#Teo. every other time he’s been right stop holding out for a time he’ll suddenly not know what he’s talking about

[bookwyrminspiration]

how many times is Teo going to stubbornly refuse to listen to Aurelio’s advice, who has trained and done this stuff for years, and then immediately hurt himself exactly as predicted because it’s getting a little ridiculous

[trylonandperisphere]

Silent Retreat 2, Ch. 22

Been trying to keep up a regular Thursday update, so here you go. Things are still tense in our story, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Also on AO3 and ff.net.

Sooner or later, during times of emergency, or... duress, you lose the ability to really feel.  Your senses and heart become so numbed from the pounding that you detach.  You alternately imagine you have no idea what’s happening, and then perceive you’re responding matter-of-factly, as each moment and development lope by you in slow motion.  It’s a sort of exhaustion that allows you to regain some logic in the face of utterly wanting what’s happening to you to not be real.  You have to deal with things moment by moment because you have no choice, no ability to predict the future when the present has gone against all you’d predicted, no option to roll back time and change your course no matter how much you wish you could.  You just survive.  Physically, maybe even mentally at times you are present, but emotionally, spiritually, you’ve left orbit.  Maybe you think you’re experiencing things, maybe you even think you’re sad, angry, panicked, hurt, but you aren’t really, yet.  You’re too distant to feel the real weight of gravity, and sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space.  As very real and tender you may feel in disjointed moments, you are not here now.  You are... elsewhere, elsewhen.  Maybe even nowhere, no-time, if you’re gone enough.

So there are minutes you can’t remember.  Minutes that feel like eons because they’re so painful, and hours that feel like seconds because your mind has just erased them—blip!  Parts are just gone.

  But they’re not really gone.  You’ll know that, later.  You’ll feel them, one way or another.  

  So you have to remind yourself.  You have to… play reporter to your brain, adult to the child inside you who’s got their hands over their ears crying la, la, la as loud as they can so they won’t hear you.  After all, you’re telling them the monsters under the bed are real.  Sometimes, that can be too much to handle.

  This is why I kept repeating myself, talking as clearly and slowly as I could in my panicked state, when I next spoke with Mika.

  “So the flight lands at 4:00 at the latest?” I asked her again, trying to make sure we both understood what was happening.

  “Mm, the statistical probability of this flight landing on time is, historically, maybe fifty-seven percent.  Not good.  The average delay is forty-nine minutes, but that means it could be longer.  But I will be doing everything I can for the sky and land traffic.  I can access local authorities’ systems easily.”

  “Right,” I breathed.  “I just… we still can’t know.  I mean... “  I sucked in a shaky breath, trying to convince myself that if something threw our already shaky plan off, between me, Teo and Michael, we’d keep everything from falling apart.  

  “Teodoro is an actor, he’ll figure something out.  He is quick on his feet,” she said, basically echoing the reassurance I’d given us both earlier in the conversation.  Mika had become less brittle, but she still wasn’t the best at handling emotional dialogue.  We were going in circles.

  “Yeah,” I think I answered.  My eyes kept being drawn to the edge of the curtain over the window.  It fluttered slightly, again and again, betraying a hint of wind that was breaking the seal of insulation.  Fluttered, just like my stomach, my pulse in my throat; trembled, like my hands if I paid them too much attention.  I forced myself to blink and look at the wall, the solid, wood table.

  “We have won before,” she piped up, over my awkward pause.  “We will do it again—wait.” There was millisecond of silence, then the ambient sound of her end of the call.  “Hold on, Cosima.”

  Her line went silent again, and I guessed she was on another line with someone else.  Maybe it’s Sarah , I thought, wishing for reassurance.   Maybe—

  “Cosima,” Mika’s voice broke through again, “I have contact with Delphine.  She’s trying to reach you.”

  Everything went still for a moment.  I swallowed, trying to wet my suddenly dry tongue, to speak.

  “It’s, it’s her? ” I babbled, I don’t know why.  As if Mika could analyze her voice digitally and confirm it.  She actually probably could, come to think of it, but would she have to —

  “Yes, I’ve traced her call back.  She’s on her mobile, the number you have for her.  GPS shows she’s in transit, to the northeast.  Shall I put her through?”

  I was stunned for a moment, hearing only the seemingly harsh intake and outtake of my breath.  

  “Uh,” I mumbled, my eyes turning upward to roam around the room, as if I expected Teo or Michael to materialize right then and there and give me advice.  “I… how does she sound?”

  “She sounds upset. She’s leaving messages on your voicemail, wanting to know what’s happening and if you’re alright,” Mika answered.

  “OK, but,” I felt a headache suddenly clutch at my temples, and squeezed my hands into fists for a moment.  “Does she sound… honest?”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  “I cannot be sure.  But… I think so.  She sounds… worried, to me.  I’ve gotten into her records.  So far only two other calls I’m finding within the last few hours, and one was to her voicemail service.  The other… looks to be a line at Yale University, Natural Sciences department.  That’s all I know.  But she is calling every few minutes.”

  I took in another breath and felt my lower lip tremble again.  There was nothing more I wanted than to talk to her, to hear her voice soothing me, speaking words of love and reassurance.  And yet…

  “I don’t know if I should,” I choked out to Mika.  There was a pause, I don’t know how long.

  “I don’t know,” Mika finally said.  “She sounds authentic, but this your… girlfriend.  I can play back her messages to you, if you want.”

  “God,” I clutched my forehead in my hand, “Sarah would kill me if she knew I was even thinking about it.”

  “I can try to connect with Sarah, but I don’t know if that will help you.”  Mika’s voice was getting that little whine, that higher pitch indicating she was becoming emotionally overloaded.  A few years ago and she might just have disconnected with everyone for a while, to clear her head.  I knew what I was asking her was impossible for her to know, but I didn’t trust myself, and I didn’t know what to believe.

  “Whether you believe her or not, we might be able to get more information if you speak with her,” Mika added, focusing my thoughts.  “But… I don’t want you to get hurt, Cosima.  I can keep her from you, maybe get her car stopped if you want… but I can’t stop her from hurting your heart.”

  It was true, just as simply as Mika in her shy, less-than-fluent-in-english way put it.  No one could stop Delphine from hurting me, from the circumstances hurting me.  I was hurting and confused, already.  

  But I still had to think about my son.  And anything I could glean, any information, might be useful in helping him.

  If I could be shrewd.  If I could be strong.

  “Can — ” I stopped my sentence so quickly my throat clicked.  I was about to ask Mika if she could talk with Delphine, try to tease her intent out of her, but that was something Mika couldn’t do.  The murder of her best friend and our clone sisters in Helsinki had damaged her scales of trust forever.  And time was running out.

  “Get a hold of yourself, kid,” I could hear Margot’s voice in my head saying, like she did when I first took her as a mentor.   “You’re powerful inside.  Never doubt that inside, you know things.  You know what you need to do.  Tap into what the universe is trying to tell you.  Ask for guidance, and just breathe through it.”

  “Just breathe through it,” I mumbled to myself.

  “What?”  Mika asked.  “Cosima, she’s trying to ring the line again.”

  I cleared my throat, and sent out a silent plea for strength and wisdom beyond myself.

  “Put her through,” I said.