Author's Notes:
In full honesty, this idea popped into my head in the middle of writing my other fic and refused to let me continue to write that until I started to write this. I only have a vague idea of where this is going. If you all don't like it or I don't think it's worth continuing, then it most likely will be stopped. This fic is not my priority, despite how fantastic I think this idea is. I'm going to go at my own pace. So, if you like it, maybe let me know. Regardless, just let me know. Do you think it's worth continuing?
Without further adieu...
Three Years Ago:
It didn't happen the way Cosima thought it would. There wasn't a big parading band playing Chopin, marching down the street, alerting passerby as to the death of someone important. There wasn't an Aha! moment, where one second she was breathing and the next she realized she was dead. She didn't stop existing. Nobody cried. The world didn't stop turning.
In fact, it's sort of a surreal thought, Cosima simply opened her eyes and died.
Or, well, she should have. The doctor's at DYAD were barely able to resurrect her remains and stabilize her body. Cosima opened her eyes and took an artificial breath, and then she let go. She couldn't help herself. She'd been fighting for so long. Stage four uterine cancer. It was untreatable. When her doctor told her that she had barely months, Cosima laughed. And then she cried. She didn't have a chance.
The tumors had spread into her lungs, by that point. It had been getting difficult to breathe.
Before that, she had been aware of the tumors in her uterus. The doctor's had assured her, at the beginning, that they were non cancerous. They'd advised her to get them removed nonetheless. She didn't listen. Or, rather, she did. She had listened. She just couldn't afford the fee to get them surgically removed through all her student loans, and her insurance wouldn't cover it. Not to mention that the doctors had been avid about how the tumors wouldn't kill her, that they weren't dangerous in the sense that she could die. Only some discomfort, they'd said, occasionally pain during sex or in the pelvic area. So Cosima listened, and went without.
And then, rapidly, the tumors became cancerous. And, rapidly, they spread. And then, rapidly, she died. Or the equivalent of death in a sense, perhaps. Cosima didn't notice anything wrong until she laboured in her breaths, having thought the pain in her pelvic to be normal considering.
Needless to say she was wrong.
So very wrong.
She'd spent some time to herself after that thinking about life, setting her affairs in order, and living life the same way she had for the past twenty-nine years of her life. Cosima attended class every day. She visited her sisters regularly, kissing Alison on the cheek and hugging Helena hello. Decided not to tell either of them about the cancer for as long as she could. Every last moment she spent with them, she wanted to spend as their sister and not their dying sister. She even gave Sarah a call to say hello.
When she'd filled out her medical information ages ago, in the event of death she'd decided to donate her body to science.
Of course.
Still, and it was strange, one day she was there. And the next, she was still there. She just wasn't there. Cosima opened her eyes and realized that they weren't her eyes. They couldn't have been. She could see. Perfect twenty/twenty. So she took a look around, but found she couldn't move. She could only look. What she looked at was herself, but it couldn't have been herself. She was just laying there, with her eyes closed and unseeing. Not moving at all.
Sarah had been the one to find her.
That one struck with her, that Sarah found her first. She and Sarah had gotten along in the past. In fact, they'd gotten along very well until the argument. It was stupid, neither even remembers what it was about. Something about Beth. Something about Katja. The argument took a toll in each of them though, and it led to the downfall as sisters. After that, they couldn't stand to be around one another. They'd constantly argued. Sometimes fists were swung and hair was pulled and things got broken. They couldn't get along. They'd hated each other. Despite the numerous attempts by their other sisters, it was something that couldn't be reconciled. Their sibling relationship was strained. They tolerated one another for Kira's sake, who'd loved her Aunty Cosima.
When Cos had called them, a week before her inevitable demise, it was with a sort of bone-deep regret that she attempted to mollify the long standing situation with Sarah before reading to Kira over the phone. Sarah had been cordial. The conversation was tense. However, after years of not properly speaking to one another, it was better than nothing. Kira had seemed to think so too.
But that had been a week before. Cosima hadn't spoken to them since. She hadn't let anyone know of her stage four. Alison and Helena had no reason to be concerned.
When she died, it was Sarah who'd found her.
Cosima opened her eyes. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She was restricted to looking at herself laying prone on her bed and barely breathing. And then her breaths began to stall. And then they stopped. Nothing happened for hours. She just stood there, watching.
Suddenly her phone was ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She couldn't answer. Each time it went to voicemail, the caller hung up and tried again. And then there was pounding on her apartment door. Someone shouting. The doorknob being jimmied, until it suddenly burst open and a frantic Sarah, of all people, burst into the room. The person she hadn't spoken to in years without conflict.
And Sarah called for her. Sarah shook her. Sarah tried to slap her awake, and pinch her cheek, ignoring the stillness of her body. Ignoring the lack of her breath. She called for the police, who only confirmed what she'd tried to deny. It was too late.
Cosima couldn't move.
It was a sight to see.
She didn't think Sarah would break down over her, crying, clutching Cosima's body tightly to her. Holding the remains of her baby sister. Sarah kept calling out for her, screaming her name, begging her to wake up, pleading for her to come back, repeating that she couldn't lose Cosima too. The third sister to go. Eventually, Sarah had to let go and the body had to be removed.
Cosima wished she could've stayed, but she had no choice but to go and leave Sarah behind in her apartment, throwing and breaking things and trashing the place as she cried. Cosima didn't walk. She stood still, but her perspective stayed on her own body and she followed. She'd been zipped in a black bag. Placed in a van. In the smaller room, her perspective was closer. When she was unloaded, in all the space, her perspective had been farther. She hadn't been taken to a morgue, rather, she'd been taken to DYAD medical institute. They hooked her body into an I.V. A doctor came in, tall and severe.
It took five disgustingly grotesque hours, but then she breathed and the doctor grinned. Suddenly, she was no longer dead. Suddenly, she breathed. And continued breathing. The color returned to her cheeks. Her eyelids twitched. She was alive.
It was a medical miracle.
Sarah hadn't been around to witness it.
Cosima didn't wake up.
