knowthyexits | (no subject)

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She's only been in the clinic for hours and the only battle wound she has is a new IV puncture -- one to add to the collection -- but she feels like an idiot. She used to be taken down by far more than a little side-effect, but something's wrong with her system and her body shuts down on her. She doesn't know when this happened, but Sarah fears it's just one more domino in a cascading series where her life is slowly being pried from her and the battle has been reduced to her white and red cells.

She's asked Neil to get Cal. If she's going to get escorted home, she's going to get the stubbornest. Once there, the new pup will do his damnedest to watch out for her -- Sarah's been training him for exactly that purpose. Now, she sits at the end of the bed, her wig settled perfectly on her head. She wants something to fight and she keeps losing.

When she hears footsteps, she looks up and keeps her eyes on Cal as he enters. Maybe there's another purpose for her request. After all, she's still not sure how he's coping with the fallout from his accident. She wants the damn spider in front of her so she can shoot it dead. "Hi," she greets him, head tipped to one side as she starts to collect her things to leave.

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There had to be an ulterior motive to Sarah requesting me, specifically, to walk her home. I didn't ask Neil why the fuck he hadn't done it, but I'd wondered. If I'd though Sarah had just been longing for my company, I might have felt marginally flattered, but I'm a born cynic. I assumed the worst.

I didn't say anything from my place in the doorway. I just waited, watching her collect her things, and then helped her through the Compound once she was done. Not until we were outside did I finally speak.

"Okay, what is it?" I demanded with a frown.

"I'm not allowed to want to make sure you're okay?" she replies, taking her bag from him and slinging it over her shoulder. She already feels better, but she'd stubbornly insisted she felt fine to begin with -- right up until the dizzy fit. "You lost your memory," she reminds him. "Everything that makes you up was gone and I'm not allowed to be worried about you?"

She doesn't mention that of all the people on the island, she trusts him the most when it comes to watching her back. She also doesn't feel the same about anyone like she does about him, but that's private for now.

"Don't exaggerate," I replied with a slight roll of my eyes. "I was still a dick, there was still part of me there."

What I didn't say, what I didn't plan to admit, was that I understood what she meant. Had our roles been reversed, I probably would have freaked the fuck out and then gone out to find someone to kill in retribution.

"I've had worse," I added, more gently.

She manages a terse smile in his direction. She is relieved, she is, but there's a part of her that couldn't help wondering what would happen if Ishiah had been wrong and it had been permanent. She's not even sure what she is to him and that had never been more clear than when Cal, without his memory, demanded it of her. "You weren't that much of a dick, either," she adds, almost as an afterthought.

She hitches her things tighter to her body. It's not much -- her apron, a book for her break, and some of the weapons she inevitably arms herself with before every shift. "Besides, I know what it's like to lose my memory, here. I wanted the company after."

"Maybe not that much of a dick compared to my normal self. Still a massive dick compared to everyone else," I corrected. My social skills were far from honed, but I knew that much.

"I never want company, Sarah, I thought you knew that," I added with a knowing lift of my eyebrows. This probably sounded like some kind of jab at her, but it was just the truth. Goodfellow had been my best friend and he still annoyed the shit out of me.

"You've never met Derek Reese. My standards when it comes to men being dicks are impossibly high," she reminds him evenly, forcibly staying at his side as she ignores the instinct to drop behind and watch his tail. "And tough. You're getting my company. Look at it this way. If you want to just field-strip guns, I'll be happy to, but maybe I don't want to be alone right now, okay?" she says sharply.

"Jesus, okay," I replied, head rearing back in incredulous surprise. "I gave up trying to get rid of you awhile ago, Sarah. I know you're going to do exactly whatever the fuck you want regardless of how I feel about it."

No matter what I said or how awful I was, she still turned up. The fact that I even allowed it was evidence of my not minding it nearly as much as I let on.

"Don't get me wrong," she replies, unable to help the pull of a smile at her lips, the quiet will to want to tease him back. "One day, I may decide that you're just too much, but I know you've got other people. For all that you're keen on keeping people out, you haven't managed to succeed," she reminds him.

Though, neither has she. There's a lot more love in her life than she's ever thought she deserved.

"If you say so," I replied, head tilted in clear skepticism. "Now I have to know who is on this fantasy list you've conjured up, because I haven't exactly been bonding with my fellow man."

Ishiah would be on it, of course, but I didn't mistake his sense of duty for something deeper. He cared about me as an offshoot of his caring for Goodfellow, and maybe out of some misplaced loyalty to Niko. He didn't come by it because he liked me.

"I don't know," Sarah says as she drifts closer to him, almost without even realizing it. "Sookie is determined to find you some kind of happiness." Sometimes, these days, Sarah feels like Cal is all they talk about. "And there is Ishiah. And me. You'll always have me."

At least, until the day he either won't or won't want that, genuinely.

"What would make you happy, Cal?"

"Alright, stop." I halted in the middle of the boardwalk with a scowl, one hand held up like a more pissed off Diana Ross. "Just fucking stop. You are perilously close to entering Sookie Stackhouse territory. There is a reason she's with Mitchell instead of me, and this right here is it. I do not need you worrying about my fucking happiness or trying to fix me. I am as good as I'm ever going to get and I am fine with that. I'm not crying into my fucking pillow every night over the state of my life. Got it?"

There's only one problem with that, as far as she sees, and, namely, it's this: "I don't want to fix you, Cal. I don't think I can, and I don't think you need it. I also don't think finding some kind of peace of mind and being fixed and normal is the same thing," she says heavily. It's difficult because she's always wanted to be happy, herself, but the things that could accomplish that never managed to co-exist when it came to her life. She lets him stay behind, walking as briskly as she can in the direction of her hut.

She turns around when she's about ten feet from him, shrugging her shoulders upwards. "You're fine? Fine," she says, trying not to spit out the words to match her current level of sheer frustration at being sick and in love with someone who drives her absolutely insane. "You're fine," she mutters, half to herself as she turns around and remembers why she can't go that quickly, slowing her pace enough to take in three slow breaths, regretting all of this.

Edited 2012-02-08 22:21 (UTC)

"Jesus Christ," I hissed under my breath as I followed. I wanted to make sure Sarah got home okay, but next time I was going to tell Neil I was busy and to do it himself. This was about as enjoyable as repeatedly stabbing myself in the eye.

"You're just like her. Just like her," I ground out, fingers of my right hand instinctively moving to the beads of the bracelet on my left wrist. "Because I don't fit into some bullshit preconceived notion of normal or happy, you assume there's something wrong with me. Well, let me tell you sister, I'm as good as I'm ever going to get, and if you don't like it or can't cope with that, you can fuck off and find someone else to mother, because I don't need it."

She turns on her heel, giving him an incredulous look. "Cal, listen to me," she says sharply. "I love you the way you are. I'm so beyond screwed up that I don't even know what's normal anymore, but all I know is that I want to wake up some mornings and not think to myself 'what's going to go wrong today'. That is my happy, so yeah, I guess I have a bullshit preconceived notion," she admits. "I don't want to mother you," she says sharply, taking a dangerous step closer to him, right in his personal bubble.

"You know what I think is wrong? I think you having amnesia is wrong. I think you being dealt a shitty hand in life is wrong, but I don't think you are. So, get that through your head," she grits out, her throat thick and her jaw tight with stress. "This isn't about you being someone else. You say you're fine with things, so I believe you because I trust you. So believe me right back, Caliban."

"But I'm not fine, okay? And I'm not happy and I can't cope with that, but I will. I've made do with worse," she says, stripping the emotion down until she's left with nothing but the stoic truth.

Apparently all that time we hadn't been talking about me at all, but rather Sarah, and her illness, and everything that came with that. Agonizing as it was, I think I would have rather the focus stayed on my inability to be happy with my place in the world.

I didn't know what the fuck to do or say, Sarah right up in my face all fierce like she was daring me to contradict the ravings of a dying woman. My fingers had stilled, but they were paused against the beaded bracelet on my wrist, a tiny anchor to sanity.

I sucked in a deep breath. What Would Niko Do?

"Alright," I conceded with a short nod. "Just…relax, okay? I'll just keep my mouth shut from now on."

She takes in a deep breath, fraught with the frustration of dealing with Cal and the incessant fight that she keeps having to counter. "You don't have to," she allows, when she takes in that deep breath and calms herself. It's like she goes straight to being high-strung when he's around and she needs to somehow stop that. "Cal, you know I just want you to be. It just always helped take my mind off my own issues when there was someone else to focus on. John was good, that way."

And Charley, too, while she had him -- before...well, before everything got complicated.

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