SarahXCosima, post-finale. UA (Universe Alterations)
Alterations: Kira has not been taken. She is staying in Mrs. S's custody in a safe location while Sarah lives and works out of Felix's flat (the "clone hub") so that she can find Helena.
A/N: This is my first attempt multichapter fic, so please be lenient! I have a general idea of where I want it to go, but I'm not sure if it will take a long time to get there or not. So enjoy the ride, I guess because I'll be riding it with you! Also, this piece, for the most part, is self-edited, so any mistakes are completely mine.
Disclaimer: I do not own Orphan Black or any of the characters or any material that is associated with the show. The idea is my creative property and that's it!
Cosima woke with a start, images of falling angels and bloody sunsets fading from her mind's eye as she regained consciousness. She had been dreaming about home, about times that were easier than the ones she faced now. Times when she didn't know that she was one of a few and when she didn't understand the meaning of orphan. When she barely understood what it meant to be alone.
When she didn't wake almost every night with blood on her pillow.
Rising with a sigh, she rubbed the bloody tinge from her lips as she stripped the pillowcase from her pillow and crossed her dorm room over to her pile of laundry which had already had a collection of blood-stained bed coverings. It happened so often now that it had become a sick ritual. A sick, ritualistic testament to the life she was living now. Proof of the reality that she was dying.
She needed a place where she could deal with this shit. The university dorm was all well and good while she was constantly researching things that might help them understand themselves better but it did nothing to help ease her continual sense of loneliness. Despite the distractions that research brought, science really wasn't a good companion for those who were slowly dying. If anything, it only kept the stark red reality in the forefront of her mind at all times, mocking her always as she fought to find a cure, a reversal of the symptoms.
She needed a place where she could feel safe. Safe from whoever was trying to wipe them all out, from the science that she was sure she understood once. But most of all, she reflected as she tossed the sheets into the washing machine and turned back to the suitcase that lay open and empty at the foot of her bed, she needed a place where she knew she was safe from the fear of dying alone.
The pink phone was in her hand before she even registered that she had crossed the room again. Her thumb roved over the contacts, bouncing back and forth between the only two on the list. Her mind first jumped to Alison, whom she had known longer and probably had a guest bedroom, now that she and Donnie were back on track again. Before she hit dial though, she thumbed down to Sarah. Cosima knew that she wouldn't ask questions like Alison surely would. Despite their occasional disputes, she knew that Sarah kept to herself, just like Cosima did. Decision made, Cosima punched call.
"Sarah?" Cosima said as soon as the call connected, not waiting for the groggy hello on the other end.
"Shit, Cosima, it's like... six in the morning. What the hell?" Sarah answered, having obviously just woken up to answer. But at least she answered.
"I.. um, need a place to stay," Cosima, normally cool and collected under pressure, faltered for a mere moment. Without waiting for Sarah to register her request, she forged on, trying to regain her confidence by sounding in control, "Is there room at the flat? You know, now that Alison is back at the house with Donnie."
There was silence for a moment on the other end, save for the rustling of fabric as Sarah presumably climbed out of bed. Then Sarah spoke again, asking questions instead of giving answers. "What's wrong with the university? You've got a dorm don't you?"
So much for keeping to herself, Cosima thought with an inward eye roll as she bit her lip and kicked clothing along the floor, nudging it towards her suitcase. "I... yes," Cosima hesitated yet again, trying to keep the fear out of her voice so that Sarah wouldn't catch onto the fact that there was something wrong. Pull yourself together Cosima! "I need a place to stay so I can get away from Delphine for a little while," she improvised, using the somewhat flimsy excuse to cover up what she was really feeling; that she was scared of dying alone and away from family. Even if that family happened to be genetically engineered. But after bouncing around in the foster system during her early years, she'd take any definition of family at that point.
"Alright," Sarah agreed slowly, sounding much more awake and aware, lending her tone into slight suspicion. But she let Cosima have her privacy and the eye roll turned into an inaudible sigh of relief.
"My flight leaves in three hours," she said as she wedged her phone against her shoulder and began folding things with precise chaos, tossing shirts and pants arbitrarily into her suitcase, defeating any and all purpose of folding. "You'll meet me there?"
"Yeah.. sure," Sarah's voice came across the line, sounding slightly irritated. "What about Alison? You know she needs to be in the loop."
A flicker of her own irritation stopped her momentarily in the process of packing her basic toiletries. "Does she have to come with, though?"
"You know she'll go crazy if she doesn't, Cos," Sarah told her impatiently.
"Okay, fine. Whatever. Tell Alison, I don't care," Cosima snapped, her fingers whitening as she gripped her phone harder. "And since she'll want to know every little detail, tell her my flight number too." She relayed her flight information, even her seat number for both connections.
"Fine," Sarah replied, her voice just as edgy.
Cosima hung up and threw her phone at her bed. "Bitch," she snapped, glaring at the pink thing for a moment longer before turning back to her closet. As she yanked down shirts and jackets in an abrupt manner, she knew that, in the back of her mind, she was grateful for Sarah. She was providing her a place to stay without questioning exactly why she needed a place. Despite knowing that she would have to tell Sarah and Alison eventually, the thought eased her frustration somewhat as she began carelessly folding another pile of shirts, coughing into her sleeve as she did so. When she went back to her closet, to her drawers this time, she brought her mouth away from her arm, leaving her sleeve stained a deep scarlet.
Her flight was fairly uneventful, aside from one major coughing fit that sent her scrambling to the washroom to cough up blood. She had spent so long in that tiny space, clutching the cold metal of the sink that a flight attendant had to come and knock on the door, asking if she was alright. She had collected herself, tried her best to scrub the blood droplets from the sink and anywhere else it may have splattered before shakily unlocking the door. As she stepped out, a little unsteady, she waved off the attendant and blamed it on the turbulence.
When she had landed a little while later, she dialed up Alison this time, knowing that she would've thrown a fit at Sarah when Sarah had to tell Alison what was going on, instead of just calling Alison herself. Bracing herself for the outrage, she hit call and put the phone to her ear.
"Cosima!" Alison sniped into the phone after it had barely had a chance to ring even once. "What is this about you flying down so you can stay in Felix's flat? And why did I have to hear about it from Sarah and not you?!"
Cosima rode out the rant, one of Alison's calmer and smaller ones, with a sigh. "I'll explain more when you guys come get me. Can you just tell Sarah that I've landed and my luggage will be at carousel 3 so meet me there in an hour or so?"
"So what, I'm your messenger to Sarah and Sarah's your messenger to me?" Alison scoffed, clearly annoyed, "Why don't you just talk to both of us directly?!"
"Fine," Cosima bit out and hung up on her, dialing Sarah in the next breath.
"What did I tell you?" Sarah began to sigh into the phone when Cosima cut her off with a sharp snap and an abrupt movement of her hand that Sarah couldn't see anyways.
"No, Sarah. Just don't," she said, then carried on through Sarah's resigned sigh, "I just landed. Carousel 3 in an hour, alright?"
"Right, right," Sarah replied and they both hung up. Cosima stuffed her phone back into her jacket and picked up her carry-on from where she had placed it beside her on the floor while she had stopped to make the two calls. She ran a hand through her dreadlocks and sighed as she headed for the luggage drop off area of the airport. Maybe coming here wasn't such a great idea after all. Back in Minnesota, she had Delphine. Wasn't that enough?
As she waited by carousel 3, watching the different suitcases go by, she forcibly reminded herself of Delphine's betrayal. Despite the fact that they had worked together to decode her genetic sequence and she told her about being sick, Cosima was still burdened by a distrust for her, worried that she might still be, simply, an experiment to her. Delphine's own personal laboratory subject.
"God," she muttered to herself after she had tried to shake that particular line of thinking for the fourth time, "You're starting to sound like Alison. Loosen up Cos!"
"Did someone say my name?"
"There she is." Two voices drifted towards her and she turned, spotting Alison and Felix walking towards her. The pair wasn't exactly hard to miss, what with Alison dressed brightly in her ever-present pink and Felix in his usual flamboyant styles.
"Hey," she greeted both of them, glancing at Felix for a bit longer than necessary; she still wasn't exactly sure of him and where they stood. But he was Sarah's brother, so that had to count for something. "My luggage hasn't shown up yet. But thanks for getting here on time."
"Yes, well, with Sarah driving-" Alison began, but Cosima cut her off as an impulsive spike of irrational fear cut through her.
"Where is she anyways?" she demanded, looking at Felix as though he had murdered her or something.
"Relax," he told her, regarding her with the same, if not greater, amount of distrust that she gave him. "She's waiting in the car because she drove." He continued with a roll of his eyes as he saw Cosima open her mouth to interject further. "You honestly think that we'd risk the three of you being in the same place? God, even two of you is stretching it."
"Right," Cosima nodded abruptly and turned away from him with a small glare in his direction as she spotted her red luggage finally sliding down the metal chute. "Well, let's go then," she told them, grabbing it from the carousel and pulling it along behind her.
"Where are you planning on staying while you're here, Cosima?" Alison asked her as they walked beside each other, Felix on Alison's other side.
"Um... the flat," Cosima said after a moment of hesitation, glancing past Alison at Felix. He didn't react much other than to just let out a tiny sigh, so she assumed that Sarah had told him about her intentions of giving Cosima a place to stay.
"Is there room there?" Alison asked as they walked into the parking garage. "Isn't Paul staying-?"
"I should bloody hope not," a voice came from within the underground parking lot, magnified by its echo. They all looked to see Sarah walking towards them, hands stuffed into her pockets and her hood up.
"Why would you say that Sarah?" Alison questioned, looking at her in confusion. "I thought things were fine between you and Paul."
"Yeah, well, they're not," Sarah said by way of explanation,glancing at Cosima. "Hey. Flight went alright?"
Cosima thought about her major coughing fit and felt her lungs seize up at the recollection. "Yeah, it was alright," she replied, clearing her throat when she didn't make any sound the first time.
"So what's going on between you and Paul, Sarah?" Alison asked as Sarah popped the trunk for Cosima so she could throw her luggage in the back. As she did so, her chest tightened and she bent over, coughing violently for a moment or two before she regained her breath and was able to load her suitcase into the back. Everyone else except for Felix was already in the car, so neither Sarah nor Alison noticed. Felix just gave her a look as he slid into the passenger seat beside Sarah. He didn't have to ask; he knew that she wasn't fine. He was the one who saw her coughing up blood on the day that Delphine came to visit, after all.
Her little coughing fit caused her to miss the majority of Sarah's answer, but as she sat in the back beside Alison and shut the door, she heard her finish with "- with Rachel at the Dyad Institute. He works for them."
"If he's not staying at the flat, then where-?" Alison began to ask as Sarah pulled out onto the road, signaling for a turn and cutting her off in the same moment.
"He's back at the apartment. He's the least of our worries," she explained as patiently as she could to her hyper-paranoid clone.
Yeah, Cosima thought as the rest of the ride was silent, We've got other things to be paranoid about. She turned her face to the window and hid a cough in her coat sleeve. More life-threatening things.
After they dropped Alison off at her house, not directly in front of it, but at the curb of course, Sarah, Felix and Cosima headed back to the flat. Sarah parked and they all got out, both Cosima and Felix walking towards the trunk. Cosima looked at him in confusion as he told Sarah to go on up, that they'd be right behind her. She did, though not without her own confusion, and disappeared up the stairs.
"What do you want?" Cosima asked, her voice laced with a hint of aggression. But if Felix noticed, he waved her off with his response, one that was filled with concern.
"You're sick," he stated. When she did nothing but to nod slightly, he carried on, "Are you going to tell them? Sarah? They need to know, you can't just put it off!"
"I'm going to tell them, don't worry," Cosima shrugged him off and went to the trunk to get her suitcase.
"You've got to remember that Sarah isn't by herself like you. She's got a daughter to worry about," he explained, reaching for her wrist to stop her from going for her luggage.
"I know," she replied softly, "Believe me, leaving Kira motherless is the last thing I want. I would rather die than leave her motherless." She looked at Felix with sad eyes then, the both of them recognizing the deeper truth that lurked beneath her words. But only Cosima knew just how fast that that truth would catch up with her in the end.
Halfway up the stairs to his flat, the strain of pulling her luggage up behind her triggered another coughing fit, causing her to bend double and clutch onto the railing for support, leaving Felix to take ahold her her suitcase as she fought for breath.
When she regained her composure, she reached out for the handle of her bag, but Felix simply held onto it. "I've got it," he told her, his tone soft towards her for once.
"Thanks... Felix," she smiled gently at him and made her way slowly up the rest of the steps while he followed along behind her. She reached the landing, crossed over to the threshold of the flat and was about to knock when he caught her arm.
She turned to him and noted his eyes, how they were filled with concern once again. But when he spoke, quietly this time, as not to let Sarah know that they had come up just yet, his concern was not for his sister. "You sure you're alright?"
Cosima regarded him for a moment, then just decided to tell him the truth. "I've been getting worse," she explained, her breaking voice exposing her true fear, "That's why I'm here. Because I don't want to die away from family."
He took the information in silently, the only indication that he was upset by it was the tightening of his lips. Then he spoke, his voice comforting and serious all at once. "You're in good hands. Sarah will do anything for her family."
"That's what I was counting on," she nodded solemnly and pushed open the door, which Sarah had left open because she knew that they had been right behind her.
"What took so long?" Sarah asked as they stepped into the room. With Felix pulling her suitcase, Cosima shut the door and put the screwdriver into place to keep it shut.
"I.. had to talk to Felix about some things," she said as Felix shot her a meaningful look, to which she nodded in response.
Sarah looked back and forth between the two of them as Cosima moved her suitcase to the foot of the bed to deal with later and Felix went to change. "Yeah? About what?" she asked, looking to Cosima as Felix disappeared into the bathroom with a swish of beads.
Cosima was silent, pretending to be busy with unpacking. "Where can I put my stuff?" she asked, ignoring Sarah's annoyed look.
"Just.. in the drawer, wherever," she said distractedly, crossing the room to stand closer to her. "Cosima, what's-?"
"Nothing! Nothing, I'm fine," Cosima insisted stubbornly as she opened a drawer, closed it quickly when she saw what was inside, and opened another one just below it.
Felix came out a minute later and nailed Cosima with a look as Sarah sighed and folded her arms impatiently. "I'm going out," he said meaningfully, "So I'll leave you two alone." Cosima met his gaze determinedly, which caused Felix to let out a sigh of his own before just saying outright, "You better tell her."
"What? Tell me what?" Sarah jumped in as Felix walked across the room, pulled the door open again and disappeared out into the hallway.
Cosima shut the door and put the screwdriver back in place before crossing back over to the bed where Sarah was still standing, watching Cosima with wary eyes. She sat down, her back against the headboard and her feet tucked under her thighs over top of the covers, and looked up at Sarah, indicating that she sit next to her.
She did, glancing at the way Cosima sat, how her posture was all wrong and so very tense. "Tell me... what, Cosima?" she asked again, her voice softer, more gentle as she looked at her dreadlocked sister.
She considered saying it outright, like she had to Delphine, but she knew that Sarah needed more than that, since she could be at risk too. They all could. "The German's respiratory disease," she stated while Sarah looked over at her more intently, interest piqued now. "I've been running some tests to see if it's, well, a genetic defect in all of us."
At her pause, Sarah leaned in, her body twisting at the waist as she put both hands on the bed between them. "Yeah? And?" Sarah's eyes were focused entirely on Cosima's face, tracing the details as if searching for answers in the features that she had seen in the mirror her entire life. But none of the clone, genetically identical weirdness crossed her mind now. All she cared about was Cosima's answer. And her reasoning behind keeping it from the rest them until now.
Cosima was momentarily caught off-guard by Sarah's intensity, a stupid scientific hypothesis rolling through her brain. Would having sex with a clone be equivalent to masturbation? "Idiot," she muttered under her breath at herself.
"Cosima!" Sarah's indignant voice shook her from her scientific inquiry.
"Right, I-" she began, shaking her head, forcing the thought out of her brain. Focus on the stuff that matters Cos. She didn't get a chance to go further in her explanation than that, because she felt a cough wrack through her body, violent and uncontrollable. She stood, stumbling slightly, as she struggled to make it over to the bathroom sink.
"Cosima!" Sarah shouted again, right behind her as she gripped the edge of the sink with pale hands. Blood spattered over the ceramic as Sarah rushed in behind her, pulling her dreadlocks away from the spray. After the tremors left her body, Cosima straightened slowly, her lips painted a deeper scarlet. She caught Sarah's horrified eyes in the mirror and tried a pathetic smile, only to reveal pink teeth from blood-tainted saliva. She quickly clamped her mouth shut again, turning to face her now.
"How long?!" she accused, stepping close to Cosima as she fruitlessly tried to scrub the bloody evidence away from her lips. "How long has this been going on?!"
"I...," Cosima began, trying to frantically backpedal. Gave up after a matter of moments. Sarah had already seen. "A few days," she admitted quietly, turning back around in defeat and twisting the taps to wash the red away before it stained the ceramic.
Sarah opened her mouth to berate Cosima again, but saw in the slump of her shoulders something that Cosima wouldn't admit to out loud; that her science friend was scared out of her mind. Her anger drained away then as she wrapped her arms around Cosima's waist from behind in a decidedly intimate posture as Cosima leaned over the sink again. As tremors wracked her slim frame once more, the intimacy of the hold went unnoticed until she looked up from the sink into the mirror and noted their closeness.
"Sarah, I.." she began, looking at their reflections. Then she turned suddenly in Sarah's arms, causing her to step back a few feet. Because while they were, for all intensive purposes, sisters, Sarah clearly wasn't one for physical closeness except for those that she was truly familiar with.
"You're alright," Sarah told her quietly, just as she had on the night that Cosima told Sarah about Delphine's betrayal. The statement held just as much uncertainty now as it had then. And yet it still managed to assure Cosima all the same.
"Thanks," she murmured, leaning back against the sink wearily, tasting the fading copper on her tongue yet again. Something else she'd have to get used to.
"So this really isn't about Delphine, is it?" Sarah asked. It was an obvious question. Rhetorical really, as the answer had already been displayed quite clearly a few minutes ago when Cosima had her first coughing fit. But something flickered in Sarah's expression when the name crossed her lips, like she wanted to make absolute certain that Delphine wasn't, in any way, involved.
"No, Sarah," Cosima attempted a weak laugh but it ended up turning into a rough hack of breath that forced her to turn back to the sink to spit out more blood. "Sorry," she muttered.
"For what?" Sarah asked, her presence suddenly very alive and near. Cosima didn't know what to make of the lightheadedness she experienced right then, chalking it up to her coughing. To her blood loss. To her weak breath. To anything other than what she thought she had with Delphine. Because it couldn't be caused by the thing that she thought she had with Delphine.
No. Has. Still has. What she still has with Delphine.
Sarah was family. Genetically engineered, but still family. Raised to be a completely different person, but she was her sister. To what extent though? How far did nurture go? Did it go far enough to trump nature when you've never known the other existed until you were completely self-sustaining and established as your own person?
"Cos," Sarah's voice broke through her thoughts again. "Cosima!" her fingers snapped in front of her face, a hand tentatively shaking her shoulder. "You alright?"
"Apart from the..." she started to joke until she saw the look on Sarah's face and her attempt at making light of the situation fell flat. Taking a deep breath, trying to steady herself for an admission of defeat, one she never wanted to make, she looked at some point beyond Sarah's shoulder and whispered, "No. I'm not." And she tried then, very hard, not to break down.
It was in that moment, as Sarah watched Cosima fight tears, that she realized that she wasn't as concerned for herself as she thought she would be. She knew that she should've been concerned for her own well-being, as the disease could be something that was genetically part of all the clones. She should've been thinking about Kira and Felix in that moment, should have been worrying that this disease could leave her daughter motherless. Her brother without a sister.
But all she could think about was Cosima. And how terrified she must be. That she needed someone to be there for her and to protect her. And she had chosen Sarah. So this time, when she went to hug Cosima, there was no hesitation like there was on that night before. She simply reached out to her and pulled her in, even as Cosima made a slight noise of surprise at the contact.
Cosima pressed into Sarah, struggling to keep the tears at bay. She sought comfort in Sarah's familiar form, in the softness of the fabric and skin she could feel through the tank that she wore. "I'm not, Sarah," she whispered again, tightening her arms around Sarah, burying her face into Sarah's shoulder now, her lips brushing against skin, her nose tangled amongst stray strands of hair.
"You will be," Sarah tried to tell her firmly, but to both their own ears, the promise sounded flat. "We don't even know if it's life threatening," she continued on, the assurances still hollow, the lie unconvincing. "The German was shot before we could find out."
"Yeah," Cosima nodded slowly as she pulled away from Sarah's embrace, the tip of her nose again brushing along skin, her jawline this time, for the briefest of moments before fully stepping back from a hug that neither of them wanted to end. "Yeah, it might not be," she whispered, looking into Sarah's eyes for a long moment, completely overcome with exhaustion and worry.
"You look like you need some rest," Sarah said, matching Cosima's pitch, reaching out again for Comisa's shoulders to steady her as she guided her to the main bed in the middle of the room. The pair made it a few steps before Cosima's grip became more desperate as she clung to Sarah, causing her to turn and look at Cosima in concern and confusion, her lips parting in a question she never got to voice because Cosima leaned forward, way past the point of personal space, and kissed Sarah right on the lips.
Cosima wasn't even sure where the sudden desire had come from. But it was there, raging in her belly, a feeling she couldn't ignore until acted upon. She tried to remind herself about Delphine, but she was too lost in the feel of Sarah's lips against hers, the way that Sarah pressed her whole body into Cosima's, all the while tangling her hands in her dreads, pulling Cosima closer.
It was Cosima who pulled away first, despite making the first move. She put her hands on Sarah's shoulders, looking at her in confusion, trying to decipher what the hell just happened. She had only come here to feel close to family! That was it!
"Cosima... I," Sarah began, suddenly unsure of herself. It was that sudden vulnerability within Sarah that made Cosima step back. She was supposed to be the strong one, the one who defended them, the one who wasn't phased by anything! What was she playing at now, undone but their sudden intimacy?
"Forget it," she snapped, pushing back from Sarah, making her own way over to the bed much more wobbly than she would have had she had Sarah's support. She was also angry because Sarah didn't push her away. Sarah should have pushed me away! she growled angrily in her head. Delphine had pushed me away! So why didn't Sarah?
"Cos...," Sarah attempted as Cosima fell onto the bed, feeling herself weaken from the physical strain as well as the emotional overload that piled on top of her all at once. Sarah followed her, but didn't do anything other than to sit on the edge of the bed and look over at Cosima's weary face. She didn't bother to try to blame her by saying that she had kissed her first or to explain that there was no reason to be angry because she was the one who had initiated it. "I'm sorry," was all she said.
"Whatever," Cosima replied, quiet in her anger. She coughed a couple times, staining the bedsheets with red, which Sarah barely noticed as she gazed only at Cosima's forlorn form stretched out over top of the covers. She coughed again, harder this time before wheezing in a shaky breath and said as loud and demanding as she could muster, "Just leave me alone, Sarah."