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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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."

"You were in the jungle, on a hike..."

It feels, to Sookie, like she keeps on having to repeat details over and over again for them to fully sink in, the entire weight of it all. It's not simply with respect to Sarah, either; there are so many people on the island whose lives are so fantastical, some so daunting, that she simply can't conceive of them beyond the words that she's given. Jungles and delivering babies, these things Sookie can't even really imagine beyond the colors and setting, but men who are far from good, that's more familiar ground.

"What sorts of men? I mean, you say that they aren't good, but it's not even just that, is it? They... they scare you, they've made you doubt in people even when you find yourself on an island like this one."

"Men that hurt me," Sarah says with such calm that it seems as though she's already emotionally separated herself from the situation. She reaches a palm up to her shoulder and rubs it lightly, as if the pain there is worse than the pain in her leg, which has been acting up since the rain began, forcing her to even ask for a proper bed. "Bad men."

Forcing the issue isn't always the best solution, Sookie knows. There are some things which require a very open sort of insistence, but to bring Sarah's memories to the surface isn't necessarily one of those times, no matter how much Sookie's curiosity burns. She does, however, slide off of the dryer and walks over to wrap her arms around Sarah in a hug. Slowly, so as not to startle. Lightly, so as not to suffocate. But she rests her chin on Sarah's shoulder, hands rubbing lightly at Sarah's back.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes, earnest.

"You seem to enjoy hugging," is Sarah's mild comment, even if she's only tensely hugging back. She doesn't want to talk about it more, so she'll give into this, hoping that there are no more questions. "They're not here, though," she can assure Sookie that much. "The men who hurt me. They're not here."

"Well, good," Sookie emphatically replies, the tone of her voice bitter and spitting like sparks from a smoldering log, angry as she is with the mentioned bad men. Part of the overeager reaction comes from the fact that even the smallest reassurances suggest that Sarah's finding some measure of hope, that perhaps Sarah will eventually move on from the rut that she seems to be caught in. For the moment, Sookie pulls back slightly, smiling wryly at Sarah's observation before her lips pull thin.

"I hug when I think it's appropriate. But... if the men aren't here, why do you always look like you're starin' over your shoulder, just waitin' for something to go wrong?"

"Because the fact that they're not here now doesn't mean they won't turn up someday," he says, knowing that she has to be on her game and wary of everything, even though things seem safe. It's always when they seem fine that everything starts being destroyed around her, with her at the eye of the storm, having to watch the damage she's caused.

"Well," Sookie considers, squeezing Sarah's shoulders again with a resolute nod, small as it is. "Well, if they turn up on the island someday, we'll be ready. There are so many people on the island who want to protect how it is, the fact that we can feel safe even when sleepin' in huts in the middle of nowhere. It won't be so bad, I promise. Besides, everyone here's human, so... it's not equal footin' exactly, but after livin' with vampires and shifters and everythin', I find that the humans usually can't get half as far as vampires when they're really tryin'."

Sarah stares at her and almost wants to tell her the truth, if only to partially protect her in the event that anything shows up. "Sookie," she says, brow furrowed and consternation rife in her voice. "What happens if what shows up is worse than vampires or shifters?"

"Well, for a while, the worst that I'd ever seen in my life was flash floods. Vampire and shifters were a huge step up in terms of things that are... are overwhelmin' at times," Sookie shrugs, not really seeing much else to it. Crazy though things might get, Sookie doesn't see how she can try to preempt everything, doesn't see how it's possible to predict or anticipate what one can't even conceive of. Thus, for the moment, she can only go with her gut. The instinct that tells her that she'll fight to keep her ground no matter what the threat is. "If things show up that are worse, we adjust. We adjust, and we learn, and when we're ready, we fight."

Sarah stares at Sookie and some part of her wants to talk about it, if only to protect her. She's becoming friends with the woman and that puts her at risk. "The things I'm talking about, you don't adjust to, Sookie," she says, stern and cold, as icy as she gets.

"Everyone adjusts, Sarah," Sookie retorts, a quick tilt of her head as she stands up tall, sure of her words, sure of the sentiment behind them. Even if she knows that Sarah doesn't mean much by it, doesn't necessarily see Sookie as unreasonably weak and helpless like so many other people in Sookie's life have, that doesn't mean that the blonde's going to let such a conclusion slide without putting her own two cents in. "Not all of us come to accept the things we see, not all of us can deal perfectly, but we all adjust to new information. New things that come into our lives. Even havin' to learn how to ignore something? That's still an adjustment."

Sarah bites down on her cheek because Sookie can't understand without seeing or having it explained and she refuses to bring her into that world. "Then maybe that's all that needs to be done, but I still don't wish it on anyone here."

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