Chapter Text
For everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven
0. A Time to Keep Silence
"--And when you're done, you'll be able to return to your old life as though none of this had ever happened."
Cordelia shot awake, Dr Mehta's words ringing over and over again in her head. The doctor's face loomed briefly into mind, knowing eyes staring deep into her soul, the curl of the smoke rising from her cigarette winding past her face, snake-like.
As though none of this had ever happened.
None of what, Cordelia wondered, pressing her thumbs into her temples to ward off the growing migraine. The unease that had been growing in her dream had followed her into waking, now it writhed in her belly, making her breaths come short and tense. None of what? What old life? Something was wrong wrong wrong every instinct clamored, but try as she might, she couldn't piece this puzzle together.
And when you're done...
She grasped at the fragments of the dream and tried to think, to wind back the tape. It was something important, her soul knew, something that made her heart ache with a devastating sense of loss, something that drove her to her feet and to the window of her apartment. Out in the darkness, the stars glittered, far out of reach. The sight of them only made the sense of loss grow keener, the ache becoming the sharp flare of a knife cut, and she pressed her fingers against the glass and willed herself to remember.
Something flared in the distance, and she saw a glowing line cut across the night sky, arcing from the heavens down to earth. It was probably a shuttle, but from this distance, she could imagine that it was a falling star.
"Why do we wish upon those, anyway?" she murmured. "If a star falls – isn't it in enough trouble of its own already?"
But she was already wishing, biting her lower lip with nervous concentration. A thread, a ball of string, a way back through the labyrinth to a beginning that she didn't know any more.
You don't want to go back there, Dr Mehta said in her mind's eye, confident. That way lies dragons.
Stuff it, she shouted back. Stuff it stuff it stuff it get out of my head--
Dr Mehta laughed, and the cigarette smoke grew thicker. Cordelia imagined it like a noose, coiling around Mehta's throat, tighter and tighter. Her fingers turned into claws, nails digging into the glass of the window, and she felt for a moment like a prisoner trying to claw her way out of--
uterine replicators, seventeen of them, green lights flashing. A hillside. A hand through her hair. A voice... but no face, she needed to see the face, needed--
"Cordelia?"
She practically leapt out of her skin and spun around, a deer in the headlights. Her mother stood in the doorway, one hand on the lightswitch.
"Oh. Mom. What are you doing up?" she asked. The memory fractured, started turning to smoke, falling through her fingers. No! she thought, desperate. Give them back! Give them all back!
"I... went to the kitchen to get a drink." Was that an evasion there, a slight discomfort? "And I saw that you were up. I thought I'd just make sure that you're alright..."
"I'm f-f-fine." She swallowed. Forced herself to smile. "I saw a falling star. Though it's probably just a shuttle."
Her mother smiled, the brittleness of it failing to hide the concern in her eyes. "You've always been fascinated with the stars. Did you make a wish?"
"No," she said. No. Yes? Something nagged at the edge of her consciousness, slipping away the moment she tried to reach for it. "Should get back to bed. Work tomorrow."
Her mother nodded, gave her another uncertain glance. "Good night."
"Good night," Cordelia echoed, wondering what it was that made everyone look at her like she was made of glass. She'd been shot down at Escobar, spaced, woken up after a coma, but she was physically fine now, the doctors had all given her a clean bill of health. So why were there shadows (smoke and mirrors, mirrors and smoke), and dreams that didn't seem like dreams?
She glanced at the window as her mother retreated, but the falling star had long vanished into the dark.