Jemma Simmons is a terrible liar (needanewplan) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-10-22 22:31:00 |
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It seemed that any time Cosima and her sisters made any sort of headway, it was all ripped away from them just as quickly. Of course, she and Sarah had moved ahead on the deal with Susan without really stopping to think it through and discuss it with Mrs. S. It was a decision made mostly out of haste because Cosima was dying, and she and Scott didn’t have the proper lab to do what they needed to in order to make a cure. So it was a deal with the devil, and oh how it had backfired.
It had backfired in an epic fashion.
Kendall was dead, and Cosima had been there, had thought that she was going to die as well. But they’d let her live, though they’d broken her heart along with her spirit with the comment about Delphine being dead.
She’d woken up with the emotional turmoil. Cosima just went through the motions getting ready to head to work. Her normally cheerful demeanor was nowhere to be seen. Cosima didn’t even think she could fake a smile today, but she should at least be able to focus on work. It was possibly for the best that she was working at the Agency today instead of on her dissertation because there was no way she could concentrate enough to write that.
Cosima was quiet upon arriving at work, trying to keep her dream bleed over to herself. She peered through a microscope, noting her observations, but having no real conviction behind it. If she were honest, she just wanted to crawl into a hole and die because it had been her fault that Kendall was dead.
The gunshot echoed in her head and she jumped a bit, glancing around momentarily before realizing it was just an echo from the dream. She rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes before sliding her glasses off to look into the microscope again.
Jemma was… well, she wasn’t sure. The dream she had woken up from had been typical, really. A mission that nearly blew up in their faces (quite literally as she was dealing with a biological bomb), things managing to work out. Okay so there was the whole getting blasted to the side bit but the bomb was diffused. And then she had woken up with a slight headache and moments of disorientation. Probably a concussion that had bled over from the dreams.
And of course the bomb had shown up in her apartment. Which meant it needed to be taken in and processed. There was a risk to the things that kept showing up should Hydra get their hands on them, but it was also beneficial to have them because they could be studied and reverse engineered.
While Jemma had noticed that Cosima had seemed out of sorts, she’d been buried in her own work and they were on the job at the moment and she had all the faith that her girlfriend was able to separate whatever was upsetting her with work. She would ask her about it later. For now? She had finished her initial study of the bomb and so had taken it to holding before heading back, thus missing Cosima’s jump in the lab.
Meanwhile, one of the lab technicians had noticed Cosima jumping and went to see if she was okay. Perhaps not the wisest of moves, but there was concern involved. That and well… she normally should have had a lab partner with her. Which usually was Jemma but she had gone off to put something away.
“Hey, you okay? Do you need a temporary lab partner? Extra pair of eyes?”
It was an innocent question, but given Jemma was the head of the lab and ran it, she sometimes got pulled away for longer periods of time with official business.
Most other times Cosima would’ve been able to fully separate her troubles from her work. Though she probably should have taken a personal day, but then she’d simply be sitting in her apartment dwelling on her dreams, and that would only make things worse. Though it was what it was, and she was trying to deal with it, to focus on her work, though her mind kept drifting back to the dream, to her mistakes.
And what had it gotten them? The mistake had cost Kendall her life, and had cost Cosima and her sisters and the Castors a cure for their illnesses. Neolution had cornered them and, seemingly, struck the deathblow to them.
Hearing the voice, Cosima looked up and squinted, reaching for her glasses and slipping them on to see who had spoken to her. Any rational thought she might normally have in this situation was basically gone. She was too emotional, one thing that was her downfall.
“My lab partner’s dead!” It was an uncharacteristic outburst, but Cosima was definitely not herself, and definitely not in a good mental place at the moment.
That...was not the reaction that anyone would have expected. It was well known that Cosima was the more emotional and open with her emotions in the lab between her and Jemma, but an outburst like that? It was enough to stop people in their tracks. Especially since Jemma had just returned to the lab. Was it cold? It suddenly felt cold.
“Is that so? I was unaware that I was dead.”
Despite the seeming nonchalance of the comment, Jemma was far from amused. She was worried, yes, she knew that emotions from the dreams could bleed over. But that comment did cut into her even if she showed nothing on the matter.
“Can we have the lab for a bit.”
As if she really needed to ask. Those in the lab all but ran out once they had the okay to do so. They had seen her shoot the director, she was scary.
Once alone, Jemma crossed over to where Cosima was, arms crossed.
“Care to tell me what that was about?”
As soon as she heard Jemma’s voice, Cosima froze. She knew she’d messed up and she tried to get a grip on herself, to reign it all back in. Cosima had always been very suspicious and highly critical of the relationship her dream self had had with Delphine, so why was she now letting that bleed over of emotion affect her? Probably because she was more than a little emotionally raw over Kendall and everything was falling on her at once.
It was definitely cold in here now. Cosima looked up at Jemma, heavily regretting her outburst because clearly she knew Jemma was alive in the rational part of her mind that had clearly ceased to function because she was way too emotional.
“Dream crap that I shouldn’t let affect me.” At least, not let it affect her here. But Cosima was the emotional one, the one who felt too much and wore her bleeding heart on her sleeve. “Dream crap that’s my fault.”
The problem for Jemma was simple. Of course she wanted to be there for her girlfriend and help her through whatever was upsetting her with the dreams. But not only was she currently Cosima’s boss and thus she was using her compartmentalizing abilities, but when part of what was upsetting Cosima was Delphine?
It was awkward and uncomfortable. She understood how those emotions could bleed over. While she felt guilt over what had happened to Fitz even now, the apparently romantic feelings? Those were just in the dreams. But being emotionally raw could make it more present and Cosima really was much more emotionally open than Jemma was.
“But it is.”
Letting out a breath, Jemma pinched the bridge of her nose to try and alleviate the headache she already had.
“We can’t control the decisions we make in the dreams, and even then the decisions usually make sense before the hindsight comes in.”
Well… she would at least try. But this was also what Jemma did. Compartmentalize, perhaps to sometimes not healthy levels. Which meant that she sometimes struggled to understand when it wasn’t as possible.
The feelings for Delphine had only stayed in the dreams, and Cosima did try to not talk about her much because it was definitely awkward to talk about a dream girlfriend to her girlfriend here. But because she was emotionally raw, the added dig of Delphine being dead just piled on top of everything else that was going on.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t exactly make a difference to Kendall now. And I’m pretty sure Mrs. S is going to kill me in some quiet, horrible way.” That is if her illness didn’t kill her first because oh, she was definitely dying in her dreams. She was watching herself getting progressively worse with little to no relief.
Cosima was at her breaking point with what she could take. She couldn’t keep keeping it together despite the fact she normally was able to pull through emotional things quickly enough. But even someone as positive and full of life like Cosima had their breaking points. And this was it.
If there was one thing that Jemma could understand, it was taking on the guilt of every single thing that went wrong, whether it was your fault or wasn’t. She was quite comfortable with blaming herself. But that wasn’t here or now, other than the fact that their current schedule meant that Jemma wasn’t as aware of what was going on with her girlfriend since she was balancing her dissertation on top of all of it.
“I sincerely doubt that from what I have been told about her.”
Not reassuring, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Neither of them could do anything about Kendall or what was to happen.
“Look. What happened in the dreams has happened, nothing is going to change that. But you cannot be this distracted in this setting otherwise mistakes will get made here. So as both your boss and your girlfriend, I am telling you to go home and work through this before you end up getting yourself hurt.”
Work through it? How was she supposed to work through getting someone killed? Cosima might as well have pulled the trigger of the gun herself. She couldn’t get that out of her head, how Kendall had told her to turn away, her last words. The best chance for her survival was gone. Cosima was desperate, and it had been out of desperation that the deal with Susan had been made. Desperate times called for desperate measures, but that didn’t justify Kendall being dead.
And really, knowing that she was the reason Mrs. S’s mother was dead did not exclude her from potential death by Mrs. S.
As Jemma told her to go home, Cosima fought hard to keep from bursting into tears. Clearly she’d failed at keeping her dream crap separate from her work life. Her bottom lip wibbled briefly before she looked down at the floor. She took in a deep breath to try and pull herself together enough to walk out of there without making an even bigger scene than she’d already had.
“Fine.” Though right now, Cosima didn’t care if she ended up hurt. She took the slide she’d been looking at out of the microscope and went to put it back. She then grabbed her notes and put them safely away. Cosima didn’t make eye contact with Jemma. She knew she should apologize, but this wasn’t the right time. And she right now she just wanted to get home so she could hide. “I’ll see you later.” Maybe. She knew better than to think she’d see Jemma later that day, she didn’t expect her to come check on her. And really, she didn’t know the extent of what had happened in her dreams due to Cosima’s busy schedule not leaving much time for talking. Cosima hadn’t even really talked to Sarah about anything she’d dreamt lately, aside from warning her about Brightborn.
It wasn’t like Jemma wanted to be in this position, and she knew not everyone was able to separate dreams from reality to the extent she did. But it was part of their lives. And it was also Jemma’s job to be the boss, she ran this lab. Which meant that while she wanted to be there for Cosima, to be her girlfriend, right now she had to be the boss. It didn’t make it any easier to see how upset Cosima was, to see the brief wibble of her lip as she pulled herself together. Which meant she had to isolate her own emotions on the matter and just make sure everything got put away.
Because it was clear that Cosima didn’t seem to care in that moment whether or not she got hurt. Jemma did though.
Instead she just nodded, “Of course.” Because obviously Jemma was going to go check on Cosima once she was able to. She just… couldn’t be that person right now. And she really wasn’t the right person for this particular issue. Which was why she just watched Cosima leave, hands fluttering to her neck as she scratched at it, an old anxious habit of hers. Shaking her head once alone in the lab, Jemma closed her eyes and let out a breath before opening them again, only to blink at the fuzziness.
Right. Concussion from the bomb blast in her dream. It was nothing. Right now, she needed to reach out to Sarah. Just because she couldn’t be there for Cosima right now didn’t mean she wanted her alone and Sarah was probably the best choice.