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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"