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She decides to stay at the cemetery after funeral despite the rain and too cold for the September wind because she feels – not long now; she sees it in Alison’s eyes when they pass by her, sitting on the bench with her black coat collecting crystal drops. Donny doesn’t look at her; neither does Felix – she catches his arm to stop him and make him look her in the eyes; he still doesn’t. When she asks him to look after Kira till she’s back, he mutters something unintelligible but nods; she feels relieved, because Kira’s still too small to be a witness of something like this; funerals are enough. She doesn’t cry – that’s also a good thing, because Sarah doesn’t have a clue how to comfort her; not in this situation. Cosima would give her advice; funny.
Delphine’s still at the grave – long black coat, sunglasses, no umbrella; Sarah genially feels pity for her, but she sees by the way Delphine’s standing there, hair and face are wet, staring at the silver-grey sky behind the tombstone – Sarah is the last person she wants to see right now. Sarah is the last person she wants to see any time of her life, now.
No, maybe not. Maybe, the person in the mirror is the last one; and Sarah is next to her, hating her own reflection just as much. They are even, she thinks, though Delphine probably really doesn’t care about it. She has a huge decision to make now whether she’s going to live her life through or she’s going to end up next to Cosima soon; Sarah doubts she would chose the last option, no matter how much she wants to. She saw scientific skepticism shattering to pieces at the morgue; she sees its fragments being washed away with the rain. Whatever Delphine knows, whatever she believes in, no matter how stupid heaven or hell or any other concept of afterlife she considers to be, now she will always be afraid of meeting Cosima face to face and looking her in the eyes.
“I never thought it would happen so soon,” – and the accent breaks her voice the way tears should, but there’re no tears. Sarah believes, she’s cried out all of them before Sarah’s got to their apartment to give her a ride. She just watches her walking toward wooden morgue doors with a bag. No skirts, no Cosima-like shirts or dresses; Sarah thinks, Delphine wants to burn them, just can’t; thinks to offer her help.
“I just thought she would look too vulgar in her red dress like… that.” Sarah nods slightly; she blames herself for thinking the same thing the last time they’ve spoken on Skype; but, then – she didn’t know it was the last time.
Might be, she felt something, clicking on the red button; might be, the same feeling keeps her under the rain now.
She starts missing Kira the moment she hears the stiletto tapping on her left; she lets Rachel get comfortable, watching Delphine adjusting something at the tombstone.
“For the first time I truly regret being that smart.”
Yeah, Sarah wants to say, me too; but she can’t even turn her head. She wishes Kira was here; wishes that little vessel of hope fly between them, forcing Sarah to look at Rachel; and then look at Sarah with this dreadful maturity in her eyes and go somewhere not too far but enough to let them space for a private conversation.
Maybe she could go to Delphine; touch her with her little arm and make her see the sunlight peeping out where a cloud is thin enough.
Maybe she could show them all that there’s still something important here; that she’s still with them; that they’d accomplish something in the end.
But there is no Kira; there is no sunlight even behind the brightest spot of the sky – there is nothing but Rachel Duncan ironically rumbling about how she was too smart outwitting them and stealing the cure, the rain and Delphine holding something that Sarah swore to Kira she would offer to aunty Cosima herself.
“For the first time I truly regret I’m not you.”
Rachel chuckles; her voice is husky and tired; Sarah closes her eyes to pretend she doesn’t notice (“well, okay, maybe that isn’t as good as we thought it would be, but, hey – you can plan your plastic surgery beforehand, right?”).
“Do you regret being not as smart?”
“Being not as cold.” She turns her head just enough to see Rachel’s legs; she wears pants.
“But still I’m here. There is a flaw in your concept of me, Sarah.” That sounds hysterically sad; and there is that sigh, like – there is a flaw in the concept of me in whole; Sarah clenches her teeth.
“Growing old, one grows sentimental; make a note for yourself.”
“You sound like Cosima.”
“Death equalizes all of us, I believe.”
It’s been raining for a whole week now, Sarah muses; she remembers it drowsily pattering on the windshield – the only sound except for their calm, quiet breath. “I never thought it would happen so soon,” – and the accent breaks Sarah’s heart the way she never suspected to be so relentless.
Rachel’s face is right on her left now, and she closes her eyes again and thrusts fingers in the soaked hair.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Am I not being wanted here?”
“You’re unbearable.”
“We are the same after all.”
You didn’t kill her, you know, Sarah wants to say, scratching the steering wheel; it’s okay to want to be alive while someone else’s dying; but she can’t. She lets those words be lost in the silence and rain then; they flow down her face with mascara now.
“You never think about how little time you have until there’s only hours left.”
Sarah counts to herself, breath slowing down.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
She can feel Rachel's smiling absently, watching dump soil under her feet.
“I thought I had enough time to make you suffer. Taking your daughter away from you, again. Taking down your brother. Kidnapping Alison’s children. Blackmailing DYAD. Anatomizing your sister. Anything to have you back under my control.”
It’s okay, Delphine, she wants to say; she wants to touch her hand, to offer a hug – but she can’t, because Delphine doesn’t need to be deceived by one with the face she’s going to see in nightmares for the rest of her life. Dead must stay dead; alive must stay away.
“I would love to kick your arse a couple more times.”
“Of course you would.”
She knows she’s bought a ticket to Paris in the middle of August; she knows she’s sent her resume to Sorbonne two days before their last conversation on Skype. She knows Delphine wants to kiss her and touch her and tell her she loves her; she knows she keeps the glasses in the pocket of her jacket. She knows it because Delphine says it on their way through slumbering September noon.
She inhales deeply, as if it doesn't smell of damp foliage and soil; decay.
“Slap you and put the gun in your face again, and then put out your another bloody eye, so you would wear some fancy gadget to see me at our next encounter. And we would call you robo-clone or something and make more silly puns.”
“You do make puns about it?”
“Yeah.”
Rachel rolls her remaining eye, Sarah knows it; so she chuckles. She manages to look at her thighs and waist; her belt is something very ascetic and plain and the clutch on her knees is a little too small for what’s inside.
“I would probably lay low for some time after that, saving my strength and my resources for one final strike.”
“And we would sleep with one our eye open until the day we think you’re gone for good.”
“And that would be the exact day I attack you from behind.”
“Yup. No improvisation whatsoever.”
It’s next to impossible, but they laugh, together; though Sarah’s laughter sounds like bark and Rachel holds back all the loud sounds.
“But, when there would be a moment when we finally admit irresistible attraction to each other and make everything even messier and more complicated by self-indulgently letting lust prevail over other, deadlier animalistic impulses?”
It’s not enough air to breath; all of it is gone and replaced by water, both inside and outside, and Sarah chokes.
“Bet you’d be gentle, dominatrix wannabe.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“In time.”
Rachel keeps silent, considering; then shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
“Still, imagine Alison and Cosima’s faces when they learn we’re shagging.”
“I wouldn’t ever want to become a member of your little club.”
“Bollocks. You cherish that dream since the beginning.”
“You are wrong.”
“I am right. You’re lonely in life.”
“I’m much lonelier in death.”
Her face is wrinkled and yellow, like old burnt paper; her eye became watery and bloodshot. She used her lipstick but it only made her look worse as her lips are too big on the emaciated bony face. Her hair is grey; she doesn’t even try to dye it anymore. She wears, in vain, a white turtleneck under the jacket to hide her neck grown flabby and over pigmented, though yet not as much as Cosima’s or Alison’s. Her jaw trembles a little, as well as her arms when she loosens her hold on the heavy clutch; her infamous smirk is unsteady and weak. Sarah wants to turn away and not to see it – ever; but she leans toward instead; her eyes are shut, lips are numb.
“Not anymore.”
Rachel watches her with that ironical surprise she’s mastered over the years – the one which makes Sarah feel uncomfortable and uncertain of what she’s just done. They stare at each other stubbornly, drops falling down their faces; Sarah regrets for Kira not being here once more – maybe she would come closer now, stand in front of Rachel and hug her or pet her or just say “we--”
“I--”
“Oh, please. It’s either too late or too early for that.”
She sounds arrogant and mocking but with unmistakable bittersweet echo of pity; it’s reflected on her face, so she looks aside.
“All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain.”
Sarah stiffens, waiting for the continuation; Rachel looks so proud and satisfied with the words as if she’s made them up just now; but then snorts not even trying to hide a smile.
“Robo-clone, yeah.” Sarah puffs drops from her lips, though she never intended it to be a whisper. Rachel lifts her chin up.
“It’s been a cliché since the very beginning. There can’t be too much drama now.”
She draws her eyes over Sarah’s face, then over her shoulder; her voice becomes powerful, commanding and cold, just like that first time in her office.
“Try to save somebody you still can.”
Sarah hesitates; the rain’s growing stronger, with distant thunder over a church.
“And I shall visit father.”
Sarah hesitates, muses if she should bid her farewell somehow, but it’s too cold and wet now and Rachel’s expression implies she’s overstaying her welcome; so she just huffs and stands, turning toward the gates.
She feels something like phantom pain deep inside the strands of her DNA, walking forward numbly; deep inside her being. Delphine catches up with her on a small crossroad – no sunglasses, eyes are lowered, wet face is pale and slightly despondent behind the raised collar; she’s shivering.
“I think I have a blanket in the car.”
A particularly loud rumble of thunder catches them at the parking lot; Sarah freezes with her hand on the handle, ready to turn around; but Delphine’s plunges into the car, grinning sardonically, and she follows her a moment later.