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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.

It's been long enough and it's time for Sarah to start facing the music. She can't imagine that two weeks later, George doesn't have some kind of results for her and so she drags herself from bed and forces herself to march right over to him and ask. She's so used to demanding answers that now that there's an answer she desperately doesn't want to hear, she's scared.

She's scared and she's alone and that has never been a good combination with Sarah Connor.

Enough is enough, though. She steels herself and takes a deep breath, waiting for George's Clinic Day before she visits. She lingers outside the door, pacing back and forth, and waits until it's empty to enter.

"George," she says, voice steady and subdued. "Can we talk?"

With Cromartie moved to her place, Sarah needs to dig another hole. She's got a shovel, but it's taking longer than it should. This goes faster when you have three people to help and one of those people isn't a person at all, but a machine who doesn't need to sleep. She's feeling a shade of sick again and lilts slightly as she buries the shovel in the sand, swaying and trying to find some stability again.

Cromartie's broken face peers out from the dirt at her and she lodges the shovel loose enough for just a moment to spill sand over him, until his eyes can't see a single thing.

She grips the handle of the shovel just a little tighter. "Damn it," she mutters, aware she should take a break, but too stubborn to just stop.

Admittedly, this isn't what she had expected, but some work hours are worth this. She has her feet propped up on a chair and has been watching Gaius tend to her tables for the last few hours. She hasn't determined yet what she wants to spend the rest of the day doing, but after everything -- and everything he's found out about her -- she likes this small little sliver of normalcy.

It's almost like she's back with Charley. Almost.

"You missed a table," she helpfully points out, popping slices of mango past her lips as she gestures to a table that has yet to be bussed.

It's becoming hard to ignore.

At first, Sarah had blamed the weight loss on a change in her lifestyle -- the stress of being away from John. After months passed, after going back and seeing him again, there's no way to ignore that she's still losing more weight than healthy and she isn't even doing anything differently.

Even though her appointment with George isn't for months, she goes in early with the itch under her skin, needing to know. She raps her knuckles lightly on the door during his shift and clears her throat, terrified to the point that she's hyperaware of her every move, but stubborn enough not to run.

"George," she greets, quietly. "I need your help."

No fate but what we make.

For all that Sarah spends her time espousing that, she finds herself stuck. She's just finished another shift at the Winchester, but she had suffered through every moment. She couldn't stand the thought of Cromartie just out in the open and so she's moved him, but it's more than that weighing on her mind.

All she can think about is how the endless day refused to send her back home until she let John kill Sarkissian.

As if that's the only conclusion there's ever going to be in that story. No fate but what we make, but that seems like it's a joke now, spat in her face. She nurses a drink and sits at a table, ready to resume cleaning in a minute, but all she can do for the moment is stare into space and think about inevitability.

She's an idiot.

Sarah's been reiterating this again and again, but nonetheless, she's here. She's here and she's even put on decent clothes for this blind date that a crazy woman set up. Insanity may have been prevalent in the whole process, but she still finds herself curious as to what kind of man she'll be meeting tonight. Her thoughts stray always to Reese and to Charley and how they were both good men trying to fight to make the world better.

The men she's met here seem the same, but she's not exactly a great prize considering everyone else is at least twenty years younger and far more attractive than she can ever muster. She can clean up nicely enough, but pry away the clothes and all there's left is scars and shrapnel and proof of her war.

Still, here she is in a pair of good jeans and a decent top, hands awkwardly shoved in her pockets as she waits for this mysterious man. The added fact that they're at the Winchester doesn't help. This is her workplace. This is where she knows people and they know her.

Like Sarah said: insane.

Her hands still have blood on them.

The house is in one piece, the bomb in the Jeep was dismantled in time, and she has blood on her hands from Sarkissian's body and his henchman. She had been waiting for them. She had known they would be there and instead of letting them chain her up and beat John, she'd been waiting for them with a weapon and all the rage of a mother protecting her child.

And now, she has blood on her hands and she stares down at the stain, unable to process anything around her. Not John, not Derek, not even the men from the island who are impossibly there. She just can't...

She can't process this. Not yet. She's done a lot of things, but this is the first time she has blood on her hands from a direct kill. It's her first.

And it hadn't even been the machines.

She has human blood on her hands and she's not sure if she's done the right thing.

The annoying thing about an injury is that it doesn't immediately heal. She's not a machine (as much as she wants to be to fight off the predators) and so when she gets hurt like she did in that junkyard, she stays hurt for a long while. She's healed for the most part, but that also means she's gone from too many cleanings to just one a day and that one is right now.

She's just come from getting the rub and is in the clinic with it, shirt hoisted up and mirror showing her the jagged marks of the stitches as she rubs two fingers over the area, trying to make sure that if she does scar, it's not going to be as noticeable as her c-section marks.

Her whole body is a story of scars, at this point. She just thought that if she'd be adding to it, it would be for a cause and not just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Out of all the things she's ever expected of her life, being torn away from a surgical table and brought to an Island isn't one of them. Another thing she doesn't expect is to close her eyes in sleep one day and wake up in a familiar alleyway with a gun in her hands and John being held hostage.

It all goes the same, it all progresses exactly the same. Derek is there and the child is whimpering and then the man pretending to be Sarkissian is shot and John is in her arms. It's different, though, it's different because she hasn't seen John in too long and she remembers the last time they were separated this long.

She won't let go, she refuses, even when out of the corner of her eye she sees faces that, by all rights, shouldn't be there. "John," she says, holding him closer than before. "John, I love you," she says like it's a command, like he needs to respond. "Are you okay?"

Sarah is following Bruce.

She knows that she shouldn't, but there are certain things that she likes to keep track of and in this place, people are one of the few things she can control. She's been hovering six feet behind and easing behind trees and other objects, a weapon tucked away in the small of her back. Even if it's not a gun, she's made a shiv out of good solid wood and knows that it will protect her if ever she needs it.

Right now, though, she doesn't think she needs to be on the offensive. There are just things about Bruce that set her alarms on maximum and maybe she's just being paranoid. Maybe now that he's seen her all but naked, she's over-reacting, but she'd rather let the paranoid bitch out than play dead.

And so, she follows.

Sarah is soaking wet. And she's heard it all about how many pounds she probably is. She knows better than to argue, knows to just take advantage of any preconception and go with it. The problem is, no one here is really anything but too-kind and she's soaking wet. Her clothes are sticking to her skin and sloshing about, but it's a necessary evil if she wants to eat or shower.

She's made it downstairs to the clothes box, stripping off her long-sleeved painted-on top (at least, that's what it feels like at the moment), letting it fall to the floor with a heavy thud before continuing along.

Tank top goes too and meets with the jeans. She's still got on a pair of men's spandex shorts and a camisole, but those are wet too and she's willing to take anything she can from the clothes box at the moment, even the ugly plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt she's just grabbed. It reminds her of something that she might have thrown out from Charley's closet and that makes her smile, just offhand for a moment.

It's just a brief flicker of a moment and she turns her attention back to the more important things. Dry clothes. Reaching her arms above her head, she flexes her shoulders back and starts to shrug into the shirt, cool air meeting her skin momentarily as she pulls on the shirt, covering her shoulders, arms, and more.

The jeans come next and she soldiers on, just glad to be dry once more.

It only figures, Sarah believes. She gets a doctor and almost can put her trust in the woman and suddenly, she's gone. Just like she's dropped out of time, gone. And really, she knows that the woman had a husband and child and she has no claim. Still, she's relieved that at least the husband hasn't been left behind.

This leaves her with no doctor, though. At least, not yet. She has a chance, though. When it comes time for his clinic shift, that's when she shows up at the door, arms crossed and leaning against the doorway. "Hi," is all she manages with a tight smile, as if somehow he could read her mind and figure out what she's doing there.

Things are progressing slowly. Every day takes its small toll on her in the way of emotional pain tearing at her, keeping her from John. She still has no gun and she still has no explanation for what kind of time skip must have happened to bring her here. Something must have happened during the surgery and she has no way of finding out what or what kind of mad scientist has decided to put this madhouse show together.

She's making small steps of progress. She's found herself a temporary home and is starting to fortify it. She's made sure that she has primitive weapons and checks in place for if someone arrives that she knows. She has her investigations underway.

That leaves several important things.

First: find enough people and befriend them on a casual level. Close enough to earn mild trust, but not too close to arouse suspicion.

Second: make sure the cancer isn't in her body. That's why she's at the Clinic after researching the roster of names. Ellie seems the best bet. A mother, a woman, and who seems normal as can be from her quiet investigation. She's timed her arrival to the clinic in the middle of Ellie's shift, knocking lightly on the door. "Hi," she greets with an even pull of her lips. "Dr. Woodcomb?"

MAILBOX FOR SARAH BAUM

She's dallied too long.

At first, Sarah could almost consider it acceptable because of her leg, but then she had started to have nightmares about her inaction. She sits around all day and researches the history of this strange place she's in and considers seeking help because she's imagining a place with dinosaurs, but the last time she looked for a therapist...well, that's one story she's sure kids won't ever hear at bedtime.

She lowers her hairbrush and looks at her reflection in the mirror. All prettied up and barely looking like she's been shot less than a week ago. She touches the clasp in her hair lightly and smooths her hand over the ankle-length black skirt and blouse she's put on. She's waited too long. There are things at play on this strange Island she's been taken to and while she might not know where John is and while she might not know if Derek is protecting him, she does know that she can't stop fighting.

She'll start with the call-box system, see if it's a threat. There are other concerns, but she's only one woman and she has to start here. She slides into a pair of low-slung heels just outside the lab where people tell her that Gaius Baltar usually works. "Dr. Baltar?" she remarks, waiting to be noticed.