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"Damn right. You're damn right. You're da-"
Sarah turned off the sound coming out of the TV. This was too weird. This was her voice, but the intonations, the expressions, the accent were different, it was like watching some sick, twisted version of herself. The figure on the screen kept moving though and Sarah watched the way she moved, tried to learn. The camera was some shitty family-use kind and the image was shaky. Yet in the middle of it all Beth stood still, sweaty from her run, a frown wrinkling her forehead but what could be seen as a smirk on her lips. She was looking right at the camera, and even if she knew that she was talking to the person behind the camera, when her face lit up, Sarah felt as if she was looking right at her.
When she turned her gaze away, she almost expected Beth to do the same.
She turned off the TV completely, this was useless. She tried one last time.
"You're damn right."
This sounded so wrong.
The apartment was as cold as Beth has seemed from what she had seen on the TV screen. She had appeared like some stuck up woman, probably drowning herself in her own work to forget whatever had made her thrown herself on the railway. Sarah caught herself before going any further in her thoughts. She didn't know this woman and had no means to judge her. Not her, not in her state, not when she was stealing the identity of some dead woman who happened to look exactly like her to redeem herself in the eyes of her daughter.
She remembered Beth's look. The look of someone who had seen enough for a lifetime not to blink when meeting the exact same replica of herself before jumping. She remembered it all too well, the utter weariness, the rings under her eyes and the determination with which she had crossed the platform, not even trying to understand.
The woman that had died that night was a whole different person than the one the camera had recorded, that much was obvious. But Sarah didn't want to know, she was here for the money, she'd take Kira and then she would be gone.
Still ...
She sat on one of the stools besides the island of the kitchen and took an apple. Biting into it she scattered the few photographs she had found in the apartment on the counter. Beth could have been some long lost twin, but wouldn't Mrs. S had known about this ? When she was not frowning, which seemed to be quite the unusual thing, Beth looked actually kind and peaceful. On some of the pictures she had took with, what was his name, Paul ? On these ones she was smiling sometimes. Her smile would reach her eyes and dimples would form in the corner of her eyes and beneath her cheeks. She'd look younger, almost childlike, there was actually something beautiful in her, you just had to dig to find it.
This is bullshit, thought Sarah standing up again, throwing the apple core in the bin, she looked exactly like her and both of them were a fucking mess.
Both of them were a fucking mess and one of them was dead.
Clones. That was sick.
What was sicker was that she craved their presence like the family she never had. Felix was something else. So when they talked about Beth sometimes -not Cosima though, Cosima never talked about Beth, it felt as if one of them had died too soon when she shouldn't have. And it hurt. It hurt because it was this member of the family you were told so much about but had never met. You'd have pictures, you'd have words, but they were gone and you never had the chance to know them.
Except Sarah did. Sarah had seen Beth before she died. And if her death had been paralyzing, it hadn't been enough to stop her from stripping her of the remnants of her identity. The way she saw it now, she had died as a nobody. The street-rat she had been mere weeks ago.
She'd talk sometimes with Allison about them, she'd tell her about Beth because Sarah found herself actually interested in knowing more about her. About herself. She was Sarah. Somehow a part of Beth still lived inside her. Beth had been the motherly figure of the group, protecting, taking care of the dangerous stuff and even keeping things to herself when she thought it was maybe safer this way. Beth wasn't all black and white like she had thought, she had learned that when working on the Maggie Chen file. Beth had taken a lot on her shoulders and all that had collapsed when she had learned that the one man she had loved had been sent by the same organization responsible for fucking her life over. Sarah wondered how Paul had been able to smile on these photographs she had found of them both. But she wasn't the one able to lecture anyone when this hadn't stopped herself from screwing Paul even after knowing what he was. Sometimes she wondered where her moral was. Beth seemed to have followed one till the end. Family first, but when family had turned against her she hadn't been able to take it.
She could have prevented her from jumping. She knew that. And sometimes before going to sleep she just remembered. Watching yourself die isn't something you can forget ; the more she closed her eyes, the more the scene kept getting clearer. And she'd ask herself, could have things be any different, if instead of running away with Beth's purse she'd have just stepped in between the train and her, just a fucking step, would have things been any easier for them all ? Could have Beth protected them from what was coming ? The bitter taste of guilt would spread in her mouth and she'd almost hear her. You're damn right. Beth was gone because the weight was too much to bear. That left one last question in her mind. Who was next ?
Beth felt like a missing piece, she was the one that knew, the one you could rely on. Cosima was lead by her impulse, Allison freaked out about anything and herself had nowhere to go. Somehow they were all lost, blind sheep waiting to be slaughtered. And sometimes she felt just like a pale, shallow copy. Which actually was the exact truth.
She picked up the bag in which she had put the rest of her items she had found in Beth and Paul's apartment. She had lived in here for only a few weeks and it was still messier than when she had broken into it. She left it like she had found it, dead and silent. No more pictures on the fridge though. The couch which used to be always a little bit rumpled seemed to have been picked out of one of these lifeless homes in furniture magazines. She turned the light off, stepped out outside and ran her way under a pouring rain to the car.
She was Sarah Manning. It was time for Beth to return to the grave.