Chapter Text
When she was three, she’d pointed at the bright sky in June, and tried to explain to Maman that it was the color of her voice.
Maman had laughed, the bright cerulean sparkling around Delphine, and laughed, scooping her up and pressing a kiss to her curls. Mon petit coeur, she’d laughed, silly thing, you say such pretty nonsense. She had objected, squirming in Maman’s arms, because her voice was that pretty sky-blue, it mixed so nicely with Papa’s starless-night-sky voice, contrasted sharply with baby Henri’s bright-green cries. Maman had frowned, Delphine that’s enough, you’re being silly, go inside and wash up and I don’t want to hear anymore.
When she was three, she’d tried to explain to Maman the colors of voices and she’d begun to fear that she was wrong.
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She started school that year, just another child in a sea of children, and she tried to keep it that way, seated in the back of the room and tugging on a blonde curl among the sea of colors that came with all the high-pitched voices. Reds, purples, pinks and greens and colors in between, swirling and pressing in on her. She squeezed her eyes shut and drew her knees up to her chest, the colors changing from one to another and all filling her head.
The teacher’s voice was muddy brown. Her stomach rolled.
She tugged on her curl and bit her fingernails and wished it was silent so the colors would stop.
“Delphine.” The muddy-brown teacher was closer, louder, and she shut her eyes tighter, because she really did not like that color, especially surrounded by all the other colors in the room. “Del--”
She threw up on the teacher’s shoes.
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“First day nerves,” Papa reassured her at home, stroking her hair as she lay in his lap. She shut her eyes and breathed in his warm smell of home and cigars, wreathed in the sound of royal blue. “You’re all young, they will forget and school will get easier. Were you feeling ill this morning, coeur? Why didn’t you tell Maman?”
“Can no one else see the colors?” she begged, opening her eyes and tugging on his suit jacket.
“Colors?”
“The colors of the sounds, Papa.” When he looked confused, she tried to explain--he was dark blue, Maman was lighter, baby Henri was mint green, and all the children at the school, they were so loud and so colorful--
“Delphine.” Papa cut her off, sitting her up so she was looking in his eyes. “How long have you been seeing the colors?”
“For forever. I tried to tell Maman, but--”
“No, Delphine.” He was holding onto her shoulders now, and she was getting scared. “You now how Maman has her turns? Sometimes she goes quiet, or gets ill and stays in her room for a few days?”
She nodded; after Henri was born, Maman hadn’t left her room for days, but she had heard her yelling and crying. Maman hadn’t wanted to see her or Henri and Papa had looked more scared than she’d ever seen him.
“This would give Maman a turn?”
“Yes, coeur, we don’t want her to worry.” He rubbed her shoulders comfortingly, but he still looked serious. “I have a job for you. I’ll hire a home tutor for you, you won’t have to go to school, but you mustn’t tell Maman about the colors.We’ll pretend like they don’t exist.”
“But Papa,” she asked, tugging on her sweater sleeves, “isn’t that like lying? Lying is bad, Maman says.”
“Delphine, you have to listen very closely now, this is important.” Papa took a deep breath, looking away for a moment before looking back into her eyes. “Lying is bad--very bad. But what’s worse is letting your loved ones get hurt. Even if it means lying, coeur, even if it means doing bad things, you keep them safe. You do what you must to keep them safe. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she promised, feeling very small. “I understand, Papa. I’ll protect her.”
“Good girl, mon coeur.” He kissed her forehead and held her close. “You don’t forget that.”
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Mademoiselle Beraud was a patient and pretty woman who liked Delphine, it was obvious, but was also fairly curious about why Delphine needed a tutor rather than going to school. Delphine just smiled and did as she was told--she didn’t mind, Mademoiselle Beraud had a clear voice like bright lavender.
It was dull work at first--she would have preferred games to exercises, but they were sort of fun and Mademoiselle’s voice was pretty to see.
She learned to read fairly quickly, though reading aloud was harder--she was better at connecting symbols to meaning than symbols to sound. Handwriting was dull and she did as much as she could to get out of physical exercise, but overall she had fun, and loved the looks of pride her parents gave her, their voices singing praise in happy blues.
And then she got her first set of math problems--equations instead of just counting blocks and patterns--and she fell absolutely in love.
The numbers fit, they fell into place before her in a way that was absolutely right. There was a map in front of her whenever she saw numbers, maps that showed her where the numbers sat in relation to others, and even at age five and one quarter she knew it was the most beautiful thing she would ever see.
She also knew, without asking, that it was something she had to hide, the same as the colors, and so she let kind Mademoiselle Beraud call her gifted and magnifique instead of broken and wrong. But it did make Maman smile, and then Maman would get Henri to clap bright blue-green claps and laugh his mint-green laugh, Papa would look proud, and that meant that everything was okay.
She pretended the colors weren’t there and everything was okay.
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When Delphine was five and three-quarters, she was reading Le Voyage de Babar when Mademoiselle Beraud stepped out of the room to answer the sharp maroon of the ringing phone.
She liked Babar because it was silly--she watched the documentaries, she knew elephants never wore clothes or walked on two feet. She liked the documentaries too, the narrator had a pretty orange sound.
Mademoiselle came back into the room just as Babar and Celeste got onto a whale.
“Delphine,” she’d said, kneeling down in front of her. She hadn’t wanted to stop; it looked like Celeste and Babar were in trouble again. “Delphine, cherie, reading is over now. We have to go on a special trip.”
The lavender of her voice didn’t cover the tears on her cheeks. She sat up, scared, as Mademoiselle dabbed at her eyes.
“Where are we going? Mademoiselle, what’s wrong?”
“We’re going to to the hospital, cherie. Your Maman and Henri were coming home from the store and...and were in an accident.”
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The hospital was full of colors, all beeping and shouting and other horrible noises that Delphine had never heard before and never wanted to hear again. She felt like all the colors were going to mash her up and swallow her whole.
“Delphine, you can’t cry now cherie, we have to go inside.” Mademoiselle frowned, bending to scoop her up. Delphine half-screamed, pressing her hands to her ears and eyes shut as tight as they would go. “Come on, Delphine, the doctors...the doctors said we must hurry.”
Mademoiselle held her tight to her chest, her shoes tapping a fire-yellow click-clack that pierced through all the other colors in her brain, giving her just a bit of stability to cling to in the desperate mess.
“She’s family of Lara and Henri Cormier.” Mademoiselle’s voice was quavering, but her voice was a strong, comforting lavender hue. “Martin, the father, he called ahead, do you have any information for us? Please, I have worked with this family for years now, I know them.”
The doctor’s voice was a color between pink and green, slow and gentle as he ushered Mademoiselle to a chair. It was quieter here and slowly Delphine lowered her hands from her ears enough to hear words.
Enough to hear him say “--Henri has died, I’m sorry,” and deep lavender sobs.
“Delphine,” she heard, and there was the deep blue of a night without lights as strong arms pulled her away from Mademoiselle and against his chest. “Delphine, mon coeur, thank god, thank god.”
“Papa,” she cried, wrapping her arms around his neck as he murmured blue into her hair. “Papa, what’s happening, it’s so loud and my head hurts, Papa please, they said Henri was dead and I don’t understand, please Papa.”
“Oh mon coeur, mon coeur,” he pressed a kiss to her forehead, stroking her hair and rocking her back and forth, just a bit. “Delphine, I’m sorry, but you have to be brave now. You’ve got to be brave now.”
“I don’t want to be brave, I want to go home, please.”
“I know, mon coeur, I know.” Papa set her down gently, kneeling in front of her to dry her eyes. “But there’s not a choice now. Maman is ill, Delphine.”
“Like with one of her turns?”
“Her body’s ill too, this time.” His voice was the darkest blue she’d ever seen, and it almost scared her more than the water in his eyes. “She’s very ill but she wants to see you. You need to talk to her coeur, and tell her than Henri is okay.”
“Papa, they said…” She started to sob, balling her hands into fists and pressing them to her eyes. “Papa, they said Henri was dead. Dead isn’t okay, Papa, and they said he was dead.”
“I know, Delphine, but Maman doesn’t know that. She’s ill and a turn will only make her worse. We want her to be happy.”
“Lying?”
“Protecting. You remember what I said to you, about the most important thing?”
“You do what you must,” she hiccuped, and he patted her on the head.
“Good girl. You love Maman?”
She nodded. “But she won’t be cross with me when she gets better?”
“No, Delphine,” he promised, voice almost black. “She won’t.”
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Lara Cormier, née Lachance died at 6:08 PM, according to the doctor with a voice like cream, about three hours after her son, Henri Cormier, died at the scene of the accident.
The important thing, Papa said, was that Henri had had Maman with him, and he hadn’t suffered, and Maman had had both of them with her and she hadn’t suffered either. She had just been sleeping at the end, he promised her, surrounded by tubes and wires, that one machine making black-orange beeps for a long time before it turned to one long tone, Papa in a voice so dark blue and so different than Maman’s blue telling the doctors to step back, stop trying. A pretty nurse had offered to get her some cocoa, to sit with her for a bit, but the nurse’s voice had been like Henri’s spit up and so she’d refused, sat alone on a bench in the quiet part of the hospital while Papa did “offical things.”
One week later, Papa helped her put on a new black dress and they went to a funeral parlor, where they would put Maman and Henri in boxes and then put them in the dirt.
“Don’t talk like that, Delphine,” Papa had scolded. His voice was a darker blue now--ever since Maman and Henri had gone away, Delphine had felt like there was a big hole in her belly and Papa’s voice had been close to black. “We’re going to say goodbye to them.”
“Will there be other people, Papa?”
“Yes, most of the family will be there. I know you haven’t met them, but they’re all very nice.” He didn’t look up while he was talking; instead he knelt and fastened the buckles on her shiny black shoes.
“But Papa, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to say goodbye to Henri and Maman--”
“I know, mon coeur, but they’re gone, we have to.”
“I don’t want to, Papa, I don’t understand!” She pulled her foot away, her voice raising into a wail. “Where did Maman go, where did Henri go, why aren’t they coming home?”
“Delphine--”
“They were coming home! They were coming home and now they’re never coming home and everything is different and bad and I hurt inside all the time and your voice is almost black all the time--”
“Delphine, how many times, no talking about the colors!” She flinched away, sobs stuttering in shock. Papa took a deep breath, then picked up her other shoe and began to put it on. “Sounds do not have colors.”
“But--”
“Delphine. I’m sorry, mon coeur, but you have to grow up now.” His voice was so close to black. “You’re nearly six years old, you cannot stay at home with Mademoiselle Beraud anymore. In a few months you’re going to go back to school. I have a new job, so I’m going to be at work more--you’re going to be walking yourself to and from school.”
“Papa, I don’t want to--”
“I know.” He sat up and pulled her into a hug, gently wiping away her tears as he did so. “But it’s only us now. This is best, Delphine, I promise, even if it hurts now. Be a brave big girl for me now, mon coeur, you must.”
“Yes, Papa,” she whimpered, scared of throwing herself back into all the colors outside the safety of home, but more scared of failing Papa. “I can be a brave big girl.”
“Good girl.” He kissed her forehead gently, smoothing out her hair. “Good girl, Delphine. I love you.”
“I love you, Papa.”
The funeral was outside on a warm day, the sky almost the color of Maman’s voice. Instead of the coffins, Delphine stared at the sky, watching the red-purple birdsong and the rainbow of condolences and sobs.
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When she was in her freshman year of college, already taking junior year math and already called an “extraordinarily promising mathematician” by her professors (the number maps that she was now certain no one else saw were invaluable), Delphine’s coffee date with a boy who sounded raspberry-red was interrupted by the sharp yellow-green of her cell phone.
“Excusez-moi,” she said politely, interrupting what seemed to be an endless rant about Madame Coupe’s grading system (she agreed with his points, but after around ten minutes he’d repeated himself five or more times) and answered the unknown number.
“Mademoiselle Delphine Cormier?”
“Yes?” The woman on the other end had a melodic enough voice, but managed to be a pale brownish-green; well versed in practice at this point, Delphine kept a polite smile on her face and a civil tone.
“You’re Doctor Martin Cormier’s daughter and next of kin?”
“Yes that’s me. Can I ask who’s speaking?”
“I’m a nurse from the Lou Bellerose Hospital. I’m sorry to have to inform you that your father has passed away.”
“Oh.” The breath left her in a sudden rush and she stumbled, reaching out for something to grab onto. When she didn’t find anything, she slumped down against the wall instead.
“Mademoiselle Cormier? Are you still there?”
“Y-yes, I’m sorry.” She ran her hand through her hair, taking a few shaky breaths. “It...it was an accident?”
“No, Mademoiselle I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Your father has been coming here for months, ever since his lymphoma was classified as stage IV. He developed a parasitic infection a few weeks ago, it was thought he would recover but his condition worsened unexpectedly--I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, he told you none of this?”
“No, he didn’t, he…” She stopped, swallowing down a sob. “In our family, we protect each other. We don’t let anyone get hurt.” Even if that’s lying, even if that’s hiding. “It is the most important thing.”
“Mademoiselle, forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply--”
“No, no, it’s me who should be sorry.” She pushed herself off the wall, stumbling toward the nearest door. “Thank you for calling. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”
The sky was clouded over, various greys going out to the horizon. None of the passerby’s chatter was blue, and she wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.
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Delphine Cormier was alone.
She realized it after Papa’s funeral, surrounded by relatives with sickly sweet condolences and voices whose colors all blurred together before long. She smiled, thanked them, shook their hands and turned down their offers of money, food, support. These were people she hadn’t seen since Maman and Henri’s funeral and she didn’t want to see again. They were strangers pretending to love her because of a simple thing like blood--a meaningless thing like blood. She and Papa had survived as the two of them for years, and she didn’t appreciate them intruding just because Papa was gone now.
So she returned to college alone, and never called that raspberry-red voiced boy back. Instead she called her advisor, a Monsieur Tobias, who was a sweet older man with a dark orange voice.
“Hello?”
“Bonsoir, Monsieur. This is Delphine Cormier--I’m sorry to bother you so late.”
“Mademoiselle Cormier, no, not at all! I’ve heard about your father and I’m so sorry--he was a great doctor, from what I hear, and very missed.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s very kind.”
“Did you need someone to talk to? Is that--”
“No sir, it’s actually about my major. I’d like to switch from mathematics to biology, with a focus on immunology.”
“Changing your major? Forgive me, but are you sure you’re thinking this through? You’re already slated for a wonderful career as a mathematician, already getting attention--”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t feel that it’s something right for me.” I’m wrong, something Papa taught me for years to hide, and I’m using it to achieve success. The numbers were still so beautiful to her, fitting into the most wonderful, wonderful pattern before her, but Papa had worked so hard to help her be normal--a successful, normal child--and she was going to be, for him.
And she wanted to know more about what had taken Papa from her.
“Well, Mademoiselle Cormier, if you’re sure…”
“Yes sir. Thank you.”
She glanced out the window; all the familiar French streets, the brown and white and ruby-colored chatter and bustle, all the places that Papa once wandered, planned to wander, all the places Maman and Henri could have should have been.
“I’m sorry sir, one last thing--I’d also like to study English. I want to go abroad.”
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She learned to love the lab--the robin’s egg blue color of clicking pipettes, the copper whirr of the centrifuge, the wonderful silence on the weekends or after-hours when she was the only one there.
She adored the complexities of science; after years of wrapping herself in theoretical mathematics, applicable studies were something new and wonderful. There were always new questions, further complexities, deeper mysteries within something so outwardly simple as a cell, an organ, a human.
She loved it. She loved it so much that sometimes, she forgot about the horrible wrongness of the colors.
And she was good; maybe not as good as she was in math, but she was a Cormier and that meant she was damn good when she wanted to be, and as her fascination with science grew, as she rose through her classes, she got noticed.
Noticed enough that one morning, as she slipped into the lab to check on a few cultures before classes and before the lab would be filled with other students and all their colorful chatter, she was interrupted.
“Mademoiselle Cormier,” a smooth voice--grey and red, mixed together, like gunmetal and blood melded into one--came from a figure settled at her usual lab station. “Or Doctor Cormier, I should say--you’ll be one in what, a few weeks?”
“Who are you?” she asked, taking a few cautious steps forward. The speaker was a man, tall and thin and bald, and his eyes raked over her body in a way she was sickeningly used to.
“Oh, forgive me, where are my manners?” He crossed a few steps closer, grinning charmingly and extending a hand. “My name is Doctor Aldous Leekie, and I work at the Dyad Institute. I assume you’ve heard of us?”
“Y-yes,” she stuttered, taking his hand automatically. Dyad was spoken of by the professors here with a little of something like awe and a lot of something like fear. “I have read several of the papers published by your institute, I was very impressed--”
“Well thank you, thank you, but flattery isn’t something you need to do with me. You’ve developed quite a reputation, you know; science is such a close-knit field, when one person stands out, word gets around. One of the youngest PhD students this school has ever had, that’s very impressive.”
“Thank you, sir, I--”
“Delphine--may I call you Delphine? I’m here to offer you a job.”
“A-a job?”
“Well, a research fellowship really, but we’ll cover all your expenses. In fact, we can guarantee you work once your fellowship is done. Well-paying, even--Dyad knows when they’ve caught a good one, and we’d hate to let someone like you go.” He grinned again, wider this time, and didn’t bother hiding his leer. “In fact, you and I, we could work out a special arrangement. Just a few favors in exchange for a few favors from me.”
She bristled instinctively, halfway to pulling away when she realized what he was offering her. A fully paid fellowship, a job afterward, and with one of the greatest institutes in the world, an institute who’d sent someone across an ocean to meet with her.
And in exchange…
You do what you must for the ones you love. For Papa, who’d wanted her to be successful. For Maman, who’d looked so proud whenever she’d done well.
For herself, because she was all she had left.
“Doctor Leekie, it would be an honor.”
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So she immersed herself in the work, and the work was good. It was fascinating research, and brand new, and nothing like anything she would have dreamed of being able to do had she stayed behind in France.
(That may be because it would’ve been illegal there; she did her best not to think about that)
The one downside to the work was Dr Joey Paquet. He was absolutely fantastic at what he did (as everyone of the researchers associated with Dyad were, they were all assured), but he had a voice that was an orange-yellow-brown, like smeared dog dung, that even she, with all her years of practice in dealing with unpleasant voice colors, had trouble stomaching. Worse still, he considered the fact that they were both French (he was of Asian heritage but raised by French parents, he was always quick to point out) to be an invitation for him to flirt with her whenever possible, which always ended with her rejecting him as quickly and politely as possible before fleeing the room.
He never seemed discouraged. She started carrying peppermints to settle her stomach.
“You know this isn’t an exclusive relationship,” Aldous said to her one night as she dressed, and she frowned for a moment, unsure of what he was getting at. “That Dr. Paquet seems quite keen on you,” he clarified, his red-grey voice feeling like it was settling on her skin like thick oils, like it always did. “I wouldn’t want this arrangement to be the cause of his broken heart.”
“Ah, no, no, I do not reject him because of this,” she clarified quickly. “He is kind, yes, but it is his voice, the color is so…” She trailed off, terror sitting heavily in her stomach. “I-I mean, the sound, his voice, it can just be so irritating, I could not stand listening to it--when I am tired, my English seems to leave,” she finished, carefully schooling her features into a self-deprecating expression, even as she felt her fingertips tremble ever so slightly as she bent to adjust the foot of her pantyhose. He had not moved when she straightened back up, simply staring at her like a child that had just amused him. After several moments she slipped her top on and asked him to help with the zipper.
“You have a unique perspective on the world, don’t you Delphine?” he murmured into her ear as he did up her zipper, slipping back into flawless French. She felt herself go absolutely still, her heart beating loudly in electric pink double-time.
“It is necessary to succeed in a scientific field,” she managed to force out, automatically responding in French as she pulled away and slipped her feet into her heels.
“That’s very true.” Aldous held out her purse and she took it, still unable to look him in the eye. “Until next time, Doctor Cormier.”
“I’m sorry?” She did pause at that, turning back from the door she’d been about to leave through. “I thought the fellowship ended next week.”
“Oh, I think we’ll be seeing each other for quite some time,” Aldous replied with a grin. It sounded more like a promise than a simple statement.
The next day, Delphine received a letter notifying her that she’d been selected to work on Project Leda.
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Project Leda was groundbreaking, and stunning, and wonderful, and so illegal.
Human cloning.
She had perhaps the lowest clearance level possible on this project--she’d never even seen photos of the clones, knew nothing about their names, where they lived, their lives--she only knew biological sex because of some of her genome work, and the various tag numbers. 781b68, 324b21, 572b36 and several others passed through her lab daily in the form of blood samples, tissue samples, even hair samples on occasion (and that was the closest thing she had to a glimpse into these lives--because really? Bright red hair, 665b41?) as she studied immune responses, hypersensitivities, and any signs of immunodeficiency or autoimmune disorders.
It was all so fascinating, the idea of human clones, out there in the world, unaware of the amount of work that had gone into them, unaware of the scientific miracles that they were, of how they would change so many different fields.
She loved her work, loved being a part of this history, but she knew--she knew so well--that she could be more. Aldous knew that too--he had a knack for reading people, she knew, and she knew that she didn’t exactly hide the ambitious gleam in her eye.
So it wasn’t really a surprise when she entered her lab one morning and found him there, alone, and waiting.
“A position’s just opened up in Minnesota,” he said without preamble. “A monitoring position for one of the clones.”
She sucked in a breath, eyes widening slightly. Monitoring. Instead of samples and tag numbers, the chance to see a clone, to interact, to gather data first-hand. A thrill of excitement filled her, only dampened slightly by Aldous’s steel and blood colored chuckle that filled the air when her face betrayed her.
“Of course, normally this is a double-blind situation, but this subject has always given us a bit of trouble, and we need someone able to infiltrate the University of Minnesota as a student. Naturally, I suggested you--after all, we can trust you, hm?” He moved forward as he spoke, gently arranging one of her curls so it sat behind her ear as he finished.
“Aldous, I would be honored,” she told him, making herself look into his eyes and smile. He chuckled again, dropping his hand to give her shoulder a squeeze.
“I knew we could count on you, Delphine. I just hope 324b21 likes you as much as I do. Speaking of…” He leaned in, the red-grey glisten of his voice almost filling her vision as he whispered, “I’ve reserved the usual hotel room for tonight. A bit of celebration, hm?”
“Of course,” she whispered back, forcing her face to remain bright and smiling once he stepped back. Do what you must, she reminded herself, and it’s paying off.
“Excellent.” He squeezed her shoulder once more, briefly, before seeing himself out of the lab with a promise to send an intern in with subject 324b21’s files within the hour. Once the door had shut with a greenish-blue click, she fell into her favorite chair (it squeaked with a lovely mango-pink color) and allowed herself a few moments to grin.
It was worth it.
It was going to be worth it.