Work Text:
For every person betrayed, there is another who betrays them.
Delphine had betrayed Cosima's trust.
She had kissed her again, a real kiss this time. But the worst thing is that the whole time, she had wanted it. She had wormed her way into the bed of the warm, cluttered heart that occupied the warm, cluttered apartment. She had said all these things about science and spectrums, ever the dazed foreign exchange student, wide eyed and skittish, French spoken softly as a weapon and a shield. But the worst thing of all is that this time the kiss hadn't been a lie.
Because she had wanted it. She had wanted it so much.
She deserved the guilt. She deserved the shame and the fury, she deserved it all and would bear it until she had atoned. She would do it to save whatever existed between them. She would give it all up for the intangible, immeasurable connection to her.
Because something had existed between them for a few days. Something real and something good. For a precious few days they had been Delphine and Cosima, two halves of a whole.
Until she had destroyed them and Cosima had stood there, her face so anguished with her quiet words that tore into Delphine's soul. Not because they had been said but because she had said them and Delphine worried that they were true.
And after she had lain in her own bed with the sheets far too empty and white and the walls far too empty and white and her soul too empty, a black spot marring it, where she could feel all the lies becoming part of her as her soul pulsed and ached with the guilt.
She was alone in her house that was too cold. There were no eskimo pies in her freezer, only ice packs. There were no truffles or red wines in her house. There were no eclectic potted plants on her shelves, no dusty tomes of Darwin stacked against her bare walls. But she knew that she did not deserve these things anyway.
That was until she returned to Cosima, tail between her legs, asking not for forgiveness, just a chance to redeem herself. The guilt festered after they found the patent, but was swiftly pushed into a hole to deal with later when Cosima said those words.
“I'm sick, Delphine.”
And then her delicate love was coughing all the time, blood filling her lungs, making her rasp and wheeze.
But still everything was good enough, for a little while. They went on dates to the planetarium and made crazy science in the lab, christening the counters while Scott was away. Delphine would hold Cosima in her bed, back in the apartment she had longed to see again.
However, they were not normal people in love. Normal people in love do not lie and keep secrets, they do not steal stem cells from their lover's niece and then proceed to look said lover in the eye as they insert them into their uterus. That is what she did, and the guilt could hardly stand it.
Even after Kira was safe again, after she had paid the price for Delphine's mistake, the guilt did not lessen. A measure had been added for each lie and each secret, each black spot that darkened her heart.
After they had smoked pot the first time, Delphine had known just how far she had fallen and it had been embodied in the strangely strangled phrase, declared after she was coming down from the high, in which they had laughed like children:
“J'taime.”
The worst part was that it was the truth, and Delphine knew that she did not deserve to say it after everything she had done.
Then Cosima was on the floor seizing and she was holding her head as her beautiful brown eyes rolled around inside her skull and blood covered her hands, and in that moment, Delphine cursed herself because in her head there was no room for the guilt. It had been replaced by the fear of losing the person she bore it for. She would feel it sevenfold later, when Cosima was slowly dying and Rachel sent her to Frankfurt. She went because she had no choice, in the fear that Rachel would exact her fearsome wrath upon Cosima.
She woke every morning with the guilt following her, hounding her like a vengeful ghost when she paced the lab, working on meaningless research until she was promoted and the guilt was pushed down again for each moment that her golden hair was straightened and her blouses and slacks were on, resembling armour, and frowns and lines took up residence on her face, betraying the blackened soul below.
But then she was back and so was the guilt because she had seen Cosima, and it had taken root in every cell of her body as she pushed her love away into the dark hole that was her soul as she cried, leaning against that filthy building that felt more like home than any other place she'd been, even judged as she was by “the Clone Club”; known as a betrayer. Which she was.
And she had pressed on Rachel's eye, even though she was a defenceless woman with Cosima's face, although they were nothing alike. The horror at what she had done had been absorbed like everything else into her soul, so black that there was no light left in her eyes.
She was hard now, but she had not forgotten why she had done what she did and so she played the boss and grieved and fumed at Cosima's lack of trust in her, because the hope that Cosima could love her back had been enough to fend off the darkness that would surely grip her soul soon, destroying any and all morality she had once possessed.
And then Cosima had said that she almost died and she kissed her again, like a fool, like an addict. Because Cosima was her drug, the only thing she lived for was her.
So it was that she was doomed to ignore the guilt as she threatened Shay with a razor blade much like the one she herself had used seventeen years earlier. She felt sadness for the girl who had almost died then, who would surely slice her wrists over and over if she knew could see herself now. If she could see the ice queen that had replaced her.
She would return to Shay, giving her a glimpse of the woman who had existed. She had been good. Delphine missed her. Now Delphine was placing Cosima above the love they had. She deserved it. She deserved something simpler, something easy. So Delphine had tried to walk away.
Somehow it became worth it later, when Cosima had smiled at her outside that soap shop and she had kissed her, finding the love again, the reason why she had done it and would do it all again if meant that Cosima didn't die. She was very aware of the gun in her coat, pressed against her heart which beat so quickly and strongly and the fact that she could feel the blackness of her soul being absorbed by the dark crisp night of redemption and Cosima's touch. She knew why. This beautiful creature didn't blame her because she knew know that it had all been for her. In that moment she had started to atone.
So she walked away again, to save her love, her soul greying now as she drove her car to DYAD for the last time before she would run and take Cosima with her. She would be safe and they could work on the cure again.
She had been so close. She had been so close to seeing Cosima again. But she had never before gotten what she wanted. Why would life be kind to her now?.
The footsteps on the concrete floor behind her alerted her to her fate. She was being hounded by a shadow. This time, blessedly, it was not guilt.
It was just a man, a nameless, if somewhat familiar Neolutionist thug with a gun.
She knew how it felt to be betrayed now.
She could have said a prayer to God, or Jesus or Mary; she had grown up Catholic after all.
But there was no God. God did not exist in a world where a good, kind, wonderful person like Cosima was dying, unless he was a God without love. She didn't know which would be worse.
If there was a God, he was certainly not with her in this parking garage built by greed.
Non. There was only science.
And love. She could have said a prayer, but instead she asked what would happen to her dear Cosima because the guilt had made her strong, in its own way, but that lovely girl, who shined so brightly that she may as well have been a star flung from space, was the one that had made her life worth living.
And then a shot was fired and her shirt was soaked crimson.
She had been so close to seeing Cosima again. That was the worst thing. She had been so close.
They would have found the cure together and Delphine would have proposed. They would buy a house with a porch for their children; two daughters. One would be short with curly hair like Delphine's but the colour a deep brown like that of her other mother. She would have serious green eyes and be old beyond her years. Their other daughter would be tall and goofy, with straight blonde hair. She would be relaxed and always late, but she would win science fair every year while the other one would do theatre like Alison and she would play the piano like Delphine had in her younger years.
Cosima and Delphine could teach science at that Oscar and Gemma's school and would be invited for Felix's gay brunch every Sunday and the children would blossom from children to surly teenagers and then to adults, while she and Cosima would grow old together, sipping ice tea on the veranda flanked by Franklin and Curie, their spaniels named after Rosalind Franklin and Marie Curie, and perhaps a tortoise whom Cosima would name Eskimo Pie.
Maybe in another life; another world.
Even as she lay dying, the illusion was enough to make her smile.