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She’s been driving the stolen Jeep northwest for hours, listening to Helena snoring from the passenger seat. Sarah appreciates the noise—just loud enough to block out the thoughts that threaten to come forward, but quiet enough not to annoy her. She can’t get emotional. Experience has taught her the only way to survive is to keep moving forward, deal with the aftermath later—when it’s safe.
Except it’s never safe, and she’s still running; only now it’s from herself.
Sighing, Sarah rakes a hand through her hair, trying to tease out some of the knots and dirt. Her eyes land on Helena, who looks so fucking peaceful in spite of their situation. Sarah’s anger simmers, burning away the tears that had threatened to fall only seconds ago.
Come sestra, people miss us.
Sarah still hasn’t forgiven Helena for leaving her behind. If Helena hadn’t Paul might—it doesn’t change a bloody thing. He’s gone because of her, another victim of the Sarah shite storm—we do terrible things for the people we love—and she’s got to get them away from this mess.
I was hungry. Pupok was my sandwich. You are not sandwich, sestra.
Why did Helena come back? Her explanation makes no sense. The fuck is a poo-pock anyway? It’s the second time Helena’s said it. The desert and the military must have done a number on her, but it doesn’t matter. Sarah doesn’t care. She can’t give a shit about anything other than getting back to her family.
Her body may be screaming to pull over, stop, and rest. Her muscles are pleading for relief from the tension that keeps building under her skin, tightening and twisting until she breaks. It’s not important—Castor is still out there and they are not out of the woods yet.
I let myself get consumed by this thing.
Beth’s right—or her dream version of Beth is right, at any rate. She has to keep moving—if she doesn’t, Sarah will collapse under the weight of all her unanswered questions. She’s done a shit job so far—Paul’s dead, Kira’s gone—but there are still people she’s responsible for who need her.
Stop asking why. Start asking who.
Siobhan. She needs S to get out of this mess and back to Felix and Alison and Cosima.
There’s a gas station up ahead, a payphone installed near the building and the Telemex sign calls to her like a beacon. She scrounges around the glove compartment and retrieves several pesos, making sure Helena is still asleep before leaving. Sarah hasn’t forgotten the last time she’d left her alone in a car. And she knows, if Helena tries some shit, they don’t have any money to pay off a cop to keep her out of prison.
She rushes into the store and blows her money on two bottles of water, a bag of something she thinks is beef jerky, a map, and a phone card—when had things changed anyway—and the clerk, with his weathered skin and looks of concern decides to start talking.
Must not get that many customers this late at night—too bad she spent most of Spanish lessons smoking outside.
“Este lugar es peligroso para mujeres,” the clerk warns and Sarah sighs. Yes, it’s dangerous, but not for the reasons he thinks. She’s survived a psycho with homicidal tendencies who tried to steal her kid and her ovary, and her fucked up rapist clone brothers—this isn’t shite in comparison.
“Esta bien.” She lies—nothing is fine. “Yo—seen worse,” Sarah adds, heading for the door and trying to cover her accent with something that sounds like Cosima’s as best she can. There’s only so much Spanish she remembers—and it’s better he believe that she’s a dumb American in case any of those psychos come after them.
Sometimes all that running comes in handy, she thinks. She slips the phone card into the slot and presses the receiver to her ear. She hears someone pick up on the first ring and her stomach drops—S never answers this quickly, it’s probably a bloody recording that’ll tell her something she doesn’t understand.
Then she’s fucked.
“Sarah?” Siobhan’s voice comes through the receiver and Sarah bites down on her lip to keep from breaking. She feels like she’s fifteen again, before S had gotten used to her running to prove a point, back when there was still worry in her voice.
“It’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“Mexico,” Sarah answers, “Delicias or some shite.”
“Mexico?” Siobhan asks, as if she’s expected it all along, and it just makes her angrier. Maybe S was going to leave her there too. Take Kira back and raise her—she’s done it before. “Information was spotty, but—“
“Two of those psychos kidnapped me,” Sarah interrupts, annoyed and not in the mood for excuses. “I don’t have my bloody passport and I’ve been drivin’ all night—“
“I’ll be on the next flight out.” Sarah jerks into the receiver at that, nearly dropping it in the process. “Benjamin arranged it. There’s a car waiting in El Paso with explosives in the back.”
Shit. She was already coming—S was looking for her all along and the guilt cuts through her like a knife. She’s just so bloody tired that Sarah’s left believing the worst in everyone.
Whose side are you on, S?
Yours, love. It’s always been yours.
“No. No.”
Siobhan can’t come here. Not with Helena still having her bullshit revenge fantasies—Sarah still hasn’t told her about Paul and how that all turned out. Maybe she’ll do it in the morning, when they’re further north.
“What do you mean, no, Sarah?” Siobhan rants into the receiver and Sarah tenses out of habit. “You can’t just stay there! They’ll find you and drag you right back.”
“I—I have Helena, S,” Sarah admits, chewing on her bottom lip. She hopes that S will understand; that she won’t have to tell Siobhan the truth of it all. She isn’t sure what to make of Helena’s betrayal, but she’s still family.
“So? I’ll bring two sets of papers.”
Bloody hell, she’s not getting it and Sarah isn’t sure how many more minutes are on the damn card.
“She knows, Siobhan—Helena knows about the deal.” Sarah doesn’t confess that she’s the one who told her—not that it would have mattered. Bad, hopefully dead, mother told Helena before she had, anyway.
“Does she now?”
“She left me with them, with Castor,” Sarah sighs. Maybe a change in tactic will help S see that coming her will just put her in danger. When she closes her eyes she can still see the guard’s blood and brain matter explode against the bricks. “Helena thought I had somethin’ to do with it.”
“And yet she’s with you now.” Siobhan’s tone rings through the phone and across countries. Sarah knows S doesn’t agree with her decision and she doesn’t know how to bloody well explain it to her.
“I—she came back,” Sarah answers in non-answers in an attempt to quell her own doubts about Helena. “But, if she sees you—“
“I can handle myself.” S snaps before Sarah can finish her warning and she frowns into the cradle of the phone, Amelia slipping to the forefront of her mind.
She hasn’t forgotten, even if Sarah chooses to ignore Amelia and Katja and all the rest. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead without sin and all that bullshit Helena believes in. But if she takes out S—there's no coming back, no forgiveness Sarah can offer, and if it comes to that, Sarah knows where to aim, how to pull the bloody trigger.
“I can’t risk it.”
“You’re my daughter and I’m coming for you, Sarah.”
“No—Mum, please. Please.” Her lip trembles as a stray tear trickles down her cheek. She can’t lose anyone else—she can’t. “Just send Benjamin, yeah?”
Sarah breathes into the phone, the staccato beat a clear tell that she’s trying, and failing, not to start sobbing under the weight of Helena’s past and the threat it poses to her family. A family she thought—thinks—Helena is a part of.
We make a family, yes?
And Helena’s innocent? How many people has she killed?
Too many, Sarah thinks—that she didn’t know better, that she’s not—it doesn’t wash the blood off her hands. And she won’t let Helena add Siobhan to the list.
“Alright, love. I’ll send Benjamin. Do you have a place to stay?”
“Just the Jeep I lifted.”
“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”
“I—“
“You have to keep moving, chicken—an army vehicle sticks out,” Siobhan adds and Sarah bobs her head. She knows this, but she’s just so, so tired. “I won’t lose you before I have you back.”
“Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So how is this gonna work?”
“I have a contact four hours north in Juarez—“
“Juarez? Right.”
Sarah scowls as she remembers the time she slipped away with Vic, high as shite on cocaine and self-loathing. Vic’d scammed some drug lord for gas money and sped away before they got caught, but she knows that rule one is to never return anywhere where you’ve had a mark.
“Oh, come off it. You’ve survived worse.” Sarah rolls her eyes; amused that S thinks her objection is simply based on the city’s reputation. She’s been in clone jail, shitting into a bucket and getting pumped full of rapist blood. Juarez is the bloody Four Seasons in comparison.
“She owns a bar—Frontera. She’ll be expecting you; I already reached out when Mexico came up. Benjamin will meet you there.”
“God I wish I had paid more attention in Spanish class—“
Siobhan clucks her tongue to the roof of her mouth as if to say, I told you so, but Sarah ignores it. Going back to school is the last thing on her mind when there’s all this DYAD and Top Side and Castor and Leda shite around every corner.
“Marta speaks English and helps funnel in children,” Siobhan says, and Sarah files that knowledge away. She doesn’t know what Helena’s thinking—the less she knows of Siobhan’s involvement the better.
“Can I trust her?”
“We don’t have a choice, now, do we?”
“I guess not.” Sarah agrees and catches some movement out of the corner of her eye. Shit. “Helena’s awake. I have to go.”
“I lo—“
Sarah hangs up the phone before Siobhan can finish. She stares up into the sky, stars twinkling down from above and whispers, “I love you too, mum.”