Enough
Fandom: Orphan Black
Pairing: Alison/Sarah, Alison/Beth
Summary: Alison and Sarah are sleeping together, Sarah so she can forget, Alison so she can remember.
Sarah is a poor replacement for Beth, but she's a replacement nonetheless. Alison only reminds herself that Sarah isn't actually Beth every now and then. Like when Sarah and Felix are bickering like only brothers and sisters can. When Sarah laughs in that carefree way that Beth just never could. When she isn't pretending to be Beth and she dresses and talks and fucks the way that only Sarah can. Especially then, when Alison's carefully constructed façade slips and she moans out Beth's name instead of Sarah's. Alison never realises that Sarah notices, that her face winces just a little and her fingers falter for the merest fraction of a second, she's always too wrapped up in the moment. Sarah on the other hand doesn't lose herself in the sex quite like Alison does, she concentrates on it, soaks up the way it feels and revels in it so she can forget everything else. Everything that they still have to do, everything that they're still worrying about.
In these brief but unerringly frequent encounters Alison forgets that the woman above her is Sarah Manning, but instead allows herself to remember other things. To remember every locked away and stoppered up memory of Beth and the way Beth looked and felt and tasted (so, so very similar to Sarah says the quickly silenced voice at the back of her mind). It isn't hard to see Beth instead of Sarah, the face is the same and her body almost matches up too. Slightly rougher hands, softness where Alison remembers defined muscle, and a voice that is so far removed and so similar to Beth's all at the same time.
It's only afterwards when they're retrieving hastily ripped off clothes and desperately looking anywhere but at each other that Alison remembers that this isn't Beth, this is Sarah. The woman that just barged her way into her life one day and assumed Beth's whole identity like it was nothing, like it was easy. She never quite perfected it though, Sarah just didn't have the same steady, strong demeanour that Beth did, she certainly wasn't any good at being a cop and when it came down to it, she just wasn't any good at being Beth. Sarah was no replacement for Beth Childs, but she was enough.