Chapter 12

Sarah sat at the kitchen table of her childhood home only half listening to the conversation taking place between Beth and Siobhan. To her credit, Siobhan had been taking the clone reveal fairly well. She hadn't freaked out, didn't ask too many questions while they tried to explain, and didn't push for more details than were necessary. Beth had dropped the bomb as soon as the three women were sat at the kitchen table, not bothering to beat around the bush.

Initially, S had been cold when they showed up on the front step. Sarah internally rolled her eyes, recalling how her foster mother had harshly told her Kira was asleep and it was no time to be trying to spring a visit. Beth had thankfully put out the fire before Sarah had the bad idea to start one. As soon as Beth had told Siobhan they were there to just visit her, their foster mother changed her tune and welcomed them both in eagerly. It was as if the woman never saw them despite it only being a few days.

Siobhan almost immediately began making tea for them all, not even bothering to put the offer out because she knew none of them would ever pass up a cuppa. She fixed it the way they both liked it before setting the mugs on the table and taking a seat with them. Siobhan's quirked eyebrow at them both was enough to get Beth talking and nearly unable to stop.

Sarah had been content to just listen for the most part. She threw in a comment or two when Beth took a breather. Beth's explanation had been going for nearly half an hour now and Sarah inwardly sighed in relief when she noticed her sister sitting back in her chair, she must be finally finished.

She watched Siobhan let out a deep breath and begin to analyze both her foster daughters. "Well this is certainly a surprise."

"Ya think," Sarah scoffed and Beth elbowed her in hopes of stopping any other sarcasm.

Siobhan offered her a grim smile in response, for once choosing to understand Sarah's feelings over a situation and empathizing with them. Sarah was constantly pissed about all this shit and S was actually choosing to allow such feelings to be valid. "What I would like to know is why you've been with this information for months and just now have decided to tell me."

"I've been dealing with it," Beth shrugged. She instantly saw the look of doubt on Siobhan's face and sighed harshly. "I was doing my best given the circumstances and I didn't wanna drag anyone into it when I wasn't even fully sure what I was dealing with."

"And now?"

"Now things are getting more out of hand. There's no point trying to keep secrets what with all the shite we're dealing with now."

Siobhan nodded in acceptance and turned her gaze to Sarah. "And you've just been letting your sister shoulder all this by herself?"

"'Course not!" Sarah immediately responded angrily, brow furrowed. "She's such a bloody overprotective control freak though, there's only so much I can do to help her."

"Hey!" Beth objected.

"It's true, love," Siobhan agreed with Sarah with a small smile. "Let her help you."

"I'm only trying to prevent her from getting killed," Beth grumbled.

"And yet I'm the one that's had meetings with the psycho who's tryin' to kill us," Sarah pointed out easily. "It won't kill you to let people help you out, Childs. Especially me."

"I know, I know," she held her hands up. "Jeez, I didn't come here so you could both team up and lecture me."

Sarah laughed softly at the comment and shrugged indifferently. "Now you know how I feel, yeah?"

"Whatever," Beth rolled her eyes and punched her sister's arm playfully.

The three women fell into silence after that and for possibly the first time in their lives together, it wasn't awkward or tense. All Beth's secrets were finally out on the table with her family and it was as if the revelations lifted the strain in their relationships for the moment. No doubt times would turn rocky again, but for now it felt like everything was out in the open and all of them were in this shit storm together.

Beth's cell phone ringing broke their peace and she eyed it with disdain. She read the caller id and grimaced at Sarah. "It's Alison."

Sarah rolled her eyes and watched her sister stand from her seat, answering the call as she walked further away from the table.

"That's the one in Scarborough?" S questioned.

"Yeah, a regular bitch soccer mom," Sarah snorted.

Siobhan huffed a laugh out at Sarah's clear disdain and raised a curious brow. "I take it you two don't get along?"

"I only met her once, but no. I ended the meetin' by punching her in the face."

"Some things never change," Siobhan clucked in disapproval but her face gave away her amusement easily.

Beth re-approached the kitchen table looking a mixture of annoyed and exhausted. "Alison's freaking out about the whole monitor thing. She's convinced it's her lump husband and refuses to calm down so I've gotta go out there."

Sarah snorted in slight amusement over the woman's typical suburbia dramatics. Leave it to Alison to only be focussed on her own problems, having no regard for their group as a whole. Who gave a shit if her husband was her monitor? Beth's boyfriend was hers and they didn't see her completely losing her mind over it.

"Do you want to come and help me with it?" Beth offered sarcastically. "Or I can just drop you off at home on my way over."

"If it's cool I thought I'd just crash here tonight," Sarah said and looked to Siobhan for approval.

When her foster mother nodded her consent, Beth squeezed her sister's shoulder comfortingly. "Alright then, I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Sarah smiled up at her, returning her sister's half hug in the process.

"Bye, S," Beth threw out warmly as she started for the door. "Off to bloody suburbia I go."

They two remaining women listened to the front door click softly closed as Beth exited. After only a second Siobhan was rising, collecting the empty mugs and bring them over to the counter. She returned another moment late with two empty tumblers and tall bottle of bourbon. Sarah watched her foster mother expertly pour just enough of the liquid into each glass, then slide one a bit closer to rest in front of her.

"What's on your mind, love?" Siobhan asked after proceeding to take a quick sip of the alcohol.

"Hm?"

Siobhan smiled at her foster daughter gently. "I'm pretty sure you didn't decide to stay here just to be close to Kira. Right? So tell me what's going on."

Sarah heaved out a sigh and gave the older woman a frustrated shrug. "I dunno, S. This whole thing is so fucked up."

"We'll get through this together, okay? Anything you two need, I'm here to help," Siobhan tried to speak as soothingly as possible, laying a hand atop Sarah's.

Sarah raised her head at the gesture. It was one of comfort and she would welcome it completely. Through the years, such gestures from Siobhan had been few and far between for her. Not that it was entirely the older woman's fault of course – Sarah could admit at this point that she played quite a large part in making their relationship so strained. She was an angry kid that hated the world and it had been easy as hell to take it all out on her guardian. She had caused a lot of shit and to Siobhan's credit, she was still alive and had a family to come home to no matter what. In the face of all this new unfolding drama, it was something Sarah was going to make herself remember and hold as more important than anything.

"How?" Sarah questioned, her voice laced with defeat. "We don't even really know what the hell we're tryin' to get through, S!"

"I know, chicken."

"We're somebody's bloody science experiment. Do you know how that feels? All my life I've dreamed about meeting my birth parents, ya know? Now what do I have to look forward to? I was created in a fucking lab with a bunch of scientists pissing themselves over their cloning success. I don't even have a family."

"Hey!" Siobhan scolded harshly. "Not another word of that. You most certainly have a family. Beth, Felix, me, and Kira. We're your family, love. We always will be. I don't care where the hell you all came from."

"I know that. I do. It just doesn't make sense, you know? Cosima, Alison, and some of the others, their parents all wanted babies enough to do in vitro. Why were me and Beth given up? It doesn't fit," she asked in frustration, her childhood orphan pain beginning to surface.

Siobhan looked sympathetically at the young woman next to her. Sarah had always tried so hard to hide the hurt she felt over the years in the foster system, but there were times like this that she faltered. Despite their often tense relationship, Siobhan had and always would care immensely for Sarah and she hated thinking about everything she had gone through in the first eight years of her life. She pushed her chair back and stood, gently squeezing Sarah's shoulder as she made her way to the nearby closet.

"There were rumours," she said while fishing through some boxes. She found what she was looking for a returned to the table with a weathered photo album.

Sarah looked curiously at Siobhan as she flipped the album open, recognizing some old photos and newspaper clippings. "What about?"

"You remember Carlton, right?" Siobhan asked, flipping the pages for Sarah to find a specific one of a dark skinned, large built man.

"Yeah, he's the one that brought me to you?" Sarah asked for confirmation, analyzing the photo of the man and trying to recall anything she could about him from her childhood.

"He knew your birth mother," S revealed and once again placed her hand atop Sarah's, seeing the woman's wide eyed expression. "She split you and Beth up when you were born and he was able to find out where she had taken Beth and got her to me when she was still only a baby. It took longer for him to track you down though."

"Why did he need to get us? Why'd she give us up?" Sarah asked desperately. She needed the answers to these questions like her life depended on it.

"You came to me through his pipeline. The rumours were that the kids we were hiding, the ones who came through Carlton's pipeline – children in the black, like you and Beth,"

"Children in the black?" Sarah interrupted, confused by the term.

"Undocumented, outside the system," Siobhan elaborated. "It was rumoured they were originally intended to be the subjects of medical experimenting. When he brought me Beth he told me he was working to track you down to. He begged me to keep you both safe, to hide you as deep as I could."

"What kind of experiments?"

"I don't know, love. It was a paranoid time and radical fringe. Everything was a rumour at best. I just did as he asked me, he made it seem like your safety was of the utmost importance so I hid you both as best I could."

Sarah nodded in understanding. She could recall some of Siobhan's stories of Europe during those days and none of them sounded pretty. She hadn't even really learned that much more from their conversation that she hadn't previously been told. What stuck out most to her was the knowledge that someone connected to S knew her birth mother, could possibly connect her?

"Can your contacts still find Carlton? If he knows who my birth mother is, I need to get in touch with him."

Siobhan shook her head. "Last I heard he was in prison – human smuggling. They've all dissipated now, Sarah. It's too dangerous to keep in touch, and especially too dangerous for you to start digging in that."

"Siobhan, please," Sarah pleaded, imploring her foster mother to understand the importance of the situation to her.

The older woman sighed sadly but nodded in compliance. "I'll see what I can do. Don't mention this to Elizabeth yet though. I don't even know if Carlton's still alive."

"Thank you. I just need to know who I am."

"You're still you," Siobhan stated firmly. "Remember that. You're a survivor and you're a part of this family."

Sarah knew her foster mother was being honest. The emotion and sentimentality of the conversation began catching up with her and she averted her gaze from the table to help alleviate the unfamiliar atmosphere. When she did, she noticed the front door was half open and she furrowed her brow. She distinctly remembered hearing it close behind Beth when her sister left.

"What the hell," she muttered softly and stood up to investigate. Siobhan threw her a confused look before following her gaze.

Sarah approached the foyer slowly, pacing herself to fully take in her surroundings. She froze when she caught sight of the coat rack next to the door. Noticeably absent was the horrendous green parka she had sported on the way over. In its place: her beloved leather jacket.

"Kira?" she called out up the stairs, despite already feeling her blood run cold, knowing deep down what was happening.

She turned back to the coat rack and confirmed her worst fear. Kira's jacket was gone, as were her boots that had been resting at the door when she had arrived earlier. She could feel Siobhan beginning to approach her now but didn't have time to offer anymore explanation more than the frantic cry she let out. "It's Helena!"

She was bolting out the door right after the words left her mouth. The sidewalk was slick with the winter ice and snow, but it wasn't slowing her down for a second. She was screaming, that much she was pretty sure of. She could feel the vibrations of sound in her throat and mouth, but she couldn't hear a thing. The sound of blood rushing through her ears was so loud, blocking everything else out completely.

Running seemed to be a recurring theme in her life. The only problem was she had only ever been running away from everything and everyone. Now she was on the other side of the coin – running to something as though her life depended on it. And it did. Kira was her life, plain and simple. If Helena dared touch a single hair on her daughter's head, harmed her in anyway, her life would end. She'd never recover from such a thing.

The thought of her daughter in Helena's clutches kept her moving at top speed, screaming for her young, innocent child to stop and come back home. She skidded as she rounded a corner, stopping in tracks when she couldn't make out where her daughter had gone. She let out a wounded cry of desperation, her head swivelling in every direction for some clue as to where she had been taken. A flash of pink and Sarah's heart swelled in relief. Kira was across the street and moving back toward her.

Everything was happening in slow motion for her now. The overwhelming relief at seeing her daughter was okay and returning. Then only another moment, sheer terror at the premonition of what was about to occur. She was screaming again, still desperate. She wasn't fast enough. The blood ceased rushing in her ears just in time to hear the sound of her daughter being struck by a car.