A.N.-I promise to try to update in a timely fashion after this one! Just needed a little break to work on some other projects :)
Chapter 14
Cosima spent the morning getting ready in awkward silence, more than once bumping into the blonde, who would share a soft smile, both feeling tense and draw in simultaneously.
The attorney went downstairs ahead to prepare for a big break-out session, leaving the environmentalist to her thoughts.
She could only review what she knew of the situation: that she was still attracted to Delphine, and that she didn't know if she should do anything about it. She figured she should just back off, happy to exchange a few flirting moves here and there before going back to her usual high-stress life.
She also knew herself, even if she didn't know Delphine very well. She knew that the likelihood of being able to back off was, statistically, non-existent.
Cosima was all too aware that she could pack herself with all of the resolve in the world, especially with the new information that not only was there a new project with dangerous implications, but that Delphine was a part of the project, but at the end of the day if she so much as felt the blonde's body or smelled her perfume, that it would all crumble around her with her ideas of existing in singularity.
She grabbed her briefcase, packed to the brim with her evidence against nuclear energy, planning to present alternatives with their studies. Even if the Summit was a sham, Cosima had decided that when they were talking about something she took seriously, she would still present it seriously, hoping that at least some of the attendees were indeed genuine.
"Are you going to tell me where you're taking me later?" Tony whispered over to Evan, getting their seats in the front row for Cosima's big session.
"Ahh, that. I am taking you on what you may refer to as a journey." Evan said cryptically, grinning.
"Is that your subtle way of suggesting I need to pack a PowerBar?"
"No." Evan laughed, although he now fully expected that Tony would indeed be the type to pack emergency snacks. "I'm going to introduce you to my world, my American friend."
Tony began picturing what "Evan's world" might involve. He immediately conjured images of some sort of contortionist yoga class, followed by a dinner comprised of food prepared by an itty-bitty hors d'oeurve committee, where he would have to find a way to escape to the nearest pub and drink away hours of potent floral arrangements and antiquing.
"Tell you what." Tony started, immediately picturing all of the places he could indeed hide snacks in what he was wearing. "You bring me to your world for the afternoon, but we visit my world at night." He said, turning to face Evan.
The man returned a small smile. "Okay."
"Sorry I am late." Delphine breezed in, seating herself at the opposite end of the long table from Cosima, who was seated closest to the podium at the right. Delphine took her seat at the left end of the table in the front of the room, with a panel of two others in between them.
Cosima looked up, surprised. "You're on this panel…?" Cosima trailed off, studying the blonde.
Delphine nodded. "Of course. This is on energy sourcing, no?"
"Yeah, just you never mentioned anything." Cosima scanned her head, realizing that none of their personal conversations had actually been spent discussing work, an oversight that made her realize just how emotionally wrapped up in the blonde she had become.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I thought it was known. I was on the Heismiser case." Delphine shrugged, expecting this to be common knowledge.
The mention of the case made Cosima freeze in place.
The Heismiser Case. Cosima thought for a moment, before tensing. That was the case arguing for routine use of nuclear energy for power after the accident that killed that worker. Wheels started turning in Cosima's head, quickly pulling out her phone to search for "Cormier" and "Heismiser", not even noticing Rachel, the moderator, introducing the panel.
Once Cosima found who exactly had argued for what in the case, her eyes snapped back up from the phone, staring at Delphine with cold eyes.
It seemed to Cosima that they indeed were not always on the same side.
Alison was walking with the confidence of a superhero, with the stride of a goddess; she had her head held high, every hair pulled back into her high ponytail with not a single stray, pounding the ground with her heels in her very favorite power suit.
Also, she had on the broche inside of the lobster that she had stepped on people, threw people, and that Rachel had maimed people for her to claim the evening before.
The quarter-sized red ruby surrounded by diamonds, as far as Alison was concerned, did indeed hold the powers of poor Gary the Lobster, who had to be sacrificed for Alison's continued success. While wearing it, Alison felt very much that she had solidified her place at the top of the food chain for the Summit, a feeling that was confirmed by the appointment promptly made for her.
She approached the side-room reserved with the seal of the Prime Minister's office, nodding at Sarah and Felix, as they opened the door to let in Mrs. Sadler's newest penciled-in appointment.
"Mrs. Sadler, I believe you requested a meeting, and so, here I am." Alison tried to sound professional, and not over-the-top beaming that she was wearing the lobster prize pinned to her lapel.
"I did. Please, have a seat. Felix will be in with coffee shortly."
Cosima gave her presentation on combining wind, solar, and hydro-power generators into location specific mega-units, using coal generators to run the plants themselves, and then have the plants create power out of the alternative sourcing for hundreds of miles of towns by her calculations. She sat back with a triumphant look on her face. The audience kept up with her pace, easily endeared by the charismatic woman's ability to keep interest, explaining the most complicated concepts with patience, and without sounding condescending.
The warm, fuzzy, accomplished feeling fizzed away shortly after Delphine began her presentation, defending nations that choose to use nuclear power for electricity.
The happy feeling, in fact, had been sucked from Cosima's very being, and was slowly being replaced by an underlying rage that someone dared come to an environmental Summit for the purpose of pushing nuclear energy.
The more Delphine spoke, the more Cosima's rage bubbled, taking every ounce of her willpower to even let Delphine finished, after openly rolling her eyes at each and every PowerPoint slide.
"And now, if there are any questions."
Cosima's hand shot up, as the audience had barely had time to register the presentation as finished before the American scientist reminded the room of her presence.
Delphine had seen the woman's hand shoot up from the corner of her eye, cocking her head in confusion at the reaction from another panelist.
"This is not going to be good." Tony whispered over to Evan.
"No, I'd imagine not." The slender man answered, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Ahh—Cosima, I believe we have to let the audience ask before we can-"
"Can you really sit here and tell us, Ms. Cormier, that you think this is a safe project? We're talking about nuclear power, as in, Chernobyl, right?"
"Cosima, that is hardly a fair-"
"You know, nuclear power. As in, the kind of energy that we use to put in bombs, precisely because of how dangerous it is?" Cosima challenged, unable to keep her teeth from grinding together, even for the sake of professionalism.
"Ah, yes. Chernobyl, that terrible, terrible disaster. One terrible disaster in the decades-long history of nuclear energy for electricity. Tell me, how many accidents does coal mining create a year in America alone? How many does that total historically? Perhaps we could remind the Chilean delegation just how safe the mining industry is?" Delphine was losing her patience with Cosima very quickly. Her attraction to the woman did not mean she was going to let something she felt passionately about come under attack in a public forum.
"We should ask the Chilean delegation that. And they will tell you that they were mining copper during that crisis, not coal. Care to check your facts, Cormier?"
"And does the earth care what you're digging around for specifically? The fact of the matter is that mining is dangerous, especially coal mining, and we have an alternative that is indeed safe that can phase it out in the next twenty years."
Cosima was seething. She was breathing with full, labored, dragon breathes. Moreover, when she looked over at Delphine's responses, she could feel the anger being directed right back at her.
"Really? Okay, I'll make a bet with you. I will hold in my hand a hunk of coal, if you will touch physically with your hand a hunk of nuclear uranium. Does that sound safe to you?" Cosima all but growled out.
Rachel sat in her chair on the opposite end of the podium, knowing that her job as moderator was to stop this exchange before it got out of control. However, Rachel's natural instinct to enjoy a good fight was winning over the small voice in the back of her head that required her to be present in a professional capacity.
The two women continued to banter back and forth, with Tony and Evan watching wide-eyed.
"Still think they're in love, Croissant?" Tony said, watching Cosima toy with her pen in her hand, using it occasionally as a pointer, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the pen went flying out of her hand.
"I already told you I'm on your side with that. This is fantastic!" Evan said enthusiastically.
"…it is?" Tony said, actually turning his head, not bothering to whisper anymore.
"Yes! They'll never try anything with each other now. I'd say we are certainly safe to disappear for the day and not have to worry about them building a love nest while we're gone."
Tony's head snapped back just in time to see the pen fly across the room at Delphine's head, as Cosima reminded Delphine for the third time that she was not completely pro coal energy in small amounts, but completely against nuclear power. Rachel, not caring that she was the only person not to gasp, immediately started clapping.
"Well," Rachel said, standing and heading towards the podium, motioning for Delphine to sit, "I'd say this is a wonderful topic to discuss indeed. Perhaps some of the presenters will be willing to join us for round two next year? That is, unless Ms. Cormier ends up trapped in a mine somewhere, in which case we all know who to implicate in the crime."
Rachel's dark humor was met with a snicker from the audience, as well as a pen sent sailing in her own direction from the American's side of the room.
Once the room began clearing out, Delphine made a beeline to Cosima, her own anger now flowing freely.
"We need to talk." She said curtly, watching the dreadlocked woman pack up her things without even looking up.
"Yeah, I don't think so. I don't need to hear anymore of your propaganda. God, I'm so stupid. What is it they say? Always hire a lawyer, but never trust one?" Cosima was slamming things into her bag to show her frustrations.
"Regardless of how you feel about what I think, Cosima, you are completely out of line. In fact, you have been out of line for the last twenty minutes. If you don't agree with something, fine, but that doesn't mean you get to try to bully someone into agreeing with you during a panel." Delphine didn't bother keeping her voice down, full well knowing that the people walking by to exit were purposefully slowing down to listen to the continued argument.
"Gee, so I should just bite my tongue not to hurt your feelings of professionalism? Would it make you feel better if I just go sit in the corner while you run your completely anti-environmental presentations?"
"Actually, yes. You should go sit in a corner while you're going to act like a child." Cosima's jaw dropped, her face shooting up to meet with Delphine's. "Whether or not we agree on something does not give you the right to act like that. If you have a problem with something, then you talk to me like another professional, and we find an agreement, or agree to disagree."
"No, you-"
"No." Delphine cut Cosima off, leaving the shorter woman's eyebrows up in surprise. "That's enough out of you for today. You do not get to decide that I'm a villain if I don't agree with you, and you do not get to do so while trying to imply to a room full of our colleagues that I must be a villain because I either don't care or because I'm too stupid to understand the facts that I'm presenting."
"But-"
"Don't. You crossed a line Cosima." Delphine grabbed her own bag. "Don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone without a Ph. D. isn't able to understand the same topics as you. Don't think that because I kissed you that I'm some giggling schoolgirl that you can just keep in your back pocket who nods whenever you speak. Not to worry; the room can be all yours tonight, Dr. Niehaus."
Cosima, who had been shrinking as Delphine scolded her, swallowed, watching the blonde walk away. She had been so angry that Delphine didn't automatically see eye-to-eye with her that she had forgotten that she was battling another actual person, a person with feelings—and whom she had feelings for.
The actual person that she woke up in the same bed with just three hours earlier.
She could only stand frozen in place, watching the tall blonde storm out, amazed that even the sound of her heels clicking on the floor could manage to sound angry.
"Do I really sound like that?" Cosima asked, turning to Rachel.
"Condescending? Oh, most definitely. We like it. That's why we invited to you to run the youth panel. You terrify the teenagers, but you know how to use Tumblr." Rachel said smirking, her own heels clicking away from the room.
Cosima sat back in her chair, putting her forehead in her hands, breathing out a deep breath, before breathing a deep breath in again, cooling herself off enough to attempt to think clearly.