knowthyexits | (no subject)

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Sarah is soaking wet. And she's heard it all about how many pounds she probably is. She knows better than to argue, knows to just take advantage of any preconception and go with it. The problem is, no one here is really anything but too-kind and she's soaking wet. Her clothes are sticking to her skin and sloshing about, but it's a necessary evil if she wants to eat or shower.

She's made it downstairs to the clothes box, stripping off her long-sleeved painted-on top (at least, that's what it feels like at the moment), letting it fall to the floor with a heavy thud before continuing along.

Tank top goes too and meets with the jeans. She's still got on a pair of men's spandex shorts and a camisole, but those are wet too and she's willing to take anything she can from the clothes box at the moment, even the ugly plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt she's just grabbed. It reminds her of something that she might have thrown out from Charley's closet and that makes her smile, just offhand for a moment.

It's just a brief flicker of a moment and she turns her attention back to the more important things. Dry clothes. Reaching her arms above her head, she flexes her shoulders back and starts to shrug into the shirt, cool air meeting her skin momentarily as she pulls on the shirt, covering her shoulders, arms, and more.

The jeans come next and she soldiers on, just glad to be dry once more.

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Somewhere, at the far back of his mind, Bryce has to remind himself that it's wrong to look. There's a distinct difference between spying on someone when they're up to something, when they have an agenda, and watching them when they're doing nothing wrong. When they're at their most vulnerable. (And though he knows better than to assume Sarah Connor is anything approaching vulnerable, he also knows that anyone can be caught off guard in such a situation.)

Still, he doesn't look away. At first, yes, because she's nearly naked and he hasn't the right. But something causes him to turn back. He spots the scar on her thigh, the one from the bullet wound she arrived with. Then he spots the others — ones he recognizes as the remnants of nasty fights, of more gunshots, of knife wounds, of broken bones and bruised scar tissue. If there was a single doubt in his mind before, it's whisked away the moment he catches sight of all those scars.

It's only after she's dressed that Bryce finally makes his presence known, moving slowly toward the Clothes Box, as if he, too, has some reason to be here. As if he didn't spot her in the hall and follow her down here, curious as ever about who she is, about what she's doing, about why. He tosses out an easily forgotten quip — something about her catching a cold when she so adamantly protests to seeing a doctor. He flashes a grin. Business as usual.

Sarah tightens her hands against the plaid shirt, still open over the blank tank top that's meant to be for a man, she's sure. She hadn't even seen him approach and now she's left wondering just how long he's been standing there. He treats things like it's normal, like he's just arrived, but paranoia and suspicion run deep with Sarah and with Bruce, it's no different story. "What did you see?" she demands bluntly. She has time for niceties later, but right now, there's a roughness to her voice that speaks of how many people she's threatened before.

He used to think that John Casey was hard to know. That was before he ever met Sarah Baum. Granted, Sarah has never shot him before, but he wouldn't put it past her. The fact that he thinks her capable of it, that she can be provoked into trying to kill him, that makes it all the more imperative that he keep his eye on her. That he watch her every move, even if from afar; there's little doubt in his mind that she was the one to sabotage the call-box. He's determined to find out why.

"What's the point of asking?" Is his response, his tone that of an annoyed man trying for neutral. That's all Bruce; Bryce is more curious and apprehensive than he is annoyed. "I doubt you'll believe me even if I tell you I saw nothing. I'm starting to notice you've got this habit of expecting the worst in people, you know."

"People have a habit of showing me the worst of themselves," she replies immediately and evenly, her arms crossed tightly around her torso as she tries to shake off the discomfort she's feeling. He didn't lay a hand on her and she knows that they're just marks, but it's the c-section scar that she's most worried about, that he'll see it and just know. "You've been nice enough, but I trust you about as much as you trust me. Which is...not much, right?" she prompts.

Bryce tilts his head. "I hate to get petty, but who pointed a gun at whom here?" The funny thing is, that might be the least of his concerns regarding Sarah. She aimed at him, but she didn't shoot. She hesitated. That tells him that she's reluctant to take a life, even if she's willing, and it gives him the upper hand. He has no such compunctions; he could never afford them.

"I'd just been shot, can you blame me?" she asks, feeling irritation pulse through her in a way that it usually doesn't with Bruce. She likes him. Maybe that's why she's reacting so poorly. She's been trusting him and she doesn't know whether she can and here she is, her scars on display for the briefest of moments and he saw. "Look. Do you want the truth?"

"You know I do," he says, "but I don't expect it." He wants to tell her that it's okay, though, that he understands. He doesn't expect it because it's not what he would do. He's keep just as many secrets (perhaps even more). But he says nothing. He leaves it at that, because the truth would only expose more truth — revealing that he understands would, by default, inform her that he is keeping something. He can't risk confirming that he has secrets — those secrets belong to Bryce, not Bruce.

Sarah presses her lips together, the sarcasm biting at her tongue and she wants to say it, wants to just let it loose and maybe she's just so fed up with things and she knows that no one will ever believe her. No one ever believes crazy Sarah Connor. "Well," she says, absolutely calmly. "I'm a fugitive of the law running from killer robots from the future who are trying to make it so I can never give birth to a child that could prevent the apocalypse," she says, almost patronizing in her tone. "And no matter how far I run or how many years I travel through time, I can't seem to escape metal harbingers of death who never sleep and can assume human forms, like clones. Happy, now, Bruce?"

It sounds like the convoluted plot to a bad science fiction movie, and chances are that's where Sarah found her inspiration. He can't tell if she's being serious (the tone suggests not) or if she truly believes the story, but the fact of the matter is, it wouldn't be the strangest thing he's heard. Not by far. In fact, to most, his own life story would seem just as ridiculous — something straight out of a Bond film rather than a slice of real life.

"Sounds exhausting," he tells her, and watches for her reaction. He wonders if she expected him to laugh. He wanted to, briefly, but something told him that reaction wouldn't be well received. For now, he pretends to believe it, deeming that the best way to find out if she's lying or not.

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There aren't really words for what Sookie's just seen. She knows, of course, that Sarah's been through something crippling, must have to have developed the sort of personality she has, paranoid and defensive and occasionally aggressive all at once. She's even seen a more impressive set of scars than she ever expected to see on Caliban, but he shrugged those off, went on with life as though they meant nothing at all. Sarah's feel more personal, stretched as they are across her body, pale and taut and quite frankly grotesque, some of them. Dents on a dashboard. Hints of war.

Sookie feels young, confused, leaning against the door leading into the laundry room for a good amount of time before she comes to her senses and quickly slip in, closing it behind her. If Sarah's going to be mad that Sookie's watched, that she couldn't tear her gaze away, that's fine. Sookie's had enough people angry with her lately that it's something she's grown accustomed to, even if it leaves a heavy weight on her chest that's hard to push off.

But what she can do, what she can offer, is that no others come across Sarah like this.

What comes afterward is less sure, a hovering blonde just inside of the laundry room, hands clasped behind her back and the distribution of her weight shifting.

Sarah finishes with the plaid shirt, adjusting into it and tugging on too-long sleeves to try and get it to sit better on her frame and it's while she's adjusting that she turns and catches sight of Sookie, just standing there with a look on her face that says that maybe Sarah should have done a sweep of the room first before getting out of her wet clothes. She tries to be calm, picks up the wet clothes and begins to make her way to the dryer. "Yes?" she prompts, not wanting to draw this out.

At least Sarah isn't angry, Sookie tells herself with a relieved sigh, although she's not really sure that the resigned look is all that much better. When it comes to the matter of her past, Sarah is always taciturn— too much so, in Sookie's opinion— but she's starting to wonder, these days, how much she can really push past people's walls before it becomes too much. Sookie walks forward, hopping to sit on one of the dryers as she keeps her gaze held level on Sarah.

"How did... all of that happen?"

She adjusts the shoulders of her shirt, keeping her gaze forward as she debates how she's going to manage to lie her way out of this one. She keeps a steady poker face before turning back to look at Sookie. "John was delivered via c-section," she says evenly, deliberately not mentioning that said c-section was performed in the jungle with no anesthesia and not exactly high-tech equipment.

"Don't lie," Sookie pleads, letting her hands dangle in front of her until she starts threading them together, pulling them apart, anything to keep her occupied and her mind off the very obvious fact that Sarah's not explaining everything. She wonders, though, if maybe she's spoken too bluntly just now, closing her eyes to amend her statement. "I mean... if you can't talk about it, that's one thing, but don't lie to me about what it is. That's all that I'm askin'. If you tellin' me is gonna force you to run away, then I don't want that, but I'm not that blonde. I can tell when somethin' is up."

"Sookie, I'm not lying," Sarah says and maybe there's an edge of incredulity to her voice, that she's actually giving part of the truth and it's being tossed away. She looks around to ensure there's no one there and lifts her shirts to show the scar. "It was an emergency, he wasn't expected so early. They had to cut me open."

She hopes it's enough distraction for now. She knows it won't last, but just for now, she hopes it does.

"No, I—" Sookie pauses, letting her forehead fall into the palm of a hand for a moment as she shakes her head. "I didn't mean to say that some of those scars aren't from John's birth, I just meant that it's clearly not the whole story. Arlene, she's a friend of mine, her second birth wasn't natural and she showed me the scars after, but they're tiny little things and you can hardly notice them unless you're actively searchin'."

Looking up again, she tilts her head, not sure if she wants to keep on pressing or not. "It's never looked like... well, you know."

Sarah pauses, at that. There's only so much truth she can tell, but in this case, there's nothing completely dangerous about this one. "I wasn't at a hospital," she admits, shaking her hand as she presses a hand to her stomach. "I didn't have pain meds, we didn't have scalpels. I was in the jungle, in Central America, I was in the jungle on a hike when my water broke. And the men I was with helped deliver him, but..." But it made marks. "The others...I haven't always known good men."

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Cable grew up in a society which didn't treat nudity as either taboo or erotic. He also grew up in a time where there was no such thing as civilians and everyone wore scars.

So when he visited the clothes box and saw a woman changing there, he barely spared her a second glance. He just followed her lead; stripped off his own, soaking, shirt and picked up a new one to replace it, the light gleaming off his metal body as he did so.

Sarah stiffens slightly, her whole body tensing like a cat's as she realizes that she isn't alone. She goes even worse when she catches the glint of metal and immediately scrabbles to find anything to defend herself, realizing that she doesn't have anything but her fists. "Who are you?" she demands, readying herself just in case Skynet is making a move.

Cable paused, still holding the shirt he'd been about to put on, and slowly turned towards her, his face totally blank.

"Is that a philosophical question?"

"No, it's just a normal one. Who are you?" she asks, blunter than most people would be when it comes to just talking to someone, but she's still wanting answers. "What's your name? Where are you from?"

"Shouldn't you be shining a light in my eyes for this bit?" he replied as he slipped the shirt over his head.

Sarah doesn't laugh at all, just staring at him with discomfort, crossing her arms as tightly as she could around her body. "What year are you from?" she asks, "If you don't want to tell me your name."

"That all depends on your perspective," he replied, calmly, "and what exactly it is you're asking."

"I want to know what year you're from, how you got to look like that, and who was involved in it. Did someone perform an operation on you? Are you human?" her questions are slightly on edge, slightly demanding, but she'd rather know than be caught off guard later.