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xviii.
You aren’t quite sure what made you finally pick up the phone.
It felt like forever since you’d decided that nothing but bad news and whispered words of pity were the only sounds that could come from that cheap burner phone. What else would come through the static, after all?
You were there, you watched the decline, and you couldn’t stand it.
No, you did what you’ve always done best, and you ran away without so much as a single glance behind you. Orpheus had nothing on you, except maybe an intact heart.
i.
From the first moment you laid eyes on her, you knew that you were royally fucked. You’d like to pretend in the coming months that you knew then that she was the one who would bring you to places you’d never dreamed of before, but the truth was much more clinical than that.
One’s a coincidence (one over almost just as soon as it’d begun).
Two’s an oddity (a clean-cut one that makes you wonder where you went wrong).
But three, three’s proof that you can’t go about ignoring this calling in the pit of your stomach.
You gain a new dirty c-word that day.
ii.
You spend your nights wondering about nature and how it can be manipulated, but not completely bent out of shape. Man could come up with ways to tame nature in a way, but never permanent enough. Permanence was the untrodden path for humanity.
You shrink into your bed, knowing that you have so little understanding of it all, that Cosima is the one who actually gets the science behind this, behind them, and who are you to even attempt to unravel it all?
But sometimes she’s there with you, and you speak your small existential thoughts aloud, and she listens with a soft smile and, for a second, you pretend that she isn’t so far above you, that she’s close enough to touch.
And she is.
iii.
That night you shared a bed wasn’t the first time, but it was seminal in a sort of way. It marked the first time that you cried while she was there, as she told you the meaning behind her tattoo and the future of a life without her in it.
ix.
You’d only fallen in love once, and that seemed more than enough for a lifetime. Cal had been a good guy, brought you happiness in the moment and continually through the child they’d brought into the world. Kira was a light in your darkness, and sometimes you were bad at facing the light because of the shadows it exposed.
When you were her age, you’d practiced kissing on the mirror, and what a thought that fucking is.
v.
“I know it’s silly, and probably dangerous, but we deserve a little sense of normalcy just once,” Alison defended herself unnecessarily; you were already sold on the idea.
So you gave her a smile, but you couldn’t quite tell her how much you were aching for something so normal and simple, so you settled on saying, “Exactly how normal can a birthday for a bunch of clones be? And we don’t even share the same one.”
Alison bristled somewhat at your comments. “We are in the middle of all of them right now, so it’s just an approximation.”
You grunt in agreement and she claps her hands together, already going off about all of the normal party planning conventions- color schemes and menus and decorations and presents and where to keep the new semi-automatic she’d recently purchased during the festivities.
vi.
It was during the party that you realized just how happy you could be.
Helena was stuffing her face with cake next to you (somehow getting frosting behind her ear) and Kira was giggling at the display. Art was discussing Alison’s recent gun purchase with an air of reluctant excitement. It was his opinion that she shouldn’t have bought it illegally (of course), but he resigned himself to keeping his thoughts to himself for the day. Mrs. S was putting burgers on the grill with Felix while Donnie watched, attempting to be helpful. Cosima and Scott were discussing the possibilities of the future of recombinant DNA and patent law, and you’d just scolded Kira for attempting to eat like Helena.
Everything felt so bright and hopeful, and you didn’t want the day to end. You wanted every day to be just like this one, and Cosima caught your eye with a glint.
Suddenly everything was a little overwhelming, and you needed to breathe for a moment. You got up from the table in the backyard Alison had set up under a discreet tent and went inside, mumbling something about having to use the bathroom.
You entered the house feeling a dizzying combination of elation and gripping fear. The world before you spun, and you fell into the couch without grace. Everything was so perfect today, which made you realize just how delicate this all was. At any moment you could lose all of this- after all, there was a reason M.K. couldn’t make it. Or Beth.
It was then that you felt the touch of a hand on your shoulder. “Hey, Sarah.”
Cosima must have seen the sudden change of emotion in your eye- she had been looking right at you when you realized the precarious nature of your own happiness. She sat next to you on the couch in silence for a long stretch of time until her hand slid over yours, fingers interlocking as if they were made for each other.
You’re not sure when you started crying, but sure enough your face is wet with the evidence, and Cosima lays her head on your shoulder in an attempt to show you something.
She looked up at you and you wondered if she could could the teardrops still lingering on your eyelashes, waiting to fall. You wonder when she started crying too. You wonder if her tears taste the same as yours.
vii.
You find out two weeks later when the stem cell line fails to take and it’s the two of you alone in that bed again, hands entwined.
viii.
After that night, you pretend like it never happened, like you never kissed her. And, for a little while, she lets you. She still has the hope of Delphine lingering in her heart, and Cal is waiting for you to finally say the words he needs to hear.
It takes a long night of drinking for you to finally give in and kiss her again. She kisses you back like she’s been waiting for it.
iv.
“Sarah fucking Manning, I swear to god!” you hear Felix yelling from the room next to you, and you let out a snort of self-satisfaction and humor. The two of you didn’t share any genetic link, but he was the only one in your life (besides Kira) you felt actually related to.
Maybe one day Helena would reach that level with you too, but never Alison. Never Alison with her crafting and her Lululemons and her husband and her house in the suburbs.
Never Krystal, or Tony, or M.K., or any of them that she ached for but didn’t know in all of their complexities and their beautiful humanity against the odds that would favor them as cogs. Never Rachel with her cold interior and deranged part to play in the greater machine.
Never Cosima, who you-
“What is this?” Felix entered the loft with hands on his hips and scowling eyes that you adore. He gestures to the arrangement you’d made out of all of his dildos in the kitchen area. You shrug, attempting to withhold a smirk.
“You have absolutely no respect or ability for art,” he accused while pouting.
xiii.
She had to go to the hospital in an ambulance this time.
She had been in the lab again, finally returning after two full days of bedrest. You had stayed with her as long as possible, but eventually she would kick you out for your own good. So, when you’d finally held her hand (and dragged her oxygen tank) into the lab, your heart had lifted slightly. But it wasn’t even half an hour later that she fell to the ground in another seizure, this time shattering her phone in the process.
Felix was there with you, restraining you from running after the ambulance, and you hated that you always knew this day would come. If only there had been time before you’d learned that she was sick, some unadulterated memories for you to look back on.
He reassured you that the medics had gotten there quickly, that Cosima was in good hands, that she would make it through this just like everything else.
"You’re the wild type, Sarah. You propagate against all odds, you’re restless. And you survive.”
She told you that you would survive, but she never mentioned if she would. That was always the unspoken truth of the matter; you both knew she wouldn’t.
So you grabbed your jacket, and you left.
x.
She looked at you in a way you’ve never seen before. Sometimes it was all too much, the weight of everything between the two of you. You still hadn’t actually talked about it yet- your fault, you know. Cosima had tried a couple times to bring it up, but you had always sealed her mouth with yours, hoping desperately that you could kiss away the worries and vexations.
But she withdrew this time, and you knew you couldn’t put it off anymore.
“Sarah, we have to talk about this,” she whispered, her forehead touching yours, hands clasped between the two of you. You squeezed your eyes shut and waited for her to deliver the words you never wanted to hear.
“This isn’t easy,” she started with a sigh, and you wondered if she’d ever studied the science of the heart, and how it was possible to feel a physical pain from dread.
“I know,” you mumbled back. You matched your breathing to hers.
You still refused to open your eyes, fearing the reflection of yourself staring back at you from her eyes. “It’s all complicated, and confusing, and messed up, and I don’t even know where to start. But you can’t just keep springing this on me- you can’t just keep on coming to me- kissing me- and then acting like nothing even happened,” Cosima said, and you felt her hands stretching from your grip, as if they would surely fly around to emphasize her point if you weren’t restraining them.
Your throat felt like it’s closing up, and your heart raced. You released her hands from yours, letting them free, half expecting Cosima to leave with them. But instead there was a hand gently raised to your cheek, thumb brushing over the skin there. “Look at me, Sarah.”
And so you did. You opened your eyes and saw them looking back at you. There was a surge of panic from the pit of your stomach, but Cosima’s hand hadn’t left your face.
“I’m not going to state the obvious here, but we aren’t exactly a Hallmark couple here,” Cosima said, and it brought out a garbled, watery laugh from you.
“Yeah, no shit,” you agreed.
“But I’ve never been one for greeting cards,” Cosima added, and your heart started racing for another reason entirely.
She kisses you this time, and you let her. You let her bring you in closer to her, and you let yourself exist in this moment. You let yourself drown in her as her hands reach deep within you and pull out your heart from it’s home. She whispers your name over and over as she brings you over the edge with her hands, and those same hands pull you back to reality when you’re finished.
xi.
Later that night you hear her whisper that she loves you, and you pretend that you’re asleep.
xvi.
Maybe her smile was the only thing that could still cut you this deep, and you didn’t want to keep the memory around and slowly lose more pieces of yourself. Felix would have probably yelled, through his crying, that you would regret getting rid of these, that one day you’d come to terms with your demons and hate the actions they were drawing out of you.
But you burned them anyway, each and every frozen moment preserved on slick 3 x 5. You reminded him in a dull voice that if you wanted to see her face again you could just look in the mirror.
xvii.
Maybe Cosima wasn’t dead, but you liked to fill Beth’s shoes (her job, her apartment, her boyfriend , her arrogance). Alison seemed to think you were a poor substitute for a leader, but maybe that wasn’t what she was looking for.
Your new hobbies included standing at the train station and wondering what would have happened if you’d taken her hand and joined her.
xii.
The two of you never told anyone. Cosima had suggested telling Alison, something about how she suspected she might understand. But you were fairly certain she would have a conniption and cling tightly to that cross around her neck. So you didn’t share, and Cosima never brought it up again, telling you that she would wait until you were ready.
You thought about telling Felix. He gave the two of you plenty of suspicious looks as it was, so maybe he was onto something after all. You flashed back to the time you’d met Cosima for the first time and gone back to Felix’s apartment, attempting to process the whole shitshow you’d wandered into.
“Soccer-mum Sarah, dreadlock science-geek Sarah? Arguably more attractive than the real Sarah.”
“Yeah, I was there, thank you.”
So maybe you’d been attracted to her since the beginning, and maybe Felix had some idea of it, but that didn’t mean that he’d be okay with you actually bringing it up with him. At the very least, he knew that you were closer to her than the others, closer to her than anyone except maybe him. You knew it from the feeling of his bear hug stopping you from chasing that ambulance.
But you didn’t tell him. Instead you spent the day in bed with Cosima, discovering her body and pretending it was new to you. You felt guilty for all of it, that you’d somehow corrupted this beautiful and fragile being with your dirtiness. Not only did you drag her and others down with you with your irrational behavior, but now there was this. Surely you’d sealed your own ticket to hell long ago, but Cosima didn’t deserve to be dragged down with you.
Surely it was wrong to look into eyes just like yours and feel a passion light up inside you.
xiv.
So you left and drove for miles and miles after the ambulance pulled out. You found a dingy bar, and you lowered yourself into the hole of alcohol and bad decisions, a place you used to call home until recently. Until home wore glasses and dreads.
You stayed in a nearby motel on the nights when someone didn’t take you home with them, and you left your phone there. You heard it ringing over and over again, but you never once picked up. The two who called most often were Felix and Alison- after three weeks the others started to trail off in frequency.
You never checked the texts or the voicemails- just the missed calls. Part of you wondered why you didn’t just throw the phone out the window or drown it in a glass of whiskey, but you never did. You let it ring like a church bell reminding it’s parishioners to come and confess.
So instead of answering, you get in the car again and drive.
xv.
You walked only as far as the gate, not daring to walk in. It was the graveyard she’d mentioned wanting to be buried in during one of your darker talks.
“I love you,” you whisper. It was only fair that you finally own up to your sins, after all.
xix.
“What?” you answered violently. Before the person on the other line could even have a chance to respond, you went off. “I don’t want to hear your fucking pity. I don’t want to hear about how I fucked up by leaving when I should have stayed waiting in that hospital room to hear the news with the rest of you. Because you know what? It’s not like this should have come as a surprise to you- I’ve always been a runner. Poor Sarah, and her emotional instability, can’t even be there for her daughter, or her dying-”
And you couldn’t say it, so your voice broke into a sob instead. You couldn’t bring yourself to say sister, or sestra even, because it brought up all the pain you’d dealt with every night in Cosima’s bed when you knew you should repent for your sins, but instead you begged for them to happen again.
“Sarah,” the voice on the other end of the phone exhaled.
And you swore your heart skipped a beat in that moment, because that voice sounded exactly like Cosima. Then your brain kicked in to remind you that, of course it did, because you all shared the same fucking voice.
You should have hung up.