knowthyexits | (no subject)

It's difficult to avoid the clinic when she has a doctor at her disposal and she needs to verify that her treatment hasn't gone on a collision course to nowhere. She's made her appointment and is now hovering around the clinic as she waits for Rory to get in, her head bent low. She's treated her wrist by herself, patched up the wounds as best as she can, but it's not her physical being that she's concerned about.

An entire restaurant's worth of people heard her being called Sarah Connor.

There's not much wiggle room when it comes to escaping that accusation. She might as well abandon her alias, at this point, because her worst fears have come to pass and there's nowhere that she can run. She could go to the second island, but she needs to treat the cancer and it's difficult to do that, there. It's terrifying, but there's a chance that Sarah may need to suck it up, face her fears, and simply live as the woman she actually is.

She adjusts her hold on her forearm, deciding to leave that particularly delightful existential crisis for later, when she's not waiting for the ramifications of the attack to come falling down around her ears.

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"Implying that, at some point in time, you were taking a beating like that, what, frequently?" He's not angry at Sarah; Rory keeps his tone mild. But he is annoyed at the world for making it so easy for people like Sarah, like Amy, like the Doctor to get themselves hurt. There's nothing wrong with being tough and head strong. There shouldn't be. But there was enough trouble in the world without people finding ways to get into it.

Sarah lowers her head for a moment. She has a choice. She can lie to him like she always lies. She can pretend that she's a battered woman as she did with Ellie. She could do what she did with George and avoid the issue. After the attack, she's not sure she ought to be doing that. "I had no choice," is what she inevitably says.

"You're going to need to do a full exam, at some point. It's easier to explain if you see the scars."

His brow crinkles in a confused frown. She has said just enough for a dozen different theories to blossom and too little for any of them to be knocked away. There's a mild spin of thoughts inside his brain that he pushes aside in his desire for the truth.

It would be easiest if she just told him what was going on, but Rory had better bedside manner than that. Sometimes patients have their own way of telling you things. Playing along was a kind of listening. "Alright," he says with a single nod and moves to shut the door so that they have a little privacy. "Show me?"

Sarah watches the latch of the door and when it's fully closed, she rises to her feet to unlace the boots she'd put on that morning, even though they had been painful to lace up with her wrist. With those kicked aside, she slides off the jeans and then the black tank-top is next, leaving her in the sports-bra and the utilitarian pair of underwear.

The scars are on display now. The knife wound in her left shoulder from Cromartie, the bullet wound in her thigh from the factory, the long and ugly scar from her c-section in the jungle, the various grazes from bullets and bruises that won't fully go away. They're all there and they always will be.

Good doctors -- good medical professionals -- Rory has learned over time -- are not the ones who don't let things affect them. Rory figures you have to be affected, concerned, otherwise you're not doing your job. The job isn't just to heal, it's to make things better.

But the thing is: Pity rarely makes things better. So when he does look at Sarah's scars, he doesn't let the way they hurt him show on his face. He can't fix these scars, or the deeper ones, with medicine. "How'd you get these?" he asks.

She's promised him the truth, hasn't she? Sarah keeps an impassive look on her face, refusing to let emotion sway her when she's had her weak moments. This is not one of them. "When I was seventeen, something came for me in order to kill me so that I wouldn't give birth to a son. It failed, but they haven't stopped trying to hunt me since."

She lets her fingers drift to her stomach, tracing the jagged scar all the way up. "This one, though. This is from the birth."

"Something?" Rory repeats, guessing the pronoun choice is important. "Not someone?"

He looks over her scars with this knowledge in mind. They -- whoever they is -- haven't succeeded yet, but it doesn't look like it's from lack of serious trying. "Any lasting damage?" he asks, trying to focus on what he can actual change, help. "Or just scars?"

"Something," she clarifies. "I've had my fair share of trouble with humans, but I'm smart enough not to let them get marks on me." She glances down to the wound in her thigh, a rueful smile on her lips. "Usually." She cants her gaze upwards to look at him. "What kind of lasting damage are we talking about?"