donor and carry a child. A little boy due in a couple months time. Sarah had gone through two egg donation cycles at her own insistence. They were clones – genetic identicals, so while, yes, they were her actual eggs, it was really no different than any of the sisters having their own biological children the Brit had reasoned.
Alison had fallen pregnant their first IVF cycle and while they knew the truth, genetically speaking it was as if she and Donnie were having their own child. Alison insisted this was the only child she would physically have as she would shortly have four children – they had adopted Charlotte as well - so the rest of Sarah's eggs were currently in storage in case Cosima wanted to use them. Cosima was adament she didn't want to carry a child, but Delphine's eyes lit up at the thought of carrying Cosima's child.
Helena and Jessie had, finally, gotten together and were raising her – their – twin girls and driving tow trucks. Making an honest living. She did routinely trap squirrels, rabbits and other woodland creatures that had the misfortune of finding themselves in their yard, but other than that her killing days were far behind her. Sarah, Cal and Kira were off living the dream Sarah never knew she wanted. For someone who could never be still, she was pretty great at it nowadays. She was no soccer mom, but she was great. No more kids for them though. If anyone even asked, Sarah told them right where to put their questions or opinions. She had gotten her GED and had even taken a couple of online college courses. Only a couple and they were core classes everyone was required to take despite their major. She hadn't picked a major yet and was in no rush. School still wasn't her thing, so she was taking it slow.
Felix was Felix. His art was actually getting quite popular and he was making a pretty decent living. So he was able give up his prostitution side job and had an on again/off again thing with Colin, the lonely morgue guy. Mrs. S was Mrs. S. Mysterious as always, but now she had many more chickens being a surrogate mother to them all and grandmother to the kids.
And then there was Cosima and Delphine. Cosima smiled up at her love and took her hands in her own, admiring the perfect fit of the engagement ring on Delphine's left hand that matched the one on her own. Three weeks. They would be married in three weeks. And this was their life. Their family, their house, their jobs, their future. Perfectly boring and perfectly theirs. They had family dinners on Sundays and went to every karate tournament or school event for their nieces and nephew, they went to every play or musical Alison was in no matter how bad, Delphine got her nails done with Krystal, Cosima and Scott had game nights and they met other sestras for dinner or drinks or whatever and they stayed home and cuddled up on the couch with a bottle of wine and watched TV and told the other about their day and they went grocery shopping and picked out hand towels for the guest bathroom.
And they went on romantic weekend getaways and candle light dinners and stayed up all night worshipping each other's bodies even though they knew it would make the next day at work miserable being so exhausted, but not caring as it was impossible to keep their hands off one another.
And it was amazing.
It had taken them a while to be able to spend any amount of time apart. There had been panic attacks and hyperventillating and sweating and one very scary instance where Delphine was sure she was having a heart attack after Cosima's phone had died and she hadn't been able to reach her for hours, but eventually, slowly, they were learning to trust that everything was okay. To trust that just because they hadn't gotten a call or a text in the past hour, that the other was still okay. They still kept in very close contact texting throughout the day even if it was just a winking emoji. Just something to reassure the other that they were okay. They had been through hell and were still working on it. The entirety of their relationship before they reconnected on the island was full of bad things happening so it was hard for them to be comfortable and okay with being away from each other for too long. But they were working on it.
"Are you okay mon amour?" Delphine repeated, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside Cosima.
It was still hard for Cosima to believe that this was real. Even though it had been a few years, it was still hard for Cosima to believe this wasn't some some dream brought on by her mind and she wasn't currently dying out in the cold woods with Charlotte. She didn't think she would ever stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she didn't let moments pass her by. Time was a gift and she cherished it. With a smile she cupped Delphine's face in her hands and pulled her in for a long, slow, lingering kiss. She pulled away with a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. "I'm perfect."