InsaneJournal

Who: Cosima and Jemma
What: Dream fall out
When: April 21st
Where: Their flat
Warnings: References to experimentation
Status: Log | Complete

It wasn’t surprising that the Dreams had started up again, Jemma had always known that they would. There hadn’t been that feeling of finality that she’d had before. Besides, how could they when there was a planet to save? Still, they had been something else. Piper betraying the team because she thought they were dead and being tricked by Hale, Yo-Yo losing her arms, finding out Coulson was dying and then getting married in the same day after a fear rift had opened up, trying to find more gravitonium.

And yet…..things got worse. Being attacked by a manifestation of the Astronaut - not even her greatest fear - because the temporary salve had been broken. That had been bad enough. But then finding out the Doctor was there on base and had been manifested. Because as she told Fitz, who said the Doctor was his greatest fear?

Why oh why couldn’t it have stayed at that? Why did it have to end up the way it ended up? With Fitz acting as the Doctor, a split in his personality. On operating on Daisy against her will - even though they were in desperate times and needed to stop the end of the world…. Of the fact he’d program a robot to point a gun at her so he’d keep on going. Him saying when he hallucinated her, she was his conscience. Something that seemed to be a theme for her. She was what kept him a good person and what did that mean for her?

That was all too much. She couldn’t process what was happening. She could try and find a way to make some sort of desperate sense of it, to grasp at anything and then Deke…. The truth was right there. Part of her seemed to know what he was saying even before he said it. But she couldn’t seem to hold onto it. She couldn’t believe it until she asked for verification….

Then she was sick and then she woke up.

Letting out a shuddering breath, Jemma sat up and looked to her wife before wiping at her eyes. She still felt sick. Even awake, her mind was flashing to the different scenes. Her throat was sore from where she’d been strangled but that was nothing compared to everything else. Daisy on the operating table. A gun pointed at her. Pleading with Fitz to just let Daisy go, that they could find another way….

“Oh god…”

With the memories rushing her mind, Jemma quickly got out of bed and to the toilet where she ended up throwing up stomach acid as there was nothing else in her system at the moment.

Cosima’s dreams had come to a conclusion. It had seemed like an eternity since she’d first started dreaming, and had been sick. And while they’d lost some friends along the way, M.K. and Mrs. S being the most notable and recent ones, the core group of her, Sarah, Alison and Helena had all survived. They were finally free to live their lives in peace.

While it had been upsetting to lose Mrs. S, Cosima had felt a sense of peace about her dreams coming to a happy conclusion. She hadn’t expected it. While she’d gotten the cure for her illness, Cosima had fully expected more of them to die, especially after the crap she’d seen on the island Westmorland presided over. But after all of the darkness and heaviness of her dreams, having a happy ending where she could settle down with her sisters, Felix, Delphine, Donnie, Kira and Helena’s sons was such a relief.

In a way, it just proved Cosima’s eternal optimism right. They fought the good fight, fought for their right to exist and they had prevailed. Good had won the day, though they had all paid prices along the way. So much death and hardship, but they had all made it through. And Felix was still dreaming, he would have to experience it all for himself, and Cosima hated that, but it was what it was.

As it was, she did sleep easier now, knowing that she wouldn’t have anymore nightmares. Or wake up dead or dying or something. That had been a fear of hers, that Jemma would wake up next to a corpse one day. Of course, Cosima had that fear herself since she knew Jemma’s dreams weren’t the safest either. At least Cosima’s were done so Jemma didn’t have to fear for her anymore.

Cosima partially woke up when Jemma got out of bed, and she was further pulled from slumber as she heard her wife throwing up. Opening her eyes, she squinted as she reached for her glasses.

“Jemma?” She asked as she got up and moved towards the bathroom. “Are you alright?”

Jemma was definitely relieved that Cosima’s dreams had come to an end and that they had come to a good end given how they had been heading. That and Jemma was basically inclined to always expect the worst thanks to her own Dreams. Which once again had been proven to be the case.

The biochemist barely registered her wife’s approach and instead just flushed the toilet and then went to get water, hand shaking. She heard the question but she didn’t know how to answer it. She didn’t know what she felt or how to make sense of any of it.

“Nothing makes sense, I don’t know how to process this….”

It was the same thing she had told Deke and yet it remained the case. Jemma was just...lost. So much had gone on. Yes, things were always happening and it was as if it all just finally seemed to break through and all the things Jemma had feared, the fact she was talking to her grandson, trying to understand….to feeling the need of being Fitz’ conscience….

It was nice to know that dreams as bleak and dire as Cosima’s could have a happy ending. Yes, plenty of people dreamt of worse worlds and situations than Cosima did, but the danger of her dreams had been extremely high. In a place where one never knew who to trust, or who could be trusted because of the possibility of someone being a plant for their enemies was intensely dangerous. And being someone’s science experiment wasn’t exactly a nice thing to dream about.

But everything had ended well, though not without a cost. Siobhan had died as well as several of Cosima’s sisters. But in the end, they were free from Neolution, and able to cure all the sisters of the illness that plagued the Leda clones.

Frowning a bit at Jemma’s response, Cosima knew the only way to approach it was the logical way. Applying the scientific method was usually a good plan.

“Talk me through it? Maybe that can be a start for trying to process what happened?” She suggested.

Honestly, one of the things Jemma loved and appreciated about Cosima was that she could always get her to focus on the logic. To talk her through things when the emotions got to be too much. It took a lot for Jemma to be this lost and unable to process…. But when she did get to that point? It was usually bad and this was definitely bad.

Nodding, Jemma let out a slow breath and leaned against the wall, running her fingers through her hair in agitation. Right. The beginning. She had already mentioned the fear dimension pull through, what it meant when it came through. And how of everything she’d been through, it was Fitz as the Doctor that had shaken her to her core. Her feelings on how it had seemed people felt she was why he hadn’t gone that way….

“Right. Well, the temporary salve we had on the Fear dimension broke and I was attacked by a manifestation of Hive in the astronaut suit from when I’d been stuck on Maveth.” After that, what had happened next…? “We needed to get everyone higher up and away from the rift and so I was helping Mack with Yo-Yo when Fitz came in and said the Doctor was there,” Even here there was fear of him, which was ridiculous….. “Anyway, getting them to safety, I realized that Fitz and Daisy were still missing and went in search for them, how something wasn’t adding up….when these robots cornered me and led me and Deke at gunpoint to where it turned out that Fitz was operating on Daisy to remove the inhibitor in her. Everything assumed to be the Doctor, the different ways to manipulate the situation to get her alone, to sabotage...it was Fitz as the Doctor. The gun on me was to make sure he went through. Because the only way to shrink the gravitonium to finally seal the rift, which could be the cause of the Earth shattering, was for Daisy to use her abilities… after that, after she did it, he turned himself in….. I went to talk to him…. He said how when he hallucinated me, it was because I’m his conscience. How he doesn’t regret it….. And I told him I agreed. Not in the how, but that we’re up against the end of the world, that actions we’d normally take weren’t enough….. But after that...I was trying to process everything, how I felt I was losing Fitz, maybe myself even if I don’t say it and Deke comes across me and it turns out he’s my grandson….”

As she went through what happened, Jemma did her best to keep her voice dispassionate. Scientific. It was how she always handled things. But there were still halts and stops, catched breath. She could see the logic even now and the risks…. The desperation and the fact that maybe if she stood by Fitz, he wouldn’t be so….She just couldn’t voice it. Not yet.

“She’s going to hate me.”

Sometimes it was a bonus to their relationship that they were both scientists. Cosima tended to be more free with her emotions, largely because she was the type of person who couldn’t actually conceal them. She was terrible at lying, possibly even worse than Jemma was. But in times like these when it was needed, she could slip into the logical and methodical approach of the scientist that she was. So as Jemma spoke, she took in what she was saying, also noting the halts and stops in her wife’s voice.

It was a horrifying picture all across the board. Except for the part about Deke being Jemma’s grandson. But it did make sense to her. After all, Cosima had nearly put the parasite thing in her own cheek because she believed it was the only way to cure her illness and keep her from dying. So she could understand, logically, why the operation on Daisy was needed. It ultimately resulted in a good thing, even if it had been a very bad way to go about getting it done.

“From everything I know about her from your Dreams and this life, I’m confident that she could never hate you. She’ll be upset about it, I’m sure, but after she calms down, I don’t think she’d hate you. After all, you weren’t the one that operated on her. She might not like you siding with him, but she doesn’t seem like a completely unreasonable person to me.”

Jemma had gotten better at lying, it had been necessary. She was still bad at it, which was why she tended to resort to half truths, but it was a matter of survival. And she compartmentalized constantly. Probably not the best thing in the world. Something Daisy..well, Skye right now, would mention in concern when they’d been dating back in England. That one day it was going to cause problems.

But it was horrifying. Jemma understood the logic. She knew that in that moment and undoubtedly in the long run, it was necessary. But the way it had been gone about. The fact that Fitz had made robots hold a gun to her just like in the Framework to keep him in line… To constantly hear that she was his conscience….It was too much.

She just couldn’t believe that Daisy would ever forgive her.

“Why wouldn’t she if I hate myself for it?”

Then again the guilt and self hatred were normal for Jemma. She was quite comfortable with that. It was familiar in all the crazy and pain. Maybe not healthy, but no one could really say Jemma’s way of dealing with everything she’d been through was healthy.

“I should shower...get to work…” Try to pretend that she was fine. It was her way after all.

That was the thing about those sorts of situations. While there was a logical understanding of why it had to happen, it was still difficult to accept when it was something horrible. Perhaps a better way could’ve been found to accomplish the same end, but everyone involved would have to learn how to live and come to terms with what had happened.

“Because we are always far harsher on ourselves than anyone else could ever be,” Cosima responded. And honestly, that seemed to be a universal truth. It was one she knew from her own Dreams. She’d blamed herself for Kendall’s death and believed that Siobhan should’ve taken revenge on her for it. But that wasn’t how Siobhan had responded to it. Did she blame her and Sarah for what had happened? Probably, but she’d at least managed to move past it.

Cosima well knew that this was Jemma trying to pretend that she was fine when she really wasn’t. But she also knew there were times she shouldn’t push the issue too much. At least not more than she already had. “Alright. But if you need to talk more in the future, or need logic, I’m here.” It was her way of saying she recognized Jemma needed some space, but also saying that she knew she wasn’t okay no matter what she might say.

Wasn’t that the truth? They were their own worst critics and always the ones to judge themselves more than others might. But in this, Jemma was pretty certain she was right. It didn’t matter that it was the only way in that moment, it had still happened. And they would have to deal with the fall out. Even if it broke her heart.

Too much had already been pushed for in getting information out Jemma, and it had been necessary. She had straight up said that she didn’t know how to process everything she’d just dreamt and had needed to get it out. But now? Now she had to get on with her life. Okay so it was Sunday and Easter at that (seriously, what a great start to Passover), so technically there wasn’t anything at work for her, but she could focus on her worry about Cisco and clean up from the latest OC drama.

“I know.”

Forcing a smile that she didn’t quite mean, Jemma went to get ready to face the day and ignore her Dreams. Or at least that was the plan at any rate.