In
which I get to practice my French a little bit.

No, not like that. You’ll see. 

This has also been wonderful procrastination. I should be prepping
my class, or grading papers, or looking for a new job, but instead, I
finished this. 

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 3, Ch 12
|
Archive of Our Own

I accidentally wrote “Continuing Travels of Delphine…” which is kind of true for this part, but oops. 

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 3, Chapter 5
|
Archive of Our Own

Hope this lives up to the expectation created by Part 2′s cliffhanger! 

Also, she’s not on Tumblr, but I want to acknowledge the great help of a friend and coworker who’s spent a lot of time in Israel. She gave me some wonderful little tidbits to consider, like the surprising popularity of pork in Tel Aviv.

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 3 – ce_ucumatli – Orphan Black (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2, Ch. 9

Hey, look, I finally wrote something! And it has smut (eventually)! 

The mention of Delphine stitching behind Sarah’s ear comes from @mlleclaudine’s delightful Cophine series. If you haven’t read it yet, I don’t know where you’ve been. Get reading it! <https://archiveofourown.org/series/314495>

Speaking of @mlleclaudine, thank you so so so much for checking this over and making sure I don’t get too much wrong.

Also, thanks always and perpetually to @afrenchclone for helping me with all of the French. Merci toujours !

The entire Continuing Travels can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525500

---

No matter how much time she spent with Charlotte, no matter how recent that time had been, every time Delphine saw her, she thought of the night she first saw her – bundled from head to toe, wrapped in Cosima’s hypothermic arms. Her face was much the same for each new interaction with Delphine as it had been then, skeptical, closed off, wary. Delphine was never sure how much of it was an act, and how much a genuine defense mechanism.

“Bonjour,” Charlotte said.

Well. Maybe it was just her resting face.

“Bonjour!” Delphine replied. “Ça va?”

Charlotte nodded but gave no reply, instead limping across the room with her bearded dragon perched on her right shoulder and kittens frolicking around her feet. She’d been studying French for a few years, Delphine knew, but only for the past several months had those studies taken place in a classroom with multiple students. That “Bonjour” a moment ago was the first French word Delphine ever heard Charlotte speak. “I thought Cosima was coming with you,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, she needed to use the bathroom, so – ” She pointed upstairs to indicate where Cosima was at the moment.

“Oh.” Charlotte looked down at the bags they’d brought in, and her resting wary face opened up. It might’ve been Delphine’s imagination, but it seemed that the bearded dragon perked up, too. “Are we going to use all of that? That’s a lot of eggs.”

Before Delphine answered, Sarah thumped down the stairs just behind Kira, who treated Delphine like she’d been there for Kira’s entire life. “Did you get any chocolate?” Kira demanded.

“Oi, say hello first,” Sarah said. As Kira mumbled a quick hello, Sarah faced Delphine and said, “Took you long enough. I thought you’d be here an hour ago. Where’s Cosima?”

“She’s using the bathroom,” Charlotte said. To Delphine, she said, “You didn’t answer my question. Are we going to use all of those eggs?”

The varying pulls on her attention raised Delphine’s anxiety, and there were still two other adults in the house. “We might,” she told Charlotte. To Kira, she said, “and no, we didn’t get any chocolate.”

“Can we throw them at people?” Kira asked, hoisting one of the egg cartons in one hand.

Delphine and Sarah spoke in unison. “No.”

Kira pouted and slumped onto the couch with her phone. In a few seconds, various bloops, bings, and plops emanated from the device, and Kira’s eyes and fingers darted around the screen while the rest of her body remained perfectly still. A dozen academic articles popped into Delphine’s mind, all proclaiming the dangers of too much screen time for developing brains and eyes, but Sarah let it slide, so Delphine followed suit.

Cosima bounded down the stairs with her hands flapping beside her. To Delphine’s arched eyebrow, she said, “The towels are damp. FYI.”

Sarah gave her unresponsive daughter a kiss on the head, hugged Charlotte, and then threw on her jacket. “Yeah, we don’t quite have room service here like you two are used to. You a’right otherwise?”

Delphine looked over at Kira on the couch, and at Charlotte in the kitchen feeding a piece of apricot to her bearded dragon. “Euh, yes, I think so. We’ll call you if we need anything.”

Sarah was halfway out the door before Delphine’s comment registered, and she turned around. “Uh, you can do that, but I can’t promise I’ll answer. The girls know where everything is, and emergency numbers are on the fridge. Oh, and Art said he’ll be here at seven.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cosima said. “Have fun, okay? You deserve a little time to yourself. See you later.”

After Sarah left, Delphine’s first instruction was for the girls to wash their hands, but when Charlotte’s bearded dragon stepped down Charlotte’s arm towards the counter, Delphine stopped her. “Could you put… euh, what’s its name, again?”

“Saphira. She’s a girl.”

“I think Saphira should go back into her cage right now.”

Charlotte leaned against the counter and fixed Delphine with a small-mouthed stare. “She likes being on my shoulder.”

“I’m sure she does, but I don’t want her getting into our food.”

“She’s allowed to have human food sometimes, like fruits and vegetables. It says so in the book of bearded dragon care.”

Delphine looked around for some backup from Cosima, but Cosima was trying to pull Kira away from her phone, and both of them were giggling. “Charlotte,” Delphine said, “please put Saphira back in her cage. I don’t want her roaming free while we’re preparing food. It’s not sanitary.”

Charlotte jutted her chin out to one side like Cosima and Sarah both did when they dug in their heels and gripped the counter top like she expected Delphine to physically pull her away, so she needed to brace herself. Before Delphine could ask again, or explain her request further, Cosima steered Kira into the kitchen.

“Yo, Charlotte,” Cosima said, “you should probably put Saphira back in her little house before we start in with the food, okay?”

Charlotte sighed and dropped her shoulders. She didn’t reply, but limped away, up the stairs to her room, and for just a moment, Delphine hated both clones equally.

They spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen, more or less following Delphine’s written and spoken instructions for deviled eggs (oeufs farcisto Delphine and Charlotte) and carrot cake with crème fraîche frosting. Delphine had cooked with the girls before, during their Christmas holidays and with Alison’s participation, but she had never cooked with Cosima before. She’d assumed going in that cooking with Cosima would be like running a science experiment with her – Cosima would be diligent, methodical, and professional despite frequent bad jokes and pop culture references.

None of that was the case now.

Cosima was not concerned at all about the specifics of their recipes. Instead of weighing and sifting the flour and sugar, she directed Charlotte to simply dump the dry ingredients into a bowl after leveling off the measuring cup with her finger (of all things), and then she showed Charlotte how to blend the wet and dry with her bare hands. The girls, at least, found it delightful. When they tried doing that with the deviled eggs filling, though, Delphine put her foot down.

“Use a spoon, Chérie, please.” The cake batter was at least cooked after mixing. The eggs were not.

They smeared caked batter on each other. Cosima, Kira, and Charlotte all dabbed or wiped globs of the ochre gloop on each other’s faces, necks, and arms, and while they exclaimed some version of “Oh no, you don’t!” they all laughed together. When Kira lunged at Delphine with a handful of mayonnaise, though, Cosima grabbed Kira by the waist and spun her around to face the other way.

“Nuh uh. Nobody puts food on Delphine but me.”

In fact, the one time they’d tried using chocolate syrup with sex, the stickiness put them both off of doing it ever again, but the children didn’t need to know that. Delphine kissed Cosima’s sticky cheek while Charlotte fended off Kira’s mayonnaise attack with a wooden spoon. “Thank you, mon amour. And please tell me that all of you are taking showers after this?”

“Oh, yeah. The girls can shower before Art gets here, and then I’ll clean up real quick at the Rabbit Hole before the party. We’ve got time.”

And Kira talked the entire time. She talked about her school, her classmates, her teacher, and everyone in the neighborhood. She talked about Minecraft, Minecraft videos, and the children’s hockey league she had recently joined. She talked about her mother, her late grandmother, her father, and all of her genetically identical aunties. She talked about her Uncle Felix and how he and Colin were having a bit of a rough patch right now because Colin wanted them to be exclusive and Felix was having a hard time with that.

“What’s it mean to be exclusive, anyway?” she asked.

Delphine was washing out the mixing bowl they’d used for the cake batter, and exchanged a look with Cosima.

“It means you only date one person,” Cosima said. “One person at a time.”

“I thought that’s what dating was,” Charlotte said. “Like, when people are dating, that means they don’t kiss anyone else or whatever.”

Cosima’s face was much calmer that Delphine felt, but Cosima still took a moment to answer, making a show of checking on the cake in the oven. “That is sometimes what it means. But sometimes people have open relationships, where they’re allowed to kiss other people. Or whatever.”

“But then they’re not dating,” Charlotte insisted. “They’re…” She waved her hands around in a way reminiscent of Alison Hendrix. “They’re doing something else.”

For the first time since they’d all gathered together in the kitchen, both girls’ attention was fully on Cosima and Delphine.

“An open relationship means that two people love each other,” Cosima said, “and they put each other first, but they’re allowed to… see other people on the side. They just need to communicate really well so no one’s feelings get hurt.”

“Does that mean they have sex with other people?” Charlotte asked.

“Sometimes,” Cosima said. “But only if their partner is okay with it. Communication’s the most important thing. And consent, of course. But that’s true for any relationship, really.”

The girls thought that over. Charlotte had her serious face on again, and she watched Cosima and Delphine more closely, like she was putting their relationship into the context of what Cosima had just said. Delphine was on the verge of clarifying and she and Cosima did NOT have an open relationship, by mutual agreement, but Kira changed the subject to a story about a recent afternoon she’d spent with the Hendrixes. Delphine took a deep breath and went back to washing up, tuning Kira out for several minutes and letting Cosima do all the little “uh huh” noises. When Delphine tuned back in, Cosima had her hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed.

“Oscar tried telling us we couldn’t be there,” Kira was saying, “`cause him and his friends were gonna build a fort or whatever. Like, their yard isn’t even big enough for a stupid fort! But then Gemma said that he used to wet the bed until he was, like, ten, and then he got really mad.”

Charlotte giggled at the story, but neither of the adults did.

“That doesn’t sound very nice,” Delphine offered.

“We were allowed to be there!” Kira said. “He didn’t, like, reserve it, or anything.”

Cosima adjusted her glasses. “Yeah, but there were better ways to handle that than embarrass him in front of his friends like that.”

“Well, maybe he shouldn’t have told us to leave! He was being rude first.”

“That’s not the point, and that’s not really how people work,” Cosima said. “Just because someone else is mean to you, that doesn’t give you the right to be mean back at them.” She tapped Charlotte’s shoulder. “You and I have talked about that before a couple times.”

By the time the kitchen was cleaned up, with Cosima’s insistence that the girls helped, the cake was out to cool and the eggs covered and stored in the fridge, Delphine was swaying on her feet. The girls went off to shower without encouragement, and Cosima rested her hands on Delphine’s waist. “You might need a nap. I think the kids took it out of you.”

“A nap sounds good.”

The master bedroom, the best room to nap in at the moment, was remarkably tidy for what Delphine had come to expect from Sarah. Hell, it was cleaner than Cosima’s living spaces were once Cosima spent more than a few days in them. The queen sized bed in the middle of the room was made, if not neatly, and the floor was clear. Books and papers littered the desk by the window, but it was clearly used as a desk rather than as storage. Delphine flopped on top of the bed, on the fleece blanket rather than under it. She was asleep in minutes.

Cool Mediterranean breezes blew sand all around her as she waited at the light rail terminal. No one else on the platform seemed to mind. In fact, the sand didn’t even touch them.

They jostled onto the train, speaking in tongues and smelling of stomach acid. The train hit bumps on the track that no one else noticed. Only Delphine lost her footing and needed to grab at the back of someone’s seat to stay upright. Then the train sped up onto a raised track overlooking the city. The view was beautiful, but no one else looked at it. At the next curve, the train hit a gap in the rails and bounced everyone up in the air…

“Oh, sorry, Delphine!”

Delphine panted, face up in the bed, clutching the blanket beneath her. No one else was in the room with her, but the bedroom door was open, and water was running. No. Not water. Someone was peeing. The air was cool with a hint of pine scent, and the pillow was wet right next to her head. By the time the toilet flushed, the sink ran, and the master bathroom door opened, Delphine’s breathing and heart rate were almost normal again, but nothing else made sense.

“Sorry,” Kira repeated. “I forgot you were here, and I really had to use the bathroom.”

“Nnnh,” was all Delphine could manage, and then Kira was gone again.

Through the open door, Cosima’s voice called out, “Okay, this time try to get it in without touching the edge, okay?”

Delphine propped herself up on one elbow and rubbed her face. The curtains were closed, but sunlight winked through the cracks. Her phone was nowhere, and there was no other clock in the room. She stumbled into the bathroom, awake enough to lock the door behind her in case anyone else forgot she was there, and took in the varied marker graffiti that edged the bathroom mirror. Some of the words (like pay taxes,, Kira dentist, and in prime place at the top of the mirror, BOLLOCKS) were clearly Sarah’s, but others (I ❤ kittens and Boys are dumb) were scrawled in childish writing, along with various flowers, mushrooms, and cat faces. Cosima’s bathroom mirror back in Minnesota had had a similar ascetic, albeit with different messages.

She found the girls in Charlotte’s bedroom, surrounded by scraps of fabric, string, ribbon, stickers, tape, and markers. A carton with five remaining eggs sat open on Charlotte’s desk. Cosima joined them a moment later with a box of bendy straws, some broken-down cardboard boxes, and a pair of scissors. At least it wasn’t a box cutter or a blow torch.

“Oh, hey, sleepy head!” Cosima grinned at her and pecked her cheek on her way into the room. “How’d you sleep?”

“Euh, well, I think.”

“We’re doing science class!” Kira said.

“With crafts,” Charlotte added. “So it’s like science art.”

Delphine ran her fingers through her hair and took in the mess. “It looks like fun. What are you doing, exactly?”

The girls looked to Cosima, but she gestured for them to answer. “We’re dropping eggs out of the window,” Charlotte said.

“But we’re not allowed to break them!” Kira added. “And now we have to get them to land in that tub down there, but without hitting the sides. Cosima keeps making it harder.”

Kira was not the first person to make that claim, and Cosima knew it, because she gave Delphine a pointy smile. “You wanna try?”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of the bed and sorted through the supplies, not awake enough yet to form a plan. An egg appeared beside her, accompanied by another kiss on the cheek. “How many have you broken so far?” she asked. “These were $6 a dozen.”

Cosima sat beside her, careful not to upset the egg, and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Not very many. The girls have some pretty good designs so far, so most drops have been successful. It is no more or less wasteful than make two dozen deviled eggs that might not all get eaten.”

As she spoke, Charlotte tucked an egg into a little basket with a plaid parachute, leaned out the window, and dropped it. A few seconds later, she cried, “Oh no! It’s in the neighbor’s yard!”

“Well, sounds like you have to go get it, then.”

“Can’t we just let them keep it?”

“Uh, no. That’s called littering. Go on, we’ll still be here when you get back.”

Delphine picked up her egg and considered it. It could have been an omelette, an oeuf farci, or part of a cake. Some countries would have pickled it and eaten it that way. Instead, it would be cloaked in cardboard, fabric scraps, and plastic, decorated with markers, and dropped out a residential window into a tub of dirty water. And considering Delphine’s experience with this activity, the egg was just as likely to simply smash open on the ground, feeding invertebrates instead of people. Delphine picked up a Sharpie and drew a sad face on the shell.

Dropping eggs from Charlotte’s window for another hour, as Cosima put more constraints on the girls’ projects like size and material requirements, and the girls seemed halfway to jobs with an aeronautics firm. Delphine’s own eggs did better than she expected, although the girls were divided in how many points to give her for style.

“They’re sleek,” Charlotte asserted. “Missiles don’t have frilly ribbons on them, so Delphine’s eggs don’t have to, either.”

“But they’re not missiles!” Kira argued. “Eggs need to have some fashion sense when they go down.”

Delphine leaned against Charlotte’s desk and took in the feedback. To Cosima, she remarked, “You know, I keep thinking we’re talking about different kinds of eggs entirely.”

Cosima giggled. “Me too, sometimes. It’s true, though. Your eggs don’t have to have frilly ribbons if you don’t want them.”

* * *
* * *

After handing the girls off to Art at 7, going to the Rabbit Hole just long to clean up and grab presents for the sisters, then they were off again, in another Lyft car, to the address Alison sent that morning.

The resort overlooking Lake Ontario was reminiscent of their hotel in Muscat, except that here the temperature was in the 60s and the ethnic blend of patrons and employees was a bit more mixed. Clone Club had an entire spacious wing of the property to themselves for the night, including an indoor and outdoor bar, heated pool and heaters outside under a partial roof, and table and pub games inside. There was also a kitchenette tucked in behind the games area, where Alison puttered away. When Cosima and Delphine arrived, the rest of Clone Club was already there, many of them in some kind of swimwear. Helena was the only one not prepared to swim. She stood in a sweater and baggy jeans, watching Scott and Sarah play foosball and eating from a heaping paper plate.

Adele intercepted them just as Cosima handed off the carrot cake and eggs to Donnie at the food table. “Oh hey y’all! Welcome back to civilization and all that shit.” Despite the multiple sources of alcohol present, Adele did not have a drink in her hand. Yet.

Delphine returned Adele’s hug. “Did you just arrive?”

“Oh, yeah. Flew in this morning. Last minute. Felix only just told me a few days ago that you were having this little shindig, and you know I can’t turn down a good party. Besides, I missed everybody.” She looked over at the food they’d brought in as Donnie set it on the table. “Delphine, honey, if you made that, I’mma have to get me some. That looks too good.”

Delphine would have been flattered, but she could serve Adele a plate of week-old carrot shavings with a dusty radish on top and Adele would gush about “French haute cuisine,” and pronounce it “hoat kwezeen.”

“The girls helped,” she told her.

“Oh, well, that’s another reason to try it. I have to tell them what a good job they did.” She waved to Cosima. “Happy late birthday, by the way. You and half the people here. Well, I guess some are early birthdays. Whatever. Twenty-one’s the last birthday anyone really cares about, isn’t it?”

“Euh…”

“Anyway, Felix’ll be here in a minute. He had to run back out to the car for something. Oh, shit, hang on.” She rushed over to Alison in the kitchenette, who was balancing a few trays in her hands.

“Can I offer you ladies something to eat?” Donnie Hendrix wore blue swimming trunks and flip flops with a hooded sweatshirt, and his hands were clasped in front of him like any good customer servant. The poor man had probably had to serve guests at his own wedding, too.

“Um, sure,” Cosima said. “I see Helena’s already been at the buffet.”

Donnie chuckled and handed them each a paper plate as he moved around to the other side of the table. “Helena’s been to every buffet in Ontario, I believe. She makes them reconsider their pricing policies.” He picked up some tongs and clicked them a few times. “What can I get you?”

Nothing on the table would have prevented Cosima and Delphine from helping themselves, but Donnie seemed to enjoy his role as host, so they let him load up a single plate to share with bruschetta, mozzarella with basil, sliced vegetables, and cucumber sandwiches, some of the deviled eggs they’d brought, and a slice of carrot cake. Then they sat quietly together on a waterproof sofa under an outdoor heater, nibbling on the healthier foods first. All of it was good, almost certainly made by Alison, but like most food they’d had in the past few days, it had a certain blandness after two months of Middle Eastern and African dishes.

“Hello Sestra.” Helena slid herself into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of them, her plate freshly piled with carrot cake, eggs, and various brownies, just as Cosima and Delphine’s plate was almost empty. “Much birthday happiness, yes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cosima said. “Happy birthday to you, too, bub. Cheers.”

Helena giggled as they clinked their drinks together, but then she sat up straight to look at Cosima’s. “You have only water tonight, sestra? Why not something better?”

“I don’t drink if I’m swimming. Personal rule.”

Helena made a face at that but did not argue. “No drink, okay, but food, yes? You need more food, with all of the traveling around the world. You cannot save our sestras if you are hungry.” She transferred a piece of carrot cake, two brownies, and two eggs from her plate to theirs and gestured for them to eat it.

If Delphine ate as much as Helena wanted her too, she would most certainly not be as trim and fit as Helena managed to be. Not for the first time, Delphine wondered at the levels of malnourishment Helena must have experienced growing up that prohibited her from putting on more weight as an adult. She’d met enough clones by now to know that svelte wasn’t necessarily genetic. Cosima was eating more carrot cake, though, and Helena was telling them to tell the girls how good it was, so Delphine went along. She’d had enough carrot cake already to last a week, though, so she took a brownie instead. It was delicious, heavily dotted with butterscotch chips, and she ate all of it before Cosima even picked at hers, but all the brownies lack Alison’s tell-tale sharpness. In other words, it looked like a human made it, rather a team of cake robots.

“Who made these?” she asked Helena, as Cosima broke a corner off the other brownie, sans butterscotch, for herself.

“Brother-Sestra Felix made them. He said they are all special.”

At the same moment, Cosima swallowed her brownie piece and made one of the most interesting faces Delphine had ever seen. “Holy shit. That is very special. Um, babe? How much of that did you eat?”

“I ate the whole thing, why?”

“Oh, shit.” And now Cosima was laughing and waving at Felix, who stood in Donnie’s place at the food table. “Felix! Did you seriously bring space brownies, man?”

He sashayed over in form-fitting shorts and a T-shirt with a rainbow dinosaur on it. “Yeah, why? D’you want some?” Looking down at Cosima, Delphine, and Helena, and at their plates, his face and posture drew together and pulled back. “A bit late for me to offer, though, I see. Shit. How’d you get some? I only just brought them in from outside.”

Cosima and Delphine looked to Helena, whose mouth was chipmunk-full. “Sorry,” she managed.

“How many did you eat?” Cosima asked her.

Helena shrugged.

Delphine looked down at the crumbs on her fingers. “Let me guess. Cannabis?”

“You could say that,” Felix said.

“Even the butterscotch ones?”

He nodded and Cosima put a hand to her own forehead. “And you haven’t had any in a while, so…”

Felix draped his hand over Delphine’s shoulder. “So you’re about to have quite the interesting evening, I’d say. Stick to the short end of the pool if you get in, yeah?”

*

“I don’t feel any different, I swear. And the water is wonderfully warm. You should come sit with me.”

Cosima crouched down beside her and brushed back the stray cluster of hair escaping Delphine’s ponytail. “You’re not feeling anything yet, but you will. Edibles just take longer to kick in.”

“You had some, too.”

“I had, like, two bites, and I’m way more used to pot than you are. You had a whole fucking brownie, a big one at that, and you haven’t been high since Rachel had both of her eyes.”

“That’s not true.”

“Okay, when have you been high since then? Don’t tell me you toked up with old PT on the island?”

Delphine splashed a handful of water up at her and got a satisfying yelp in return. “I have smoked with you, mon amour, in the Rabbit Hole, before we left for Latin America.”

Cosima flicked Delphine’s arm in retribution. “Smoked, my ass. I smoked, but you took, like, one drag and passed out.”

Delphine was not about to argue about that, and anyway it didn’t change how she felt right now, which was full, content, loved, and a delightful mix of cool and warm at the same time. A hip-hop artist she didn’t recognize played on the speakers and at the other end of the pool, Sarah, Alison, and Adele were doing something that looked vaguely like water aerobics but probably wasn’t. Adele was starting to look an awful lot like a scarlet ibis when Cosima’s phone rang.

“What the fuck?” Cosima muttered. They had their purses with them at all times out of habit, so Cosima could grab her phone before it stopped ringing. “Hello? Yes? Oh, hey, Gabriela! How’s it going? Yeah, hang on, lemme go somewhere a little quieter.”

Gabriela. That could be anyone. She watched Cosima’s shorts-clad ass hustle inside. It really was the cutest butt Delphine had ever seen.

When she turned back around, the chlorine vapors coming off the surface of the pool were green, reminding Delphine of nothing more than the absinthe fairy, and Adele had gone full scarlet ibis. Absinthe. Now that was something she hadn’t had in looooong time. The last time had been, when? 2004? 2007? Too long ago, at any rate, and now here she was, sitting on the edge of a whole pool of it, it’s little waves massaging her calves and the soles of her feet and singing a little song for her.

She slipped in, up to her ribs, and bounced. She bounced! It was the funniest thing she’d ever felt, so she bounced some more, up and down and side to side in the steamy green pool, laughing her head off and watching the stars dance around overhead to a mixed up mash of the hip-hop song playing and “Prét-à-Porter,” that song she’d listened to endlessly on the island because PT deigned that she could have a record player with one record and somehow or other she never hated it. Him, yes, but never the song.

And Sarah’d killed him with an O2 tank to the skull, and that’s how she tried to remember him, but instead, the green water turned red and his gnarly fingers crept up her waist and she

did

not
want

this.

“Oi, Delphine, you doing a’right over here?”

Cosima stood in front of her, but it wasn’t Cosima. It was Not Cosima, with wet loose hair and a British accent. She’d said oi. The clones didn’t say oi unless they were Sarah. Delphine twisted her head side to side and confirmed that, indeed, this was Not Cosima, and Not Another Clone, but Sarah. Then she laughed at her own cleverness and slipped on the pool floor. “Quoi?”

“I said, are you doing alright? You seem a bit, uh…” Sarah moved her hands in a way Delphine didn’t understand, and when she tried to follow them, the world tipped sideways, but everything was funny again so it was okay.

“A bit?” Delphine dropped her knees and floated with her chin just above the water so the vapors went up her nose.

“Oh shit, did you eat one of those brownies Fe brought in?”

“Mmmm…” Brownies would be perfect right now. With some of that frosting they’d made for the cake today. However. “You know what I really want?” Still floating, she put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder, which was damp and covered in little goosebumps, but curved in a way Cosima’s didn’t, in a way Delphine had never noticed before.

Sarah giggled and looked around everywhere except Delphine. “If you say more brownies, you’re not getting any.”

“No. No no no.” Delphine now had both hands on Sarah’s shoulders. “A döner kebab. With extra sheep’s cheese, and… and and and and…” The English and tripped over her tongue until it because a blur of “dudududududududu” and the only thing keeping her from slipping under the surface of the absinthe pool was Sarah’s shoulders. Delphine dangled from her shoulders and bumped against Sarah’s body, distracted by the scar behind Sarah’s left ear.

“Okay, this won’t work.” Sarah nudged her back up onto her feet and pried her hands away, but Delphine leaned in to point at the scar.

“I remember that. I stitched that.”

“Yes, you did. You were sober for that, thankfully. Come on, now, let’s get you back up on this ledge before Cosima fuckin’ murders me.”

“She won’t. She loves you too much.”

Sarah’s laugh had a strange tone to it then as she turned Delphine 180 degrees. “Not enough for all that. Come on, up you go. Outta the water.”

Now, though, the ledge of the pool was continents away, and despite soaking in absinthe, she still hadn’t drunk any, so she cupped her hands and drank a few mouthfuls. “It doesn’t taste like I remember it,” she told Sarah. “It tastes like… like grade school.”

“I… I don’t even know what to say to that. Come on, sit up here.”

The ledge was rough, with pebbles and craters to dig into her skin, and it was moving, crumbling under her hands and sliding back and forth. Never mind the height. She couldn’t possibly pull herself up there. “Non. Je ne peux pas.”

“That so?” Sarah turned and gestured into the distance. Her hair was wet, falling over her skin and leaving rivers of water that pulsed with her heartbeat. When she turned back to Delphine, she was smirking. Only then did Delphine have the fleeting thought – Sarah might not speak French.

“You have Cosima’s eyes.”

And Sarah thought that was funny! She was laughing, so Delphine laughed along. “Do I really?” Sarah asked. “Isn’t that something?”

A hand caressed the back of her neck, under her hair, and the pleasure was so strong she almost fell over.

“Hey, babe? You doing okay?”

Cosima’s lips were the best of all the clones. They had so many different shapes and her bottom lip gave just the right amount of resistance between Delphine’s teeth. When she tried to kiss her now, though, Cosima pulled away.

“You’re feeling those brownies now, aren’t you? Ho-ly shit.”

Sarah asked Cosima where she’d run off to, anyways, and Cosima said something about Puerto Rico and infertility and vaccines and uteruses, but she had the cutest little toes Delphine had ever seen, so Delphine didn’t really catch most of what she said. She stroked each little Cosima toe individually, then ran her finger over the tops of all of Cosima’s toes and kissed the top of her foot.

When she looked up, Cosima had that little sideways dimpled smile, and when she stroked Delphine’s cheek, Delphine almost lost her legs again. “Let’s get you out of the water, yeah?”

Delphine slid her hands up Cosima’s calf and lost herself for a moment in the shape of her muscles. “Can I kiss you then?”

“You can kiss me all you want, just on dry land so no one drowns.”

A few moments and an eon later, she sat on the couch near one of the outdoor heaters, alone. The absinthe vapors flickered in the distance to the undulating beat of the music while the scarlet ibis flitted in and out of the water. Her heart beat to a different tempo, expanding until it filled her entire self, rubbing against the backs of her eyeballs and her nasal passages and worming its way into her pelvis and the soles of her feet. If she squinted, she saw her heart beat pushing out from her toenails. Then her heart contracted again, and her body shrank into itself, smaller and smaller until she imploded into her own navel like a Popple. Blood in, heart expansion, explosion. Blood away, heart contraction, Popple.

Repeat. And repeat.

“Drink this.”

She took the glass of water and drank it, gulping at first and then sipping to feel the drips and drizzles down her esophagus. Food stirred inside of her along with her blood and breath, food breaking down and turning into energy, each little molecule sucked into the lining of her stomach and intestines and moving along through her ever pumping blood stream to her brain, her liver, her muscles, her skin.

“We should do a study,” she told Cosima, “with brownies. To see how much of that brownie is in each skin cell.”

Cosima giggled. “Uh, somebody’s probably already done that study.”

“We should do it again. For my skin cells, and those brownies over there.”

“You are not getting any more brownies.”

Music washed over her and burst in the air beside their heads. Like a blaze of light, ready to ignite, we are made of dynamite “We are,” Delphine said, nuzzling the side of Cosima’s neck.

“No,” Cosima said. “No more brownies.”

Delphine didn’t know what she was talking about now, but Cosima smelled like cloves and oranges and her skin was warm and soft. She ran her tongue over Cosima’s neck to her throat to nip her chin. The texture change from Cosima’s shorts to the skin of her waist distracted her, though, and she pulled back to watch her own hand move back and forth, from warm soft skin to cool crisp fabric.

“You’re dry,” she remarked. “Why?”

“Um…” When Cosima laughed, her stomach quivered. “I, uh, I wasn’t in the water like you were.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had to take a phone call.” She stroked Delphine’s hair and the back of her neck so Delphine purred like a kitten. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, when your sweet beautiful brain is working again.”

Tomorrow didn’t exist yet, but Cosima’s legs did. They were firm and silky smooth with subtle moving valleys of muscle conforming to Delphine’s hands. Cosima gasped when Delphine moved her whole hand up the inside of Cosima’s right thigh.

“Delphine? Babe? We’re, um, we’re in public. People can see us.”

Maybe they could, but all Delphine could see was the cute little hollow at the base of Cosima’s neck, which was just the right size for her tongue, and the rise of her shoulder muscles from her clavicles. “So?” she whispered.

“So, I don’t really want to do this in front of everyone and their sister.”

“You don’t want to?” Cosima never said she didn’t want to. Okay, maybe sometimes she did, but that usually coincided with Delphine’s agreement. She pulled back to look at Cosima’s face, and the world swam around again for a minute.

“Not right here. But…”

Cosima stood and led her by the hand to the room with all the games and the little kitchenette, grabbing a bottle of water along the way. They passed Scott and Helena playing a violent game of air hockey, and Helena laughed until she was bent over and banging on the table while Scott shouted something about cheating. Four empty, crumb-covered plates sat nearby. Helena’s curls snaked and twisted around her head in time with the Hozier song playing softly on the speaker in the corner of the room.

“They’re different songs,” Delphine remarked.

“What’s that?” Cosima held her finger tips in hers, both of their arms extended as Cosima tried pulling Delphine along.

Delphine pointed outside and then to their current location. “There. And there. Different songs.”

Cosima’s smile was sweet as she cocked her head and stepped over to her. “Yup. They sure are. Come on.” She hooked a finger into the waistband of Delphine’s shorts and tugged a little.

Through the door beside the kitchenette was a storage room, filled with folded metal chairs, stacks of bar towels, extra game equipment, and pool toys. Off-white canvas bags were piled up in one corner, and Cosima pulled Delphine down beside her after flopping down herself. Delphine peeled off her bathing suit, rubbed her arm across the low-thread-count fabric, and smelled salt in the air. “Amatique Bay,” she said.

“Hm?”

Delphine positioned herself to hover naked above Cosima. “It’s like Amatique Bay, remember? From Guatemala to Belize?”

“Oh, yeah, right. On Latin America’s cheapest legal ferry during a tropical storm. We had more clothes on then. I’m surprised you’re still smiling at that memory, even if you are high off your gourd.”

“I was with you.” And she bent down and her kissed her lips.

Cosima’s mouth was everything. Sweet and salty, soft and firm, wet and giving all at once, and Delphine gave it all of herself. She pushed into it, into Cosima’s body against the lumpy bags of laundry or whatever was in them, and she raked her fingernails up Cosima’s torso, up under her bathing suit top to brush the soft undersides of her breasts. Cosima arched her back to let Delphine’s hands behind her, but as much as she fumbled, Delphine failed at removing the garment separating her from Cosima’s chest. She dropped her forehead onto the bag beside Cosima’s head, and pouted.

“Having trouble? Here.” She wriggled out of the top and caressed Delphine’s face, and Delphine’s mouth went dry. Uncomfortably dry. “Here,” Cosima said again, and there was the bottle of water Delphine had forgotten all about.

Delphine drank a few mouthfuls and let the water molecules permeate the membranes inside her mouth and her throat, filling each cell to a plump ripeness, like grapes on the vine.

And speaking of plump, Cosima’s nipples were right there! Delphine dropped her mouth onto Cosima’s left breast and licked her nipple until it puckered up in her mouth. Only when Cosima laughed did she realize that she’d still had water in her mouth, which now covered half of Cosima’s torso and part of the canvas bags they lay on.

“Oh. Sorry.” She tried to mop the water up with her hands, but her hands failed at being absorbent, and Cosima took her wrists to stop her.

“It’s okay. A little wetness never hurt anybody, right?”

There was that cheeky smile, and Delphine giggled, too. “Right.” She dug her fingers into Cosima’s hips and kissed her breast a few more times. “Touch me?”

Cosima didn’t answer right away, but ran her hands over Delphine’s back, shoulders, neck, and arms while Delphine nipped at the underside of Cosima’s breast. “If you want me to touch more of you, you’ll have to let me up.”

She would have, but mixed in with the Amatique Bay salt and canvas smell was Cosima’s smell, and what she needed more than anything was Cosima. The little string on the front of Cosima’s shorts came undone easily, and then Cosima was naked, too, on her back with her knees spread and her thighs framing Delphine’s head.

And she knew this taste. She knew these textures, the tiny soft ridges and loose folds; she knew the flavor of Cosima’s body when she was aroused, the heady mixture of vanilla and citrus, or sometimes it was sweeter like a freshly baked custard tart, and then sometimes, every good smell in the world made her think of Cosima.

From across the universe, Cosima whimpered. Each movement of Delphine’s mouth elicited another little squeak, moan, or whine, and when she adjusted herself to put her fingers inside Cosima’s body, she heard a low rumbly, “Oh, fuck.” Before long, Cosima’s heels beat against the canvas bags she rested on, and her cries echoed in the little storage room.

“Stop,” she said, her voice shaky, “that’s enough, no more.”

So she stopped, and pushed herself on shaking legs to lay beside her. The scent in the air was thick now, so Delphine swam in it as Cosima flopped her arm over her waist. When Cosima twitched against her, hips spasming in tiny recursive orgasms, Delphine laughed. “You can swim with me,” she said into Cosima’s hair.

“One day. When you’re sober.”

Delphine’s leg found its way around Cosima’s, and the pressure and heat between both of them yanked her heart down into her groin. “We can swim right now. You can swim inside of me, if you want to.”

“Hmmm… You’ve taken all my energy, though.”

Cosima’s hand slithered down her side, though, to cup her right ass cheek, and Delphine wiggled herself against it. “I can give you more energy if you need it.”

She smiled against Delphine’s neck. “Oh, really? You gonna spit more water on me?”

“No.” In reality, it didn’t matter how much energy Cosima had, so long as she was awake. Delphine took Cosima’s hand from her ass and tucked it in between her legs, fingers in just the right places. The simple presence of her hand there nearly pushed her over the edge, but Cosima pulled away. “No!” Delphine cried.

Cosima kissed her lips, then her chin. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s just easier if I’m on top right now. I can use my body weight that way. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.”

Still, Delphine grabbed at Cosima’s skin as she moved herself to Delphine’s other side. “Come here. Just come here.”

“I’m here, gorgeous, don’t worry.”

And then Cosima’s fingers were inside her and her mouth was on Delphine’s breast, and her body opened like a ripe peeled plum. She pushed herself against Cosima’s hand and body and dug into her scalp and the back of her neck and the room sucked into her before exploding in countless points of light and sound and taste and sensation blended together in every speck of her being, forever.

*

*

*

Otters swam with dolphins all around her. One of them whispered in her ear, “I’m pretty sure everybody heard that.”

She would have laughed if she had the energy. A talking otter, with breath like a fresh clementine. Instead, she just smiled.

Soft lips brushed her shoulder. “Are you gonna fall asleep here?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you’re gonna fall asleep here. It’s not exactly comfortable for me, but I’m not baked like you are.”

“Am I baked?” Images of bread and cookies floated around with the otters, who themselves turned into dinner rolls with eyes. It wasn’t entirely pleasant.

Another giggle. “You are super baked, my love. You probably don’t even know where you are right now.”

Nonsense. “I’m in space,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Another kiss. “It’s pretty cold in space, though. And you’re not allowed to go outside naked.”

Come to think of it, it was a little chilly here. She moved her head from side to side, and the dinner roll otters vanished. In their place was a cluster of pool noodles watching her with disapproving expressions. “Mais putain, allez tous vous faire foutre,” she told them, and raised her middle finger.

“Hey, I didn’t make the rules.” Cosima stood and stretched, her strong little body marked with red lines.

Delphine watched her put her bathing suit back on and retie her hair. Then Cosima opened the door and leaned halfway out. She said something, called out to someone out there, but her words were drowned out by the judgmental chatter of the pool noodles. “Écoutez,” she told them, rising off her seat to point at them. “Je m’en fous!”

“Hey, babe?” Cosima touched the small of her back and steered her away. She had a bag on her hand. “We’re gonna get you dressed, okay? Then we’re gonna get you back home and in bed. Can you help me with that?”

“Mmm. Okay.”

She didn’t remember getting dressed, but there were lights flashing outside the car window and Cosima’s hand held hers. When the door opened, she almost fell out.

“It’s red,” she said.

“Yup,” Cosima said. “Alison’s van’s been red the whole time. Come on, up inside now.”

Alison said something, and then Delphine was in bed, a heavy comforter weighing on her, and Cosima kissed her temple. “Goodnight, beautiful. I hope your dreams aren’t too fucked up.”

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2, Ch. 7

Finally. Sorry for taking so long! This takes place a few weeks after the end of Chapter 6. The series can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/931965

Don’t be afraid to tell me if there’s any typos of what-not. I think I proofread pretty well, but it is 1 AM over here, so you never know.

---

“Holy mother of fucking cock shit.” Cosima collapsed into the plump leather booth near the entrance of the restaurant, her sweater flapping around her while Delphine laughed and settled in across from her.

“How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Fucking hell. How long do you think?”

They were in the Istanbul airport, shedding the remains of Saudi Arabia and breathing in the secular air of urban Turkey for a few hours before transferring to Toronto. They ordered cocktails and sweet bread, and once it arrived, Delphine leaned back and sighed. Things were looking up already.

Cosima, on the other hand, fiddled with the napkin under her mojito and rubbed her forehead. Even after a few sips, her demeanor didn’t improve, so Delphine gave her a gentle kick under the table.

“Hey. I thought you’d be happy to leave?”

“Oh, I am! I definitely am. Let’s never go back there.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Cosima did that thing where she shrugged with her face instead of her shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Hm.” Delphine drank some more and pretended to believe her for a minute. Pushing Cosima never helped, and anyway airports were terrible places for emotionally charged conversations.

Cosima drank about a quarter of her cocktail before she leaned back in the booth and looked at the glass like it had insulted her mother. “I’ll probably order this again in a month or two, won’t I?”

Delphine blinked. “I don’t know. Do you want to?”

“No. But by the time May rolls around – we’re gonna be here in May, right? – I will have forgotten that it’s too heavy on the lime juice and too light on the mint, and I’ll order it again because I’ll be exhausted then, too.”

“Make yourself an alert on your phone for those dates. Do not order a mojito in Istanbul. We might not have as much time then, anyways.”

“Let’s hope not.” Cosima closed her eyes then and rubbed them with the heels of her hands.

“Are you feeling alright, though? Other than exhausted?”

“Yeah. Fucking great.”

Delphine nodded and kept her mouth shut. Cosima was cranky, refusing to admit it, and bottling up whatever was bothering her. She’d been like this on their way to the airport in Riyadh, too, but Delphine had explained that away as irritation about their treatment by the Saudi Arabian authorities. But now they were partway back to Toronto, for a three-day group birthday celebration with her sisters, and the irritability remained.

Cosima checked the time and fidgeted in her seat. “The sestra in Bursa – you know, the one with the bulldogs? Özlem is her first name, I think?”

Delphine nodded.

“She posted something on Twitter this morning about cough treatments. We could check it out while we’re here in Turkey.”

“We could…” Delphine watched her body language. Cosima was definitely twitchy. “However, on Facebook this morning she said it was bronchitis. There was no mention of blood or anything else worrisome.”

“Yeah, well, you know doctors don’t know what they’re looking at half the time.” It could have been a joke, but there was no accompanying smirk. Just Cosima’s fingers tapping at her hairline. And it was almost true, when it came to clone disease. Most doctors did not know what they were looking at, and misdiagnoses were the norm. In this case, though…

“I trust that if a doctor says she has bronchitis, then she has bronchitis. If her cough were bloody, she would have a different diagnosis.”

“Did her doctor really say that, though? She never posts in English.”

Delphine arched an eyebrow. “And yet, you know that she was referring to cough treatments on Twitter.”

“I do. There was a picture of hot tea and cough drops, and she used the word öksürük, which means cough, and I remember that word because it has three fucking umlauts in it.”

Despite herself, Delphine smiled. “Yes, that’s very impressive, chérie. But, I also have Google translate, and she said that she has bronchitis, and the word doctor was in there, too.”

Cosima still pouted. “Google fucks things up sometimes, though. Remember when I tried to say in French that I was cranky, and Google told me I should use excitable?”

“Yes. And that’s why I also took screenshots of Özlem’s statuses recently and sent them to our Turkish translators back in Toronto.”

The waiter came back to check on them and expressed dismay that they’d had so little of their drinks. “Not good?” he asked. “Something different, maybe?”

Delphine smiled up at him. “No, thank you. Just taking our time.”

Across the table, Cosima stopped fidgeting and slumped against the wall. “You know, I bet Alison makes a killer mojito. I’ll have to arrange for all four of us to get smashed out of our skulls sometime this trip. You know I’ve never seen Helena drunk.”

“You can do that. Spend the night at Alison’s house, maybe.”

Finally, Cosima cracked a smile. “What, you don’t want to sleep with me when I’m drunk off my ass?”

“It’s not that, although you do talk in your sleep more than usual when you’re intoxicated. I just don’t want you going anywhere when you’re drunk off your ass.”

Cosima opened her mouth as if to argue, but shook her head and took another sip of her mojito before pushing it to the edge of the table for the waiter or busboys to pick up, and then laced her fingers together behind her neck. “It does seem like a real waste, though, to be right here and not vaccinating the, like, nine clones who live in Turkey. There’s three right here in Istanbul, for fuck’s sake. They could even be self-aware, who knows. One of them might even work at the airport! She might be at that hat shop just over there!”

“She might be. One of clones here is a personal trainer, but I don’t know about the other two.”

“A personal trainer. So she’s in great shape, is that what you’re telling me?”

Delphine rolled her eyes, then reached across the table to poke the up-curled corner of Cosima’s mouth. “Yes, I expect she can bench press both of us at the same time. So what?”

Cosima straightened up and leaned over the table. “You know where she works, yeah? We can slip over there, give her the shot, and have one less clone to take care of in four weeks.”

Delphine checked the time. Her cell phone read 12:10 pm, so they had another hour before boarding would begin for their next flight. Only an hour. “I don’t think Alison would be very pleased if we missed our flight, though. And I don’t think she or Sarah would be excited about you missing out on Clone Fest.”

“But Helena wouldn’t give a shit, is that what I’m hearing?”

“Cosima…”

Before Cosima could reply, Delphine’s phone dinged with a new email. “It’s Deniz. She agrees – based on what I sent her, Özlem has bronchitis, probably nothing more. We can wait four more weeks before treating her. In fact, it’s probably best that we do. We don’t need to catch bronchitis ourselves.”

“Yeah, alright. Fine.”

“Hey.” She rubbed Cosima’s leg with her foot under the table. “What’s the matter, really? I thought you’d be happy to go home, to see everyone, to be in a slightly less restrictive place for a couple of days.”

Cosima looked around the booth to watch the people going by. Many of the women wore hijabs, and a small handful had niqabs to cover their faces, but for every woman with her face covered there were two more in halter tops, short shorts, or bight red lipstick. Teenagers held hands or made out with their backs to information kiosks. And she and Delphine had cocktails in front of them at at 11 am local time.

“I don’t think Istanbul’s all that restrictive,” Cosima said. “I’ve heard there’s even a relatively visible queer community here.”

“Relatively.”

“Well, it’s not San Fran, but no place is.”

“And the Turkish government is more restrictive with each passing month, including being more oppressive of LGBT people and groups. We will have to be just as careful walking around Istanbul as walking around Cairo or Casablanca, and even more careful in the countryside. You know this.” She watched Cosima resume fidgeting, tapping her fingers on the table and jiggling her leg. “Cosima, do you not want to go back?”

“Of course I want to go back.”

“Then why are you being like this?”

Cosima tossed her head back and for a minute Delphine thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “Of course I want to go back. Just not for, like, three days. Not for just long enough to get back on Toronto time, and then have to leave again.”

“Ahh. I see. I think.”

“Like, we’ll spend the entire time we’re there working on clone stuff anyway.”

“Not the entire time. We’re going to see your sisters, not to work.”

Cosima waved that idea away. “Basically the entire time. And we’ll be checking the news every two hours, or checking in with Waheed and Fahad to make sure we can still get around Iraq safely, or whatever.” She nodded at the waiter and gestured for him to just take her glass away. “We could have just flown to Baghdad from Riyadh and we’d have one more sister cured by the end of the day today. We’re just prolonging the entire thing.”

Delphine considered this. She was right, but they’d discussed this already, back in January, in Sarah’s kitchen. They’d decided that celebrating everyone’s birthday together, celebrating their lives and their survival, was important enough to come back for a few days. “Well, if you really want to, you could call Alison and tell her we’ve changed our plans.”

Cosima’s face told her exactly how excited she was about that suggestion. “No. No, thank you, I’d like to not be skinned alive by my sister.”

“She might use a fancy knife.”

“Oh, God, she would. Or, she’d, like, cut all my digits off with fabric scissors or something, strangle me with frilly multicolored ribbon. No, we’ll go.”

*

Eleven hours later, they landed in Toronto, too sleepy to care much about view as they approached the city. It was the longest single stretch they’d ever spent on one plane; flying into North Africa in January they’d done 9 hours to Vienna, then transferred, and that was bad enough. At least it was first class this time, so they’d been able to nap some and eat halfway-decent meals.

Just like their last arrival in Canada, Sarah greeted them at the Toronto airport. This time, however, she was alone. The girls were in school, and Alison was busy with the school board and managing Bubbles.

“You looked a lot more tan the last time I picked you up,” Sarah said. “I thought you were in the desert this whole time?”

“We were. And trust me,” Cosima said, “we’re not nearly as tan as we’d like to be.”

Sarah took her shoulder bag from her and grimaced. “Like I said, Cos, you must really love all of our sisters to put up with Saudi bullshit for a whole fucking week.”

“Nine days,” Delphine said, “actually.”

“Nine days? I thought you were in Dubai last week?”

“We were in Abu Dhabi,” Cosima suggested, “just before Saudi Arabia. But not Dubai.”

“Oh. Alison kept talking about Dubai, so I figured you’d gone. Sorry.”

Sarah’s car was now decorated with a pair of new bumper stickers, boasting honor roll students at the local elementary and middle schools.

“You’re turning into Alison,” Cosima joked, tapping the stickers as Sarah unlocked the trunk.

In response, Sarah raised her middle finger and made a face. “I never made honor roll. I barely passed each grade. I’m allowed to be proud that my kid and my little sister got all As. Twice, actually, this year, for both of them.”

Cosima settled into the front passenger seat while Delphine slumped into the back behind her, purse in her lap out of habit from months of taxi riding. “Dude, you’re totally allowed,” Cosima told her sister. “That’s awesome. How about you? How are your classes going?”

The last few times Delphine had heard them speak over Skype, the conversations had focused on the girls, with side trips to other members of Clone Club, the twins, and the fluctuating weather Toronto had been having. Now Sarah shrugged and sniffed – the classic Sarah Manning aloofness they were used to. “They’re a’right,” she said. “Math prof’s set me up with a tutor, but I’m not sure it’s helping much.”

“No? Maybe you need a different tutor.”

Sarah scoffed. “Maybe I need a different fucking brain. English is better, though. I got an A on my last essay.”

“That’s awesome, Sestra! Good for you!”

“Yeah, it’s good. The prof says I have interesting ideas. Interesting, like, in a good way, like I don’t write the same old shite as everyone else does. She says my big problems are grammar and organization.”

“You can get that down, though,” Cosima assured her. “It’s the ideas that are hard, sometimes. Didn’t you tell me once that you used to love reading?”

Sarah’s face immediately closed up. “What? No, I didn’t tell you that.”

Cosima’s voice changed, too, to match Sarah’s sudden shift in tone. “Oh, sorry. Must’ve been Felix, then, that told me that.”

Sarah was quiet for a while as they turned and the road followed the banks of Lake Ontario, offering a placid gray view that was surprisingly refreshing after so much time in deserts. She spoke again several minutes later, after they’d turned again and headed into the heart of the city. “I did used to like reading, though. I read all the time, when I was Kira’s age, up through maybe 16 or so. I didn’t tell anybody, of course. Dunno why Felix would’ve told you.”

“Why not?” Delphine asked. After all, the only friends she’d had as a teenager had bonded with her over reading and school work.

They were stopped at a light, and Sarah turned a bit, as if surprised that Delphine was still back there. “I dunno. I just didn’t want people to know. I stopped, anyways, in high school. I never read whatever shite the teachers gave me. I was never in advanced English or anything, not like Charlotte is, and you know they always give the dumb kids really stupid books to read.”

Delphine and Cosima sat on that thought as downtown Toronto sped by and Sarah steered them to the Rabbit Hole. Once there, Sarah helped them carry their suitcases inside, where Hell-wizard greeted them. Delphine looked forward to a very early bedtime until Sarah asked, “You two still up to chat with Helena tonight?”

Chat with Helena. Right. Putain.

“Yeah,” Cosima said, obviously feigning enthusiasm. “Of course we are.”

*

That evening, after a huge welcome-back dinner at Alison’s house, Delphine and Cosima joined Helena and Sarah in the garage apartment to Talk. The twins were kept in the main house with the Hendrixes, to allow the conversation to go uninterrupted, and they all – three sestras plus Delphine – had hot beverages prepared by Alison, who’d refused Sarah’s request to add alcohol to help lubricate the conversation.

“You all need clear heads for this,” Alison had said.

Delphine agreed. However this little talk went, everyone needed to be sober, but especially Helena, whose consent was most essential. So they settled into Helena’s home space, with Cosima and Delphine perched on the bed, Sarah spread-legged on the chair, and Helena cross-legged on the floor. Sarah started for them.

“You know,” she began, “before you and I met, before we were really a family, you had a different job. A job with Tómas.”

Helena took a deep breath. She’d been told that they wanted to talk to her about the past, but until now no one had pushed the topic. “Yes,” she said. “But Tómas is dead now.”

“Yeah, and that’s great, but, we…” Sarah looked down at her glass, then back to Helena, then to Cosima and Delphine.

Cosima stepped in. “We’re going to Europe in a couple months, right? And we’re trying to figure out where all the clones are over there, and if they’re still alive.”

“Yes, I know this.”

Delphine cleared her throat. She had the feeling that, let to themselves, Cosima and Sarah might skirt the issue forever. “We understand that, under Tomas’ orders, you were forced to kill some of the clones in Europe.”

Helena shifted on the ground, her eyes darting around and not landing on anyone. “Yes.”

Cosima handed the papers in her hands to Delphine and slid onto the floor across from Helena, ducking her head a little to put herself lower, the way Delphine had seen her do before, with others who needed a gentle approach. She’d even done it with Delphine a couple of times. “We know you didn’t understand what you were doing. You didn’t mean to. We’re not blaming you.”

“I knew that I was killing.”

“Right, but you didn’t know they were our sisters. You… you had the wrong ideas in your head.”

“Yes.”

“But we kind of need to know, like, how many sestras you, um, you got to before… before you came over to Canada. Before you left the Proletheans.”

“Before I met Sarah.”

Cosima nodded. “Yeah, exactly.”

Helena hugged her arms to her chest. “I do not remember exactly. Tómas… Tómas kept track. He had list, and he-” She licked her lips and rocked back and forth. “He told me where to go, who to kill. They were sheep, he said. And I did not count them. I did not count sheep, as you do not count insects when you kill them.”

Cosima tried hard not to kill insects at all, but she remembered the mosquitoes in Central America, in Bahir Dar, even in Toronto in the summer, and she conceded Helena’s point. “That’s okay. That makes sense. Are you… are you okay talking with us about all this?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Thank you. You don’t have to remember the numbers, that’s okay. Do you remember any names? Cities where they lived?”

“Names, no. Yes. Some names, later. Katja Obinger. Elizabeth Childs. Alison Hendrik.”

Sarah cut back in with, “Wait, you knew about Alison?”

“Yes.” She kept her arms crossed, and still rocked, but she straightened her spine and looked into the space between Sarah and Delphine, gaze focused on the invisible past. “We were in new country, new continent. Tómas trusted me more than before. Before, there were no names. But then I did good job, killed many sheep, and he began to tell me names. In Europe, one name, one kill. Tzak.” She made a gun with her hand and shot an imaginary clone, then another. “Another name. Tzak.”

“And, do you remember any of those names?” Cosima asked.

“Danielle, in France. Aryanna, Italy. Others I have forgotten. Italy was beautiful country, I remember.”

Delphine watched Helena’s face as she spoke, watched how her eyes avoided contact and her lips twitched, and listened to the changing pitches of her voice. She was lying about some of it, almost certainly, and a glance at Sarah told her that she suspected it as well. Delphine couldn’t blame her, though, for wanting to conceal or forget what she’d done.

Cosima nodded. “That’s okay. Thank you. Were they the only ones you killed there? In those countries, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“There were others, too, in other countries. Austria, Poland, Belarus, Russia. A country that was not Ukraine, and not Russia, but very much like. I understand most of what they say there, but it was strange. We did not stay long.”

“You killed someone there?”

“Two. One in house, one on bicycle. The one on bicycle had shaved head, I remember.”

“Okay.” Delphine jotted it all down, even what they already knew. This country Helena mentioned could be one of many Slavic nations, or it could in fact be Ukraine or Russia, despite her claims to the contrary. From what she’d heard, Tómas kept Helena very much in the dark.

Silence settled over the garage apartment, broken only by the tap of rain drops on the roof. Helena slowed her nervous rocking, but kept her gaze fixed at the corner. Eventually, Delphine spoke up.

“You said Tómas kept a list of the Ledas?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he get it?”

Now Helena cocked her head and looked at Delphine, who was, perhaps, an easier face to look at just now. “Maggie Chen.”

Sarah bounced forward in her seat. “Maggie Chen, of course. And she had a locker, didn’t she?”

Helena shook her head. “Not in locker. Locker is too obvious, too easy to find.”

“What about that old ship you were on?” Sarah asked. “The one… you know which one I’m talking about.”

“Yes, I know. The ship is gone, I think.”

“We could find that out,” Cosima said. “That should be pretty easy.” Moving slowly, she rested a hand on Helena’s forearm. “Would you like to come with us if it’s still there? You don’t have to.”

“No.”

“Okay. I thought so, but I just thought I’d ask.”

She removed her hand from Helena’s arm and watched her face. In the silence that followed, Delphine thought of all the various traumas Helena had endured, and the effects they must have had on her brain development. Did anyone even hold her when she was a baby, and she cried?

Helena looked at Cosima then, made eye contact, and said, “We would have found you, too, Sestra. I do not think you hide well.”

Cosima smiled. “I hid well enough when I needed to.”

“Hm.” Helena smiled and reformed her hand into a gun, then ran her gun-muzzle-fingers over Cosima’s forehead. “Tzak,” she said.

Delphine had no doubt that Helena was joking, or showing off, or deflecting, and had no serious intention to shot Cosima in the forehead. Still, the gesture unsettled her, and she had to force herself to stay seated, biting her tongue for the moment.

“We’ll just be happy that you didn’t get to me before you met Sarah, then,” Cosima said.

“Yes. Very happy.” Helena pulled herself to her feet and put her hot chocolate mug in the little sink by the fridge. “Because you have cure for us all. Without you, there is no us. Only myself, and Sarah. Everyone else, dead. But now, I must go. My babies need me.”

She opened the door and looked at them all, the universal signal for “get out,” so they thanked her, and left her apartment. Helena followed and closed the door behind them.

Back in the Hendrix’s house, in the basement away from the children playing upstairs, Cosima sat on the sofa with her legs folded up beneath her, Delphine beside and curled around her, absorbing her warmth. She was beyond exhausted, extra relaxed by the cup of herbal tea yet still unsettled by the image of a gun pointing at her beloved’s face. She rested her face against the top of Cosima’s head, breathed in the familiar Cosima-travel-smell, and let the follow-up conversation drift over her.

“That could have gone better, I think,” Cosima remarked.

Sarah sat in an armchair and nursed a fresh beer. “Yeah? Helena doesn’t know much. Tómas only told her what he wanted her to know, and kept her in a bloody cage the rest of the time. I do think she remembers more than she’s letting on, though.”

Cosima shifted to give herself room to talk with her hands. “Oh, yeah, I know that. That’s not what I meant. I meant, I feel like I – we – could’ve done a better job of taking care of her feelings. That’s, like, massive trauma, and we just, like, went in there and dug it all up again.”

“It’s not like she’ll never have to deal with it, though.”

“You mean, like, if the boys start asking her questions one day?”

“For example. Kids are nosy. They won’t think anything’s weird for years and years, but one day, they’ll wanna know where they came from, and where their mom came from, and they’ll start asking. If Helena doesn’t tell them, they’ll ask Alison or one of us. Kira might tell them one day out of the blue. They’ll notice that all the other kids in school have parents that went to school – at least high school. I don’t think if Helena’s ever been to school other than the convent.”

Helena’s sons would have a whole mess of curiosities to figure out as they got older, but at the moment, Cosima didn’t seem too concerned with that. “I just want Helena to feel like she has control. Like, she doesn’t have to tell us anything, you know?”

Sarah scoffed. “Doesn’t have to, but it might save you a shit ton of time if she does, yeah? Like that one clone from whatever country, the one you couldn’t find?”

“Malika,” Delphine chimed in. “From Morocco.”

“Malika from Morocco, yeah. You’d think I’d remember that. Anyway, imagine if she actually got offed by Helena while she was on holiday in Paris or wherever, and it never got recorded. We’d never fucking know.”

Cosima rolled her head around, disrupting Delphine’s comfortable headrest. “I guess that’s possible.”

“She might not’ve even known her name, and Tómas, neither. Maybe Malika was just sitting at some café and Helena noticed she had the same face, and pop.” Sarah made her own finger gun to mime the shooting.

“The French police would’ve figured it out, though,” Delphine said. “Not that she was a clone, of course, but they would’ve identified the body and there would be a death certificate somewhere.”

“What if they couldn’t ID her, though? Like, when Katja died-” Sarah leaned forward, her fresh bottle of beer in one hand. “-and, and I had to get rid of her body, her face got crushed.”

“What?” Delphine had not been aware of that, only that Katja Obinger was dead, and that she’d been the one who initiated the self-awareness of the North American sestras.

Cosima turned and patted her leg. “I’ll… tell you more about that later, okay?” To Sarah, she said, “So? The police eventually reconstructed it, and identified her. Just like they could do with any of Helena’s other victims. She didn’t… vanish them completely. I’m not sure I’m seeing your point here, Sarah.”

“My point is, you need Helena to talk to you about this stuff. It’s too important for her not to talk about it.”

Cosima yawned and rubbed her stomach. “Maybe. What’s really important for me right now, though, it to go to bed. And to get this lady to bed before she falls asleep on top of me.” With a nudge, she got Delphine up on her feet, and five minutes later they were on their way back to the Rabbit Hole.

* * *
* * *

When Delphine woke the next morning, a few hours before meeting the sestras and brother-sestra for lunch downtown, Cosima was already awake, wearing a knee-length robe and flitting around her lab like a butterfly in a garden, her hips swaying to the beat of whatever her ear phones were playing. The rich spiciness of chai filled the basement, covering up the scents of mothballs and mildew that had greeted them the day before. Delphine padded up behind her fiancée while she organized a shelf of vaccination tubes, and kissed the side of her neck until she plucked out one of her ear phones.

“You’re in a better mood,” Delphine remarked.

“Yeah, a little bit. Horny, though.”

She must have been up for longer than Delphine originally thought, then. Sex and just-woke-up-Cosima didn’t usually work out for the best. “Is that something I can help you with?”

“I sure hope so.” Cosima turned in her arms and draped her arms around her neck. “But only if you’re up for it. You still look pretty sleepy.”

“Hm.” Delphine ran her hands up and down Cosima’s sides and hips. “I could be up for it, yes.”

Cosima giggled and pecked her on the lips. “Good. Because I have had this thought in my head for, like, two months now, and there’s only one way to shake it.”

“What idea is that?”

Cosima dropped her robe on the nearest chair and skipped over to their closet in nothing but her glasses and slippers. “Oh, you know. Fucking your brains out. Making you scream. All that good stuff. Where is it, by the way?”

“Hm? Where’s what?”

“My Christmas present. What else?” Cosima buried herself in the closet, pushing through clothes on hangers and giving Delphine a great view of her ass when she bent down to look on the floor.

“Your Christmas present?” Delphine repeated as she caressed Cosima’s right ass cheek, but Cosima pushed herself deeper into the closet.

“Yes. The harness with the vibrating cock, or whatever.”

“Oh, that. It’s in the shoe box on the top shelf.”

“The top…” Cosima straightened and looked up. The top shelf was high enough that, unless she wore significant heels, she could only touch the edge with her fingers, and she had to back up a few feet to see what was on it. Her dreads whipped around as she turned to Delphine with a fake scowl. “Are you hiding it from me?”

“Tch. No.” She swatted Cosima’s hip and retrieved the box, standing on her toes but not struggling. Handing it to Cosima, she said, “Here you go.”

Cosima snatched it away. “Ah ha. Not hiding it from me, just limiting my access to it. I’m onto you, Cormier.”

She scurried into the bathroom get herself ready, and Delphine climbed back on the bed, over the covers, after stripping out of her night clothes. Unbidden, her mind drifted in other directions, tugged by the scents of cardamom and cloves and her own body, by dreams of the desert and memories of being a late teenager on break at her mother’s house. She remembered Rashid’s rough hands, the taste of Djarum cigarettes on his breath, the way he’d lifted her by the thighs and fucked her senseless. At that point in her life, she could count on one hand the number of orgasms men had given her. Two of them came from Rashid.

She was just thinking of how Cosima probably wasn’t tall enough to fuck her on a surface like that, when Cosima landed right beside her, the electric blue dildo flapping against Delphine’s hip.

“What were you thinking about?” she asked, after kissing Delphine’s lower lip.

Delphine smiled and stroked the sides of her neck. She was soft, infinitely softer than anyone else she’d been with, and the lighting in the basement brought out the green in her eyes. “Mmmm, nothing important.”

“Nothing important?” Cosima nipped the tip of her nose. “I don’t believe you.” She moved her way down, knocking into Delphine’s thighs and pelvis with the dildo as she did so.

“Nothing that’s important right now.”

“I see.” Cosima opened her mouth wide and put as much of Delphine’s right breast as possible inside, swirling her tongue around the nipple and sending shock waves through Delphine’s body.

Delphine hissed and arched her back to put as much of her self as possible into Cosima, but after a moment, after grazing her nipple with her teeth, Cosima stopped.

“Was it, like, something that’s totally awesome but you’re worried I’ll laugh about it, or something really deep and serious that would totally kill the mood if you told me?”

“Nothing deep…” But then Delphine thought of the double meaning of that word, especially since Cosima and that dildo were positioned right between her legs, and giggled, and kept giggling as Cosima cocked her head and squinted with her lips pursed.

“Uh huh. So you’re gonna laugh that like, but you’re not gonna tell me?” She tickled Delphine’s ribs and when Delphine pushed her hands away she gave her her best puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”

“I told you, it’s not important. I’d much rather focus on you right now.”

“Hmm…” Cosima stuck her tongue between her teeth and looked over Delphine like she was a particularly tasty dessert she wasn’t sure how to tackle. Delphine ran her hands up over Cosima’s arms and shoulders to massage behind her ears. She’d removed her glasses, and Delphine reflected that these days she saw her as much with them as without them – an unique and illustrious position to be in. She was also pouting again, but when Delphine tilted her head up to kiss her, Cosima pulled away.

“I don’t why, but it’s kinda bothering me now,” she said.

“What?” Delphine asked.

“That you won’t tell me what you were thinking about. Like, I know that we’re both allowed to have, like, privacy and our own inner thoughts, but… I dunno. Maybe it’s just because it’s what you used to do, you know, before.”

“Before.” Before they both shared everything, before their trust was absolute and unconditional. She kept her hands behind Cosima’s ears and rubbed her earlobes with her thumbs. “If it’s really bothering you, I’ll tell you.”

Cosima tipped her head to the side and gave her a small smile. “You gonna make me feel like an asshole?”

“I hope not. Actually, I was thinking about that Tunisian boyfriend I had. You know, the carpenter.”

Her eyebrows went up, but she didn’t seem put off by it. “Oh?”

“There was one day when he picked me up and sat me on top of my mother’s washing machine and…” Despite all this time speaking quite frankly with Cosima about sex, she blushed.

“And…?” Cosima’s voice had a distinctly amused challenge in it. “Don’t tell me he just read you poetry up there.”

She snorted. “No. He fucked me up there.”

“Was it good?”

“Yes.”

Cosima nodded. She’s pulled her dreads back so they didn’t tickle Delphine, but Delphine almost wished she hadn’t. She was used to playing with them when they talked like this. Instead, she traced the lines and contours of Cosima’s collar bone.

“Why didn’t you want to tell me?” Cosima asked.

She let out a long breath. They were supposed to be having sex right now, not talking about why Delphine still held back and didn’t talk about everything. “Because I don’t really want to go into sex with you thinking about sex with someone else, or with you thinking of me having sex with someone else. Because I don’t want you to think that I want to sleep with anyone else. The usual.”

“Hm.” Cosima shifted into a more comfortable position and nuzzled her neck, dropping sweet little kisses. “You know I don’t think any of those things.”

“I know.”

Cosima’s mouth travelled up to nibble on her earlobe. “Do you want me to fuck you on a washing machine?”

“I would like you to fuck me in, and on, all kinds of places.”

“In, on, under, between…” Cosima’s tongue trailed along her jaw to her mouth, ending with a delicious cinnamon flavored kiss. “We could do, like, a whole series of prepositions-based fucks.”

“We could. It would really, euh, spice up someone’s grammar class, maybe.”

“Totally.” She kissed her again, then scooted back down to kiss and suck on the tender place above her collarbones, giving suggestions in the meantime. “Prepositions of place – We had sex on the bed. We fucked in the planetarium.”

Delphine laughed and swatted her arm. “No, we didn’t!”

“Shh, that’s not important.” While she lavished her neck with attention, Cosima’s hands moved up and down her sides, from her hip bones to the sides of her breasts, at an asymmetric pace. “Prepositions of direction – I fucked you to the moon.”

By this point, Delphine’s arousal overcame her amusement, and she rolled Cosima onto her back. Cosima might have made some comment, something about Delphine always wanting to top, or more about fucking prepositions, but Delphine got her nipple between her teeth and her tongue, and all Cosima managed was a mix of a groan and a moan. Delphine stayed there, working her nipple with every available part of her mouth, but her hand travelled down over Cosima’s hips and thighs, then up between her legs, to the little mechanized nub tucked into the harness just over her vagina.

“You have fucked me to the moon many times, chérie.”

Delphine reached for the little vibration controller that Cosima had dropped beside her on the bed, but Cosima kept it just out of reach. “We’ll get to that. It sounded kind of like you wanted me to fuck you up on top on something.” She looked around as though she didn’t already know the space inside and out. “Too bad we don’t have laundry machines in here, though, and uh, most of the other machinery would probably break if we tried it.”

“It’s okay, mon amour. I just want you, nothing else.” She kissed her lips to emphasize her point, holding her body down when Cosima tried to flip their positions. In doing so, Delphine lifted her pelvis so that the dildo was conveniently positioned to rub against her clit when she lowered herself back down again. “This works nicely for me,” she said.

“Yeah?” Cosima watched her face, the parted lips and hooded eyes as Delphine ground her hips against her cock. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

There would never be a day in Delphine’s life when her heart didn’t flop over just hearing Cosima say that. In response, Delphine caught her mouth in a big sloppy kiss, and Cosima held her close, raking little pricks of pain down her back with her fingernails. The tip of the dildo slid inside of her, and she ground her hips down to get more, using her hand to assist, but despite Cosima’s ragged breath egging her on, and the thick smell of arousal all around them, she wasn’t getting any farther. She needed much deeper penetration than this, and more than that, she needed Cosima to pound the hell out of her.

With a grunt, she pried herself off of Cosima and pulled Cosima up into a sitting position. “It’s not enough. Here, do it this way.” While Cosima got her limbs back in order, Delphine got on all fours and gathered the pillows under her torso for support. For the first time, she was not annoyed that Alison had given them so many goddamn pillows. Behind her, Cosima made an appreciative little moan.

“Oh, we’re doing it this way? Which, uh, which way exactly would you prefer?” To make her clear, Cosima ran her fingers from the tip of Delphine’s clitoris back through the crack of her ass, making Delphine shudder.

“Mmmm… vagina this time. I don’t think we have any lube right now.”

“Oh, shit, you’re right. That would be problem for anal, wouldn’t it? Okay. Your wish is my command. And, I will put that on the shopping list ASAP.” She kept her hand between Delphine’s legs as Delphine settled into a comfortable ass-up position, with the edge of one of the pillows rubbing nicely against the side of her clit, enough to stimulate without pushing her all the way.

Cosima kept her fingers light between her legs, kissing her way up and around Delphine’s back, and giggled when Delphine snapped, “Stop teasing and fuck me, Cosima!”

“Mmmm, yes, ma’am…”

The angle was much better this, and her breath caught in her throat as Cosima filled up, scratching the itch deep inside her and grabbing her hips.

“Is it good?”

“Yes. Yes yes yes.”

“Good.” Cosima worked up to a steady rocking rhythm, running her hands all over Delphine’s back, hips, and thighs.

As she felt herself getting close, though, she fumbled around the bedding for the little vibrator controller, cursing herself for not paying better attention earlier. Cosima paused, her fingers clamped to the side of Delphine’s hip and her own hips still, as Delphine scrounged around. “You okay?” she asked, her voice husky in that way where Delphine knew exactly how turned on she was.

“Oui,” she said once she had it. “Continue, s’il te plait.”

She switched it on, and any response Cosima might have had was swallowed by a moan as the thumb-sized vibrator buzzed away.

As expected, it didn’t take long after that. Delphine came first, screaming and clawing at the sheets and pillows as her body spasmed around the cock her lover kept pushing into her, until she collapsed and pulled herself away from Cosima, who fumbled with the straps of the harness until she tore it off, still buzzing. Then, artlessly, she rolled onto her back and fucked herself senseless under Delphine’s limp arm.

Neither of them realized they’d drifted off until Cosima’s phone rang, interrupting Delphine lovely little dream with the chorus of “I am the Walrus,” Cosima’s song of the week. Delphine reluctantly released her hold on Cosima’s waist to let her answer, and listened to the tinny squawking on the other end, and to Cosima’s sleepy replies.

“Oh, shit…” Cosima muttered. “Yeah, no, we’ll… we’ll be right there. No, no, everything’s fine. Just got, uh, a little caught up on some things over here…”

Even in her post-coital euphoria, Delphine got the overall message – they were late for clone club brunch downtown. She pulled herself from the bed, feeling her skin tug where it had stuck to the sheets. The vibrator, she noticed, was off, though she didn’t remember Cosima turning it off. Maybe it had just buzzed itself out, the poor thing. They’d have to get some more batteries for it, at any rate.

After they’d freshened themselves up and dressed, Cosima paused to look around the lab space, almost like it was their last time there.

“Come on,” Delphine said, tugging her hand. “Alison’s already annoyed with us.”

But then Cosima smiled, that little inside-joke smile she got in the Middle East when Delphine flirted with her under the radar. “Yeah, I know. I was just thinking… we could totally put a washing machine in here, don’t you think?”

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2.4

All of Part 2 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13525500

Constructive and polite feedback is always appreciated, especially if you’re familiar with the region I’m writing about.

---

Hala, the Libyan clone living in Tripoli, came to her doctor’s house to be treated. She was slender, with Rachel Duncan posture and square Gucci sunglasses tucked into her hijab. Her husband Khaled was with her, dressed in Armani. Delphine and Dr. El Gidi met them at the threshold of the house, flanked by Ali and Ahmed, and their guns. Delphine and Dr. El Gidi smiled at the couple, who did not smile back.

Ali patted down the husband. Surprisingly, Khaled had never been Hala’s monitor. He probably knew as little about her biology as Hala herself did.

While Ali check the husband, Ahmed approached Hala, but did not attempt to touch her. Instead, he gestured for Delphine to come over. “Woman,” he said. “You search.”

They’d expected that. Still, she flushed as Hala raised her arms with a dramatic head roll, and she apologized as she patted her hands over Hala’s sides and legs, trying to keep her hands flat and fully aware that Cosima was watching from crack in the curtains upstairs. She was probably laughing. When Delphine was finished, she put a few feet between herself and Hala, and Ahmed sneered and shook his head. Fine. He could think whatever he wanted.

Hala and her husband had their own security team, too, of course. People with that kind of money in Libya would vanish quickly without one. The female guard searched Delphine, and one of the men searched Dr. El Gidi, while the other members sized up Ali and Ahmed.

Inside the doctor’s house, Hala stayed silent while her husband asked several questions in Arabic, and her doctor answered with a soothing tone and open-handed gestures. She was lying again, promising to cure this woman’s infertility in order to save her life, backed up by Dr. El Gidi’s assurances of her honesty. By the time Hala and her husband realized the lie, Delphine and Cosima would be long gone. It would be Dr. El Gidi’s problem then. Unless he decided to take up their offer of expedited immigration to Canada.

That night, after dinner with the El Gidi family, they sat with the doctor in his study. He poured them cognac, adding Delphine’s to a cup of hot tea to ease what remained of her sore throat, and slipped easily back into English.

“Dr. Cormier,” he said, “you are a monitor, too, yes?”

She took a deep breath, aware that Ali, just outside the door, also spoke English. “Yes. I was Cosima’s monitor.”

His plump cheeks widened as he looked to Cosima. “Of course. You are lucky, Miss Niehaus.”

Cosima sipped her cognac with wide eyes. “Um… I guess?”

He laughed. “Do not be so coy, Miss Niehaus. I am telling you that I know. That I understand the nature of monitor and subject. I was a monitor, myself, for the lady today, you know.”

“Uh… yeah. I, um, I heard.” She and Delphine exchanged a long glance.

“You were her monitor for many years,” Delphine confirmed. “Not her husband, as most monitors are.”

“Monitors are those who are closest to their subjects. That is the goal.”

Cosima cleared her throat and looked like she wanted to laugh, too. “Does, uh, does her husband know? About how close you are to his wife?”

Dr. El Gidi shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. You could ask him, but we are all beneath his attention. Besides, he’s a politician; he and everyone he knows is unfaithful. Hala trusts me most, that much he knows, too. And you-” He pointed to Cosima. “-trust Dr. Cormier the most, correct?”

She wouldn’t have faulted Cosima for pausing before answering, or even for saying No. After all, it was Cosima’s sisters, not Delphine, who had never lied to her.

But Cosima didn’t pause. “Yes,” she said, and Delphine’s heart melted into her shoes.

“You are good to be careful,” Dr. El Gidi went on. “This is a dangerous place, a dangerous region, for people like you. Do whatever you must to stay careful. Women like you, usually not so bad as for men, but sometimes worse.”

Delphine shifted in her seat. She knew what he meant, and why he wasn’t being specific. Ali could be confused, and that would be okay, but he could never find out. He could guard infidels because he considered himself an infidel, and a genuine human clone would fascinate him, but lesbians, even bisexuals, were another story.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the warning.”

* * *

Ali accompanied them from Tripoli all the way to Alexandria, past the multilingual “Welcome to Egypt” signs and baggage claim, and out onto the bustling street. He didn’t have his gun with him, unless he’d hidden it very well, but his bulk, tight black shirt, cargo pants, and crew cut made people think twice about approaching him. By extension, they left Delphine and Cosima alone, too.

He’d stuck with them their entire time in Libya, screening every room, every location they went to for suspicious people of any kind, and checking with them about safe and unsafe areas of the city, though they hadn’t explored much at all. Now, when they finally shook his hand by the open door of their taxi, and wished him good luck and safety back in Libya, Ali looked like he wasn’t sure what to do next.

“You are returning to Tripoli, aren’t you?” Delphine asked him.

“Ehhh…”

Cosima was already in the car, but she stuck her head out again. “Dude, you told them you were coming back. They’re kind of counting on you.”

“I know, I know. Of course, I go back. But maybe, one day in Egypt, and then go back.”

Delphine grinned. He was trying so hard to be tough, to seem pragmatic, but the whimsical look on his face was hard to hide as he looked towards the peaceful, bustling city. There were guards, still, and repression, but no war, and a better economy. Here in Alexandria, he could restart his engineering career if he wanted to. “Whatever you decide to do, you know how to reach us. Okay?”

He nodded, arms tight across his chest. “Okay.”

“Okay. Goodbye, Ali.”

“Goodbye, Delphine.”

In the taxi, as they sped away from the airport and into the city, Cosima giggled. “Oh my god, he has such a crush on you.”

“Yes, thank you, I noticed that.” She had known it, hell, everyone had known it, for their entire three day stay in Tripoli. Ali had never acted inappropriately, thankfully. He and Ahmed were consummate professionals. Ahmed, though, never lingered to ask Delphine about where she’d learned English, or what she thought about international politics, or to talk about the year he’d spent in Vancouver as a teenager. Ahmed’s face never pinked up the way Ali’s did when Delphine smiled at him.

“You think he might actually stick around here?” Cosima asked.

“I think he might be wise to stick around somewhere other than Libya. For the moment, at least. But I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“Hey, true that. You gave him Art’s info, right? In case he wants to hightail it back to Canada?”

“I did.”

“Well, then, that’s all we can really do, isn’t it?”

Delphine nodded, wishing they could do more. Ali had his parents and a disabled sister back in Tripoli, though, and she doubted Art would be able to get all of them into Toronto. She took a deep breath and focused on where they were that day, putting Ali’s troubles behind her.

Their hotel overlooked the Mediterranean, and immediately after getting into the room, Cosima pranced over to the balcony to lean into the view. While she was out there, Delphine stretched and soaked in the relative security of not being in the middle of a civil war. For the moment.

One war zone down, two and a half to go.

She leaned over to touch her toes and hoped the number would not increase. Ethiopia had legitimate political protests, but didn’t seem headed towards violence. Ditto for Iran. Turkey they kept a close eye on, but seemed safe enough now. Of course, any country could explode with unrest at any time, even in Europe. It wasn’t much good to dwell on possibilities.

And at the moment, they were not in a war zone, they had made contact with the Leda in town, and both she and Cosima had finally shaken their head colds. There were reasons to be happy.

On the balcony, she stood a few feet away from Cosima. It was getting easier, this habit of not showing affection in public. At least here they had their own private room, which made a nice change from the sofa and day bed in Dr. El Gidi’s house.

“It feels like San Fran,” Cosima said. “Maybe a few degrees warmer.”

Delphine wrapped her jacket tighter. “When you take me there to visit, we can look over the water and reminisce about the month we spent in North Africa.”

She grinned. “You bet your ass we will. That reminds me, though, I should check my messages.”

With a dramatic slouch, Cosima pulled herself from the railing and the view of the sea, and went back into the room. Delphine followed and closed the door to keep the wind out. In Libya, they’d had phone reception but not internet, and the cost of calls and texts were astronomical. Cosima had called Alison once a day from Tripoli, to tell her they were alive and safe, and nothing more. The rest of the time, they kept their phones off or on airplane mode. Now they sat on the edges of their beds waiting for them to power back up, and Delphine giggled.

“It’s like the day Sarah gave Kira her phone back.”

Cosima laughed. “God, I know. And she lost hers for a whole week, the poor thing.”

“She deserved it.”

“Eh.” Cosima lay back on her bed, the phone coming to life beside her. “If I’d had a cell phone at her age, I would’ve been looking at the same things.”

“And your mother probably would’ve taken it away from you, too.”

On cue, Cosima’s phone blooped and beeped and buzzed, and one of those sounds was certain to be Sally Niehaus checking in. “You know Sarah only took it away because Alison told her to,” Cosima said.

“I suspected as much.” Delphine’s phone was much quieter when it regained its full potential. There was a group text from Art, a voicemail from a Moroccan phone number, and an email from MSF asking her to donate money. All of them could wait a little bit longer. “What would you have told Sarah to do? For that matter, what would you have done, if you found your nine-year-old daughter looking at inappropriate material on her cell phone?”

Cosima blew out a noisy breath. “Are we talking about my parenting skills now?”

“I’m curious.”

Cosima scrolled through her messages some more before answering. “Well, first of all, I am not a parent, so I don’t know how much my opinion matters in this case. But, since you’re curious… I think I would talk to Kira – I mean, this hypothetical daughter of mine – about what she was looking at, what she thought about it, etc. I’d try to explain that it’s not reflective of real life, it’s exaggerated, all that good stuff.” She flopped her head over to look at Delphine. “Does that answer your question?”

“So you wouldn’t punish her?”

“That would not be my first step, no. What about you?”

She laughed. “Honestly? I would take her phone away. Just like Sarah did.”

Cosima didn’t respond to that, but arched her eyebrows and went back to looking at her phone. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked about hypothetical children, but it was the first time they’d talked about how they might parent.

“Well,” Delphine said, “if we ever find ourselves in charge of a nine-year-old, I’m sure we’ll find a way to compromise.”

“Hmm. I guess so. Holy shit, the twins are turning one this Friday! God, all that shit was a whole year ago…” She turned her phone to show Delphine the mass birthday party announcement from Alison that for some reason had not gotten to Delphine.

“That will be an interesting birthday party.”

Cosima giggled. “How much you wanna bet Helena eats the entire cake?”

“Of course she will. Are you all getting your own cakes for Clone Fest?”

“I have no idea.” Cosima paused to play a voicemail from her mother, which was just as fraught with worry as they expected. Then she pointed to Delphine’s phone. “Did you anything good?”

She swiped her phone back open and played the voicemail from the Moroccan number. Once Cosima saw that, she sat straight up, but went limp again when they heard Dr. Klein’s voice, leaving a message for “Keith.” Whoever Keith was, he apparently had a Canadian number and needed to call Dr. Klein back about his test scores.

“What the hell?” Cosima muttered after Delphine closed voicemail and took her phone off speaker. “How many Canadian numbers does he call on the reg that he’d mess that up?”

The rest of Cosima’s messages were more appropriate. She got the same group message from Art about a translator needing some assistance in Toronto. Sarah sent her a picture of herself dressed as Cosima for Charlotte’s recent teacher conference, though the ensemble missed Cosima’s red coat. There were Niehaus family updates and clone family updates, and updates from Scott and Hell Wizard about cell cultures and equipment performance. It took her over an hour to go through all of them, while Delphine showered and set out their things.

“Yemen’s gonna be even worse,” Cosima said when Delphine stepped out of the bathroom. “And Syria.”

“Worse than Libya, you mean?”

“Yeah. I’m not talking about the dangerous parts, although that… is a thing, for sure. I’m talking about the number of goddamn messages I have piled up after three goddamn days. And most of them aren’t, like, clone business contacts. I just know too many people.”

Delphine changed into clean clothes and shook some more water from her ears. “Let me guess, though, half of them are from your mother and Alison.”

“More like a third, but, yeah.”

“They worry more than the others when they can’t reach us. When they can’t reach you, I mean.”

“It’s us! They worry about you, too.”

“Maybe. When we’re with MSF and the others, we’ll be with people who have emergency communications, though. If something goes wrong, we can still reach out, just like in Libya. Ethiopia will be trickier.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ll be out in the sticks, won’t we?”

“Quite probably.”

* * *

At 10:05 the next morning, while Delphine rode the bus back from the clinic, her phone beeped to notify her of a group message. There was a picture of Cosima, mouth wide in a selfie with a sign reading BIBLIOTECA ALEXANDRINA. The message below was in all caps, too. OMG YOU GUYS I’M AT THE FRIKKIN LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA!!!!!11!

Delphine snorted. She could picture Cosima typing the exclamation points, then back spacing to enter a few 1s. She snorted again when the first reply came in, from Scott.

Dude wtf it’s 3 am

She removed herself from the group message before any other sleepy North Americans replied, but her phone beeped again. This time, the message was only for her.

Let me know when you get here and a kissy face emoji.

Nearly an hour later, she did, but Cosima said she’d fallen down a dissertation rabbit hole and didn’t want to leave all her books out in the open to meet Delphine. Gimme fifteen minutes, and tell me where you are then. I’ll come find you. And another kissy face.

The library, Delphine had to admit, was impressive on a scale that exceeded all her expectations. It was modern, incorporating ancient ideals of scholarship with contemporary architecture and technology. The sloped, windowed ceiling opened the building to the heavens and dwarfed the patrons and tourists milling around inside. She passed the larger groups of them and headed to the stacks a floor above the entrance, texting Cosima once more before putting her phone on silent.

Several shelves in, she found herself alone, with no other patrons in visual or audible range. She skimmed the collection of astronomy books until she found a large illustrated volume about the International Space Station, in French. She was halfway through, leaning with all her weight on one leg, when hands slid around her waist.

“Are we going to space next?” Cosima whispered, then kissed her neck.

“I think if a Leda were in space, we would know it by now.” She closed the book and put it back on the shelf, then stepped away from Cosima.

Cosima leaned against the shelves and flashed her teeth. “You know there’s, like, no one in this part of the floor, right?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So why are you doing the whole don’t touch me in public thing?”

She’d thought it was obvious. “Because we are in public.”

Cosima grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her in for a kiss. It was soft, with no tongue or teeth, and in a moment she let go again. “I am not asking to have sex in the library,” Cosima whispered, “although it would be fucking awesome to fuck you in the Library of Alexandria, not gonna lie. I just…” She gave a dramatic sigh. “I just want to touch you sometimes, and I hate the fact that I can’t.”

Delphine agreed completely. She stroked her face. “I know. This isn’t forever.”

“Right, I know, I know. Just a couple more… months, maybe.”

“All together, yes.”

Another patron wandered by then, clutching a reference paper in one hand. He didn’t acknowledge them, but he certainly would have noticed if they were making out.

“Do you want to stay?” Delphine asked. “If you want to work on your dissertation some more, I could be very happy looking around some more. Only if you want, though.”

Cosima shrugged and adjusted her bag. “I got a lot done already. My dad really wants us to go to the planetarium, too. He texted me at 1:14 California time to tell me that, so I feel kinda obligated. And…” She looked around at the books. “…we’re kind of in the space section anyways, so it’ll be a nice segue.”

“The planetarium?”

“Yeah, the place where you can see, like, a movie of the stars moving across the sky…”

“I know what a planetarium is, yes, thank you. But, why does your father want us to go so badly? He’s a ecologist, not an astronomer.”

Cosima led the way out of the stacks and down the stairs. “He is a hobby astronomer. Always has been. Why do think my parents named me Cosima?”

“I… I have no idea, actually. I assumed it was because they liked the sound of it.”

“Well, yes. But it’s a variant of Cosmo. Like cosmos.”

“So, if your parents had had a boy, they would have named him Cosmo?”

Cosima grimaced. “That is a distinct possibility, yes.”

They pushed through the doors into the glistening Egyptian midday, and a decades-old memory seeped back into Delphine’s consciousness. She turned to Cosima. “I think Cosmo is the patron saint of doctors, too.”

“Are you serious?” Cosima stopped in her tracks and spun around. “Like, medical doctors?”

“Well, in French it’s Saint Côme, which used to be Saint Cosme, and I believe that’s the same as Cosmo.”

Cosima laughed and bent forward in delight, going so far as to slap her thigh. “That is awesome! See, we’re totally meant to be together.”

Inside the planetarium, they bought tickets for “Oasis in Space” and squeezed into the only two adjacent seats they found a few minutes before the show started. As soon as the lights dimmed, Cosima groped around Delphine’s lap for her hand, and Delphine could almost hear the tongue-between-the-teeth grin. And she had to admit, holding hands with Cosima, in public, in what was technically the Middle East, and getting away with it, did have a certain thrill.

Overhead, they watched the cosmos fly by on the domed ceiling while a deep, disembodied voice described the search for water and life on other planets, and a dramatic soundtrack filed in the spaces between sentences. During a louder moment, Cosima leaned over and nuzzled her ear, then took it between her teeth. She released Delphine’s hand and reached over to stroke her thigh, but Delphine grabbed her hand again and squeezed it as tightly as possible.

“There are school children here!” she hissed into Cosima’s ear.

“Nnnn…. I know.” Cosima kissed her ear. “Just couldn’t help myself.”

They sat through the whole show, Cosima’s left hand safely tucked into Delphine’s right, and once the lights came on, Cosima all but pulled her out of her seat. By being a little less than polite, they made it out of the building before the hoards of school children and accompanying adults could clog the exits.

On the way back to the hotel, she watched Cosima bounce as she walked. It was subtle, this extra bouancy in all of her joints, and it included little twists that followed along with Cosima’s internal rhythm. It was adorable, and very sexy. A block from the hotel, Cosima turned her head towards Delphine.

“We don’t have anything to do for the rest of the day, do we?”

She kept her face neutral. “Oh, there are a few things I might want to do in a little bit.”

“Inside or outside?”

Cosima’s little cocked eyebrow almost broke Delphine’s neutral face. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much you can handle.”

“Mmm….” Cosima looked around at the people surrounding them on the street, many of them tourists, and most of them competent in English. “I think that I can handle whatever you wanna throw at me, Dr. Cormier.”

* * *

They got dinner at a restaurant near the hotel, their bodies warm and loose from sex and hot showers. Delphine nearly forgot that she wasn’t supposed to hold Cosima’s hand, and Cosima noticed. “Just one more month, yeah? Then back to Canada for a minute.”

Delphine nodded. “Unless something comes up.”

Cosima leaned back in her chair and contemplated the table top. “Like we finally find Malika, or something.”

“Like we find her and she has symptoms.”

“Right.”

“And even then, I would go off and cure her, so you can spend that week with your family.”

Cosima clicked her teeth. “Yeah, Alison might get kinda mad if I miss Clone Fest.”

“She most certainly would.”

They were almost finished with their food when Delphine’s phone beeped. She looked at it and drew a deep breath. Then she opened the email.

Delphine,

I’m afraid I’ll be very busy during those dates. Perhaps another time.

Maman

She stared at the message, reading and re-reading it as though she’d missed something, but she hadn’t. It was two sentences, nothing more. She fought the urge to throw her phone across the room.

“Everything okay?” Cosima’s hand was almost on hers before Delphine pulled back.

“Yes. Euh, my mother isn’t going to see us while we’re in Paris.”

“Oh. I’m sorry?”

She took a deep breath, and put her phone back in her pocket, then thought better and put it in her purse. “Don’t be. We’ll probably enjoy ourselves much more this way.”

Cosima watched her, her fork balanced between two fingers. She didn’t say anything, but raised her eyebrows and ran her tongue over her teeth. Then she took another bite of falafel and tapped the table with her free hand.

Delphine couldn’t eat anything else. She pushed her plate of fatteh away and focused on her breathing. Her mother would be in Paris during their visit; she was sure of it. When Maman traveled, she let everyone know. No, her mother would be there, meeting with clients and having elegant dinners with friends, and every single item on her agenda was more important than seeing Delphine after she’d been away for four years.

The waiter came with the bill, which Cosima took care of, and they walked back to the hotel. In the lobby, forty or fifty German-speaking teenagers spread out to occupy the entire space, laughing and flirting with each other. A couple of them stared at them as they pushed their way through the crowd.

“Beautiful hair!” one boy called to Cosima. She ignored him.

An older boy angled himself in front of them near the elevators. “Hello sexy, what room you are in?” he asked, while his friends laughed. Delphine thought of the knife in her pocket, but Cosima steered her into the elevator, and they left the teenagers behind.

Upstairs in their room, Delphine dropped her purse on her bed, followed by her jacket. They’d fallen into a routine with these separate beds, which Delphine now requested for the sake of security. Cosima took the bed nearest the door, and Delphine the farthest, unless by chance the beds were actually large enough for both of them, as had been the case in Oran. She thought of that room while she removed her boots, of the powder blue duvets and sheets that she’d rumpled up before check out to make both beds look slept in.

“Hey.” Cosima stood beside her, stroking her hair with her finger tips.

“Hello.” She gave her her best smile. Cosima deserved that.

“Do you… wanna talk?”

“About what?”

Cosima chewed on her lip. She’d taken off her jacket and scarf, and her shirt opened up to reveal the cute little hollow between her collarbones. “That, uh, that message from your mom that you got during dinner?”

“Mmm…” She leaned over and rested her face against Cosima’s body, bumping her nose against a clavicle. “Do I have to?”

“No. But you seemed pretty upset about it. You still seem upset, and while those assholes downstairs didn’t help, I’m pretty sure they’re not the reason why.”

“They’re not.” She took a deep breath. “It’s okay. I’m not surprised, to be honest. I told you my mother and I were never close.”

Cosima slid down onto the bed beside her and supported Delphine’s weight in her arms. “Right. But you still wanted to see her, didn’t you? I mean, you emailed her asking if she’d be available. Did she say anything about… I mean, about the whole fiancée thing?”

“No. She did not. She said she will not be available, and that is all she said.”

“Okay.” Cosima shifted to better accommodate her weight, and played with her hair. “Does that mean we’re not inviting her to the wedding, then?”

The wedding. Despite being the one to propose, Cosima seemed to have no desire to talk about the actual wedding. Until now, perhaps. Delphine pulled herself upright. “Are we wedding planning now?”

“Not unless you want to, but a couple folks back home sure do. Alison wants a guest list.”

Delphine stood up and rolled her eyes. They had just left a war torn country, and they would enter at least two more before the summer. Her left calf was bothering her for reasons unknown. They still had no idea where to find Malika. And Alison Hendrix wanted a fucking guest list for a wedding that didn’t even have a tentative date yet. She walked over to the bathroom, but turned to Cosima at the door.

“Tell her she can put our names on the guest list. See if that makes her happy.”

Cont. Travels of Cophine, Part 2.3

Tunisia.

Link for the entire work here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13525500

---

They arrived in Sousse in the afternoon, their last stop in Tunisia and the end of their Francophone African experience. If everything went well here, they would be in Libya in a few days, and Egypt after that. Cosima’s energy level was partially recovered and the sinus headaches were gone, but she still had frequent coughing fits, and her voice cracked every couple of words. She now spent her time propping up Delphine, who insisted that she wasn’t really all that sick.

“Delphine, I love you,” Cosima said, “but your eyes haven’t opened completely for, like, two days. Your voice is an octave lower, and your sneezes have woken the dead. You are fucking sick.”

Delphine fell back on her bed beside Cosima. In Tunis they’d gotten a queen sized bed in their room, which was great at first, but a lot less appealing when both of them tossed and turned the whole night. Here in Sousse, they were back to separate twins, and neither of them had the energy to even comment on it.

“Okay,” Delphine said, “I’m sick. Are you happy now?”

“No. I just want you to stop pretending that you’re fine. I want you to take care of yourself. I mean, I’m happy taking care of you, but you’re not letting me do that, and you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

As if to prove Cosima’s point, Delphine rolled over to check the little beep her phone just made. “Dr. N’Jikam wants to postpone our meeting until Wednesday.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“And you don’t have to be at the clinic until Wednesday morning, either, so tomorrow we can focus on getting rest, yeah? Maybe check out that sauna they’re supposed to have.” With the chilly weather outside and the lack of heat in the hotel room, spending the day at a nice 180 degrees fahrenheit had a certain appeal.

“Mmm… maybe. We still have a lot of arrangements to make.”

Cosima rubbed her back through her sweater. “We do. But we’re not going to help anybody if you’re not healthy. So you need to rest. That’s what you told me the other day!”

“I can’t sleep, I’ve told you.”

The night before, Delphine had apparently been awake for five hours while Cosima slept like a log. She’d drifted off for an hour or so on the ride into Sousse, but good sleep still aluded her. “Take some more NyQuil,” Cosima said. “Or I’ll get the bar downstairs to make you a nice hot toddy.”

She shook her head. “Then I’ll be hung over all morning. Is there any tea?”

Cosima checked the little complimentary beverage station near the ironing board. “Um… yes, but it all looks caffeinated.”

“Then no.”

Another coughing fit hit Cosima then, doubling her over as she pounded on her chest. The pounding never helped, but it was better than doing nothing. Once it subsided, she straightened back up and fumbled around for some more water. Delphine stayed on her bed, watching her.

“Have you tried the throat spray again?”

“Um, no.”

“Maybe you should. It would numb your throat and…”

“It would make me vomit again. No thanks.”

“You might’ve done it wrong.”

Naturally, Delphine was able to use the throat spray with no problems at all. Cosima added it to the list of things Delphine did effortlessly.

Cosima picked up her purse and wrapped her scarf around her neck again. “If I did, I’m not willing to risk doing it wrong again. But I will get some more cough syrup. And some more tea.”

Delphine propped herself up on her elbows to return Cosima’s kiss. “Can you get some soup, too?”

“Yup. Soup, syrup, and tea. I’ll be back soon, love.”

Delphine nodded and sank back down.

* * *

They tried the sauna the next day, but found it packed with Scandinavian women who all knew each other and laughed too loudly at everything each of them said. Cosima got some tea loaded with valerian root and lemon balm, and Delphine drank mug after mug of it while Cosima did their laundry in the hotel’s facilities and brought containers of brik and fricassé from the vendors across the street. In the evening, they drank more tea and watched the Arabic dubbing of Downton Abbey on the hotel television.

On Wednesday it rained, the first time since they’d arrived in North Africa. Cosima sat at the bar in the hotel’s restaurant and watched it fall in sheets over the cars and cyclists and old men in traditional burnouses hustling around with newspapers over their heads. It was just after noon, almost time for midday prayers, when the locals on the street would clear off for a moment but the tourists in the restaurant would stay. She knew these things now. She was also starting to forget that she hadn’t always dropped the “h” sound in “hotel.”

The restaurant was packed. Most of these tourists were here for the promise of a sunny beach-side vacation in a relatively progressive Arab country, the lone gunman attack of a few years ago now a distant memory. The rain, however, put the beach off limits. The business men were here too, but in fewer numbers than in Tunis or Algiers. Cosima wondered how many tourists would be in Tripoli.

Delphine was supposed to be back by now. The clone here in Sousse had been easy to find, unlike the one in Tunis who’d gotten married and changed her name since the Leda List was compiled. Cosima double checked the time and confirmed that this clone’s appointment had been for 10:30, and then she texted Delphine.

Everything okay?

While she waited for a reply, she scrolled through her Facebook feed, finding very little that was new since that morning. Alison posted pictures of a black forest cheesecake from all angles; Cosima’s mother posted memes that she thought were hilarious and Cosima had seen ten years ago; Scott cracked science jokes; her father ranted about Republicans. Same old, same old. She thought about reading the news, but she’d done that earlier and had no desire to repeat the experience. She was nervous enough about going to Libya without reading that the country was “mired in chaos” and ruled by “men with guns.” She wanted to keep her worries confined to the language barrier.

“Anything else?” The bartender gestured to her empty tea cup.

“Yeah. Another one. Thank you. Merci. Shukraan (شكرا.)”

He gave her an indulgent smile and got her more hot water and some fresh tea.

Instagram yielded no new results, either. Five of the Ledas were hyper active there, posting so many photos of their personal lives that Cosima felt closer to them than to most of her own cousins at this point, and was becoming personally invested in the little drama that was brewing in the love life of one of the Austrian sisters. All total, Cosima tracked 33 Ledas through Instagram and 34 on Twitter, 11 of which were on both. None so far had symptoms of clone disease that they were sharing on social media, though the Leda in Cape Town, South Africa, did seem to have a worrying rash on her torso that had nothing to do with being a clone, but probably with a swimming in the ocean.

Her phone buzzed. Difficult patient. Delphine said.

Cosima arched an eyebrow. That could mean many things. And?

A reply wasn’t immediately forthcoming, and Cosima rubbed her face to keep from swearing. The restaurant was loud enough that she might’ve gotten away with it, but it was better not to risk it, even surrounded by foreigners. She tried to look out the window but a man pushed up to the bar and blocked the view. He was tall and broad, wearing what Cosima called the “I yell at my family in public” uniform.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Can we get a table, please? We’ve been waiting fifteen minutes!”

Cosima rolled her eyes and went back to her phone. No reply from Delphine, but another cake picture from Alison on Facebook – red velvet this time.

She pulled up Twitter and perked up again. A clone from southern California they hadn’t made contact with yet finally posted something. She was in Cambodia, it turned out, and she had a long thread about politics and southeast Asian history that was actually quite fascinating. And then Delphine replied to her text.

Still trying.

“Still trying? That doesn’t help, Delphine.” She tapped out her response. Do you need anything? Can I help?

She’d been at the bar for over an hour. She could have been up in their room, working on her thesis, or napping, or masturbating, or catching up on her reading. But Delphine had asked her to be here, to meet her after her 10:30 appointment at the clinic, because she was bringing one of her contacts from MSF, and this was an Important Contact. Cosima was wearing her nice shirt, for fuck’s sake, and she’d ironed her pants. They were going to eat lunch together, their treat for this Important Contact, so Cosima had not eaten since 8:30 that morning.

She typed some more. Do you have an ETA?

Three minutes later, as she watched the loud man yell at his son for touching the floral arrangement on the table they’d finally gotten, her phone buzzed. Her excitement faded when she saw it was just an email from her mother.

Cosima,

Here’s that dress company I told you about, based out of the City, very social-justice and queer oriented and I think right up your alley. It’s pricey but we’d be happy to help you out if….

She closed the message without finishing it. “I am not dress shopping online, goddamn it,” she muttered. “How many times do I have to f…. ugh. Mother.” She rubbed her face again and checked the time.

12:40 pm. Five minutes since her last message to Delphine, and more than two hours since the appointment at the clinic started.

A bearded man in a West Virginia University sweatshirt sat down beside her, apologized when he brushed against her knee, and placed his order with the bar tender in Arabic. Once the bartender left, he laced his fingers together and turned to Cosima. “Heckuva weather we’re having, yeah?”

“Yup. Sure is.”

“You know, I been coming here for ten years, and I swear this is the first time I’ve seen it rain.”

“Hm.”

He tapped the bar top. “Are those dreads you’ve got?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so! They look good!” He turned a little on his stool to face her more. “Usually white girls can’t pull those off, but yours look really good!”

“Thank you.” She checked her phone again. 12:45, and no new messages.

“Can I ask, if you don’t mind, what you did to make ‘em stay so well? Like, my cousin tried dreads, and she’s as white as me, and her hair stank!” He laughed and bumped into her knee again. “Like, it was just straight up matted and shit. What’s your secret?”

She drained her tea and looked him in the eye. “I’ve been genetically engineered.”

He chortled. “Okay. Fair enough. I shouldn’t have asked; I’m sorry.”

Cosima raised her eyebrows and did not respond. The bartender came with his order then – a steaming bowl of stew with a side of bread and a bottle of beer. The stew smelled amazing, and she still hadn’t gotten any messages from Delphine, so she called the bartender back over and ordered a bowl for herself. While she waited, the cups of tea crept up on her and she slid off to the ladies’ room, leaving her coat on the stool, pockets empty.

While she peed, she texted Delphine again. Is everything okay over there?

The clinic was on the same block as their hotel, and Cosima would have gone there herself an hour ago if they weren’t terrified of accidental clone meet ups.

She also finished her mother’s email about that dress shop in San Fransisco, which, Sally was keen to point out, also did tailoring for suits. Great.

Back at the bar, Cosima’s coat was still there, along with her food and a fresh cup of tea. The WVU man was wrapped up in conversation with a guy to his left, thankfully, and now there was a different customer to Cosima’s right – a woman with short wavy black hair, wearing a collared white shirt. As she walked towards her own seat, Cosima glanced down at the woman’s shoes. Sure enough, Keens, or Keens equivalents. Cosima’s phone buzzed.

Yes was all Delphine had to say. No ETA, no other information. Cosima put her phone back in her purse.

“Excuse me,” she said as she squeezed in between the two other customers to sit down.

“Sure, no problem,” the woman said, smiling at her. The WVU man did not seem to notice her return. “I hope no one was sitting here?”

“Oh, no,” Cosima assured her. “You’re fine.”

The soup was delicious, but spicier than she’d anticipated, so she got a glass of water and another serving of bread to help it go down. In minutes her sinuses opened up and she needed extra napkins, as well. The woman beside her got a salad and a glass of wine, and smiled at Cosima when she drained her water glass.

“A bit spicy, is it?” She was British, or Irish, judging by her accent.

Cosima nodded. The water helped, but her eyes watered and her nose ran, and it was a damn good thing she wasn’t trying to look good right now. She thought of Delphine’s MSF contact and checked her phone again. It was 1:10. No new messages. “Whatever.” She dropped it back in her purse and gave the rest of her soup her full attention. When she’d finished, she wiped the bowl with some more bread and finished her third glass of water. Beside her, the dark haired British woman watched her, sideways.

“I guess it was good,” the woman said.

“Yeah. Delicious.” She pointed to the half-full salad plate in front of her bar neighbor. “Yours wasn’t?”

The other woman shrugged. “I keep forgetting that I don’t like tomatoes. I order them every so often, thinking that some dish looks rather good, and then I eat one, and remember.”

Cosima smiled. “I’m like that with oysters and clams. Someone will rave about how good they are, and swear they’ve got a good recipe, but it’s always like eating a snot ball out of a shell.”

The other woman laughed at that, throwing her head back and showing off her neck in the process. “That is such an apt way to put it! They really are nature’s little snot balls, aren’t they? Tell me, have you read Tipping the Velvet?”

If she hadn’t suspected this woman was queer before, she sure did now. More than suspected. Cosima blushed a little and grinned. “I read it when I was, like, twenty. So yeah, but it’s been a while.”

“Well, I’ve read it several times, and every single time, when she’s going on and on about oysters and how she prepares them and all that, I just have to shake my head, because I find oysters absolutely disgusting, just as you do.”

“Are they better or worse than tomatoes?”

“Worse. A thousand times worse.” She picked around the tomatoes on her plate, eating pieces of cheese and lettuce speared on her fork. “If I may ask, what brings you to Tunisia?”

“Oh, it’s a, uh, a medical trip, of sorts.”

“Hm, I see. Like, medical tourism sort of thing? I’ve heard of that, and you’re American, I take it?”

“I am, yeah. No, it’s not for me. I mean, I’m not getting treated for anything.” She twisted her napkin between her fingers, trying hard to look nonchalant.

“You’re doing the treating, then, perhaps?”

“Something like that.”

“Cosima?”

She spun around to find Delphine three feet behind her, frowning. “Oh, hey! When did you get here?”

“I got here a few minutes ago, as I said in my message. Did you get my message?”

Cosima dug in her purse for her phone. “The last message I got just said…” She looked at her phone. Sure enough, two new messages from Delphine, at 1:12 and 1:20. It was now 1:27. “Shit.”

“You haven’t reserved a table, then, I take it.”

“They wouldn’t let me unless I could give a more specific time!”

“Well, if you’d checked your messages, you would have had one. But now we have to wait.” She gestured over to the hostess stand, where a West African man in a linen suit waved and headed in their direction through the other diners. “He has a busy schedule, you know. He is a doing us a favor.”

Cosima gathered her coat and purse. The bartender had their room number to charge for the meal, thankfully. Fussing over credit card payments wouldn’t improve either of their moods. “I do know that, and actually, Delphine, I’ve been checking my messages all day, and you weren’t sending any, so maybe you should lay off a little bit?”

It was not the right thing to say, and it was not the right time to say it, but it came out of Cosima’s mouth anyway. Delphine’s eyebrows went up. She glanced over at the woman to Cosima’s right, who was smart enough to pretend she wasn’t listening. “Well,” Delphine said, “at least you made a new friend.”

The man in the linen suit reached them and gave Cosima a broad smile.

“Dr. N’Jikam,” Delphine said, “this is Cosima Niehaus, my research partner.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Niehaus. Dr. Simplice N’Jikam, from Médecins Sans Frontières. Dr. Cormier and I used to work together. Perhaps she’s mentioned me.”

She put her best smile on for him and shook his hand. “Yes, she has. It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

As dramatic as Delphine was about waiting for a table, they only had to wait five minutes to get one. Cosima sat across from Delphine, with Dr. N’Jikam to her left. Predictably, Cosima wasn’t very hungry any more, but she ordered a carrot salad with hard boiled eggs and another cup of tea. Delphine ordered a lamb platter with couscous and vegetables. She must not have eaten since that morning, either. At least she seemed healthier than she had the day before.

Dr. N’Jikam started off the conversation as soon as they’d ordered. “So, you are going to Yemen.”

Delphine nodded. “That’s correct.”

“When do you plan to be there, and for how long?”

“We’re not sure exactly,” Cosima said. “It depends on how successful we are there. Right now, we have five days scheduled in early March, but that could change.”

The waiter brought their drinks – water for Delphine, coffee for Dr. N’Jikam, and mint tea for Cosima.

“And what exactly,” Dr. N’Jikam asked Delphine, “is your measure of success for this trip? What is your objective?”

“We’ve identified three women with a specific phenotype that puts them at risk for a terminal condition, and we plan to inoculate them against it, or cure them if they’ve already developed symptoms.”

His eyebrows rose. “What condition is that?”

“It’s only recently been discovered, so there’s not an agreed-upon name for it yet.”

“I see. And you’ve already identified patients already? How?”

“It’s a long story. Some of our connections back in Canada gave us the information.”

The answer satisfied him, and he sipped on his coffee. For Cosima, though, the effects of her earlier bowl of soup and all the accompanying water became pressing, so she excused herself, meeting Delphine’s “wtf” look with a wide eyes. Whatever. It would be worse to sit there bouncing and in pain, unable to focus. Waiting in line for the ladies room for the second time, she rummaged in her purse for her bottle of TUMS, and took two.

Back at the table, the food had once again arrived in her absence. Squeezed onto the table between the plates, glasses, silverware, decorative flower arrangement, and complimentary flatbread, Dr. N’Jikam had his tablet and a pad of line-free paper, which he and Delphine crouched over between bites. Delphine glanced at her when she sat down, and continued her conversation with Dr. N’Jikam in French.

Cosima ate her salad and listened, picking out about half of what Delphine said and less than a quarter of what Dr. N’Jikam said. She’d read that Cameroonian French was a little different than Canadian or Parisian French, but she hadn’t expected such a great difference. But then, Delphine wasn’t having any such difficulties. From what Cosima understood, they talked about the Yemeni refugee crisis, camps, transportation options, and money, and then Dr. N’Jikam said something that made Delphine laugh. Cosima raised her eyebrows at her, hoping for a translation, but none came.

At the end of the meal, Delphine excused herself to use the restroom, letting Cosima handle paying for the meal.

“How was it?” she asked Dr. N’Jikam.

“Pardon? Oh, it was excellent,” he said. He dabbed at his lips with the napkin and smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Cosima said. The food and the rain made her sleepy, but she needed to keep up appearances. “So, uh, how long have you been with MSF?”

“A long time. Twenty years, almost. And I’ve been, oh, I’ve been everywhere.” He laughed at that, so she smiled along. “But we’ve been talking the whole time, and you’ve said very little. Tell me, Miss Nyehouse, is it Nyehouse or Neuhaus? I can’t remember.”

“Uh, Niehaus, actually, but that’s not important.”

“It’s important to me.” Another grin. “So tell me, Miss Niehaus, how long are you working for Dr. Cormier?”

“Well, I’ve been working with her for about three years now.”

“Three years, okay. I’ve known her for almost five years, since right after her doctorate. I wasn’t aware before that she had any students.”

“She doesn’t.”

He paused, hand midair on its way to adjust his glasses. “No? I thought that…”

“Wait, did she tell you that I’m her student?”

Dr. N’Jikam did not miss the way Cosima leaned over the table as she spoke, and he leaned back to compensate. “Oh,” he laughed, “I don’t remember! You know, as we age, ours minds are not so good.”

“Right. Okay.”

He left as soon as Delphine got back, shaking their hands again and repeating his best wishes and his pleasure at having met them both. Delphine promised to keep in touch throughout their travels.

At the elevators, Cosima told Delphine, “You know, if you didn’t need me to be there, you could have just said so.”

Delphine rolled her head around on her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“You know I understood like, less than half of that entire conversation. You made it pretty obvious you didn’t need my contribution.”

Delphine sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. An elevator at the end of the row dinged, and they hustled to get on it along with a gaggle of rain soaked tourists. They flattened themselves against the back wall. “He prefers speaking in French,” Delphine said.

“Does he really. English didn’t seem to be much an issue for him when we first sat down, or after you’d gone to the bathroom.”

The elevator stopped to let some people off at the third floor, and replace them with a Japanese couple in bath robes, fresh from the third floor sauna. Cosima could have been at the sauna during that entire lunch, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Whatever.

“How about our patient?” she asked. “You said she was difficult.”

“She refused the vaccination. Nothing I said, nothing her doctor said, convinced her, and she left without it. After talking my ears off about every medical problem she’s ever had, and how doctors are responsible for every single one of them.”

“Oh sh… shoot, really?” That had never happened before. Usually, once the doctor explained it, the patient accepted the vaccine. The trick was often just getting them into the doctor’s office to begin with.

“Really. She claims that vaccines made her infertile.”

The elevator stopped at the eighth floor and let out everyone else, then moved on up to the tenth, where Cosima and Delphine got off.

“The doctor is trying to bring her back the day after tomorrow,” Delphine said. “If she still refuses, though…”

“She won’t. We’ll think of something.” Cosima reached for her arm, but Delphine moved away to unlocked the door and push it open.

Inside the room, Delphine set up her papers on her bed, and sat in the armchair next to it with her laptop. “Dr. N’Jikam sent us both a list of other contacts we should talk to. Some are in Libya, which he doesn’t know as much about, but cautions us against visiting.”

Cosima opened her laptop on the desk. She had had other ideas for the afternoon, especially since it seemed they’d be staying in Sousse longer than originally planned. Delphine was buried in her work, though, chewing on a thumbnail, so Cosima might as well follow suit.

“Great. Sounds like a perfect afternoon.”

* * *

That night, after pouring over Dr. N’Jikam’s information, calling and emailing his contacts in Yemen, Libya, and a Jordanian refugee camp, and a last minute phone call with one of Art’s Arabic translators, the walls of their little hotel room were pressing in against both of them. Cosima’s eyes hurt from differentiating tiny Arabic words from other tiny Arabic words and staring at screens, but there was one more email to write.

Dear Dr. Lacrabére,

I was directed to you by Dr. Simplice N’Jikam of Médecins Sans Frontières because

“It goes the other way.”

“Huh?”

Delphine stood behind her, one hand in her damp hair. “It’s Dr. Lacrabère, not Lacrabére. You need the accent grave, not aigu.”

“Oh. Shit. Thank you.”

Delphine walked on towards their suitcase and said, “It’s not Spanish.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that, thanks.” She finished the email, watching Delphine’s eyebrows do that sarcastic little wiggle in her peripheral vision. “By the way, did you tell Dr. N’Jikam that I’m your student?”

“What?”

“He thought I was your student. Like, your graduate student or something.”

Delphine dug around her suitcase for a bottle of lotion. “I don’t know why. I introduced you as my research partner. You were there when I introduced you, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“I dunno. It was just weird, that’s all.”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed lotion into feet. “You should take your shower now, so you’re not up too late. I’m going to talk to the doctor at the clinic again tomorrow.”

Cosima refrained from replying with “yes, Dr. Cormier,” but she got up and gathered her shower things. At the bathroom door she turned back and saw Delphine massaging lotion into her left calf, her eyes closed.

The hotel bathroom was nice, with a bathtub and strong water pressure from the shower head. She let the water beat against her back, her head bowed. When she got out of the shower later, Delphine would probably be in bed. A different bed, because of course no one could know they were lovers, so they had separate twin beds. Again. Delphine’s eyes would be covered, and she’d be turned away from Cosima because the light was on Cosima’s side of the room. She would not want to talk, either about important topics or trivial ones. And then she would get up early in the morning to try convincing their sister here in Sousse that she needed a vaccine. And Cosima would…. what?

Maybe she’d stay in tomorrow. The forecast called for more rain, after all. She could work on her dissertation, enter more data and run some preliminary stats on them. She could go back to the restaurant and drink a couple more gallons of mint tea. She could stay in bed all day, and it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

She turned off the shower and leaned against the tile wall. How long would it take for Delphine to wonder what she was doing in here, or what was taking her so long? Or was Delphine still so annoyed with her that she was happy to have Cosima out of the bedroom for a while?

The steam from the shower swirling around her, she slid down in the bathtub, her face in her hands. Tears pushed out of her eyes before she could stop them, and then she was sobbing.

A minute or so later, the door opened, and Cosima took some deep breaths to try to gain some control, hands still over her face.

“Cosima? Hey, hey, hey….” And then Delphine’s hands were on her neck, and her arm was around her shoulders. “Shh… come here.”

She leaned onto Delphine’s shoulder and cried some more, soaking her T-shirt and clinging to her arms with wet fingers. “I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not seeing your messages, for not knowing French better, for not helping you cure the Ledas, for everything.”

Delphine stroked her arms and her back and kissed her head. “Chérie, it’s okay. I don’t expect you to know French very well, and you cannot help me with the Ledas any more than you already are. You know that. You already do so much for them, anyway. And the thing with the messages was just a mistake, a misunderstanding. It’s okay.”

“It didn’t seem that okay earlier.”

Delphine’s chest rose and fell as she sighed. “I was just… irritated earlier. That’s all. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

Cosima held on to her, nose in the crook of her neck. Delphine had some new jasmine-scented body wash that smelled okay, but didn’t smell like Delphine. Cosima wanted her to smell liked Delphine again, goddammit. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I know. Je t’aime aussi.” She kissed her eyes, her lips, and the tip of her nose. “We should get you out of this tub, though.”

“Yeah, this isn’t very comfortable.” She let Delphine help her out of the tub and into a towel. “Are you still mad at me?”

“No,” Delphine said. “I was, but I’m not anymore.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I was a little bit pissed at you, too.”

“Are you still?”

She shook her head and finished drying herself off. “No, not anymore. I… I can see why you were upset. I should’ve just kept my phone out the whole time so I’d see your messages, and…”

Delphine folded the towel in half and hung it up on the rod next to hers. “Maybe. I don’t think I would’ve been quite so upset with you if you hadn’t been talking to that girl, though, if we’re being completely honest.”

“That girl?” Cosima smiled now as she pulled on her shorts. “She’s, like, our age or older.”

“Oh? Is she?”

There was an edge in Delphine’s voice, so Cosima put her hands on Delphine’s waist. “I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell me. There is nothing for you to worry about. I’m engaged to you, and nobody else.” She kissed her, but pulled back after a moment. “I mean, we are still engaged, aren’t we?”

Delphine’s laugh turned into a cough. “Yes, we are still engaged! Just because we can’t tell everyone doesn’t change that fact. Now come on, let’s go to bed.”

Cosima tucked herself into bed and watched Delphine tweeze her eyebrows with the help of a pocket mirror. Delphine did that most nights, and some mornings, sometimes also yanking hairs from her nostrils in ways that made Cosima’s eyes water just watching her do it. “What would your eyebrows look like if you didn’t do that?” she asked.

“Euhh… let’s not find out, okay?” She got one more hair from her left eyebrow and closed the mirror, then turned off the overhead light and sat on the edge of Cosima’s bed, looking down at her. “I want to stay attractive for you as long as possible.”

“Yeah, same here. I mean, for myself. For you.” She wasn’t terribly attractive at the moment, of course, but she wasn’t going to bring that up.

Delphine rubbed Cosima’s abdomen through the blankets. “I’m sorry the beds are so small.”

“It’s not your fault. And it’s not forever. Here.” She scooted all the way to one side and pulled the blanket back. “You can climb in for a minute if you want.”

“A minute.” Delphine stretched herself out under the heavy blankets and faced Cosima. “I think we’re both very tired.”

“Yeah, and you’re still sick, even if you’re moving around better.” She linked her fingers with Delphine’s. “I don’t want you to think that I don’t appreciate everything you do. For us, I mean. For all of us.”

Delphine kissed her eyes, damp again with tears. “I don’t think that. I know that you do.”

“Good.”

“And I don’t do any of it by myself. I couldn’t do any of it by myself, and I would never want to.”

Cosima thought of Delphine earlier that day, spending hours trying to convince a clone that she had a condition that would kill her one day. “Do you want me to go to the clinic with you? To try convincing our skeptical Tunisian sister?”

Delphine gave an amused little huff. “I would like that very much, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Right. Probably not.” She tucked herself as close to Delphine as possible, angling her face so that Delphine wasn’t breathing directly into her eyes. Delphine wiggled her arm so she could hold Cosima’s hand between their faces.

“Of course she’s allowed to refuse, but I have some ideas that might convince her.”

“Ideas that don’t involve clone disclosure.”

“Of course.”

“Are we still doing our five day rule if she keeps refusing?”

Delphine groaned. “No. I think, if she refuses a second time, we let her refuse, and we move on. She’ll have our information, we’ll have hers, and we can always come back. I am not arguing with her for five days.”

“Fair enough. That sounds like a plan, then. We really do need to come up with a decent name for this disease, though. Maybe not tonight, but some time before we’ve cured everybody.”

“I’ve been thinking of one, actually. I thought of it today, when Inès was questioning everything I said.”

“Yeah?” Cosima propped herself up a few inches. “Can I hear it?”

“I was thinking we could call it Fitzsimmon’s Carcinoma.”

Cosima remembered the chipper swim coach whose body had taught them so much about what their disease was and the ways that it couldn’t be treated, and she smiled. “I like it.”

“I hoped you would.” She pulled Cosima closer and snuggled against her body. “I didn’t want to name it without your permission.”

“Well, you have my enthusiastic permission to use it. I’ll tell the sestras tomorrow.” She yawned into Delphine’s chest and kissed her her collarbone. “Je t’aime,” she whispered.

Delphine giggled. “I love you, too. Very much.”

And with one hand tucked into Delphine’s, and the fingers on her other hand hooked on the waist of Delphine’s shorts, Cosima drifted off to sleep.

Talk to Me, Chapt. 4

I played a little bit with the style for this one, which may or may be noticeable. Let me know what you think!

Takes place between episodes 5×08 and 5×09, with some minor canon divergence at the end.  The entire work can be found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11697588?view_full_work=true

---

Helena was missing.

Siobhan Sadler was dead.

Neolution-affiliated cops were AWOL.

And Delphine had a plane ticket to Charles de Gaulle Airport for seven o’clock tomorrow morning.

Cosima tried keeping her voice level. “You said it was done.”

Delphine looked up from her phone. She’d been buried in it, or in her laptop, all morning, pausing only to tell Cosima about her flight, five minutes ago. “The work is done. Neolution is exposed.”

“Exposed doesn’t mean dead. And you’re still flying to France.”

“Yes. This contact of ours, he… he risked a lot to help us, and now he needs our help.”

“Then send Adele! Or someone else!”

Delphine’s eyebrows arched. “Adele’s French is terrible, you know that. That’s why they needed me so much in Geneva.”

“I thought you were in Geneva to, to- ” She snapped her fingers a few times. “- to show them how to put all the pieces together, or whatever. That’s what Siobhan said.” Forty-eight hours ago they’d had that conversation. Maybe less than that. “And besides, your contact probably speaks better English than half of North America, so the French part doesn’t even matter.”

“Cosima…”

“What?”

“I told you when I got here that I might have to leave again, and soon.”

“Yeah, you told me lots of things.” Her heart was pounding again, making her whole body tremble. She pushed her palms against her waist to keep herself together.

Delphine rose and went to her, socked feet silent on the floor, and she took Cosima’s face in her hands. Her hands were always cold, like her feet and the tip of her nose, and being in the basement of the Rabbit Hole didn’t help much, but they were soft. “I will be back soon. I promise.”

As cool as her fingers were, Delphine’s arms were warm, and her body was warm when Cosima leaned against it. It was warm and firm and alive, goddamn it. Her breath tickled Cosima’s ear and her pulse thumped against the side of her neck where Cosima rested her cheek.

Fucking hell, hadn’t she cried enough this week?

“Neolution is wiping out the people who let this happen,” she said, as calmly as her body allowed, into Delphine’s shoulder. “They know you. They know what you’ve done, and they are keeping all of their eyes out for you.”

Delphine’s lips brushed her hairline. “Yes, they are, and yes, they do. And I am being as cautious as possible, chérie. I have every intention of coming back and seeing you again.”

The tears came out then, leaking from Cosima’s eyes and into the cotton of Delphine’s shirt. “Yeah, Siobhan had that intention, too.”

Delphine sighed and kissed her temple, then shifted her weight and the position of her arms around Cosima. Maybe she was uncomfortable. Cosima just held on tighter.

“Who’s gonna tell me you’re dead this time?” she asked. “PT himself? Maybe he’ll send Mud over to tell me, with that damn cow bell around her neck. Or maybe I’ll just sit here wondering, like I did last time, letting my imagination fill in the fucking blanks for me.”

“Cosima, shhh… I’ll be safe.”

“How do you know?”

Delphine brushed away her tears with a cool finger. “I have some experience with this, you know.”

“Yeah? Last time you flew anywhere, PT still thought he had you in his pocket. Situation’s changed a bit.”

She sighed again. “Yes, it has, but…”

“Delphine, they got Helena!”

As Cosima raised her voice, Delphine stepped back and looked away, but Cosima kept going.

“If they can get Helena, what the hell makes you think they can’t get you? You’re not exactly a trained assassin who’s spent her life going under the radar.”

Delphine didn’t answer. She had her hands on her hips, in the fashion of Dr. Cormier, and she looked at the table of inoculation vials in various stages of readiness.

“And I mean,” Cosima added, swallowing some of her angst, “I was kinda hoping you’d help us out with this whole ‘Curing the Ledas’ business, too, and you can’t really do that if you’re dead. You can’t really do that if you’re sitting in France alive, either, but that’s not what I’m worried about.”

“You don’t need my help, chérie.” Delphine smiled at her, her eyes a bit damper than usual as well.

At least she wasn’t angry. Cosima hooked a finger in the waist of Delphine’s pants and pulled her close again. “Maybe I don’t. But I want it.”

She kissed her gently, recommitting to memory the specific shape and texture of each of Delphine’s lips, individually and together. It wouldn’t be their last kiss, but the last one could be soon, and Cosima wasn’t about to let them to go to waste.

Delphine’s phone buzzed, breaking the moment.

“It’s Adele,” she said. Her eyes shuttled back and forth over the message, her lips pouting.

The little fire in Cosima’s stomach flared. “Okay, so what does Adele have to say? Or can’t you tell me?”

“No, it’s okay. I told you, I’ll tell you everything.”

“And yet…” Cosima paced in a tiny circle. “And yet, you’re not telling me.”

Delphine clicked her tongue against her teeth. “It’s about our contact in Kuwait, Fawzi Al Harbi. He, uh… he was found dead in his private swimming pool last night, and all of his private security guards have gone missing.”

Dead. Security guards missing. The fire in Cosima’s gut roared now, and she pressed one hand against her stomach and another on her lower back to keep it inside. “Let me guess. There are no suspects at this time.”

“No.”

She paced around the perimeter of the lab, counting her breaths in Spanish like she had as a teenager, before she discovered the anti-anxiety properties of weed. God, she needed some right now, though, and stupid fucking Scott let the whole crop go to waste while she was on the island. That bastard.

“Chérie. This doesn’t mean…”

“This doesn’t mean you have to go! This contact, this guy in Paris, whose name I don’t even know, is his life in so much danger that yours is worth risking?” She was shouting again, and she didn’t care. “And if, maybe it is, okay, but what are you going to be able to do to save him? If Neolution is creeping up behind him, what are you going to do to stop them?”

Delphine pushed her hair back. “Move him out of their line of sight, primarily. Put him somewhere where they can’t get to him.”

“Yeah, where’s that?”

“Well, I was considering putting him here.”

“Here?”

“But.” Delphine held up a finger. “I am also considering many other options. I won’t know how viable they are, though, unless I go to France.”

Cosima kicked at a piece of chipped paint on the wall near the stairs, out of reasonable objections and running out of hope. “I guess my opinion on the subject doesn’t really matter much, does it?”

Delphine let out a mix between a sigh and a groan. “Cosima, please.”

“No, no, it’s cool. You know a lot more about this stuff than I do. Obviously.”

Delphine was silent, but the look on her face said, “yes, I do.”

Well, she wasn’t going to cry any more over it if she could help it. She crossed her arms. “Your flight leaves at seven, you said?”

“Yes. So I should leave here around 4:30.”

It was almost noon. A walk sounded great right now, a brisk stomping stroll around the city to clear her head and burn off some nervous energy, but she only had sixteen and a half hours left with Delphine. Possibly ever. She wasn’t going to cry again.

“This isn’t what I want, either,” Delphine said.

“Yeah, you know, you say that a lot.”

And Delphine had that look on her face again. The one she’d had back in Minnesota, and various points since. That kicked puppy dog look where she’d thought everything was okay until Cosima stuck a pin into that idea. “Cosima,” she said, “please don’t push against this.”

“Right. Defy them. Not defy you.”

“It isn’t like that. I’m not doing Neolution’s business, I’m not doing anything against the clones, or against you.”

“Funny, it sure feels like you are.”

In the past, Delphine might’ve grabbed at her arms, but now she stood still, sucking on her lower lip. “I wish I could promise you it will all be okay.”

“Please don’t.”

“I won’t. I can’t. I can’t even promise you that we’ll be safe staying her, where you’ve been safe all along. Neolution could be lingering right outside the door. Hell-wizard could be a Neolution plant who’s just biding his time until he kills you and delivers me to Westmoreland.”

“Oh, come on, now you’re just making fun of me.”

“Not at all. My point is this – I’m not in any more danger flying to France than staying here.”

“I don’t really agree with you there.”

“No? Siobhan’s house, think about that. That was the safest place to be, outside of this room, wasn’t it?”

“Only when she was in it, and not even then. They had a safe house for a fucking reason.”

“Would you feel better if I brought Benjamin with me?”

Now she really was teasing. “Benjamin doesn’t trust you.”

“Yes, I know that. And Sarah hates me again, and Felix has avoided me for the past twenty-four hours. I’m surprised Detective Bell hasn’t dropped by to ask me a few questions, but there’s still time for that. And you’re angry with me, too. Perhaps I should bring Adele along after all; she seems to be the only person other than Scott and Charlotte whose feelings for me haven’t soured.”

“Oh, come on.” Cosima rolled her head around. If Delphine wanted to get a rise out of her, it wasn’t going to work. “Alison still likes you.”

Delphine snorted, both hands in her hair. “Yes, quite a lot apparently. She’s beside herself telling me how thankful she is for my sacrifices. I never quite know what to say in response.” She tried a small smile, which Cosima didn’t return, then let her hands fall to her sides.

Cosima watched her, meeting her eyes long enough for Delphine to break away, to go back to the desk with her laptop and her phone and her arrangements. Nothing Cosima could do would change her mind, and if their positions were reversed, Cosima would be doing the same thing. Well, with some slight adjustments – more sex and less fidgeting with logistics, for example.

“I’m sorry,” Delphine said, “I have to make some phone calls. It’s okay if you stay and listen if you want to, though.”

It was probably meant as a sweet gesture of trust, but Cosima shook her head. “I, uh, I think I’ll go for a walk, actually. Maybe get some lunch.”

Delphine nodded, her phone already to her ear and a notepad on her lap. “Okay, I’ll see you soon. Je t’aime.”

She was almost at the top of the stairs when she heard the last words, and when she turned, Delphine was in a conversation with someone in French. She met Cosima’s eyes, though, and smiled when Cosima blew a kiss at her. It was the best she could do.

* *

She walked down the street several blocks until she reached the professional district, where people in crisp suits chatted about computer codes and networks as they waited for food at various food trucks. Cosima stood behind a gaggle of young office workers waiting for Korean tacos, and listened to them talking over each about teleworking and webinars, words she hoped would never come out of her own mouth. When it was her turn, she ordered three bulgogi tacos with pickled cabbage and lime crema, and a chicken bowl with poached egg and salsa for Delphine.

Back at the Rabbit Hole, she found Delphine in the same position, laptop, phone, notepad, and all. She leaned beside her, butt resting on the desk, and put the taco bowl next to her laptop. “Here. You didn’t have much breakfast.”

Delphine’s eyes still had bags under them that hadn’t been there two years ago, but she smiled and thanked her. “What is it?”

“Chicken and egg bowl. Nothing pickled, don’t worry.”

Delphine pulled a stool over with her foot and gestured for Cosima to sit. They ate together in silence, with Delphine checking her phone every few bites. Sometimes it buzzed and she swiped it open, plastic knife still between her fingers, but then she frowned and put it down again. Cosima watched, and ate.

The phone buzzed again as Cosima gathered up their trash, but this time, Delphine jumped up. She swirled her finger over the screen, then held it to her ear as she ran up the stairs and out of the lab. Cosima sighed, and pondered.

Maybe she could hide Delphine’s computer, and then, while she searched for it, run her cell phone through the autoclave. She’d be pissed, of course, and the scenario probably wouldn’t end with her lying naked in bed with Cosima, but it was an idea.

Overhead, Delphine paced. Her footsteps went north, then south, then north again across the floor of the comic shop. Once in a while, Hell-wizard’s chair rolled a foot or so and back again. Cosima poked the inoculation vials. She could go to France instead of Delphine, but her French was even worse than Adele’s, and Delphine had already vetoed the suggestion of Cosima joining her.

Maybe she could fold herself inside Delphine’s suitcase.

After ten minutes, Delphine returned. Her feet were soft on the steps, and she smiled.

“Well, I’m guessing no one we care about is dead,” Cosima said.

“No. No one’s dead. Ehm, no one’s dead that wasn’t dead before, at any rate.” Her smile slipped, and Cosima laughed despite herself.

“That’s also good. No zombies, please.”

“Right.” Delphine tucked her hands in her back pockets and looked as shy as she had at Revival, when she returned out of the blue from Sardinia. “Um… I was wondering… do you still want me to stay?”

“Like, stay here, instead of going to France?”

She nodded.

“Fuck yeah I want you stay. I’m not really under any illusions about you doing it, though.”

“Well, maybe you should be.”

This was different. “Oh?”

“Yes. Um, Adele called while you were out, and, well, we talked, and she offered to go to France in my place.”

“Even though her French sucks?”

Delphine shrugged. “It’s maybe not that important, after all. And, maybe we don’t have to hide our contact in France, you know. There are other countries close by.”

“Yeah, I guess Europe’s a small place.”

Delphine stood there, looking hopeful and vulnerable and cute as hell, but Cosima waited. Too many shoes had dropped between them for there not to be another one dangling just overhead. Cosima picked at a little metal spur under her seat and chewed on her tongue.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Delphine said.

“I am happy.”

“That’s not how you look.”

Because something could still fall through. Because maybe Adele would change her mind at the last minute and Delphine would still fly away before sunrise tomorrow, and maybe she wouldn’t come back. Cosima rose and put her hands on Delphine’s waist. “I am happy. I promise.”

And then Delphine’s hands were on her face and her lips were on hers. She tasted like eggs and salsa, and she probably hated the taste of Cosima’s mouth, but she kissed her anyways.

“If Adele changes her mind,” Cosima said, once they’d pulled apart, “then…”

“If she does, I will be very angry with her.”

She grinned. Delphine Cormier really, truly angry at her was an experience best left in Cosima’s memory. “Has she ever seen you angry?”

“No.”

That might be for the best. Adele had the vibe of someone who could rip a person to shreds when pissed, too. “Are you really staying?”

Delphine kissed her again. “Yes. I am staying. I needed to do some work before I knew for sure, but now I do.”

“Mmm…” She nuzzled the side of her neck. “In that case, maybe I can pull you away from your little machines for a few hours, hm?”

“Maybe.” A little bite when her neck met her shoulder made her twitch. “But we just ate.”

“Okay. So we can wait a few hours. Digest, have quick showers, brush our teeth, all that. Then we can have Thank Fuck You’re Not Going to France sex.”

Delphine took her ear between her teeth and tugged a little. “Oui. We’ll do all of those things.”

Cosima pulled back, ready to find some other activity to occupy her mind until then, but Delphine held her back.

“You know, just because I’m not flying anywhere, that doesn’t mean we’re completely safe. I was talking to Adele about that, as well, and, you know, we’re taking risks that maybe we shouldn’t be taking.”

Back to this conversation, then. Okay. “I know. I know that every time I walk out that door some Neolution heavy might be waiting to pop my head off for stealing that boat, or trying to get the cure away from me. I’ve been sitting with that for a while. And you’re not safe here, either, that’s true. But at least here…” Her voice cracked and she took a deep breath.

“At least what?”

“At least here I know if you’re alive or not. At least I can see you.”

So much for not crying. Delphine kissed her eyelids and her cheeks and held her face in her hands until the tears stopped coming.

“Just stay here,” she whispered.

“I will,” Delphine said. “I’ll stay.”

Hot damn, Continuing Travels of Cophine is 54,000+ words long, you guys.  That’s longer than a NaNo novel!  

NaNoWriMo?

Are any of you fine people doing NaNoWriMo this year?  Do you want a writing buddy?  If so, you can find me (and an excerpt of my current project) @ ce_ucumatli on the NaNo site.  

Happy writing!