Delphine

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about the assignment. When she had made the call to accept, she had been so sure, so adamant, so damned determined. That day in Barcelona had sealed it for her. She had been ready to be challenged, to be useful in a different, more direct way. To chart her own path, not be anchored to the past.

The point had been to go where needs were greatest. And she did have a talented tongue, was familiar with Arabic, knew relevant clinical terms thanks to that one rotation on the outskirts of Paris.

She had said as much in her interview.

So now. She kicked herself for her candor. She was more concerned with failing her patients than herself. But she wondered at the possibility of both.

She also wondered about the small brunette who had, without intention, set her on this path. She smiled up at the Paris night before she left, straining to make out that small constellation in a too-bright sky. When Cosima pointed to that cluster of stars she meant it as a sort of metaphor of her. But all Delphine could think of now was Cosima's eyes on those stars from Minnesota, her gaze a sort of claiming. And it made her blush.

She knew she would see those stars more clearly where she was going, and the thought warmed her.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She was curled into a small cramped seat, her forehead gently resting against the harsh metal and plastic skin of the jet. Her eyes mirrored her frantic mind, earnestly searching the wisps of clouds backlit by a setting sun. To give some direction and focus to too-rapidly firing neurons, she ran through medical terms in Arabic, expected clinical encounters, diagnostic algorithms, the most efficient and effective treatments with the supplies she would have.

She had been assigned to Irbid on the northern Jordanian border. Relatively peaceful, considering. It was far enough from the skirmishes between Israel and Palestine, and from the border with Syria that it rarely saw fighting. It simply opened itself to the aftermath of both.

Considering her first few tentative days in the camp, she was frankly surprised at how easily she fell into the rhythm of the place, how the lack of pretense or prelude of the day-to-day clinic work felt right to her. Her colleagues were more than competent, passionate, irreverent - bawdy even. She knew she would learn from them. And, small as it may be, she could see the difference her efforts made, every day.

Days and nights under the clinic tents were chaos. One after another patients came. Mostly abrasions, contusions, dehydration. She moved to each in turn, taking as much time as she could to learn their stories in the space of time it took her to mend whatever was broken, to comfort as well as heal. Only occasionally did she walk into the makeshift waiting area, seeing the devastation that hadn't quite required her attention yet. It was often overwhelming, and those were the moments she felt most exhausted, a vague sense of loss.

It was hard to reconcile the strange sense of understanding and not understanding she felt at once in this new life. After talking all day with local clinicians and health care workers, her patients, the many others who hung around the settlement, she felt she was beginning to cut through the haze, to gain some understanding of the lives of the people she tried to help. But then a conversation, a news headline, a stray word from a colleague sent her nascent grasp into a tailspin. It was like reaching for a word, just on the tip of your tongue, never finding it. Endlessly frustrating. Endlessly humbling.

She didn't delude herself into thinking she made a difference in any broad, geopolitical sense. That's not what she was after anyway; she could see the difference on an individual level. But it was exhausting work, and somehow never quite enough. The work did keep her hands, her mind, her body busy. She hardly had a moment to herself since the day she arrived.

She spoke to Danielle on Skype once a week, but felt more and more distance growing, unable to explain her daily life and unable to connect with Danielle's. A gulf was opening. She wasn't sure it could be bridged until she was back home.

Without the link back home, her thoughts turned inward, to Cosima. She felt like a lovesick teenager and chided herself at first – so childish to cling to such a moment! And the bliss did feel jarring, like forcing the bright blue shard of an old life into muted greys and browns, a disjointed mosaic.

Something had been awoken as she'd lain that night by the small American. Like that piece of her life would always shine a little brighter, cast everything else in a paler light. She wrestled with its interpretation, categorization, meaning.

Maybe that moment had been a sign-post? To shuttle her to a different path?

But she couldn't shake the feeling that their night on that beach was a singular moment in time – heavier than others – like Cosima had said in the basilica. Not a signpost, but …

Cosima felt inevitable, like she was the destination Delphine had been heading toward her whole life.

Delphine's mind settled on her at the oddest times. When she was smoking with her colleagues in the makeshift rec tent in the evenings and someone mentioned their longing for a good hookah pipe. Or in the discussion of the recent Nobel nominees and the molecular mapping of DNA repair. She also wondered what the small woman would make of her decision, would think of her work. How she would respond to the many wire service photographers and freelancers she met in town – so rough, many of them, having seen too much. Others were weeping hearts, solemn and beaten, but still idealistic. Could she think of Cosima here? So full of life and light, but clearly having dealt with her own pain? Did she want to bring her here, subject her to the physical risk, the emotional upheaval? Was it so crazy to think of the two of them, a doctor and a journalist - or a scientist perhaps - together, in the midst of such chaos?

Cosima was so beautiful in her mind's eye. She wondered at how most would think it impossible to know someone in so short a time. She doesn't know what Cosima likes for breakfast, or how she spends her days. But she knows her already in all the ways that matter. Her mind drifts to these things when she's alone, filling in the missing pieces they've not yet shared.

And so she thinks of the night on the beach. She fills in their story with so many there-afters. The possibilities keep her mind awake at night, and follow her into sleep. In those long, lonely, exhausted nights, she uses her own hand to sate the arousal that springs from the mere memory of her.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Cosima

"I know, I know," she looks back at the computer screen sheepishly, her hands on her head, fingers tracing scalp between her dreads. "But, Fee, I don't think I can possibly live with myself if I don't go."

In a thick British drawl he responded, "Oh, my little dove, you looked for her. Didn't you say that school had no record of her? Maybe she was just a repressed little French girl looking for a fling, or maybe she has a dread fetish." His tone peaked at that, almost squeaking as he tried to draw the brunette out of her stormy mood.

She didn't bite. "The staff said that she wasn't currently a student, and that they couldn't give me any more information. That hardly means, like, anything." Her hands fall out from her body in exclamation and exasperation.

"Yeah, I still think you shoulda talked to Cal while he was still around, or channeled your inner Veronica, dear. Delphine can't be that common, even among the French. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one."

"Well, yeah, but who wants to be a stalker? I suggested we meet up sooner, and she said six months. We agreed: March 2nd, Fee. That's how I'll find her." She let out a long sigh, hinting at a seed of hope engulfed by five long months of resignation. "I have to go. I … I want to go." Her lips dipped into a contemplative frown.

"You do realize," he said in his thick drawl, "that she may not be there? And then you will have blown all of our money for your Spring break … rumspringa." He cocked an eyebrow and waved his hand at the screen, throwing her own corny phrase back at her. "We have to get you out of that musty library, those painfully boring shawls you wear in Minnesota."

As he spoke, she grabbed her wrapping papers and absentmindedly rolled a joint. "Ugh, I know. I feel like I have been living in this vacuum the past five months, stewing, thinking about that night. Not being able to check-in with her is making me, like, batshit." Her hands gestured wildly on either side of her head, stopping abruptly as she lit a small flame, inhaled deeply, and looked back to Fee.

"You definitely need a scratching post, darling," he drawled, "I have been telling you this for months."

After a beat, she scrunched her nose, pointed at the screen, and exhaled. "I have dated, Fee, Jesus, it's not like I have been a monk. I just, I mean, nothing is quite like that night, you know? No one is quite … her. I'm ruined until I find out what is going on."

"Go, then. Go." He waved his hand at the air again, then turned around, looking intensely into the screen, warmth radiating despite the snarky curve of us his lips, "You better keep me updated, monkey." He smirked as he poured another glass of wine, "and take better pictures this time."

She laughed as she waved him off and said her goodbyes, shutting the laptop. She looked down as his words drifted off, her eyes drawn to several black and white photographs by her laptop, never far. One was of the two of them, laughing happily that morning on the beach, framed by the deep grey of the blanket, their bodies and Delphine's hair light upon it. The second was of Delphine, biting her lip as she looked up shyly at the camera through her long lashes.

The frame was tight upon her face, the soft morning light setting a haze to her features, light shadows cast by her curls. The focus was tack-sharp on her eyes, but her lips and teeth pulled Cosima's gaze down. It was a beautiful portrait, made moreso by the subject. This was the one Cosima couldn't quite put away, remembering all the emotions so easily read on the blonde's face: vulnerability, mirth, concern. The lust.

Yes. I am definitely going back to Barcelona.