[Timeloop] Thread 2

[knowthyexits]

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.

Comments

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

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?"

[knowthyexits]

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.

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

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."

[knowthyexits]

"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."

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

"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."

[knowthyexits]

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?"

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

"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."

[knowthyexits]

"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.

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

"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."

[knowthyexits]

"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.

[rewarded-by-god.livejournal.com]

"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."

[knowthyexits]

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."