So, this is it, the final chapter. This writing of this fic was a long, bumpy road, and I have many people to thank for their help along the way, including my OBFrankenfic buddies who betaed now and then, my patrons who made it possible for me to spend more time writing and imbibe sufficient caffeine and nourishment, and every one of you readers, especially the ones who took the time to send me a kind word or comment. I so wanted to finish this fic and have it over with, and yet I find myself melancholy at the end of it, at the same time - probably because my OB fic writing days seem to be numbered. I have a few small Cophine projects left, but I'm hoping to move on to writing original work, as well as publishing an original adaption of The Swan and The Dove. I thank you all, and hope you will consider reading my other writing as I try to develop it into more than just a hobby. I will post updates on what I'm up to on my tumblr blog under this same handle.
Gratitude & XOXO,
- trylonandperisphere

Of course there were things we never talked about with our "handlers."

We made the decision never to tell them about Sevvy's special abilities. He hung out with his cousin Kira, sometimes, who had started communicating with people in what I guess you would call "intuitive circles." Never in a flashy way, but to learn more about the feelings they got, and how to handle them. We took the track of guiding him not to talk about it too much in public, but letting him know that he could look into it more as he got older, if he wanted to. Of course it fascinated me, both from a energetic/spiritual point of view and a scientific one. Had something been triggered in our genes when we were created, something that made our children sensitive? Yet, the last thing I wanted was for them to ever feel experimented on. There had been enough of that to go around in our family a long time ago.

But there was an advantage in Sevvy and Kira feeling and knowing things as they did. As much as I had to work with my judgement and intuition, I felt that I could relax a bit as I moved into my new life, knowing that they would sound an alarm if the government agencies, or anyone else, weren't to be trusted. For all the things that had happened to me and my family, in some ways I was incredibly lucky. I had thought it was my job to protect Sevvy and that I had fucked up. But it not only turned out okay, it turned out that he helped me love and trust others, again, in a way that all my meditation and yoga never quite reached.

He helped me trust the love of my life, again.

Good thing, too, because for all my smarts, some things I was just as stupid about as the next human being.

I was smart enough to stop running, to take the deal. To tell the truth, I was excited to get back into science, again. Sure, I had fears that I had gotten out of touch, forgotten too much, maybe gotten a little long in the tooth or out of the loop to keep up with the the younger minds who hadn't been away from grad school. But it actually felt like reuniting with a part of me I'd left behind, too. I ran out way before classes started and got a bunch of hard-copy books and study aids to go with my digital ones. I had missed the heft of them, the feel of the paper in my hands and under my highlighter and pen as I wrote comments and absorbed the information. More than one person told me I looked like a kid in a candy store with my new school stuff spread all around me on the floor. The meditation actually helped my memory, I found—along with the fact that I had the hottest professor on campus to help me whenever I needed. Let the other students drool over that.

And, in our new lab, there was a chance. A chance that what I had learned and what we continued to learn could further help our sisters. Maybe even the world.

There might be problems down the line, we knew, when the administration changed hands, but that was for later. Right now I got a life. A life where I could legally go where I wanted to go, live where I wanted to live, see my family when I wanted to. It almost blew my mind.

Charlotte and MK both presented problems. Once the youngest clone was cured, she'd have a lot of therapy and thinking to do to understand and accept what had happened, and even then, how one faux parent after another had lied to and manipulated her. I wanted to help, somehow, but she was pretty distraught and hostile, which I suppose was fair, considering everything, plus the fact that she was then under government supervision most of the time. I was able to get occasional strained meetings every now and then with her, but mostly she remained stubbornly silent or full of contempt, until one day, out of the blue, she asked me about some of the benefits of meditation I'd mentioned. Who knows how she opened up to it... maybe one of her therapists. But I took it as a good sign, both that she was trying to heal herself, and maybe let go of what she had been taught about me.

MK, of course, didn't want to be too close to any authority. She agreed to work with them on a case-by-case basis through us, and help track the kind of lowlifes who conduct unethical biomedical deals, hack to steal and hide large sums of money from the less fortunate, or trade deadly goods and information. I even got to see her in person at a couple clandestine family get-togethers (sprung on me so I wouldn't know ahead of time and fumble any lies with my agency contacts.) She was too crafty even for best spies in the country, however, though. She managed to disappear whenever she wanted to.

So, our lives weren't entirely normal. They never had been, and they never would be. But if they were strange, they were also exceptional in beautiful, wonderful ways.

Like having a group of sisters so bonded, not only by being genetically identical, but by the challenges we had met because of it.

Like having miracle children we were never supposed to have, and living through the disease that had been built into us to prevent our progeny: a double triumph of life over the attempt of some very smart, yet fundamentally flawed people who had tried to manipulate it, to control both nature and nurture, in ways which the infinite variations of existence would never let happen.

Like having a full life, and also regaining one I thought I had lost.

Like getting back love.

People complained (well, mostly Sarah,) about the long trip, but it was worth it. Even she couldn't stay grumpy-looking when Kira and Sevvy spotted a dolphin from the boat to the resort and started making exaggerated screeching and clicking noises at each other. That and when Alison took a header into the pool running from a snake that turned out to be a stick on the ground. That might have gone down as one of the most amusing days in Sarah's life. Thank god there wasn't a silent retreat going on. Her barking laughter and my semi-guilty giggles filled the air around us, and it was wonderful. We were meant to be loud, exuberant, on this visit.

Aurélie was as much of a hoot as when I met her in France. She and her husband, Jean-Marc, brought their kids, but she didn't let having a three year old and a baby stop her from going zip lining or staying up to tell silly stories about her big sister Delphine, who apparently went through a very clumsy phase in college. Nope, the younger Cormier daughter (now Carpentier) would pump her breast milk and hand it and her children off to Jean-Marc to do her thing, reminding us "I'm on holiday and we're celebrating!" in a much more intense accent than her sister. Honestly, I began to wonder if having that sleeping sickness as a kid had made her super awake for the rest of her life.

Besides, at that point, between me, her, my sisters, Shay, Scott and his wife, Bella… well, there were enough kids of various ages that we had them looking after each other like a wolf pack. Plus, Delphine's father seemed to be becoming doting in his older years, and we'd find him cradling the teeny one and cooing at his grandkids while his stepkids were off… well, jeez, who knows where all those kids went half the time. I didn't worry about it too much, with Helena around. I figured she'd take care of any jaguar, boar, or fer-de-lance that so much as looked at the younger clan funny.

Plus, I had my amazing co-parenting boys to look after Sevvy while Delphine and I took care of other things. That may not have stopped Teo from flirting shamelessly with Diego, the pilates instructor, but Michael took it in stride. Teo loved to flirt. He'd flirt with a rock, if he was in the mood. It was harmless, and was probably just exaggerated because he and Felix seemed to have some kind of competition going on.

It was nice to be a guest at the resort. I got massages, and took my family on tours. I didn't miss getting up early to teach classes at all, even if I did go to a couple with the kids.

And in the morning, and at night, I had my love by my side.

We could have stayed in one of our previous cabins for old time's sake, but we took the honeymoon suite. After all, that's what we were there for.

On the third afternoon we all snaked our way down the path and stairs, descending by the waterfall to where the river met the sea, and a few rows of chairs had been set up by a wooden arch woven with flowers on the beach.

Margot did the honours, which were simple. She even managed the quote in French. We were too nervous to do our own vows, and too perfectionistic, anyway. How do you you find the right words for something like that? As scientists, Delphine and I could have researched what to say forever, and I didn't want to give a performance. But earlier in the morning, before we got ready, I whispered some lines from Audre Lorde's Love Poem, one of our favourites, into her ear as she gasped below me, shimmering in sweat and recovering from our first round of lovemaking:

...And I knew when I entered her I was

high wind in her forests hollow

fingers whispering sound

honey flowed

from the split cup

impaled on a lance of tongues…*

So no, we didn't wait until after the wedding. When the gulls wheeled over the ocean as we made our promises, it reminded me of the last lines of the poem.* Maybe she thought of it, too, because I could swear I saw her blush—the most beautiful bride, and person, I'd ever seen.

Maybe sometimes I can be smooth. But I meant it. And I'd do almost anything to see her that happy. I want to see her that happy, again and again, as often as life allows, for as long as it lasts.

Then there was the party, and it got a little wild, with my closest sisters there, all of us dancing and laughing, and Helena insisting on and winning at limbo. And then there was the sky full of stars, and my lady and me sneaking away from the laughter and the music, and ascending, quickly as our dresses would allow, barefoot up the stairs in the water-misted night. The frogs called their mates loudly enough to drown out our giggles, and a gecko scurried from the lintel of our cottage, deluxe as it may have been.

The staff had lit candles, turning her skin golden and soft focus at the edges of my sight. I wanted to remember every moment we were alone together here, again, returning to each other again and again in waves, to make up for the drought that had too long kept us apart. I held her waist in my hands, taking her in, and my heart felt pressed against my sternum, swelling with a love so strong it bordered on painful, breath-stealing. Her eyes met mine in that wide open, endless gaze she slips into, one hand taking my waist in return and the other tracing my clavicle.

"Do you remember when we first saw each other again, here?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah," I answered, having to pull myself out of the trance I'd slipped into just contemplating her. "I was in class, teaching. I looked around, and… there you were. You looked like you had seen a ghost… and I guess, in a way, you had." I gave her a small grin. It had been a moment so resonant, and so difficult, in its own way. To remember it now was poignant, almost jarring.

"Cosima," she breathed, and took my hands into her own. She drew them to her lips and gently kissed the tender insides of my wrists each in turn. "I was so shocked, and so scared, then. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to that day, and whisper to myself, to both of us, that it was going to be okay… that everything was happening just in time, as it was supposed to, and that our love had just been, almost… sleeping." Her dimples emerged and I could tell she was having one of those rare moments when her excellent English was escaping her in the face of her emotions.

"Maybe you could bring a picture," I teased, my grin growing. "'Here we are in our wedding dresses, Past Delphine. This happens after you have to shoot somebody and rescue your bride-to-be like total badass, but you'll get there. P.S.: You're going to be a mother. Get ready to co-parent an amazing little kid with three other people.'" She gave me a light tap on the arm in admonishment, as she often did.

"You make fun of me, but it really shook me. Of course, it was all worth it. But I'm still impressed at how you were so calm and cool when it happened."

"I wasn't, entirely, except…" I thought for a second. "It's funny. I almost feel like I had, for a second, what Sevvy has, then. I just had this feeling something was coming, even if it wasn't totally conscious. And then, when I saw you…" I shrugged, unable to understand it, myself. "It was like it was just right. Like, sure, it had been ten years, but there you were, and it was like all the emotional work I'd been doing, all the healing, had made me ready for that moment. It was inevitable. We were inevitable, even if there was a piece of me that was still nervous, processing it. I mean… it took me a bit to feel like we were on the same page, but… I can't explain it, but it was just meant to be, and that storm brought you to me, finally at the right time in our lives, when we could work out everything that had happened in-between."

She hummed softly, in approval, and her hands found my face, stroking and holding it tenderly.

"It's like that second storm," I told her, and in the tilt of her head I saw that she knew what I meant: the one that had cut off our contact from each other when she was in the mountains at that conference, while Charlotte lashed out against us with her own wind and thunder, and I struggled to understand what was going on. "There couldn't have been a worse time for it to happen. That's what I thought then, anyway, when you told me about it. Like, how was I supposed to believe that a freak accident had made you impossible to reach right when I needed you most? It's like it was almost put there on purpose to test my trust in you. There was a part of me that was bringing up every terrible, difficult thing that happened between us, everything distrusting Sarah, or Felix, or anyone ever said about you…"

She swallowed and licked her lips, hanging on my words.

"What made you decide to believe in me?" she asked quietly.

"Love," I answered, and I smiled at her. "I mean, sure, I could check the weather report, and I had Sevvy telling me things would be okay, and that helped, but…" I shrugged again and looked down for a second, almost bashful in the intensity of the love in her eyes. I felt my smile stretching even wider and met her golden gaze again.

"We can believe things happen for a reason, or they don't. There was a time when I didn't believe in you. I died from that disease that was built into me, or close enough, but I came back with your face in my vision and your voice reassuring me, within me so deep it had to be more than a thought. But then you did what you thought was right to protect me, and I got caught up in rejection and fear…"

Her eyes fluttered closed in pain for a second.

"I hate to remember that time," she breathed, "even if it is easier now than it once was."

"Yeah," I acknowledged, and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "My point is, I went down that road before, and missed out on you for ten years. Whatever valuable life lessons I—we—learned from that, the biggest thing I learned was that, science or spirit, our hearts were meant to be together… and I wasn't going to make that mistake again."

I had just made vows to her, but I made one again.

"I'm never going to make that mistake, again. Not for as long as we live."

She took this in, and she shone from within as though the sun was breaking the horizon behind her.

"I love you," I told her,

and

"Je t'aime," she said at the same time.

We moved together and kissed, and it was just as right as it had ever been before, but it was different, because we'd made a commitment, we'd solidified it and vowed it in actual words before our friends and family. We'd been through so much, apart and together. But we'd made the promise now to never let each other walk alone through whatever life threw at us, again.

Slowly, we undressed each other. It felt familiar, yet new. My pulse throbbed with the repeating mantra in my brain: we're married, now. This is my wife. I'd never thought it was that important before; never thought that I was that sentimental, that a piece of paper from the state and a recitation and a ceremony that couple after couple had gone through, successfully or to end in bitterness, countless times over the centuries, would really be different from what we'd sworn to each other in private. But it was real, now; it had weight, and depth, and meaning.

Delphine. My love.

In all the surprises I had had in my lifetime, that we had had, together, it was not the most dramatic: that making love with her, the feeling of her pulse and heat in my palm, the clasping of the inside of her body around my fingers pulling me into her with an involuntary force as true as her soul had pulled mine to hers through every obstacle, was different, now, somehow new, because we made it so by fully giving ourselves over to it; that when she brought me over the edge of reason with her mouth describing hot, pulsating patterns at the apex of my pleasure and convergence of my thighs, it was not just the flooding-nerve release it always was, plus the sweet tinge of love that turned the physical act a warmer shade of emotion; but that something within the chemistry of us had been forever altered and bonded by taking that leap, by promising: forever.

It was not the most dramatic surprise, but it was the greatest.

So far. So far.

* Love Poem, by Audre Lorde

Speak earth and bless me

with what is richest

make sky flow honey out of my hips

rigid as mountains

spread over a valley

carved out by the mouth of rain

And I knew when I entered her I was

high wind in her forest's hollow

fingers whispering sound

honey flowed from the split cut

impaled on a lance of tongues

on the tips of her breasts on her navel

and my breath howling into her entrances

through lungs of pain.

Greedy as herring-gulls

or a child

I swing out over the earth

over and over again.