Sarah Connor

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.

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 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.