"I loved her, you know."

"I know," Sarah replied.

Delphine looked around the lab, which was in disarray. The corner with Cosima's bed and her little chair area was untouched, but elsewhere papers and files were strewn across the room. There were broken test tubes and beakers on the floor. Cosima's corner was untouched, though, looking virtually the same except for an empty bed. Delphine stood there looking at the corner, feeling empty as well.

"Cosima knew, too," Sarah said. "We…we didn't talk about you two much, but it was obvious how much she cared about you."

"I told her that I would save her, I told her that being here at the DYAD was her only chance at getting better."

"It was," Sarah said.

"Look at everything that happened, Sarah," Delphine said, finally making eye contact with the English clone. "Everything Kira went through, everything you went through. Rachel will recover and she will not forget what you did. Helena is missing-."

"All that isn't your fault."

"And Cosima is dead," Delphine said, breaking eye contact.

Sarah had nothing to say to that. They both knew it wasn't Delphine's fault, but Sarah felt some blame.

"We had the bone marrow ready for transplantation," Delphine continued. "Kira went through all of that. And now Cosima is dead and it meant nothing."

With every word, Sarah's guilt grew. Delphine knew that it wasn't Sarah's fault, but she also wasn't in a state in which to care about how Sarah felt.

"It doesn't mean nothing," Sarah managed. "Cosima knew how much you wanted to save her. She saw it. You didn't let her die alone."

"I'm so angry," Delphine said. "And guilty. Rachel took advantage of me and got Kira, and then she got you, and then she destroyed the bone marrow. If that didn't happen, Cosima wouldn't be dead."

"Cos knew what she was doing," Sarah said. "She knew Rachel held all the cards, we all knew that."

"We were so close."

Sarah's guilt deepened. "I'm sorry about the bone marrow. I saw Rachel destroy it, I could've done something, I could've said things differently so she wouldn't have…"

"Please stop talking," Delphine said. "There's nothing we can do. We can't save her anymore!" She yelled the last bit and slammed her hand on a table. She put both hands on the table, holding herself up. She was shaking and breathing heavy.

Sarah cautiously walked up to the French girl and put a hand on her back. "Delph-."

Delphine's head snapped toward Sarah and she practically jumped away.

"I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "You look just like her."

Sarah took a step back and nodded, agreeing. It hadn't hit her before how hard it would be for Delphine to see people who looked just like her dead girlfriend, but the gravity of such a situation was starting to sink in.

"I know you aren't her," Delphine said. "You aren't anything like her, but at the same time you are so much like her. You hold yourself differently, you have a different accent, you wear different clothes and no glasses and your hair's different and you don't have tattoos. You move differently when you talk, and when you're listening, and you stand just far enough away from me that it is painfully clear that you aren't her. But I look at your eyes or your hands or your mouth and all I see is her. All I want is for your eyes to look at me like hers did, or your hands to hold mine like hers did, or your mouth to say my name like hers did. But she's gone."

Sarah looked at Delphine, for the first time unsure of how to respond and taken aback by this newfound vulnerability. "Do you want me to leave?"

Delphine shook her head. "You have just as much a right to be here as I do. Cosima loved you, too. You were the person she was closest too in all this."

Sarah could see the pain in Delphine's face with that last admission.

"Every day I wish Rachel hadn't destroyed the bone marrow," Sarah said. "I've been replaying it in my mind, I've been hearing those glass vials shatter. I will make this right. Rachel won't be a problem anymore."

Delphine looked up at Sarah. "What will happen to her?"

"Marion is taking her somewhere," Sarah said. "I don't know where, she didn't tell me. She's too much of a danger to all the clones to keep around."

"Good." Delphine turned around and slid to the floor, sitting with her back against the table leg. She motioned for Sarah to join her.

"So where are they taking Cos?"

Delphine took a deep breath. "They are keeping her here. They told her parents that she died in a car accident and there wasn't a body left that was fit to transport back to San Francisco. So they are having a memorial service in a few days."

"Are you going to go?"

Delphine's face soured. "They told them that I died too." She looked down. "That was the condition. Cosima's parents knew about me, but they didn't know about the clones or the disease. The powers that be wanted to make sure that I couldn't go over and tell them everything." Delphine sat there in Sarah's stunned silence. "Scott is going, though. It was more trouble to fake his death, too, so they let him live. He's going to go and pay respects for the both of us."

"So if they faked your death, does your family think you're dead too?"

Delphine shook her head. "I don't really have a family. My parents died when I went to university, and soon after that I transferred to a school in the States and got noticed by DYAD. Cosima was my family." She wiped away a tear subtly and with urgency, so Sarah pretended not to notice.

"Cosima mentioned a book that Duncan gave to Kira," she continued.

Sarah nodded. "Yeah, that H.G. Wells book."

"Duncan put the cipher in there," Delphine said. "I need you to bring that to me when you can."

"Uh, okay," Sarah stammered. "Why?"

Delphine stood up. "I'm going to fix this. I'm going to figure this out."

"Delphine…"

"We have the cipher. We have Cosima's body," she choked out the last two words. "We know what the disease does when it runs its full course and we have the key to stop it."

"No one is asking you to do this," Sarah said, now also standing. "You don't have to do this."

"I worked out a deal with Marion," Delphine said. "I keep quiet about the clones and in return I keep that lab and have all the resources I need to try to cure you all. She doesn't know about the cipher, but she left us all this equipment and Cosima."

Sarah was stunned. She knew that clone disease was a possibility for all the clones. She thought of Alison and Helena and Charlotte, young little Charlotte, and couldn't imagine any of them as sick as Cosima was. She didn't want to, but she knew that it could happen.

"When I told Cosima that I loved her, she told me to love all of you, and I do," Delphine said. "This is how. You were her family, and you are my family now too. Not a single one of you will get sick like she did. We will not allow it."

"Who is we?"

"Scott and I," Delphine said.

"The one with the fire extinguisher, yeah?" Sarah asked.

Delphine nodded. "He loved Cosima, too. He knows about the clones. He saw Cosima through her illness. We are invested, to say the least."

"You don't have to go back to Germany?"

"Once Rachel was out of the picture, they let me stay here. Rachel only sent me away to hurt Cosima," Delphine explained. "But there are some things you should know about Germany."

Sarah looked at Dephine expectantly.

"There is a whole set of male clones," Delphine said. "They were created by the military. I saw some DNA samples and they are related to you. Sarah, these are your brothers."

Sarah again was shocked into silence. She knew about Project Castor but it didn't occur to her that they shared genetic material. "Wait, how did you compare our DNA? How do you know we're related?"

"Helena is in Germany as well," Delphine said. "And Paul, too. Paul is guarding her, in a way. I've only seen them a few times, but they assigned me to be her physician and Paul was always in the room."

Disgust covered Sarah's face. "I'm going to shoot his balls off."

Delphine made a face, like she didn't quite understand what Sarah meant.

Sarah tried again. "What an arsehole," she said, in reference to Paul.

"Paul is American military, he's pretty highly ranked. He was in charge to most of the soldiers around," Delphine said. "When he was here, he was subservient to Rachel, but I think he's higher up in all this than she was."

Sarah's face flushed with anger, then she collected herself. "What about Helena, then. Why did she need a doctor?"

"She told me that you knew," Delphine said, flustered. "Sarah, Helena is pregnant."

"What? How is that possible?"

"She didn't say much about it, because Paul was always in the room," Delphine said. "She told them that it was something about her boyfriend, but she managed to tell me something about a ranch and a man named Henrik."

Sarah absorbed this information. "Is Helena alright?"

Delphine nodded. "She seemed fine. She's only about three weeks in, so anything could happen, but so far she is alright."

"We need to get her out of there."

"I can't go back," Delphine said. "But Paul…he cares about you. He asked about you while I was there. You can use that."

Sarah nodded. "You're damn right I will."

They stood in silence for a few moments then Delphine's phone went off. She made a motion to Sarah and then went off to the corner of the room to talk. She spoke in private for a few minutes then returned.

"That was Scott," she said. "He just landed in Minneapolis, he's getting some of Cosima's things to bring back to California."

"I know that we can't go to her memorial service," Sarah said. "But we can have one of our own."

Delphine made a face like she was unsure.

"We deserve to say goodbye," Sarah asserted.

"Okay," Delphine said.

-OB-

After Sarah left the lab, she headed over to Alison's to start work on the memorial service. Alison had already said her final goodbyes to Cosima, the day before she died, and Sarah hadn't left the DYAD since Cosima died. She and Scott stood outside as Delphine laid with Cosima in her final moments. They watched a team come in and transport the body. Scott excused himself and traveled with the team to see where they were taking Cosima, then he flew out to San Fransisco.

Sarah waited outside the lab for a long while then. She saw her sister's body, encased in a body bag, be transported down the hall then up to who knows where.

She stood in the suffocating silence, the weight of the knowledge of Cosima's death crushing her chest and the utter silence from inside the lab pounding in her ears. She wanted to cry and to run and to break things.

Then she heard the sound of things breaking inside the lab. She heard grunts and the sound of glass shattering. She could hear paper flying through the air then hitting the ground with a pronounced thud. She heard rapid, breathless strings of what presumably were curse words in French and all this went on for what felt like a painful eternity, until she heard only the sound of truly broken sobs, the kind when tears aren't enough and lungs are desperate for air, for anything to fill them up with anything but pure despair.

Sarah stood outside listening to all that and feeling it, but knowing that whatever she was feeling was nothing compared to how Delphine felt. She waited until the worst of it was over and there was only quiet coming from the lab. That's when she went in.

All this was replaying in her head as she waited for Alison to open the backdoor. She wasn't sure what to expect.

"How are you?" Alison asked as she opened the door.

"I'm okay," Sarah lied. "You?" She walked in and sat in one of the armchairs, the one she sat in when she first met Alison and Cosima.

Alison shrugged. "I don't even know. How's Delphine?"

Sarah exhaled sharply. "I think she's still there. She practically lived there when Cos was there, so I don't think she's ready to go home yet. We talked though, and we want to do a memorial. For clone club."

Alison nodded. "Absolutely. I'll take care of it."

"Good, thank you," Sarah said.

"Do you," Alison began. "Do you want to talk, or anything?"

Sarah sighed. "I have no idea what I want."

"I know the timing is kind of rough," Alison said. "But do you think my kids could meet you?"

Sarah sat up straighter. "Yeah, sure," she stuttered. "Of course."

"They met Cosima yesterday," Alison explained. "Donnie and I have been trying to explain my situation to them and I wanted them to meet Cosima before…" She cleared her throat and collected herself. "Well, I want them to meet you. They already know Felix, it's only fitting that they know you too."

Sarah managed a grin. "Okay. Is this happening right now?"

"Yeah, they're home, so I can go get them," Alison said. She got up and went to get her kids.

"I should bring Kira around one of these days," Sarah said. "She's about Oscar's age, yeah?"

"Yeah, that would be great," Alison said, then disappeared up the stairs. She came back a few minutes later. "Oscar, Gemma, this is Sarah. She's like my sister, like Auntie Cosima."

"Hi," Sarah said, going up to them. She knelt down so she was about eye level with Gemma and offered her a hug. "It is so great to properly meet you two."

"You sound different than mommy," Gemma said.

Sarah smiled. "Yeah, I'm from England."

"How are you sisters if you're not from here?" Oscar asked.

Sarah laughed a bit. "It's complicated, kiddo. Auntie Cosima wasn't from here, either, but she's our sister, too."

"I'm sorry about what happened to her," Oscar said.

Sarah exchanged a look with Alison. "Yeah, me too." She stood up and led the kids back to the couch. "So you two are in school then, yeah? Have you learnt anything interesting lately?"

So Sarah sat there and spoke with Oscar and Gemma and got to know them. Alison popped in and out of the room from the craft room, getting started on a memorial. She could hear the conversation between her kids and Sarah and was happy that they finally actually met.

After a while, Donnie came home from work and the kids went upstairs.

"Thank you," Sarah said. "It was really great meeting them."

"It's important that they know who their family is," Alison said.

Sarah smiled appreciatively, then carried on. "Look, there are some things Delphine told me that we need to talk about."

-OB-

Meanwhile, Delphine cleaned up the lab. She picked up and resorted all the papers she threw and swept up the broken glass. She filled out an order form for more test tubes and beakers and finally made her way to Cosima's corner.

On the table were open files on Kira. Cosima spent a lot of time looking at Kira's file, making sure that she had no ill effects from anything that she went through to try to treat Cosima. Delphine closed the file and put it on the stack on the table, but found a little metal cigarette case under it. There was a note on the case:

For Delphine,

Now the student becomes the master. Please light one up for me. I can't even think about what you're feeling right now, and I am so sorry that you are feeling this. Kick the cigarettes, smoke pot. Hopefully it'll feel better. Also, this is about the last of my stash since I haven't really smoked since I got sick. This is some good shit, so don't waste it. Don't waste any of it, Delphine. Life is short and I want you to be happy.

I love you,

Cosima.

Delphine put the note down. She wished she had told Cosima that she hadn't smoked a cigarette since she found out Cosima got sick, that she hadn't been as disgusted by cigarettes as she felt every time Cosima coughed or struggled for air.

"There is a lot I should have said," Delphine said aloud. "Starting with I know that you don't believe in heaven or anything, but I think you would want me to think that you're hearing this on some soul level, or spiritually. Or something."

She opened the case and took out one of the three joints that were in there. She took a lighter out of her bag, lit it up, and took a drag.

She grinned slightly. "Shit, that is good."

She sat there and smoked, saying aloud all the things she wished she told Cosima before.

"I could see us growing old together," Delphine said. "Making crazy science and going on adventures. We could go to the best scientists all over the world to see their work and presentations and collaborate with them. You'd take me home for Thanksgiving, like you said you would. I'd take you to Paris and I'd show you where I grew up. We lived down the street from this bakery, I know very stereotypical Paris, that sold the most aromatic crepes and baguettes. The smell would waft down to our house and it would always smell good, almost sickeningly so. But it smelled like home. And we'd end up living here, trying to avoid deportation for marijuana usage. We could get married here. We could walk around here, hand in hand, and not have it be an issue. I don't think we'd have kids, at least not biologically one of ours. You're great with kids. Kira loves you and you're great with Oscar and Gemma. But maybe that'd be enough, being the cool science aunts. I would do whatever you want, I'd have twenty kids if you wanted. But no matter what, I'd have you and you'd have me. No more lies, no more secrecy, no more hidden feelings." By this point in her speech, Delphine was high enough that she didn't feel pain anymore. Everything was just matter-of-fact. "You are it for me, Cosima Niehaus. There is no one else, there was no one else, there will be no one else. Maybe I'll go on a date now and then, maybe with some guys or some girls, whatever tickles my fancy. But you will always be the best for me, Cosima. I don't want anyone else. I will never want anyone else as much as I want you, Cosima."

With that, Delphine sat in silence and stared at the lab in front of her. She spoke every now and then, telling Cosima about any big or small thing that popped into her head. She eventually could feel herself coming down from her high and immediately lit up another joint, wanting to run from the pain as long -as she could. When she came down from that high, she reached for another joint but didn't light it. She could feel the pain coming on, the way a person stands on the shore and sees a huge wave coming. But Delphine knew she couldn't run.

She was in pain and she was exhausted. She'd barely slept since she got back from Frankfurt and was just now feeling it, since before all her time was spent with Cosima. Time with Cosima felt like it sped by, because it was definitely limited. Time without Cosima felt slow and dragging, because Delphine knew that this time was all she had now. She wasn't going to have Cosima again and that pain and that frustration and that sorrow mixed with all her fatigue just sat in her bones and made her feel more thoroughly exhausted than ever before.

She laid on her side and covered herself with Cosima's red coat, which was on the back of the sofa. She inhaled, smelling the familiar scent of Cosima. The lights were still on and she was only half certain that the door was locked but she didn't care. She curled up with Cosima's coat and fell asleep.

Okay so I wrote this like a week or so after the season two finale aired and I've been working on it every now and then since then and I decided that with season 3 coming up I wanted to publish it because it probably won't fit with season 3 continuity.

So, I hoped you enjoyed this. Please leave a review letting me know what you think, good or bad! And have a great day! :)