AN: I have a confession: I am a recent member of Clone Club, and by recent I mean I just finished Season two last week. *digs a hole and burrows to hide embarassment.
Also, Delphine centric chapter.
...
The leather journal sits on her lap, her fingers slowly tracing the ink.
On the top part of the page, is a word: Aldous, and below it are broken phrases.
Dr. Aldous Leekie
DYAD Institute director
invitation to work there and beside it, an arrow pointing to immunology related?, a sidenote, something that hasn't been confirmed arrow points to I work with/for(?) him.
famous and limit pusher
Neolutionist and scientist
seems to possess exceptional intelligence
She sighs, the page mostly blank except for those few short words. So far, this is the extent of what she has on Grand Maester Aldous, the extent of what she's seen.
The dreams, the images, the visions, everything she can see with her closed eyes have always been there ever since Delphine can remember, always been a part of her. At first it was just simple scenes, weaving in and out of each other, like in a normal dream. A tower of metal reaching the sky, something called Eiffel, a strange place where she and children her age were gathered in a room to learn,such a strange concept, in a language she has never heard of but she can somehow understand.
They were just dreams, surely, because they didn't make sense, and were above the realms of possibility from this world. As she grew, they became more and more consistent that sometimes, she feels like it's a whole new world.
There were general things, like the dark bitter brew she considered her best friend, the sweet treat she grew partial to(truffles, I think they were called), numerous blood samples she extracted from people, studying them, excelling in it, words like hosts, test tubes, parasites, lymph nodes, antigens etc slowly floating away when she wakes up.
There were, however, the ones she remember with vivid clarity, unnerving her and throwing her sense of self and time.
A colorful laptop skin with a DNA strand. 324B21. Dark framed glasses. Dreadlocks. A toothy smile. Eyes with a mischievous glint. Coughing up blood. It's usually this point that she lurches from her sleep, throat raw from the last traces of a scream petering out, fear and pain ricocheting in her chest, her breaths ragged and uneven, her face damp from sweat and tears she wasn't aware were flowing, her current reality ripped from her, reliving something impossible but, she knows, just knows in her gut, is real.
It's at this point, seven years ago, that she accepts: they were far too real to be dreams. They are memories. The realization crashes into her at breakneck speed,colliding with every molecule of her body, propelling her to scramble out of bed, tossing things in a frenzy, desperately looking for anything to write on.
And ever since, this is what she does, every morning after a memory trip, jotting things down, every minuscule part, before it gets hard to remember, the images flowing out of the tip of her quill, scritching and scratching the way they scratched the insides of her mind.
Page by page, she reconstructs the pieces that she has into a story. Hers?Another woman's? Both? She records the ones she knows is about her, even a name, her name: Cormier, Delphine Cormier, Doctor Delphine Cormier and below her name, scribbles born from recalling, with difficulty, the early dreams she had.
Paris. Vacations with maman et papa.
School.
Trips to the Louvre. Seine River. Musee d'Orsay. La tavern Anglaise.
7763, bd Haussmann 753 Paris Codex 11
Being ostracized due to my love of science.
The recent ones that followed were easier for her to refresh and learn from
Coffee and truffles. College. Cigarettes.
A course called immunology. Molecular biology.
Graduating with highest honors.
Thesis, dissertation, oral defense.
PhD, specializing in host and parasite relationships
French language, something that contributed much to who she is, a comforting aspect in her life, sort of a touchstone.
L'Institute de Maria Sibylla Merian
Little by little, these pieces infiltrate her, to the point that she speaks French in her mind, the accent perfected through the memories, and she wonders if this is how a memory transplant feels like. She has a good grasp of her dream self that, if by some miracle, she was transported to this place called Paris, she would fit in and not be lost.
She used the information and knowledge she gleamed to study and understand her current reality, memories of hours of lectures and lab on biology, microbiology, chemistry, anatomy, and human body systems giving her a huge advantage as she studies and reviews the different plants and species from all over The Known World used for making potions and poisons, as well as use it in the medical field, the simple act of boiling her instruments and keeping her hands clean doing wonders in preventing infections. She has built a very advanced and unique database on the subject, making her the foremost expert in the field, having created new potions, corrected and perfected old ones, and developed methods for detecting poisons.
Using knowledge from a far more advanced world and revising it to fit its parallels in this one...it feels like cheating somehow. But the thought that she's helping people and making a difference puts her at ease, overriding the strangeness of it all. Especially now.
She flips the journal to the pages whose edges are worn from the number of times her hands have pored over them. As she looks at it, her fingers doing their usual circuit, the familiar rush of happiness, warmth, and longing never fails to make her feel like she is drowning and flying at the same time. This is the first thing she has written, the very first word during that night she woke up screaming.
Cosima
The paper is bruised by the heavy blows from her mind, a hurricane bursting out as ink, wreaking havoc, the urgent desperation to write it all down battering the parchment in hurried strokes and harsh indentations, until all the emotions clawing both her mind and heart have finally bled out in the last drop of black on white parchment.
Afterwards, her hands were numb, her whole body was numb. Even her mind felt does not remember falling back to sleep, exhaustion taking pity on her, and even as she lay there, cracked open and bled dry, she dimly comes to the conclusion that she loves this girl.
How could I not?
Cosima has taken a large portion of the journal, her mannerisms, her smiles, her body, her brazenness and brilliance, all crammed in arrows and spaces. When she wakes, it is always with half of her still stuck in the dream, as if being someone else who is also her, like someone snuck in during the night, dismantled her then hastily rearranged the pieces right before she opened her eyes. The pieces always find their way back eventually, rebuilding who she is right here and right now in this reality, but sometimes they linger, the fragments scraping and scratching, crawling much too sluggishly, and she would spend the whole day disoriented and untethered, in love and heartbroken, half stuck in another reality until the pieces finally repositioned themselves.
Her eyes skim through the rough scribbles of that night.
Cosima Niehaus.
San Fransisco, California.
Berkeley
Evo devo at Minessota. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. She was someone who matched her intellect and passion for science, someone who finally gets it...gets me.
Running away to the quad hand in hand. Because the little brat stole two bottles of wine. Delphine cannot remember what came before or why Cosima swiped those bottles, but she couldn't care less because the thrill of running away from the scene of the crime, the warmth from the smaller woman's hand tangled in her own, has left a very glaring impression.
"Let's go steal some bikes."
"No, that's too much crime for me."
"It's so nice to make a friend in this brave new world."
She bites her lips at the next words.
First kiss. She was taken by surprise, flustered and not sure of what to do when Cosima's lips pressed against her own.
" Oh. God, Delphine, did I just make a huge mistake?" Thinking back on it, she wants to strangle herself for even making Cosima ask that question. Non. Non, mon amour, If that was a mistake, it would be the best mistake in forever, because it's what made silly old me embrace something and love someone I never even considered for myself.
Her eyes flicker down to the list of words, her smile growing wider, until she reaches the bottom.
324B21. This...is her tag number. There is an arrow pointing to another word beside it, her index finger trailing over the m, past the o, going to the n then the i. Her hand stills, clenching into a fist, as if it could crumple what she is for subject 324B21. And I'm... she doesn't finish the thought, the memory of it proving to be too much, so she continues and turns to the more recent pages. Ever since she got that message from the Fairy, her Cosima dreams have become an almost nightly occurrence, eclipsing the ones about Paris, about immunology and science...even about her own life, and frankly, she didn't mind.
"I'm sick, Delphine" she wrote this on her first night on the ship bound for King's Landing. "We need some help! Cosima! "
Her heart twist itself as she recalls hearing her own voice desperately and helplessly calling out as Cosima seizes on the floor, blood staining the floor the way it stained the walls of Delphine's brain, something that can never be washed off. And thus, she didn't sleep for the following nights, forcing herself to think of her task instead.
Eskimo pie. This was during her first night in Ethan's chambers, hopping out of bed as the phantom emotions clog her reality, the dream still fresh in her mind. The memory started with Cosima shrugging her red coat on, and ended on Delphine's thoughts.
"Prepare yourself, you're about to become a craven addict."
"I think I already am." And I probably always will be.
She didn't sleep after that, the excitement and fear of being reunited more potent than any espresso shot, any nicotine hit she remembers taking, even though it was just a little snippet of a memory.
Where other people only had a page, Cosima just filled page after page, but despite all and everything that was written on the pages, the amount of ink spilled to anchor the reality of the memories on paper , there is one truth that is absolute for Delphine: her love for Cosima is written in indelible ink, written in every drop of blood, every breath in her lungs, in everything that she is, in the very core of her being, in every subatomic particle, and it is something she knows will mark her enduringly and eternally.
There were still a lot of blank spaces of course, a lot of questions written as sidenotes, the only clear thing being Cosima and their shared moments, but those that are beyond that are frustratingly obscure, even with new memories being unearth ever since she arrived in King's Landing. There are missing pieces, she knows Cosima is a clone, that she's her monitor, but that's where it ends; how exactly it came to that and who controls the monitors is still unknown. Delphine can only make general assumptions and conclusions based on what she has, and the important pieces are still question marks in her journal, like Aldous. Somehow, she can feel that he's involved somewhere, that he's more than the pop scientist in the magazines.
Whether he is involved or not, he's probably not the same person here. That is another world after all. Circumstances surrounding him may be different here in Westeros, producing a different version of him.
It was something she realized after meeting Rachel. Again, all she knows of the Rachel from there are general things, like looking at a driver's license or a patient record: you can see their name, age, color of hair etc, but you don't see the circumstances behind the mask, don't see the disappointment that led to steely eyes, don't see the story behind every action and reaction producing the physical manefestation.
She looks for Rachel's page, and rereads what's written there.
Another clone.
Ruthlessly efficient, cold, professional, brilliant in a scary way.
Adopted by Professor Ethan Duncan.
Up in DYAD hierarchy.
And that's it, nothing more she can see from her dreams, but for now, it doesn't matter, because the Rachel that matters is the one in her current reality.
The one I see clearer is Rachel Lannister, not Rachel Duncan. And so far, they are more or less the same. Same iciness, same cold calculated ruthlessness. She takes what she wants, and bless the poor souls who stand in her way. But she has seen something from Rachel Lannister that wasn't in Rachel Duncan, saw it in the way she avoided her father's corpse, the way she is on a bloodtrail to find the truth behind his death whereas Rachel Duncan would just have burried him and be done with it. I can't put a finger on it, but there is something Rachel Lannister has that makes her different here, as though Rachel Duncan's what if's were transferred to her. After all, even I am somewhat different from Delphine Cormier. Here, I am less gullible, more...aggressive maybe? Less confused? Although knowing what Delphine Cormier knows contributes to that. I am her, she is me, we are different and the all, we are only what we know.
On that note, she wonders what Cosima's differences would be, and the endless possibilities suddenly takes away the warm blanket she is wrapped in, replacing it with chilling apprehension and fear, making her snap the journal shut.
Breathe, Delphine, breathe. She does her best to calm the clamoring between her ribs. Your purpose here is to solve this, and to prepare for what's to come. But even in her mind, it's but a flimsy excuse, a forced rationalization against the emotions gripping her.
She bites her lips and closes her eyes.
Merde.
...
*pokes head out of hole.
So...is there some kind of initiation or requirement, like cut someone's tail and dance with it in a club, or have sex on the countertop with a stranger just to shut him up, or torture someone with a glue gun after I golf club-whacked and duct taped them in the basement , or immediately taunt someone after being warned that she "takes insults personally", or do I hide my ugly face on my way out of here?