knowthyexits | (no subject)

When it comes to the distraction of a mind, there is nothing like being told 'you're going to die' that makes a person rethink their life. Sarah knows that unlike Skynet, unlike the apocalypse, she doesn't have an exact date. She has time. How much time, she has no idea, but she has some time.

It's why she's gone around to three people who she knows that won't feel out of place in a dangerous situation and told them curtly that it's time to go before grabbing her shotgun and heading in the direction of the dinosaurs.

Whether or not they follow her is up to them.

She's done her duty and now she allows her mind to turn back to the diagnosis and George's words and the secure knowledge that she is going to get very sick and then she is going to die. She tries not to think about how she had known that was a possibility. Here, as a reality, it's so much worse.

She doesn't talk to any of them as she walks with purpose towards the dinosaurs, highly intending to shoot something, to kill something, to take her hands and pry something until it breaks because if she can't fight this disease within her, she has to fight something.

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"Yes," she agrees. "I would have." There isn't a doubt in her mind that she would have picked up the gun and come out here. It's no death wish, but she needs to have the feeling of doing something and everyone here is so good. The creatures on the other side of the island have no sympathy in her heart.

"I don't know that it's okay, though."

"It'll have to be, won't it?" I ask her, and yeah, I think I actually manage to smile. "I've. You know, I've got a talent for getting stuck with people who really seem to want me to. Die."

"I won't let anything happen to you," Sarah says, and if she's ever meant anything in her life, she means this. "It's what I do. I protect people." Sometimes, she doesn't do so well, but she gets the ones who matter out alive.

"I know," I say, because she hasn't ever said it, because there are some things that you just know and I know that about her. I watch her for a moment, shifting my grip on my double-barrel. "Why are we out here, Sarah?"

Sarah doesn't know how to put it into words that she's lived her whole life fighting a battle and now that she's surrounded by good people, she can't take this sort of rage out on them. "I need an enemy to fight," she says, because she can't target the cancer right now. She's done her best, but it's been useless, and so she needs something to fight.

That's all.

I don't really understand that; I might have played a lot of World of Warcraft, and I might have wasted a lot of zombies but I...never...really took any joy in it, you know?

I never...figured out how to like it. Not like Tallahassee.

"Whatever you need," I say, and I hope I sound braver than I feel. "I'm right here."

Sarah flashes just the briefest of smiles and then it's gone like it never appeared in the first place. She creeps slowly forward through the brush and when she sights something past the brush. "There," she whispers, coaxing Columbus onwards.

Oh, Jesus Christ. I really have no fucking desire to die out here. I really hope that I don't. I shift my grip on my gun.

"Okay," I say.
Okay.

"You want me to take the shot?" Sarah asks, when it seems like Columbus isn't going to do it and her fingers are itching for it. She wants something to fall, for something to reap the consequences of the news she heard.

"You can take it," I say, embarrassed that I've sort of frozen up but, you know, nobody's trying to kill me. And I never really wanted to kill anything.

It's funny how things turn out.

Sarah shifts in the trees so that when she pulls the trigger, she won't attract unwanted attention. It's easy to glide along the foliage. It's like Central America and she doesn't have a toddler who's just learning how to defend himself. It's almost easy. She lines up the shot, feeling her heart bursting against her ribcage, and it's that fluttery anticipation in which she feels alive that she came out here for.

I think I stop breathing. All I can do is stand there and watch her and wait. I might feel safer with a gun in my hand.

That doesn't mean that I feel safe.

Sarah watches the animal go down. She's not even sure if she can call it that. Is it an animal if it hasn't walked the earth in millions of years? She shoulders the gun and looks back at Columbus. "You never wanted to get closer to a dinosaur when you were a boy?"

"When I was a kid, maybe?" I say, shifting my weight from one foot to another and changing my grip on my gun. "I mean, back before I thought how much they could, you know, tear me into little tiny pieces."

So I've got a healthy appreciation of how easy it would be to kill me.
Fucking sue me.

"That one's dead now, Columbus," Sarah points out with the barrel of the gun, taking steps through the jungle after surveying the area to make sure there are no other threats present. "It won't hurt you. Not like this."

"I'm okay," I tell her, and I really feel like kind of an asshole. There's another one moving in the corner of my eye and I've got my gun up and, this time, I'm going to take the shot, because the last thing that I need is Sarah feeling like she's got to treat me like a five year old that's just wet itself or something.

I'm going to take this shot.

Sarah sees the target and Columbus and she doesn't say anything. She keeps her gaze on him and the shot he's taking, eyes more attentive of his form with the gun than anything else.

She doesn't give encouragement or criticism. Not right now.

I hit it. My aim's pretty good. It's had to be and, anyway, years of Halo? Kind of useful, as it turns out.

I can't help but look a little bit pleased as I turn back to Sarah.

Sarah has her own proud smile on her face, which gets hidden when she ducks her face downwards and away from Columbus. "Good shot," she says, but keeps her voice down to avoid calling attention to themselves.