A/N Hey y'all… guess who's still alive? I'm sorry it's been so insanely long between posts, this school year literally kicking my ass, and with the added pressure of having applied to university looming over my head, I've had a lot of trouble finding the time and peace to sit and write. Plus, this chapter underwent some major structural overhauls, I essentially re-wrote it three times over because I was having trouble making it flow, and even now I'm not totally sure it's perfect, but it's the best I can do as of right now. It's also the last official chapter of this fic, and it saddens me a lot to think I've come to the end. There will be one last chapter, an epilogue, coming up whenever I get lucky enough to have the time to write it. Like, I'm already neglecting a few days' worth of homework just to get this written and posted. But I figured you guys deserved it, what with your endless patience ;) With that said, I hope you enjoy it, happy reading!
-Nightshade
I do not own any of the rights to Orphan Black
Of Microscopes and Bloody Hopes
Chapter Twenty-One
I breathe out, a whispering soft-spiral of air, white and muted smokeless gasps. Her lungs answer, their own frayed-wool gentleness as lips part, sleep-sweetened breath falling into dissolution. Eyes flicker beneath barely-breached lids, the spirits of slumber coming out of solution, honeying her deep, intoxicated lung-rushes. She would wake soon. I toyed with the edges of the blanket, feeling the wool succumb beneath an idle grasp. Entropy. Disorder. It pulls all systems apart, reaming through the non-seams like brush teeth, like skinny stick-limbs, peeling soft-spun yarn into useless-fluff that clings to fragrances like milk and honey, intimacy, memories that fade into craved-after remnants, prominence blurred towards anosmia. Isolated systems, closed off from the exterior fire-snap and ebb of energy, of words yelled low and loudly like abuse, recluse from supporting grasps and memories of milk and sweetness, they surely fall. Nothing lasts on its own, forever. Systems need the outsides, the hands that pull up and worry like a tenderfooted infant stumbling within parental holds. But what comes of a system, a relationship, where external action sends it spiralling further into a suicide-fall? I remember still, the distinct taste of a hopeless chest tumbling into a self-sorted dive, the sobering bitterness of knowing its one's own fault. The insecurity as hands rattle at controls of a swooping, brainless metal-bird, pulling up, pulling up, up, up, up and hoping I haven't left entropy, that detangling force, in the pilot's chair for too long, for worry that I can't salvage what's left of my airship. For naught that my urgent action, the triply-crossed decision, be my final.
I can see the city through the omnipresent windows here, as I descend, elevator-floor firm and subtly luminous beneath shaky feet. It looks so peaceful out there, as peaceful as the city can seem, it is—in fact—a violent organism within itself. Constantly roiling and protesting and eating at itself. From up high, lights glint softly, stars scattered throughout a concrete dusk, beaming red and gold and white. It's warm, welcoming almost. These pseudo-celestial beings, cajoling me to leap, to fall forward, to pursue them until the colors bleed in through my mind, replacing the plasma thundering in my veins. They want me to rise, but I fall. The box contains myself and two bulky, suited men, a pair of life-size action figures of Rachel's to be posed and played with beneath her supple, controlling hands. The box falls, past the winking light, down, descending back to the bowels of the city, the dust-blown streets of other sinful plebeians, ruling their petty kingdoms of clinking metal magic and smoke. The box falls, dragging me down into the clutches of my many sins, skeletal hands, phalanges of knife and blade, scoring against my legs until I'm sure blood runs freely beneath my dark slacks. The box falls, but I do not let my façade down yet. The battle has been sorely won, a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one, mais ce n'a pas fini. I fall, back to sin, back to earth. I have no wings to raise me from here. Wings are for angels, comme Helena, or phoenix, like Sarah, or Valkyries, like Alison, or fairy-sprites, like Cosima. I am an earth-creature, crawling about in the mire, with knees scraping dirt, governed by silly hopes and selfish desires. I can no longer see the lights, I'm almost at the ground, preparing myself, keeping the armor up, not much longer. Just until I cross the threshold of the building, just until I'm free of this bureaucratic, laminated hell-house of glossy facades and secrets. I glance up, one last spiralling glimpse before I refocus my eyes forward. Sarah is there, staring inches from the glass, murder in her eyes. I barely jump.
"Merde." I murmur, the sudden manifestation of my worries, of the people I've supposedly-betrayed, yet another sign of my awful reputation, being dragged behind me like clanking chains and manacles. I do not feel scared, nor worried; not a fear-murmur rises from the creatures in my chest. This is resentment, utter frustration with a lot I've been forced to cast in life. A stain to my record which I seem incapable of removing. Delphine the disloyal, Delphine the distrustful, Delphine the deceptive. I feel utterly transformed, bathed in the fiery wrappings of Cosima's love, subjected to the grueling scrutiny of her family, having undergone countless trials, in my mind, to prove my worth. I feel sapped, utterly, I've no more fight within me. Delphine Cormier is a discredited scientist, a disloyal lover, a family member that's too many times bit the hand that fed her. Worthless, utterly worthless I felt, propped up on either side by the meaty grasp of Rachel's minions. The platform slid to a halt, without a shudder, nary a disruption afoot. Nothing so undignified could ever exist in the gilded hallways of DYAD's empty corridors. Hence why I was ever-so-ceremoniously thrust through the sliding glass doors, the cold bitterness rushing in to embrace my suddenly-prone figure.
"Va te faire foutre les deux." I murmured, feeling the urge to express some resentment to the faceless suits. They're a physical manifestation of how the multi-national corporation treats all its employees, affiliates, and subjects. As objects. Items to be used, abused, picked up and moved, and discarded when their usefulness has expired. The curses spiralled out into the city air, crystalline from the cold, heavy with the impurities of human coexistence. Cosima materialized, her atoms assembling themselves from the shadow and city-smoke and faded light, her face gleaming in the half-glow of streetlamps and neon signs. I was half-ready for her to spring forth viciously, to cry guilt and indictment au sujet de Delphine the deceitful. Her form was slim, pallid, and held an omnipresent quiver to it. She'd had the tremors all throughout her recovery, whether it was a consequence of an over-exhausted body, or damage remaining from the set of violent seizures she'd withstood, remained to be seen. I found it quietly symbolic, Cosima quivering with life, much too vibrant an individual to be contained in this drab world. The shaking of her ankles from standing too long, the exhaustion that never seems to taint the energy and passion barely contained in her beautiful, unique brain. She is unimaginable strength wrapped in a shroud of fragility. She folded into my side softly, wordlessly, beneath the amber glow.
"mtDNA?" she murmured, lips quirking into a cheeky smile against the hollow of my throat. It was a triumphant smirk, one that announced to anyone aware of it, 'I figured it out, I solved the puzzle'. I nodded, glad that ma chérie had figured out my grand deception. I'd thought it was a scam so brilliant, that it could have been on par with some of the escapades from Sarah's glory days of hustling. Instead of wit, my chosen method of deception was science. Coincidentally, not Rachel Duncan's strength.
"Rachel Duncan isn't a scientist. She's a suit, a corporate head of DYAD. I used that to our advantage." I responded, allowing the petite woman's tremulous arms to wind around my waist, letting her walk me down the street—having long quieted down. It was barely past eleven, but in an area dominated by government and corporate offices, where the suits leave work at five-thirty for their cozy, rich-person homes, it was eerily silent for a Toronto street. I didn't mind it. It added a layer of quietness, a healing-softness as I padded over the sore wound I'd nearly opened. Cosima knew, she trusted me. She knew I wouldn't dare betray her again.
"So you figured she wouldn't know that you can't get nuclear DNA from hair clippings, and that due to the matrilineal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, which is the only genetic material they could get from hair without a follicle, all they'd be able to get would be DNA identical to any samples they have from Sarah, or any of us." The dreadlocked woman grinned, finishing her sentence with the softest little hum of satisfaction as she pressed her nose beneath my jawline, snuggling closer. She could probably still feel my pulse rushing through my carotid there, the adrenaline from having faced off against Rachel and witnessed Sarah's violent outburst still racing through my system. Even with that, my exhausted body still in fight-or-flight mode, I couldn't feel anything other than a giddy upwelling of freedom and glee. I found myself craving Cosima's voice, its warbling excitement, the soft, throaty rumbling as the soundwaves reverberated through her throat.
"Mmm, say 'mitochondrial' again…" I murmured, kissing her forehead as we swayed like drunken idiots. I feel her laughing, deep in her chest, a tickling noise that crackled with health. Her skin smelled sweet once more, and, out of a long-buried habit, I sought out the spot behind her ear that smelled like patchouli and cannabis and sunlight. Her kisses tasted like cinnamon and damp, cold city air. The word, that twisted, Latin-borne term danced off her lips and against mine, waltzing in an elegant purr. For a minute or two I was suspended blissfully in this amber-slowness, this perfect, soft state of being that only Cosima provided.
"And Sarah? Et les autres?" I murmured, casting my worried gaze downwards into her eyes. Eyes that held me halted in time and space, two gleaming orbs flickering like pyrites, their soft gold adoration spinning me into a fool. She let out a chuckle, gusty and catching in her throat. It sounds out like the disgruntled murmuring crunch of snow beneath our feet. She's wearing these ridiculous high-heeled gladiator sandals that leave her tottering beside me and I almost laugh at the absurd choice of footwear.
"Sarah… well she nearly gouged the eyes out of the well-dressed gent that ever-so-unkindly escorted her out of DYAD, but once Felix and I got to her we managed to calm her down. I explained what I thought you were doing—good thing you weren't actually betraying us, 'cause then I'd sound kinda silly—and somewhere along my third re-explanation of the inheritance patterns of mitochondrial DNA she got fed up and barked something like 'enough of your science-geeky crap, Frenchie's not sellin' us out, I get it.' So… yeah." She mimicked, smirking her lopsided grin as she struggled mimicking Sarah's bulky accent. The British influence didn't seem to fit around her omnipresent smile. She was Cosima, undoubtedly. I sagged in half-relief, half-exhaustion, my limp blonde curls falling in my eyes. So much so that I barely saw the orange lights flash, it was nothing more than a diffuse warmth between the tangles of hair. Cosima whirled around, bracelets jingling against her wrists, and I pushed the locks from my eyes to see her waving at a cherry-red minivan that had just screeched around the corner in a barely-controlled maneuver that would have looked perfectly at home in an action movie. Alison leapt out in a huff of plumb-straight bangs and fuzzy snow boots.
"Cosima! For the love of all things holy, you just got better, where is your goshdarned coat?!" She rushed forward in a flurry of action, draping the red coat over her small shoulders before shoving a thick fleece blanket over my own frame and wrapping a knit scarf around my neck. I hadn't even noticed the cold until then. The petite clone fixed me with a gaze dripping in gratitude and aggressively maternal instincts before hustling the both of us into the large red vehicle. She shoved Cosima and I through the sliding door, sending me bowling into Sarah and tossing the dreadlocked clone onto my lap in a haphazard pile. The engine was being started before I could even become aware of the murky and unfamiliar look Sarah was giving me. I'd barely sat up and rushed out an apology before I was bowled into a bone-crushing embrace. It was stiff like cold leather and tight against my ribs, and I'm pretty sure Sarah just murmured something about me being a 'stupid French bitch' into my snow-dampened and frizzy hair, but it was incomprehensibly relieving.
"Jesus Alison, slow down wouldya?! I refuse to die in this suburban aberration you call a 'van', and if you keep driving like this I won't have much choice!" Felix's shrill voice cracked as we were once again flung around a corner at high speed, the momentum shoving me deeper into Sarah's chest. In my peripheral vision I could see Cosima, sprawled across two seats leisurely, oû elle a étè mourir du rire, and Felix, who was grasping the little handle above the car door for dear life. After a few seconds more Sarah loosened up, practically shoving me out of her arms in some mildly amusing attempt to restore fragments of her 'bad-ass' image. Her eyes were wide and slightly teary, the smudged eyeliner beneath them spelling out a story on the once-pale skin of her cheekbones.
"Thanks, you kept Kira safe, you tricked Rachel, hell, you even fooled me too. Congrats, you hustled the hustler." She admitted the last part with a scandalized blush and a little smirk, emphasizing her point with a friendly sock to the shoulder, barely a teasing press of knuckles. Alison shrieked something about seatbelts, the only warning we got before she cut across three lanes of city traffic and wheeled into an intersection. I'd just barely slammed mine into the secured position, looking over to find Cosima having somehow buckled herself in lying-down, cheeky girl. She put her head into my lap, blinking contentedly.
"DYAD's people may still be after us, I'm just being cautious—ugh—excuse you!" Alison called out an open window over the dissident wailing of car horns behind us. Her version of 'road rage' I suppose. It was chaotic and loud, with Felix's mildly terrified plaints and the cacophonous noise, the splashes of bright head-light against the interior of the car, striking up shadows like the giant maw of a hungry beast. But it somehow felt like home. Here I sat, between a punk who was trying to lean against me and display her affection in the coolest, most detached manner, and my impish chérie laying indelicately across my lap, all of us hovering in a half-gleeful, half-mortally terrorized state, and I was impossibly content. C'est folle, vraiment. Absolument crazy. But there isn't another group of individuals on this earth who I'd rather go crazy with.
A/N: In my first two drafts of this chapter, I had Delphine confront Sarah first thing after she leaves DYAD, once where they almost talk it out, and then another where Sarah's pissed and attacks her, and neither of them seemed to fit. So I decided to go back to the pairing that started this fic, Cosima and Delphine, and it just worked. Also, the last bit of this chapter could be renamed "In which I express my headcanon where Alison is a secret stunt driver when the kids aren't in the car" because this gun-toting, body-hiding soccer-mom has too many important things to do to obey basic traffic rules in desperate times… Anyways, thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave me a review, they help me out immensely!
Translations:
Mais ce n'a pas fini… but it is not finished
Comme… like
Va te faire foutre les deux… fuck you both
Au sujet de… about
Et les autres?… and the others?
Oû elle a étè mourir du rire… where she was dying of laughter
Absolument… absolutely
C'est folle, vraiment… it's crazy, really