Work Text:
Sarah Connor's body shakes awake, head low on a musty pillow, yanking her from a dream that hijacked her focus for a few short minutes of rest, luring and lulling her with lush grasses, rolling hills, and soft breezes. A world of innocence she barely remembers, having paid it scant attention for nearly twenty years, since before John. Everything was different, before John. Everything changed, after John. After Kyle. After the serpent decided to gift her with unwanted knowledge of good and evil.
Nevermind that the serpent is paradoxically her son. John is good. Everything else is suspect.
She shuts her eyes against a jagged tightness threatening to burst in her throat, returning along with snatches of pictures in her head. Moments that she is unable to shake: distant chaotic nightmarish battlegrounds of smoke-laden urban ruins stretching to the horizon, when the horizon can be seen. No noise but the wind, and no wind but what catches on dust and glass and rubble, fluttering unidentifiable fingers of paper and plastic torn away. No other sound, no footsteps, no laughter, no shouting. No one, for hours. Alone. Until metal comes. And keeps coming. Five, ten, dozens, scouring the debris for their prey, bereft of their human disguise other than the stark unnerving framework of gleaming bones and wicked grins meant only to terrorize. They pass within yards and she only dares breathe again before she runs, low, a rabbit through the warren, finding no cover to give her relief.
She stifles a cough, rolling on her side away from the warm body beside her, a sharp stab arcing through her shoulder reminding her to favor the arm now bent beneath her on the lumpy mattress. Briefly. She didn't have time for pain, of any kind. She sits, leaning rather than tilting to regain balance. The barren concrete room smells damp and earthy; somewhere water trickles into an echoing drain.
Cozy.
She fights the left-over lump in her stomach, the one that formed and stayed there the moment she opened her eyes in this world -- hours ago? days? -- naked once again, with the acrid crackle of static and spark fading around her but not quickly enough to remove the memory of traveling. Even the second time around, Sarah finds it hard to believe that Time is nothing but a current, concentrated and pushed hard enough to deposit someone, unceremonious and newborn, as one would have dropped groceries on the counter and walked away. Twice now. She'd have to start accepting it eventually.
A constant weak yellow light spills through the archway to her right. The outer passageway quiet, for now. No one. The few hours before not so much, teeming with weapons and questions and proddings and accusatory sideways glances, and a dog licking her face and hands before being led away with most of the others. More interrogation, less suspicion, and a growing silence, this one welcome. To be left alone, ironically, that's all she wanted. Not all -- that was a lie. To find John, to find her son, that's what she wants, why she came, or went, why she agreed to the plan.
Leaning over her knees in the shadows underground, stomach and throat and muscles knotted... coming here wasn't a good idea.
She stands, wobbling and chastising herself for it. Nothing else hurts enough to matter so much. She avoids the rest of the room, pausing instead at the door in the yellow light and finding nothing remarkable to keep her focus, keep her thoughts away from the eyes she feels searching her back. She brushes her shirt with her good arm. Someone else's shirt. She'd have to get used to that again.
"You gonna live?"
Derek's voice flows, quiet and rough from sleep, through the room, along the floor, settling around Sarah's feet before seeping into the hall. He clears his throat; she hears the bedding rustle as his attention falls to other things. The tension in her shoulders eases, and she nods without looking. He's padding around the room, dressing, she supposes. Shirt. Belt. Boots. Gun. He sits. She turns, glancing at the figure on the bed, still stunned by the sight of him but keeping it to herself. She hopes.
Young. He's so much younger, despite the familiar echo in his eyes of the world he's witnessed. Leaner, hungrier. More settled in this reality of his than he had been in hers. He hasn't known the past yet, her past, where the world is still green and busy and ignorant of its hellish destiny. The one Sarah left behind -- hours ago? Days?
Mostly, Derek Reese is alive, and not lain on Catherine Weaver's stone cold floor with a bullet in his forehead, eyes vacant and staring at Sarah above the slow-growing pool of blood around him.
Not yet.
"Get some sleep?" He's watching her, wary despite the circumstances, or because of them.
"Yes."
"Good. Get it when you can," he says, still seated. After a pause he continues, rubbing at his nose. "Still no name then?"
She shakes her head. It wouldn't do for the name Sarah to get out, even if humans haven't heard of her yet. Not Sarah Baum, not Sarah Gale, not a half-dozen others, and sure as hell not Connor or Reese. The machines know her, she's certain of it, and someday so will Derek. Being here complicates things far more than she'd processed before stepping into the ionizing air surrounding her, allowing it to take her forward.
Derek stands, and she takes a half-step back. He doesn't notice, shrugging. "'Hey lady,' I guess," he says, "until you remember." He softens after a pause. "I hope you didn't think I was trying to, uh." He gestures to the bed. "Or if you did, I...," he stumbles, the moment feeling oddly innocent. It's awkward, but not an uncomfortable thought for her, and she almost smiles as he goes on. "You were shaking, I thought maybe you needed someone. Something."
She's tempted to say yes. "No," she says instead. "It's fine. I'm fine. Better."
Derek's eyebrows raise. "Fine, no. Better, I'll take."
Her arm hugs close along her waist, easing the pain in her shoulder. "Okay, then. Better." She changes the subject. "When are they expected back, did you find out?"
"Teams split up. My brother took one team, the kid you're looking for went with the other, so I don't know." He takes a moment to check his weapon a second, which seems to be a reflex here. Or instinct. "Tonight, tomorrow. Depends on the metal, I guess." He looks up as a shudder passes over her, hesitating. "You really aren't used to being in the thick of it, are you," he says, holstering the gun. "Not sure what your game is, then. Only one reason for being this close to the machines, and if it wasn't my motivation I'd be a thousand miles away. So to speak. They won't let you get that far."
Sarah's face flushes hot while she restrains herself from throwing a punch. He doesn't know her, she has to remember, again, and again. And she did herself no favors by being vulnerable for once in her goddamn life. Lesson learned.
"I need a weapon," she states plainly.
"They're a little hard to come by."
"Not from what I saw on the way in. I need a weapon, you need people who can handle one. You'd be stupid, you know what I can do."
He knows exactly that. Even overwhelmed by bleakness, by the reality of the consequences of her failure -- never preventing Skynet, never stopping Judgment Day in its tracks. Even faced with dozens of metal bastards, in the middle of an ashen grey barren wasteland of a city, watching humans scattering like rats into safe-havens and following their example. Even in this, Sarah took out more than her share of the enemy when given the chance. And she survived it. He knows this, he knew it then, he witnessed it now.
"An 870 gives a good swift kick to the head," she says. He studies her. When he replies, his voice is strained.
"I'll ask our scrounger. See if somebody doesn't need theirs anymore." He shrugs into his jacket and twists out the door without looking back.
The words sting less than they should, Sarah notes, and she goes through the motions of out-of-place habits like smoothing a blanket and toeing into too-small shoes. She should care more. It should matter. Rarely has she had to take human life through all of this, and now only a fraction remain, no thanks to her, hidden and hunted. Maybe seeking something as selfish as it is practical gives her more in common with metal than she wants to think.
But in the months since Charley floated away and John jumped forward in a burst of sizzling steel blue light Sarah survived, rekindling instincts that kept her alive and moving, always moving, during the years between the taste of the apple and losing paradise. What was left behind of Cameron wasn't the only thing she buried, deep and musty.
A rustle at the doorway interrupts.
"Hey. Lady." The sting is gone. Derek leans a hand on the rotting frame, picking at the wood, lingering in the hall. "Stay. If you want." His brief nod feels deeper than his words, and the way he looks at her makes Sarah wonder for a moment if hope really was a thing with wings, after all. Then he's gone, only fading footsteps keeping her company in the shadows.
A twinge in her shoulder brings a wince. No time for either pain or hope. Both are a luxury she can't afford at any price. Couldn't then, can't now. The rumble in her stomach reminds her of more pressing matters. Food. Weapons. Finding John.
It strikes her like a bullet that she's yet to think of Kyle.
She sinks to the mattress, doubles over and lets everything flow. And it hurts.