knowthyexits | [Timeloop] Thread 2

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[Timeloop] Thread 2

Her hands still have blood on them.

The house is in one piece, the bomb in the Jeep was dismantled in time, and she has blood on her hands from Sarkissian's body and his henchman. She had been waiting for them. She had known they would be there and instead of letting them chain her up and beat John, she'd been waiting for them with a weapon and all the rage of a mother protecting her child.

And now, she has blood on her hands and she stares down at the stain, unable to process anything around her. Not John, not Derek, not even the men from the island who are impossibly there. She just can't...

She can't process this. Not yet. She's done a lot of things, but this is the first time she has blood on her hands from a direct kill. It's her first.

And it hadn't even been the machines.

She has human blood on her hands and she's not sure if she's done the right thing.

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She had been, to put it quite bluntly, bloody terrifying.

Gaius was no stranger to dangerous, powerful women. Truthfully, he found it all a bit of a turn-on, but really, there was nothing sexy about a woman staring down at the bloodstains on her hands as if she'd quite possibly lost her mind.

He didn't belong there. That much was certain. The gun in his hands was a useless weight, clumsy and ill-fitted, and he was uncharacteristically speechless.

Clearing his throat, finally, he called for her, the calm in his voice surprising even himself. "Sarah?"

Sarah glances up finally from where she's bent over her hands, the gun at her side. She breathes out heavily and stumbles to her feet, rubbing the back of her bloodied hand against her cheek and staining it heavily.

She's changed things. John doesn't have to bear the weight of this guilt anymore and Cameron's programming won't be compromised. "I'm here," she says, heading for the bathroom to clean up and leaving the door open so he could follow.

He followed after a moment, taking the open door as an invitation. He leaned in the doorway, unusually quiet for a moment, then he said, "Why didn't you tell me? All of this. You have a son? I don't... I can't fathom why that's worth hiding."

"Because it puts you in danger to know who I am, to know about him," she says, keeping her gaze slightly to the side of him before letting it rest on his face. "You have to understand, Gaius," she pleads quietly. "My lying to you was to protect you. Too many people have died for a Connor. We all die for him."

"Well, being in the dark has become rather inconvenient, as of late," he pointed out, without any harshness, the lightness in his tone suggesting he appreciated her efforts, whether he understood her motives fully or not.

"What do you need from me? I feel rather ridiculous simply standing here."

She's still shaking her head, like the constant momentum will give her something to do beyond obsess over whether or not she made the right decision. "I..." she trails off, frowning as she stares at her hands. "I just..." She doesn't know what she needs because she can't put a finger on what's wrong.

She ought to be happy to have removed this burden from John, but all she sees is how her hands shake and how she's only delayed John's slow descent away from her. She turns, back to the wall and slowly and calmly runs her bloody hands through her hair. "I fight so hard, and for what?"

"I don't think I'm the one to tell you that," Gaius admitted, taking a step further into the room, closing a bit of the distance but still giving her a good deal of breathing room, "The simple fact is, I don't think I've really fought for anything in my whole life. Not until it was too late, anyway."

"I know why I have to do it," she insists, stubbornly rubbing her fingers up and down her thigh, again and again. "But I never see a result. Everything always goes back to the same grey and depressing place, like I can't do anything about it."

She's becoming fatalistic and ought to hate it, but she can't even be bothered to care at that point.

"Sarah, I don't think we're always meant to fight for ourselves," he said, watching her rub her fingers against her thighs, likely rubbing them raw. "We fight for the ones who come after. You might not ever see the results, but that doesn't mean they're not there."

"If I can't win this fight, there won't be any ones after," she says. "And I'll know if I manage to make it this time." Even if she's not sure that she's going to. She's been putting off appointments with George, losing weight and not knowing why.

"You're telling me the weight of the world rests on your shoulders?" he asked, genuinely curious, because knowing what he knew, having seen what he'd seen over the course of the last five years, he knew it wasn't entirely impossible. "That seems like an awful lot for one woman to bear."

Sarah stares back at him and yes, that is exactly what she's saying. It's exactly how it's been and it's her life. She can't get away from it. "If I don't do it, if I don't protect John from dying, the world as everyone knows it is over. Humanity dies."

"We can't stay here," repeated Bryce for what must have been the fifth time. He couldn't be certain if she had heard, either the first time or the last, but the urgency in his voice was not one that could be ignored. (He had, until now, been almost certain that Sarah had at least taken a life before, but the way she stared down at her hands was proof enough that this assessment had been way off base. This was her first. This was her worst.) "Sarah," he called again, comforted only in the familiar feeling of cold metal in his palm, of his finger over a trigger. If the need arose, he could protect them both, but nothing said that they had to let it get to that. And mindful though he was to Sarah's pain — everyone suffered from their first kill, there was no way around it — he wasn't about to let her die as a result.

Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling the heaviness. "It's okay," she says, hoarsely. "Cameron is outside. I disarmed the bomb before we came inside. She won't turn, not this time. I fixed things," she says unsurely, but she doesn't feel like she has.

"We're safe here for now. I know where we can go next, but we're expected there in a week."

Everything was a constant game of push-and-pull, arguing with Sarah on every point, every strategy, both of them certain of their own opinions and unconvinced of the other's. It was no way to fight a war, and if it came down to it, that would be their downfall. But they also had the potential to make a decent team, if only Sarah would listen to him.

"Correction: you can't stay here," he amended, gesturing at the body in the event that he wasn't being clear enough. She was already close enough to a breakdown as it was, and staying here would not help.

Edited 2011-01-03 16:55 (UTC)

She swallows a heavy lump in her throat and brushes a blood-stained hand over her forehead. "It's not the first person I've killed," she says, shaky but steady. "I...John was going to, if I didn't. It changed everything. It changed us." She's on her feet now, listening to Bruce, even if she's not sure she trusts him right now.

"That doesn't matter now," insisted Bryce, eyes darting once more to the bloodied corpse of their erstwhile enemy. "He's dead either way, and no matter which way you cut it, it would be imprudent to hang out here with the body. We either haul ass or take care of the remains, but standing around won't do us any good." Thrilling though it was to be thrust once more into this lifestyle, he was nothing if not cautious in so unfamiliar a territory, and the last thing he care to be was a sitting duck.

Sarah's eyes are clouded with something like doubt and she rubs at her wrists as she moves slightly, taking a deep breath and trying to put together a plan. "Derek can take care of the body and there's a house we can go to. It's the one we're meant to go to."

That they're meant to go there was debatable at the very least, but Bryce didn't object, not while he haf her convinced to move away at all. There was a good chance that where they were headed would not be the best of places, but that could be sorted out once they did arrive. Right now, priority was to get far from the crime scene; figuring the next move could wait until then.

"Let's go," he nodded at last.

She feels a threatening burn in her chest, like she's about to break down, but she ignores it and keeps going. She takes the armory into hand and nods, ready to listen to Bruce, even if it means he knows about her now. "We'll go," she says and draws open the door.

...only to discover the alleyway and the Mexican standoff that she had been facing just hours ago.

"No!" she rages. "No!"

This time, he was armed, gun cocked and raised ready before he could even comprehend what had happened.

On the whole, this entire experience had required a certain suspension of disbelief that Bryce had been prepared to accept, ignoring for the time being in favor of more time-sensitive matters. Matters such as staying alive. In moments like these, survival instinct took over, physical reaction coming long before thought process had any chance to catch up.

"You wanna explain to me what just happened?" He asked (demanded) of Sarah, her outrage hinting at some comprehension of the situation, which was more than he could personally hope for.

"I don't know what's going on," she snaps right back at him, drawing out her weapon in order to hold it steady on the same threat that they've just faced, that's right there in front of them, this not-Sarkissian that they've had to deal with. "Dammit, Bruce, I don't know what this is," she says, practically wild in her confusion.

"So what? We shoot first, ask questions later?" From the tone of his voice, it was evident that he didn't consider this as wildly ridiculous a plan as the words themselves might suggest. He knew now from firsthand experience how dangerous this situation could get, and they were at a disadvantage, with no way of knowing what had happened, let alone how or why.

She looks around and tries to put this all together so it makes sense in her mind, but it doesn't. "Yes," she bites out, hand on her gun and hating that they have to do this again. "John was supposed to kill Sarkissian and it changed him. I stopped that, I changed it, so why am I doing this again!"

Practical a man though he was, Bryce had to admit that the answer seemed clear enough, however unlikely. Fate and destiny held little water with him, he wasn't one who believed there was a reason for all things; if there was, he wouldn't have dedicated so much of his life to changing the world, to preventing bad men from doing bad things. But months and months spend on Tabula Rasa had a way of changing a man's perspective, his very belief system, and if they were indeed but pieces in another game being played, here, the island set the rules.

"What happens if you let him do it, this time?"

"Then I lose my son. Effectively," she says, trying to ignore the bite that comes with such a statement, the way that it hurts her to the core. Cromartie and Sarkissian and Riley. All these factors driving John away from her. "He's all I have."

It changed a person. Bryce Larkin was the last man to argue that killing changed a person, hardened him, but it didn't seem as thought they had choice. Still, although he didn't know much of John at all, he might argue that although the boy might not be the same, he would still be his mother's son. Sarah's influence was far from forgettable, and if anything, he would need that love to hold on to.

There was, however, something else they could try: "And if I do it?"

Her gaze turns critical and thoughtful at his suggestion and she thinks about it for a long moment. She sometimes scares herself because she knows it would be blood on Bruce's hands, but there's a part of her that so fervently wants it -- to take the culpability off of his own hands.

"Yes," she says, gets it out before she can think twice.

He both could not and would not pretend that it meant nothing, that it was easy, because it never was, not matter how simple spies made it look. That was their job, after all, to make the difficult seem effortless, the impossible possible. Perhaps there was a reason he was here, and that reason was to pull the trigger.

"Then we'll try it that way," he gave a firm nod, already determined. Better him than John, in the end.

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[Timeloop] Thread 2

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