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"Sarah?"
The voice is quiet, spoken in a crescendo like a much larger thing squeezing itself through a tight space and wriggling free with a sudden burst. All in two syllables. It's a hand on Sarah's wrist even though the speaker is several yards away.
Sarah doesn't turn, doesn't so much as toss a glance over her shoulder. She stands with her toes hanging over the edge of the platform. With the backdraft from the train on the other side sending her hair whipping about her face, it's almost as dramatic as if she was perched on top of a building. But of course she isn't. Because it has come full circle. And she can't think of a better place to end it.
"I'm losing my mind," Sarah murmurs, staring straight ahead, looking at the gray wall on the opposite side of the tracks from where she stands. "When I look in the mirror, I don't know whether I see you or me."
Beth says nothing. Maybe she's fighting for words, the way she's been fighting off the emptiness in her chest for months, the way she's been fighting off the urge to drown in her fears. Or maybe there's nothing to say.
And suddenly she's there, standing right at Sarah's elbow. She is speaking, her voice low and steady. So quiet it rushes through Sarah's mind like a foundation for the ideas that bud from it, rising like the skeletons of skyscrapers. And Sarah feels like she's weaving between these ideas like the only resident of a ghost town.
"There are days that I come here - days when you're not home - and I stand just like we are. And I wait for a train, and as it comes, I step back." Beth lets out a deep sigh. "And I'll do it for hours, just… wait."
Sarah doesn't look over, doesn't respond. She's wearing darkness and the emptiness she must have contracted from Beth in the same way she wears that signature leather jacket: like a barrier, a part of her identity that she can hide behind. She tells herself she's made of iron, but iron rusts, iron is brittle, iron left to oxidize becomes completely unrecognizable.
She doesn't realize she's whispering it ("I am iron") over and over again until Beth takes her hand, warm fingers sliding between Sarah's. They fit perfectly because their hands are the same - their fingers the same length, the same shape - though Beth's are calloused in different places.
"Iron only goes so deep," Beth says, and Sarah can feel the detective looking at her now. "You've got to bleed from somewhere." She gives Sarah's hand a squeeze. "You can't be one hundred percent iron; it's brittle, and you aren't; it rusts, and you don't. Though there's iron in steel. Maybe you've got some of that in you. It's tougher anyway."
Sarah's chin jerks up. Is there moisture in her eyes? On her cheeks? She can't feel it, but it might be. She doesn't want to cry, doesn't want to feel anything. Does she? She sways on her feet, and Beth grabs her arm hard enough that Sarah stumbles back, raising an arm to strike back. Before she tears away and turns her back on Beth, fingers latched in her hair within a second to keep from destroying things.
She always destroys things.
Beth steps around her, making sure to show her hands as she reaches for Sarah. Long fingers wrap around Sarah's forearms and gently extract Sarah's hands from the tangled mane of hair. Their arms between them like a bridge, parallel to the tile beneath their feet. Beth rubs her hands up and down from Sarah's wrists to elbows and back.
"You don't have to be iron. It's that softness in the center that's so… beautiful." She forces a smile - Sarah knows it must be forced, even if it doesn't exactly look it. "A shriveled little broken thing, hidden in this cage of iron." Beth leans forward, pressing her forehead against Sarah's. "And it's beautiful. I've seen it."
Sarah sucks in a deep breath, starting to pull away. Thinks to herself ("I don't want to be broken"), wants to escape Beth, escape this warmth that has started to kindle deep in her gut. Is that guilt? Is it something else? She doesn't know. Doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to feel anything anymore.
Beth's hands drop and she lets Sarah back up a few steps. "We're all broken - all of us."
("All of us who?") Sarah wants to ask, doesn't know if her tongue even works. Part of her knows. Maybe all of her does. The clones. The human race. Maybe she doesn't know.
That sad smile graces Beth's lips again, a light tweaking of one corner coupled with drawn brows. "Me worst of all - you know."
The clones then. Sarah turns her back on Beth whose life she'd saved all those months ago right in this very spot. She can still see the folded blazer in front of the faded advertisement. The ad has since been changed. Orange instead of cyan. She can't even bring herself to see more than that. The color is enough.
The world's a very different place now.
"Let me in, Sarah," Beth calls, her voice suddenly tooharshtooloud in the silence of the empty station.
Sarah looks down at her toes, just a few feet from the edge of the tracks. Takes the last few steps so they're hanging off again. Imagines she's on the precipice of… something. A discovery, maybe - a chance, a change.
Beth takes the familiar place beside her, but they're not shoulder to shoulder this time. Beth is a perpendicular line to Sarah, two endless lengths that intersect only once. And yet, this is the second time they've come to this point. Like looking in a mirror.
Sarah turns to face Beth. Perpendicular lines become parallel, travelling together, never to touch. Two lines on the same path. Both completely alone. And it feels like a plane of symmetry, seeing her own features reflected back at her. Though slightly different.
Beth is stillness. She always has been. And Sarah, for once, feels that same calm like a winter chill, eking into her bones slowly, spreading throughout her body. There's a freedom in no longer being afraid. No longer being angry. No longer being caged. Just being broken.
Beth leans forward and kisses her lightly, their lips barely brushing compared to the usual crushing force with which they come together. Sarah can taste the tears that have been trickling down Beth's cheeks. Sarah's arms hang limp; Beth's fingers dance along Sarah's biceps. Another familiar-but-not gesture. Usually Beth's hands don't move.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," Beth whispers. The words breeze against Sarah's lips. She can taste them, too. They taste like oranges and cinnamon and coffee. They taste like sleepless nights and hot, sweaty skin. They taste like screams in the darkest hours of the night. They taste like pills stashed away in the glove compartment, a desk drawer, behind the bleach under the sink. They taste like Beth.
And Beth turns and walks away, leaving Sarah alone. Sarah can hear the muted sobs long after Beth is out of sight. And they ripple through her chest like the ocean tide. Hot, cold, hot again. The backdraft whips up again. This time on her side. She can see the brilliant headlamps like the light from Helena's heaven, bleeding across the walls and filling the empty space. She feels a buzz in her head like Alison's wine as the tracks rattle and screech. She feels a tightness in her chest that could just as easily be Cosima's cough.
And she still tastes oranges and cinnamon and coffee on her tongue.
As the train bursts free of the tunnel, roaring with all the malice of her inadequacies, Sarah takes a step backwards.