Kinda figured if you were going to kill me, I wouldn’t have known what was happening.
Who: Nat and Cosima What: Nat goes to check on Cosima and talks her out of her tree When: recently Where: Cosima's place Status: complete Rating: PG-13
To say that Cosima was having a difficult time was an understatement. After Jemma had sent her home after her outburst at the Agency, she’d basically locked herself in her apartment and refused to leave. Sarah had been there, but Cosima still felt like she was in free fall. She hadn’t really been eating, and all she did was stay in bed. She was currently laying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Her dreadlocks were free of the usual ponytail she had them in. She was still crying off and on and she didn’t know what to do but to keep blaming herself for Kendall’s death.
And she knew she’d screwed up at work and screwed up with Jemma. Sometimes she wished she was made of stone, or at least was stronger than she actually was so she could handle this. But she wasn’t strong enough, and she was actually wishing she’d just die in her dreams to put her out of her misery. She sniffed and closed her eyes. But all she saw was that van and Kendall and then hearing the gunshot that had taken her life. She jerked a bit, pressing a hand over her mouth to cover a sob.
Nat hadn’t thought that Jemma should be the one to go after Cosima. After giving her some time, it was pretty obvious that they were just giving her enough rope to hang herself with. So Natasha got in her Spyder and driven to Cosima’s house. She let herself in with the help of lockpicks, and followed the quiet sound of sniffling.
“Cosima?”
The lights were off as she laid on the couch. She missed the sound of the door opening because she was too distracted by herself to pay attention to the goings on of her apartment. She probably shouldn’t be alone right now, but Sarah had her own life to tend to, and she wasn’t going to pull her away from Kira. And she definitely wasn’t exposing Kira to her current mood and problems.
Cosima jumped a bit at hearing Natasha’s voice and she popped upright on the couch, squinting into the darkness as she’d taken her glasses off before she’d laid down. And of course there was only one reason why Natasha would be here.
Okay, maybe two, but Cosima didn’t think Natasha was here to kill her.
“Are you here to fire me?” Because that was the only other logical reason she could think of that Natasha would be here.
“Nope.” Natasha perched on the armrest of a recliner, and crossed her legs. “Not here to fire you. Or to kill you if you’re worried about that.” Her voice was light, and teasing. She rested her hands on her knees. “I’m here to talk. Or maybe listen. I know how hard it is to shake parts of the dreams. Especially the ghosts.”
“Kinda figured if you were going to kill me, I wouldn’t have known what was happening.” Cosima sighed, pulling her burgundy colored cardigan closer around her as she crossed her arms. She was otherwise wearing pajamas, and it perhaps looked like she hadn’t slept much or even done much of anything. Her dining table was covered in papers and books, her laptop sitting in the middle of it, obviously devoted to her dissertation work.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said defensively. She then reached for her glasses, patting a couple places on the coffee table before she found them and slipped them on. Not that it really helped much because she didn’t have any lights on and the curtains were closed.
“I don’t tend to play with my food,” Natasha agreed. She still had her hands on her knee, and she studied Cosima. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about it but maybe she should talk about it. “It’s affecting you, which in turn affects others. As as much as I’m loathe to admit it, sometimes we do need to talk to people.”
She sniffed again, keeping her arms crossed over herself as she looked at Natasha. There was weight on her, even after Sarah had been here, it was still bothering her. It had been her fault, her mistake, and she couldn’t get over actually being a few feet away from someone who was killed execution style, and then burned to destroy the evidence. That someone having been the original, the one who held the key to curing Cosima of her illness in her dreams.
“It’s not like we can do anything about it.” They couldn’t control their dreams, something Jemma had said to her before she’d sent her home. She used the sleeve of her cardigan to swipe some tears from her face as she sniffed again. “What’s done is done and I’ll just have to pull myself together and suck it up.” Not before she unraveled, though.
“We can’t do anything about it. Maybe prevent it from happening here, if its that kind of thing. But you shouldn’t just suck it up. If you bury it then it’ll come out when you least want it to.” LIke today, she almost added. “It’s okay to grieve.”
“Not that kind of thing,” Cosima quickly assured Natasha. No, the only way that would happen is if Kendall showed up here and started dreaming along with those Neolution assholes. “I don’t deserve to grieve.” It was her fault. She didn’t think she deserved to grieve Kendall. And despite the fact her feelings for Delphine had never crossed over, she didn’t feel right grieving her loss either. For as many terrible things Delphine had done, she didn’t deserve to die. Kendall didn’t deserve to die.
But Cosima, she was starting to think she deserved to die.
“Yes, you do. You think you got this person killed. But you deserve to grieve. Either because of the dreams or in spite of them.” Natasha swung her legs off of the chair and got to her feet. “Did you put a gun to her head, and pull the trigger? Was it your gun? Your finger?”
“I might as well have. It was my idea to do what we did. It was my illness that made Sarah and I push it faster. It was the pushing that got her killed.” The ‘her’ didn’t actually reference Sarah, though it could be construed as much. Her voice broke a bit with emotion, though she was trying to keep a grip on herself. Her emotions were what always got her in trouble. Sometimes she wished she was a bit more stoic and unfeeling than she actually was.
But Cosima was the type who wore her heart on her sleeve. And it was very broken right now despite the fact she was trying to keep it together. Perhaps it was out of some need to prove to Natasha that she could handle this, that she could keep her job. Sure Natasha had said she wasn’t here to fire her, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t on the table.
“I’m sorry. You're right, dwelling on it won’t bring her back. But ignoring it will only make it worse.” She reached down to put a hand on Cosima’s shoulder. “I can’t tell you not to feel, but I can tell you that you don’t want to bury it. You don’t want to be unfeeling. Trust me.”
She looked up at Natasha with a look that could be best described as an abandoned puppy left out in the rain. Her lower lip wibbled a bit as tears welled up in her eyes. “Sometimes it’s better to be unfeeling. Or at least to feel a bit less.”
Nat sank onto the couch and did something unexpected, at least for her. She pulled Cosima into her arms. “Feeling is part of being human. If you cut that part of yourself out, then you let them win.” Whoever them was, it didn’t matter. Everyone had a them. Everyone needed to feel human, especially a clone.
The hug was definitely unexpected. Despite the fact that Cosima was a hugging person, she hadn’t expected Natasha to hug her. But once she was in the hug, Cosima wrapped her arms around Natasha and clung to her as the tears started to fall and she started crying again. It was almost shocking to her just how many tears she had left, considering she’d been crying quite a bit already.
That went better than expected. Natasha knew the right noises to make, and she gently rubbed Cosimia’s back while rocking her. Words didn’t seem appropriate right now, not when so much emotion was coming to the surface. Natasha would be the first to admit she was a little broken, but she felt moved.
Cosima just let herself cry out this wave of tears. Despite what it may look like, Cosima didn’t think that no one cared or wasn’t worried about her. She was just the type who didn’t like dumping her problems on people especially when she knew they were busy. There was also the fact she was insanely stressed from work and working on her dissertation at the same time, which resulted in the fact she hadn’t told Jemma about her dreams lately. She would, eventually, but she knew Jemma was busy and she didn’t want to bother her. Plus she knew that Jemma handled emotions differently than she did, and it was the best if Cosima wasn’t a sobbing wreck whenever she talked to Jemma.
It took a little while, but she did eventually calm down, still clinging to Natasha. There had been ugly sobbing, and Cosima’s face was a bit of a mess. Her glasses also needed to be cleaned, but she’d take care of that once she had completely calmed down.
Nat had come prepared, wordlessly handing Cosima a tissue. There’d been a lot of build up there she thought. It had built and built until it had finally burst. She hoped Cosima felt better, getting it out. “We’re like cats,” she said, finally. “When we’re wounded, we pretend nothing is wrong and we retreat to our safe places so that no one else has to deal with it.”
Taking the tissue with a note of thanks, Cosima slid her glasses off and proceeded to wipe her cheeks and nose. “Usually I’m not. I’m really not good at hiding my pains. I’ve just been so busy lately I haven’t had time to really think about it.” And the fact she wasn’t good at hiding it was the real reason she’d had the outburst at the lab. Cosima tended to get snappy and short with people when she was upset.
“Maybe I’m wrong then. But do you feel better?” She looked at Cosima, not with pity, but with compassion.
“I guess? It’s hard to tell right now.” Cosima was highly emotional over her dreams, and she knew she would be for quite a while yet. It would take time, but she didn’t exactly have the luxury of time right now. She had a job and she had deadlines to meet for her dissertation. Which she suddenly felt she was completely blowing currently. She’d have to go back over everything she’d worked on since the dreams had taken this turn to see if her level of work had suffered. And if it had, then she’d have to redo it all.
“Why don’t you clean yourself up, and I’ll buy you dinner. Something greasy and decadent. No talk of dreams, or work, or anything else. You can worry about that tomorrow, right now…” Natasha shrugged. “Have some you time.”
“Are you sure? I don’t wanna impose if you’ve got other things to do.” Even if she really should eat something considering she really hadn’t been eating since having that dream. Cosima just knew that Natasha must be a very busy woman and have a million other more important things to do than to buy her dinner.
“I’m sure. You’re not imposing. And you need to eat. Let me treat you to the kind of thing that might shave a few weeks off of our life expectancy.” Sometimes it was worth it.
“Okay,” she conceded with a nod. Cosima didn’t have it in her to fight right now. She was exhausted and hungry and weary. She still had a lot of things she needed to express, but for the moment she could breathe.