Content Warnings: blood, death, sickness, food mention
Cosima's sitting on one end of the couch in Felix's flat, her oxygen tank on the ground beside her. She's still not accustomed to the feeling of the cannula, the way the tubes thread behind her ears and up into her nostrils, chaining her to the tank. Even with the oxygen, every breath feels deliberate, oddly forced. Her laptop, which she was using only a few minutes ago, has begun to slip off her lap, kept from falling only by one hand resting limply on the keyboard. She feels her eyes starting to close - she's been so tired in the last few days, and it scares her.
Sarah's lying across the rest of the couch, her back against the opposite arm and her feet near Cosima. She has her clone phone in one hand - texting with Cal - and a glass of wine in the other. She keeps glancing up at Cosima, from the oxygen tank to the cannula, watching Cosima's chest rising and falling, her eyes closing as she starts to drift off.
"Hey, Cos," Sarah says softly, setting down her phone and wineglass. She sits up and reaches for Cosima's computer, "Lemme take this. It's about to fall." Cosima moves her hand off the keyboard so can Sarah close the laptop and take it from her, laying it on the already cluttered coffee table. She returns to the couch and sits next to Cosima, close enough that they're almost touching, but not quite. Cosima looks so fragile, and Sarah is almost afraid that to touch her could shatter her into a thousand pieces.
"You want me to help you to the bed, Cos? Get some rest, yeah?" Cosima opens her eyes. Sarah holds out her hand for Cosima to take, but instead Cosima just looks at her and starts to shake her head.
"No. I'm... fine. I've slept enough."
"You're tired."
"No. Well, yeah. I'm always tired." Cosima's voice cracks in frustration as she says it. "I'm tired of being tired." Sarah moves closer to Cosima and puts an arm around her shoulders, squeezing lightly. She tips her head back and sighs.
"We're gonna get you well, yeah?"
Cosima doesn't answer right away. Instead, she looks down at her lap, traces the golden ratio tattoo on her arm with one finger. When she speaks, her voice is barely audible.
"You don't believe that."
For a moment, Sarah wonders if she heard correctly.
"You keep saying that," Cosima continues, "Everyone keeps saying that. But Delphine's in Germany. We've lost the bone marrow. And Ethan's dead." Cosima's voice is rising in anger and desperation. "The sequence code - the one that's in Kira's book - I don't have time to decode it, to produce non-mutated DNA, or to undergo gene therapy." She takes a breath, and then, nearly shouting in her raspy, cracking voice, "You have to accept it - we all have to accept it - I'm not going to make it, Sarah."
The silence that follows presses down on the both of them. The only sound is Cosima's continued uneven breathing. She feels the weight of Sarah's arm leave her shoulders and turns to look at her.
Sarah's lower lip quivers - the same way that Cosima's does when she's about to cry - and tears begin to wet her eyes. Slowly, Sarah pulls her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around them and curling into herself right there on the couch.
"You can't, Cosima." Desperation saturates Sarah's words, and Cosima doesn't know how to react.
"I don't know... I can't..." Panic stops Sarah from finishing her thoughts. With one hand, she claws at the material of her jeans. The other rakes through her hair, fingernails sharp against her scalp.
Cosima reaches over to lay her hand lightly on Sarah's back and begins rubbing small circles there, hesitantly at first. She knows she said the wrong thing, bad timing.
Unsure of how to right the error, she tries, in the most soothing voice she can manage, "You're okay. You're fine, you'll be fine."
Sarah gulps in air and then lets it out in great, pitiful, uncontrollable sobs. After a time, she manages, "I don't want to... How can I go on without you? There's no..."
Cosima continues rubbing Sarah's back as the tears rack her body and she rocks back and forth on the couch. Her eyes are red; tears splash onto her arms and the knees of her jeans, leaving streaks of eyeliner down her face. She rocks harder and harder, burying her face in her knees.
Cosima tries again. "You've led us all this far." She pauses for a moment, and then, "You can carry on without me."
Sarah explodes off the couch, her face suddenly contorted with rage as well as tears, and spins to face Cosima. She starts to say something, but chokes on her words. Instead, she grabs the half-full water glass from the coffee table - Cosima was drinking from it earlier - and hurls it across the room. It shatters and splashes on the ground next to Felix's easel.
But Sarah's not done. With one arm, she sweeps everything off the coffee table. Newspapers, books, her own phone and partly-full wineglass, and Cosima's computer all crash to the ground. The wine seeps across the carpet, where it's sure to leave a stain.
"Sarah, please!"
Sarah stomps her foot like a child, hard enough to make the couch shake. She rounds on Cosima. She sputters for a moment, too overwhelmed with rage and pain to form a coherent thought. But then she finds her voice.
"Fuck you!" Cosima jumps, startled by the sheer volume of Sarah's anger. "How dare you fucking say that, you bloody bitch! How can you tell me to go on without you like it's no big deal?! It is a fucking big deal, Cos! You'll be gone!" - she thrashes wildly - "and I'll be here, alone, nothing. Can't you see, Cosima? It's a bloody big deal!"
And then she stops, her voice still ringing in the silence like an echo.
You bloody bitch.
You'll be gone.
And I'll be here. Alone. Nothing.
Cosima just stares. She's stunned; there is no good way to respond. One hand fiddles with her oxygen tube.
Gradually, Sarah's breathing steadies. She swallows back the tears which threaten to return now that the adrenaline has gone stale in her veins. It's a long minute before she speaks again.
Her voice barely registers above a whisper, a tone so cracked and vulnerable that Cosima wonders how this could possibly be the strong Sarah she knows. "How can you tell me that I'll survive?" She drops to her knees in front of Cosima, who remains stalk-still on the couch. "How can you tell me that I'm restless? You don't understand; if you die, I will never have a restful sleep ever again. I will never be able to live - to be alive, really alive, I mean - if you're not around." She places one hand on Cosima's knee, the other on her oxygen tank. "You can't go, Cos, you just can't."
She lets out a long breath through her nose, sits back on her heels. "You just can't."
And Cosima, with Sarah sitting there, fallen to pieces in front of her, would do anything, anything, to be able to say, "I won't." But this is not the time to pretend, so she places her hand over her sister's and stays silent.