knowthyexits

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[Cal]

Judgment Day has come and passed and the sky still holds, not lit with fire, and every human being remains free. It brings Sarah a kind of relief in that she knows that the fight is continuing at home and maybe, just maybe, it means they've succeeded. It also means that Sarah has nothing left to fight here unless something shows up.

Correction -- she has nothing to fight but the disease inside her body, threatening to take her apart and render her weak. Ellie is gone, now so is George. It's been weeks since she's seen anyone and she's been starting to feel dizzy and weak. Her appetite is gone, she can't sleep, and she spends most of her time feeling like she's weak. She knows that she should see someone, but her trust has already been eroded by two disappearances.

She doesn't even want to consider a third.

Still, it's one of those days where even she and her stubbornness can't make it to the Winchester. She hopes that Neil doesn't mind too much, but she's confined to bed, staring at the ceiling as her thoughts turn to home and John. Her John, her baby boy. He must have stopped the end days from coming or at least pushed it off. No matter what's happened, she knows that she can be proud. Even if she won't be around to see the majority of the battle, she knows he's ready.

She lets out a small sound of effort as she sits up, hand to her forehead, and thinks about trying for some food. It's been a full day since she's even attempted, but she hasn't been anywhere near hungry enough. Maybe it's a symptom -- maybe she'd know if she would only see someone, but her stubbornness prevents her from taking on anyone new.

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There are very few things that I do which are subtle, and the knock upon Sarah's front door was definitely not one of them. I did not call out her name first nor politely rap upon the wood. I practically rattled the thing off the hinges hitting it with the side of my fist.

She hadn't been at work, and things hadn't been right with her for awhile. I'm not talking about the cancer, now, I'm talking about in the head. It was easy enough to see that she was thinking about just giving up, and that was something I just did not get. Not from Sarah.

She turns in bed at the knock, turning her head enough to let her shirt absorb some of the sweat as she pushes to her feet and makes her way to the door. She hasn't felt like this since Mexico, but at least she hasn't started to have the fever-dreams again. The last thing she needs is to be plagued with nightmares of three bloody dots on her basement wall.

She leans heavily on the door as she opens it, summoning up enough energy to scowl at Cal. "What?" she demands.

"Jesus Christ," I exhaled as I took her in. I'd never seen her look so bad, and to be completely honest, it scared the shit out of me. Moving without thinking, I reached for her and had her swept up into my arms before she could launch one of her famous protests. I never was great with impulse control.

"That's it, we're going to the clinic." With as much as I fucking hated doctors, I sure seemed to be carrying Sarah to see them a lot.

"Jesus christ, Cal," she practically erupts with stubborn anger that she doesn't let show so easily, most of the time. She pounds with both fists against his back in tandem, separately, and then to whatever rhythm she could. "I don't have a doctor and I refuse to see a stranger," she got out in a threatening growl.

"You know, it's funny. All this time, I thought you were a grown woman," I replied with a scoff, the relentless pounding of Sarah's fists eliciting little more than a barely perceptible wince. "Maybe if you took care of yourself like an adult, people like me wouldn't have to come around and force you into it. It's amazing how well logic works when you actually apply it."

She gives one last hearty kick, but the truth is that she's too tired for this. She goes limp in his arms, staring at the ground and feeling like it's pointless to struggle with Cal. "As if you wouldn't do the same if our positions were reversed," she says derisively. "I'm sick and there's no cure. You're taking me to hear that I'm dying."

"What the fuck happened to that five whole years is a long time line you were feeding me?" I asked, my brow knitting as I frowned. "And you know what? Fuck you, I wouldn't do the same thing. I might be lazy, but my brother didn't raise me to stop fighting just because shit gets a little hard." I hefted her a bit closer. "You're Sarah Connor, for Christ's sake. You stare down killer robots without flinching, and you're just going to lay down and take this? That's bullshit."

When he hefts, she presses her forehead to his shoulder, burying her face there as if she can shut out the world. Things change, but her fight had been the same for so many years. Except that it's different now. It's different because it's not her fight anymore. She presses her forehead tighter and wishes that he'd never seen the endoskeleton, that he still knew her as just Sarah Baum, the waitress from the Winchester.

"I'm tired, I'm just tired, Cal, I'm tired. It's been seventeen years," she murmurs, tipping her head to the side to speak past locks of hair caught between her lips and his warm skin. "Do you know what it's like to fight and lose for seventeen years only to be handed a new fight? One that you can't beat?"

Fuck. There was a lot in this world (and many others) that I was equipped to deal with. Sarah Connor all but crying on me was not one of them.

Biting back a curse, I carried her over to a downed log that had been pushed just off the main pathway and sat down, settling her in my lap so that I could slide my arm from beneath her knees and push back her hair. "Yes," I said, a warm murmur against her temple. "I do." My whole fucking life I'd been fighting, even when beating my own nature was an impossibility. Stopping simply wasn't an option.

"Look at me," I said, leaning back enough that I could splay my hand across her jaw and tip her head back. "I know this is hard. I know you're tired. I know." I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. "But I fucking love you, and I'm not going to let you just give in to this. We'll do it together if we have to, but I'm not going to watch you let this thing beat you. Understand?"

She closes her eyes tight enough that tears come without her intending to let them loose. She wipes at them furiously as if pushing them away means that they never existed in the first place. It's been so long since someone cared like this. It's been over a year since she got here, shot and delirious, and she's forgotten what it's like to have allies -- people who love you. "The sky was supposed to burn on the twenty-first," she says, hoarsely. "The twenty-first of April, 2011, that was Judgment Day. The fight at home is over," she gets out, looking slightly wild. "I'm dying. I have five years and they staved off the end and..." And what if she never sees John again?

She takes in a deep breath, forces herself to calm down, and that's when she realizes what he's said. "I love you too, Cal," she says, the words so seemingly simple, but coming from her it's like she's had to dredge them out from under ten tonnes of rock. "But I don't trust lightly. I know you know about that. I don't want just anyone treating me with this," she says again.

"Then we'll find someone who you like," I said, gray eyes fixed on hers, fiercely trying to ignore that she'd said it back. "There are like a hundred doctors on this rock, there's got to be someone who will work. I fucking hate doctors, but I'll go with you if that's what you want. And you're not dying, stop saying that. We have five years to fix this, we're going to fix it."

She tips her head to one side, some of her regular self filtering back in as she stares at him in mild disbelief. "Cal," she says, almost warning. She knows that five years is a long time, but she's already lost weight and if she feels like this now, how is she going to feel closer to the end. "We all die. Maybe this is what will take me. Maybe one day a machine from my future will put a bullet through my brain, but right now, I need you to at least accept that I'm sick," she says, sternly.

"I'll find someone, I will," she insists stubbornly, brushing two fingers lightly through his hair again and again. "Okay?"

"I know you're sick," I said, but my voice was low, petulant. "That's the point of this whole exercise. You actually doing something about it." Jaw flexing, I looked away. Life was so much easier when I stuck to the basics of human emotion and didn't get mired in all this caring bullshit. It never, ever worked out well for me, not in my whole goddamned life, but there was no escaping the way those fingers felt in my hair.

My eyes fell closed a moment and then turned back to Sarah. I still don't know how the fuck she snuck in, but she definitely had. Hand against her neck, I leaned in and pressed my mouth to hers. I knew better, but I'd never been very good at impulse control.

She lets out a small sound that could be protest, could be shock, could be any number of things, but her two reactions are instant -- her light touches in his hair become a forced, steel grip. She also kisses back, firmly, because there is a stubborn part of her that refuses to be surprised and refuses to bow to shock. It's a part of her that says if she kisses back, she's in on the plan.

And then when she realizes what she's doing, she backs away, but doesn't stumble her way out of his lap -- not yet. "Cal," she says quietly, licking her lips. "What are you doing?"

I had a ready quip to sling back to that, something about how I expected her to know since she had a kid and all, but I couldn't spit it out. I couldn't brush this off like I was some kind of pimp who was banging chicks 24-7. She knew me too well to buy it.

"Fuck, I don't know," I replied, looking anywhere but at Sarah and doing my damnedest to ignore the way my treacherous body was clamoring for more. It had been a long time since I'd been laid.

She has a list of all the reasons she's not built for this on the tip of her tongue and she thinks that now is the best time to stand up. She rests a hand on his shoulder and gets to her own two feet. It's touch and go, but the precarious wobble fades in the wake of a stubborn insistence that she's fine. "Come on. Walk me to the Clinic and I'll look at the roster of doctors."

She extends a hand out to him, like he's the one who needs coaxing and not her.

Say what you will about denial, but it definitely had its uses. There were few moments in my life I'd been as relieved as I was just then, to discover that apparently Sarah was willing to act as if I'd not just had my lips on her.

I ignored the hand and stood on my own in one quick, smooth motion. "Good plan," I said, and nodded her onward as I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

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[Cal]

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