Something To Remember Me By, 6/9. NC-17
Title: Something To Remember Me By
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: Kyle/Sarah
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to other people, and I own nothing even remotely related to this.
Notes: Written for the ever lovely and wonderful romanovasledger. :)
Summary: Of course Sarah had a life before Kyle appeared in it. It wasn't her fault that he didn't have one now that Genisys had been stopped. Now they had to figure out what to do with a brand new future, and Sarah was going to lead the way.
Previous chapters:
One - Uncanny Valley
Two - An Interesting Future
Three - Switch Off The Sun
Four - Choking On Thin Air
Five - Laying A New Foundation
Six - Putting On War Paint
It was a weekend two weeks after the midterm that Sarah and Natalie managed to get to the mall, and Sarah agreed to stay overnight afterward. Pops had by then vetted not only Natalie, but her mother and older sister Nadine. Natalie's father had died while she was in high school, and her mother had retreated into the house. Nadine had been away at college, and Sarah could suddenly understand why drugs became such a big focus for Natalie. It instantly gave her a release and friends that would claim to be with her forever; Sarah had seen it on the streets of LA far too often while growing up. A grieving Natalie wouldn't have stood a chance.
Sarah thought of her own grief, of how it had been sublimated into learning how to take care of herself and shoot weapons, how to take down Terminators and stay alive. She hadn't needed drugs to take the edge off, not when destroying things vented her rage well enough.
She was in jeans and a plain black T shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. There was little on her face other than mascara and light pink lip gloss, and she knew she looked incredibly young and innocent. Kyle had seemed somewhat upset that he was being left out of whatever she was going to do, but wasn't comfortable enough to actually talk to her about it. She also felt too awkward to ask him, and lamely had suggested he call one of his work friends to hang out. "We need to make a bunch of friends, right?" she had said. "I'm trying."
"Yeah," he had replied tonelessly. "Friends."
Belatedly, she recalled that John Connor had been his friend, savior and mentor. And he had helped her kill him.
Snapping her mouth shut, she took the coward's way out and met Natalie at the mall.
"You seem to be so not thrilled to be here," Natalie commented when they met up for lunch.
Wincing, Sarah dropped her eyes to look at the burger that was suddenly unappetizing. "I'm kind of an ass sometimes."
"To your Kyle?"
She looked up sharply and caught Natalie's sympathetic look. "What?"
"Hey. You guys give me the impression you've been together a long time."
"Well..."
"So you're probably not even trying to do anything fun together, are you?"
Sarah looked at Natalie blankly. "Like?"
Natalie actually covered her face with her hands and made a despairing noise. "Oh my God, Sarah, how did you survive until you met me?"
"With a knife and hidden guns," Sarah replied without thinking.
Blinking in surprise, Natalie peered at her through her fingers. "Holy shit, Sarah, you're not even joking," she blurted.
"Of course not," Sarah said, affronted. "What do you take me for?"
"The gang bangers you talked about," Natalie murmured, nodding after a moment. "Okay. So, frame of reference is totally different."
"I think it's safe to assume," Sarah replied dryly.
Natalie rolled her eyes, ignoring the comment. "You and Kyle need to date. Do something romantic." She pulled her hands away from her face and grinned, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Makeup and hair and tight fitting clothes to show off your assets."
"I don't go for girls," Sarah said.
"Just because I do doesn't mean I'm hitting on you," Natalie huffed, leaning back in her chair. "Or do you think I am?"
Sarah frowned. "I don't know? I mean, the comment about the threesome?"
"I was joking. Mostly. C'mon, can you blame me? Your Kyle is hot as all get-out, of course I'm going to say something. Doesn't mean I'm going to actually do anything. I'm not some kind of skank stealing my friend's guys. That's just awful."
Relieved, Sarah slumped a little. "Oh. Good." She gave Natalie a wan smile. "I'm not so good at the friend thing. Not with girls anyway. Gangbanger girls thought I was in competition with them or that I wanted to steal their guys. Which I wasn't."
"Well, yeah. Too much competing with each other." Natalie rolled her eyes and then munched on her fries. "Which is just bullshit and stupid, so. Good thing we're not like that."
"Full of bullshit and stupidity?" Sarah asked, pulling a face. "I dunno, I have my moments."
Natalie laughed and then picked up her burger. "So does everybody, Sarah. So. You and Kyle are together for so long that you don't even think about impressing him anymore." She snickered at Sarah's expression. "Oh, come on. You want to scare away asshats, don't even look when he's got his clothes plastered to him, but you get jealous as all hell when you think I'm trying to mack on your territory. You have it bad." She chewed thoughtfully, oblivious to how still Sarah had suddenly gotten. "Might be nice to have that, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't still look your best. If not for him, then for you. Please tell me that's not your nicest outfit."
"It's just clothes," Sarah said defensively.
"Your dad give you a line of credit?" Natalie asked.
"Well, yeah, for emergencies."
"You know what the max is?" she asked, looking eager.
"Um. No. Never needed to find out." Sarah gave Natalie an assessing glance when she lit up and grinned. "What?"
"We're going to find out. I want a few new shirts anyway, but we're going to glam you up a bit, really make your eyes pop, make Kyle drool all over you and forget whatever dumbass thing you said to him this morning."
Sarah winced. "More like a lot of mornings. And evenings."
And if her friend could see that she cared about him and called it love, then maybe she did have something stronger than lust and concern for his welfare, no matter how much she wanted to push it away.
"I missed having a girl friend I could talk makeup and clothes with like this!" Natalie crowed, bopping in her seat joyfully. "We're hitting up all the stores and getting you some cool stuff."
"I have perfectly workable stuff!"
"Yeah. Workable. We need to jazz you up a bit. Not going slutty or anything, if you're worried about that, but kinda giving you a little softer of a look to go with the edges. I think Rampage and Forever 21 will work." She sighed dramatically at Sarah's blank look. "Oh, Sarah, your education has been woefully incomplete. Westfield is way too upscale for what we want, but we can probably find stuff at H&M. Avoid Abercrombie or Banana or J. Crew. Way too prep for your style, I think."
"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
"We want to go to Stoneridge," Natalie declared. "C'mon, finish up. We can at least hit up H&M while we're here, but after this, we're heading to the other mall. Trust me, I know these two malls inside and out. I spent most of high school trolling these halls and smoking weed in the parking lots." She laughed at Sarah's dubious expression. "Would I steer you wrong?"
"I don't know. Maybe?"
"Not about clothes or makeup." She pointed to herself, and Sarah had to admit, she looked effortlessly graceful and pretty. "I had to start obsessing over something other than drugs and being a dumbass, right? And high end makeup and clothes are it."
Sarah sighed. "Okay. If you say so."
"I definitely do," Natalie said brightly. "I'm in my natural element here. You might rule the streets and the book work, but if it's down to a mall crawl, I can lead you wherever you want to go and set you up."
In the future Kyle talked about, none of those skills would have mattered. But that future wasn't going to exist anymore, they had made sure of it.
Might as well see what this alternate future was all about.
***
It had been awkward to try on clothes in the store, to see the shape of her figure in tighter fits and curve skimming fabrics. Natalie convinced her to try skirts on for the first time since her parents had died, not that the other girl had known about that. "It's... impractical," she said lamely, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Pops would hate it.
Natalie had rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around Sarah's shoulders, propping her chin on the bony part to look at her in the mirror. "Sarah, it's a miniskirt. If you're looking to get Kyle hot and bothered, it's very practical. Hike that up and peel off your underwear. Or shove 'em to the side if you really want to get to it fast." She had let go and skipped backwards while laughing when Sarah gaped at her in horror and nearly shoved her off. "Oh, c'mon, everyone needs one inappropriate friend, and that's me."
"You're enjoying this!" Sarah accused.
"Hell, yeah. I feel like I'm corrupting a Catholic schoolgirl or something. It's wicked fun."
Sarah had to tamp down on her irritation and keep from quirking her lips into a smile. Okay, this possibly wasn't that bad, and this was so... normal. Holy fucking hell, it was amazing to not worry about a Terminator coming out and sniping her, it was surreal.
"Whatever," she said, waving her hand dismissively and heading for the dressing room. "Well, I feel stupid."
"C'mon, it's a classic black mini, it goes with everything. Most of what you own is black, it would be easy to match." Natalie grabbed a red and black striped shirt off a rack next to her and handed it over. "Here. Put that on top."
This had to be what Barbie dolls and babies felt like, being dressed up and paraded for someone else's amusement. But somewhere along the way, Sarah stopped feeling so irritated by it. Maybe it was when Natalie tossed something horribly floral at her, which neither of them would wear even on a dare. Maybe it was the way Natalie subtly pointed out the colors that worked best with her complexion and the fabrics to look out for. Sarah didn't understand the references to a Clinton and Stacey, but appreciated that Natalie knew about colors and cut and fit, and was willing to give her hints to look for. It was enough of a distraction that Sarah didn't realize she had spent a few hundred dollars in clothes, shoes, and makeup, even with the sales and opening up a new store account, all in the space of several hours. Once she realized it, she was horrified at the extravagance, but Natalie only laughed delightedly and was pleased to be able to play with it all right away for their sleepover.
"We can mix and match your new stuff and some of mine. I promise, I'm not carrying any weirdo germs or anything," Natalie said, gesturing for Sarah to come with her into the bathroom. It was a fairly large one compared to the one in the apartment Sarah shared with Pops and Kyle, and she apparently had an entire drawer of makeup next to the sink. "The top one's my Mom's, which she hardly ever touches anymore. I swear, she has a mascara in there that's like ten years old or something. Better not touch any of that stuff."
Sarah pretended she understood the reference, and simply nodded. "Hey, we'll try whatever you want and see what fits me."
Natalie all but squealed in delight, and Sarah could see the girl that had so desperately tried to fit in. Sarah had learned to tamp down on those instincts, but Natalie never had to. She grabbed eye shadow palettes, blushes, brushes and different color eyeliner as well as makeup remover. At Sarah's odd look, Natalie grinned. "Trust me, it makes taking it all off so much easier. I tried different wipes and stuff, even baby wipes, and it's irritating on eyelids. I may have a serious thing for eye shadow, just so you know."
Not really understanding it, she followed Natalie to her bedroom and sat still as Natalie went wild trying different shadow and liner combinations, snapping pictures on Sarah's phone so that she could look at them later. At the moment, Sarah felt too overwhelmed to really pay attention to the combinations of colors. People paid money for this? It was such an extravagance. Why bother? A single high end palette could be a week's worth of food.
But she wasn't on the run anymore. Terminators were gone. She could figure out who Sarah Connor really was, now that she wasn't going to be Mother of the Resistance anymore.
"This doesn't feel like me," Sarah finally sighed, wiping off yet another combination. "And it's too much effort."
"Eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss?" Natalie offered. "You don't have to go all out with four or five colors at once, either. If you notice, I usually don't. We're just playing around."
"This is silly. I don't know how to do any of this stuff."
"How else are you gonna learn? It's not like I woke up one day and knew how to do it. My mother didn't teach me, after all."
Sarah frowned, suddenly self conscious. "Where is she, anyway?"
"Probably still holed up in her room," Natalie replied, voice flat. "She hardly ever comes out."
Not wanting to touch that can of emotional worms, Sarah picked up the palette of eye shadows that Natalie had been using. "So how'd you learn this stuff?"
"YouTube," Natalie replied promptly, probably grateful for the diversion. "And just messing around to see what worked. I usually like the plain colors or the dramatic look," she said, waggling her eyebrows playfully on "dramatic."
She looked at the palette. "I think most of these are too dark."
"For you, yeah. But with the right shadow brush, you could work the colors as eyeliner."
"That seems like too much hassle."
"You can spend ten minutes on yourself in the morning, right?"
"I guess so."
Natalie pointed at her face. "That's all I need. Promise."
Disbelieving it, Sarah let Natalie brush two colors of shadow on her lids, put on mascara and liner, then the lip gloss. "Lucky you, you don't need foundation too much. If you did, it still probably wouldn't take you long." She sat back and looked at her handiwork. "I like it. This would be an everyday, simple kind of thing."
Sarah nearly did a double take. "Oh." She leaned in closer to the mirror Natalie held out to her. "I like it," she said shyly. "I look pretty."
"Yeah, exactly. Why shouldn't you rock those eyes? Seriously, a good feature on you." Natalie grinned at her. "Now let's jazz up your jeans a bit. Kyle's eyes will pop out of his head when he sees you next."
She frowned at Natalie. "But I still said some really bitchy things..."
"Well, have you tried apologizing?"
Sarah shot her a look that clearly said "What are you, stupid? Of course not!" as clearly as if she had said the words. "He wouldn't believe it, anyway, because I meant it."
Natalie sighed. "Okay, then. We're going to try something." She got up and started digging in the back of her closet until she found a workbook. "We're going to do some of these exercises, and I'm gonna snap pics of it so you can do them on your own."
"The hell?"
Wiggling the workbook in her hands, Natalie shrugged. "I got this when I tried therapy. Didn't stick with it long, the whole drugs thing, but I kept the book and did it when I found it after I got sober. Amazingly enough, my therapist hadn't been full of shit." She laughed at Sarah's doubtful expression. "It's about feelings," she said, waggling her fingers at her. "You know, those icky, awful things we don't want to feel, so we throw them around so that someone else can feel that shit for us."
"I have no idea what you just said," Sarah lied.
"Yeah, well, I'm your therapist as well as beauty coach," Natalie teased, plopping down in front of Sarah. "So I need to throw around some of the lingo, right?"
Sarah sighed. "Why are you trying so hard?"
"Oh, come on. You guys have to have been together since like, junior high. Don't throw that away if you can fix it."
The comment made Sarah wonder how long Natalie's parents had been together before her father died. That had to have been a long time for it to have devastated the family so badly, for her mother to still live like a ghost in her own home.
"What if he's still angry with me?" Sarah asked in a small voice.
"That's where the makeover comes into play. Distract him so he's thinking with the wrong head, and then you can apologize." She laughed at Sarah's incredulous look. "Hey, just because my love life is nonexistent right now doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. It means I want to live vicariously through you right now."
That made sense, too. She sighed. "Okay. Tell me what's in this magic workbook of yours."
Beaming, Natalie proceeded to do just that.
***
Sarah wasn't sure what she expected getting back to the apartment, but being ignored certainly wasn't it. Frowning, she shrugged out of her leather jacket and hung it up on the peg near the door that she usually used. She was wearing one of the new blouses that Natalie had convinced her to wear, a bright blue frilly thing, as well as tighter jeans "to show your ass off" and heeled boots that had her wobbling a bit. Her other clothes were in her duffle bag, and she had all the store bags with her as well. That should've been a tip off that something was different, but Pops was in the kitchen as always, and Kyle was in the living room staring at the TV with fierce concentration on his face. It was some kind of survival show, two men going through some kind of wilderness that Sarah had never seen, arguing how best to get back to civilization. She didn't see the appeal of it, but maybe he was drawn to the greenery and seeing nature. It was highly unlikely that either of them would ever be trapped anywhere that they would need to learn how to find water in a jungle or that seep wells could at least give a little moisture until they found flowing water less likely to contain pathogens.
Kyle noticed when she banged the bedroom door open and knocked into it with some of the shopping bags. "What is all that stuff?"
"I went out, remember?" Sarah asked, trying to keep the testiness from her voice. She was supposed to matter to him, right? Didn't that mean that he should notice her more? Never mind that being noticed bothered her, that she had to be invisible and not hunted; Kyle was different, because he was supposed to find her. Instead, she had to find him. She had to be the one to teach him things in this world she was only learning herself. It was hard not to resent that, to resent the fate she tried so hard to escape.
Yet here it was, staring her in the face.
He frowned at her. "You're different."
"Eloquent," she replied tightly. Her lips stretched in a grimace of a smile. "Is it bad?"
"It's..." Kyle's hands fluttered helplessly. "Different."
"You said that."
"It's impractical," Pops called out from the kitchen.
Sarah glared at him. "What?"
"You cannot run in those heels. Your gait is unsteady, the center of gravity shifts too much, and it would be too easy to overturn your balance if attacked."
"Okay, that," Kyle jumped in, trying to look helpful.
Upset and not knowing why, she spun on that tottering heel and dropped the shopping bags so that she could slam the bedroom door shut in Kyle's face.
God, she wanted to cry. She wanted to wail. For once, couldn't she do something nice and get some kind of recognition for it?
And to her horror, the tears came. Wiping them away angrily left smears of black mascara, glittery teal eye shadow and black liner on the back of her hands. "Well, fuck," she grumbled, frustrated as she looked at her hands. What did her face look like if that mess was sticking to her hands? The gloss on her lips was starting to feel cloying and sticky, and she bit it off her lips with a vengeance as Kyle knocked on the door.
"Sarah?"
"The hell do you want?" she said, trying to find some way to wipe the makeup off of her hands. All she managed to do was smear it further into her skin, and she didn't want to rub it off on her brand new clothes. What had happened to the tissues they had on the bedside table? And her hand lotion was gone. Seriously, was that how Kyle spent the night without her?
Without saying anything else, Kyle came into the room. "Hey," he murmured hesitantly. His face fell when he saw hers, the smears of paint and tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"What for? This was stupid."
"It's important to you."
"I'm being such a fucking girl," she sneered, shaking her head. "It was stupid. I can't be like them. I can't do this and make it look like I want to be this way. I can't be soft, I can't be nice, I can't do this right-"
Kyle grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. Sarah got up on her tip toes to keep herself from being bent over backward, and she could easily feel the desperation and lust in his touch. She caught hold of his shirt, makeup smearing across it and the top of her new blouse without her realizing it.
"You're better than you think you are. You're more important than you think you are," he growled against her mouth. "Maybe history doesn't talk about you because John wanted to protect you. Because your memory was too precious to share. I know I can't share you, I can't leave you alone."
"You love who you think I am. I'm an asshole, Kyle, and you deserve better-"
"Never say that about yourself in front of me again," he said, and she could see the echoes of the military in his stance. He would have been fierce and determined as a fighter, and he would do whatever it took to get the job done. "You're human," he said, eyes blazing as he looked down at her. "No more, no less."
"Some legend, huh? You must be so disappointed," Sarah began lamely.
"I see someone who survived, who continues to survive. I see someone trading one kind of armor for another," he said, cupping her chin in his hands. "I see war paint, Sarah. You're fighting so hard to find a future for yourself, to be more than just an observer. I don't have that. I don't know where to begin, to even start. It's too different, and the flashes of what I saw in the other version of me make no sense." His hands dropped from her face and his shoulders sagged. "Maybe there's a little truth in what you said. Maybe he used me. Maybe that's the only reason why he found me in the first place."
"He was your friend," Sarah said. "Shitty, but he was."
"Yeah. I think he liked me, respected me. I was one of his best, he saw to that." There was a mournful expression on his face, and Sarah couldn't help but touch his cheek and bite her lip, sorry she had put it there. "I had other friends, but it was different, because we could die at any moment. Or there were transfers to different units based on skill sets. It was hard to get close to someone when you could see them shot up to pieces without any warning. But John... He survived it all, and it was easy for him to be everybody's rock, for all of us to rely on him."
"That's not healthy."
"What was in that life?" Kyle challenged.
Sarah had no answer for him, and felt small because of that.
"You're braver than I am. Maybe you call it being an asshole, but I see it as being brave to keep going, not being afraid of what this future is going to be."
"It was just clothes and makeup," Sarah whispered.
"You look good, by the way," he said, voice faltering.
"What are we doing, Kyle?" Sarah asked, her voice cracking a little. He deserved better than her, someone who could make him whole, give him a future he didn't have to be afraid of.
She must have mumbled some of that, because he shook his head. "I'll always be afraid of the future, Sarah. I can't not. I can't stop being on guard. It wasn't Skynet this time, it was Genisys. It could be anything next time."
Sarah blinked away tears. "It should be done. It should be over. This is what you came for, after all. You saved my life. You saved the future. You should have some of it back. You shouldn't have to still be on guard."
He cupped her face in one hand and pulled her close with his other. "Someone has to. The people in this time don't know what to expect. They won't know what to expect. We do."
"Don't we get a chance to start over? To be something different? To take off the armor?"
"I don't know how else to be," he replied sadly. "And I don't think you do, either."
"So this is our future? Save it from being the fucked up monstrosity you remember? Try to fit in in the meantime?" He voice was bitter. "I'm so tired of that bullshit."
"I know," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her again. This time, she let him bend her over and lay her down on the bed. He removed her clothes gently, reverently, lips brushing across her skin as it was exposed. His touch was soft, delicate, conveying without words that he worshiped her, adored her despite her faults, would do anything at all for her.
All she was capable of doing at the time was letting his mouth roam over her skin, lick into the cleft between her legs. She grasped the hair on his head to keep him in place, arching up as his tongue found her clit and cleverly fell back into the rhythm that he knew she liked. Sarah kept her eyes shut as she gasped and moaned, bucked against his face and arched as she approached orgasm. Kyle brought her over that precipice, lapping at her until her breathing evened out, and stretched out over her.
His lips were shiny and his eyes worshipful. She helped him strip off his clothes and slide on the condom, even though she felt the dirty smears of makeup on her hands was rather a good analogy for how messed up her life had been from the start.
Kyle sliding his cock into her was comfortable and wonderful, though. This felt like home. This felt proper. This part felt right, something she definitely couldn't screw up.
When Sarah came again, she sank her teeth into the meat of his shoulder, and Kyle cried out in ecstasy. He jerked inside her, muscles tensing beneath her fingertips before his entire body relaxed and his expression smoothed out.
She cradled him close, his erratic heartbeat a counterpoint to her ragged breathing. This was probably the first time in a long time that she hadn't directed the sex or ordered him to do something kinky. If she had to call it something, she would have said that it was lovemaking, it was comforting, it was fusing their bodies together.
For some reason, that thought hurt her more than the thought of him not needing her.
***
***
To Chapter Seven - Concern And Guilt
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: Kyle/Sarah
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to other people, and I own nothing even remotely related to this.
Notes: Written for the ever lovely and wonderful romanovasledger. :)
Summary: Of course Sarah had a life before Kyle appeared in it. It wasn't her fault that he didn't have one now that Genisys had been stopped. Now they had to figure out what to do with a brand new future, and Sarah was going to lead the way.
Previous chapters:
One - Uncanny Valley
Two - An Interesting Future
Three - Switch Off The Sun
Four - Choking On Thin Air
Five - Laying A New Foundation
Six - Putting On War Paint
It was a weekend two weeks after the midterm that Sarah and Natalie managed to get to the mall, and Sarah agreed to stay overnight afterward. Pops had by then vetted not only Natalie, but her mother and older sister Nadine. Natalie's father had died while she was in high school, and her mother had retreated into the house. Nadine had been away at college, and Sarah could suddenly understand why drugs became such a big focus for Natalie. It instantly gave her a release and friends that would claim to be with her forever; Sarah had seen it on the streets of LA far too often while growing up. A grieving Natalie wouldn't have stood a chance.
Sarah thought of her own grief, of how it had been sublimated into learning how to take care of herself and shoot weapons, how to take down Terminators and stay alive. She hadn't needed drugs to take the edge off, not when destroying things vented her rage well enough.
She was in jeans and a plain black T shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. There was little on her face other than mascara and light pink lip gloss, and she knew she looked incredibly young and innocent. Kyle had seemed somewhat upset that he was being left out of whatever she was going to do, but wasn't comfortable enough to actually talk to her about it. She also felt too awkward to ask him, and lamely had suggested he call one of his work friends to hang out. "We need to make a bunch of friends, right?" she had said. "I'm trying."
"Yeah," he had replied tonelessly. "Friends."
Belatedly, she recalled that John Connor had been his friend, savior and mentor. And he had helped her kill him.
Snapping her mouth shut, she took the coward's way out and met Natalie at the mall.
"You seem to be so not thrilled to be here," Natalie commented when they met up for lunch.
Wincing, Sarah dropped her eyes to look at the burger that was suddenly unappetizing. "I'm kind of an ass sometimes."
"To your Kyle?"
She looked up sharply and caught Natalie's sympathetic look. "What?"
"Hey. You guys give me the impression you've been together a long time."
"Well..."
"So you're probably not even trying to do anything fun together, are you?"
Sarah looked at Natalie blankly. "Like?"
Natalie actually covered her face with her hands and made a despairing noise. "Oh my God, Sarah, how did you survive until you met me?"
"With a knife and hidden guns," Sarah replied without thinking.
Blinking in surprise, Natalie peered at her through her fingers. "Holy shit, Sarah, you're not even joking," she blurted.
"Of course not," Sarah said, affronted. "What do you take me for?"
"The gang bangers you talked about," Natalie murmured, nodding after a moment. "Okay. So, frame of reference is totally different."
"I think it's safe to assume," Sarah replied dryly.
Natalie rolled her eyes, ignoring the comment. "You and Kyle need to date. Do something romantic." She pulled her hands away from her face and grinned, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Makeup and hair and tight fitting clothes to show off your assets."
"I don't go for girls," Sarah said.
"Just because I do doesn't mean I'm hitting on you," Natalie huffed, leaning back in her chair. "Or do you think I am?"
Sarah frowned. "I don't know? I mean, the comment about the threesome?"
"I was joking. Mostly. C'mon, can you blame me? Your Kyle is hot as all get-out, of course I'm going to say something. Doesn't mean I'm going to actually do anything. I'm not some kind of skank stealing my friend's guys. That's just awful."
Relieved, Sarah slumped a little. "Oh. Good." She gave Natalie a wan smile. "I'm not so good at the friend thing. Not with girls anyway. Gangbanger girls thought I was in competition with them or that I wanted to steal their guys. Which I wasn't."
"Well, yeah. Too much competing with each other." Natalie rolled her eyes and then munched on her fries. "Which is just bullshit and stupid, so. Good thing we're not like that."
"Full of bullshit and stupidity?" Sarah asked, pulling a face. "I dunno, I have my moments."
Natalie laughed and then picked up her burger. "So does everybody, Sarah. So. You and Kyle are together for so long that you don't even think about impressing him anymore." She snickered at Sarah's expression. "Oh, come on. You want to scare away asshats, don't even look when he's got his clothes plastered to him, but you get jealous as all hell when you think I'm trying to mack on your territory. You have it bad." She chewed thoughtfully, oblivious to how still Sarah had suddenly gotten. "Might be nice to have that, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't still look your best. If not for him, then for you. Please tell me that's not your nicest outfit."
"It's just clothes," Sarah said defensively.
"Your dad give you a line of credit?" Natalie asked.
"Well, yeah, for emergencies."
"You know what the max is?" she asked, looking eager.
"Um. No. Never needed to find out." Sarah gave Natalie an assessing glance when she lit up and grinned. "What?"
"We're going to find out. I want a few new shirts anyway, but we're going to glam you up a bit, really make your eyes pop, make Kyle drool all over you and forget whatever dumbass thing you said to him this morning."
Sarah winced. "More like a lot of mornings. And evenings."
And if her friend could see that she cared about him and called it love, then maybe she did have something stronger than lust and concern for his welfare, no matter how much she wanted to push it away.
"I missed having a girl friend I could talk makeup and clothes with like this!" Natalie crowed, bopping in her seat joyfully. "We're hitting up all the stores and getting you some cool stuff."
"I have perfectly workable stuff!"
"Yeah. Workable. We need to jazz you up a bit. Not going slutty or anything, if you're worried about that, but kinda giving you a little softer of a look to go with the edges. I think Rampage and Forever 21 will work." She sighed dramatically at Sarah's blank look. "Oh, Sarah, your education has been woefully incomplete. Westfield is way too upscale for what we want, but we can probably find stuff at H&M. Avoid Abercrombie or Banana or J. Crew. Way too prep for your style, I think."
"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
"We want to go to Stoneridge," Natalie declared. "C'mon, finish up. We can at least hit up H&M while we're here, but after this, we're heading to the other mall. Trust me, I know these two malls inside and out. I spent most of high school trolling these halls and smoking weed in the parking lots." She laughed at Sarah's dubious expression. "Would I steer you wrong?"
"I don't know. Maybe?"
"Not about clothes or makeup." She pointed to herself, and Sarah had to admit, she looked effortlessly graceful and pretty. "I had to start obsessing over something other than drugs and being a dumbass, right? And high end makeup and clothes are it."
Sarah sighed. "Okay. If you say so."
"I definitely do," Natalie said brightly. "I'm in my natural element here. You might rule the streets and the book work, but if it's down to a mall crawl, I can lead you wherever you want to go and set you up."
In the future Kyle talked about, none of those skills would have mattered. But that future wasn't going to exist anymore, they had made sure of it.
Might as well see what this alternate future was all about.
***
It had been awkward to try on clothes in the store, to see the shape of her figure in tighter fits and curve skimming fabrics. Natalie convinced her to try skirts on for the first time since her parents had died, not that the other girl had known about that. "It's... impractical," she said lamely, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Pops would hate it.
Natalie had rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around Sarah's shoulders, propping her chin on the bony part to look at her in the mirror. "Sarah, it's a miniskirt. If you're looking to get Kyle hot and bothered, it's very practical. Hike that up and peel off your underwear. Or shove 'em to the side if you really want to get to it fast." She had let go and skipped backwards while laughing when Sarah gaped at her in horror and nearly shoved her off. "Oh, c'mon, everyone needs one inappropriate friend, and that's me."
"You're enjoying this!" Sarah accused.
"Hell, yeah. I feel like I'm corrupting a Catholic schoolgirl or something. It's wicked fun."
Sarah had to tamp down on her irritation and keep from quirking her lips into a smile. Okay, this possibly wasn't that bad, and this was so... normal. Holy fucking hell, it was amazing to not worry about a Terminator coming out and sniping her, it was surreal.
"Whatever," she said, waving her hand dismissively and heading for the dressing room. "Well, I feel stupid."
"C'mon, it's a classic black mini, it goes with everything. Most of what you own is black, it would be easy to match." Natalie grabbed a red and black striped shirt off a rack next to her and handed it over. "Here. Put that on top."
This had to be what Barbie dolls and babies felt like, being dressed up and paraded for someone else's amusement. But somewhere along the way, Sarah stopped feeling so irritated by it. Maybe it was when Natalie tossed something horribly floral at her, which neither of them would wear even on a dare. Maybe it was the way Natalie subtly pointed out the colors that worked best with her complexion and the fabrics to look out for. Sarah didn't understand the references to a Clinton and Stacey, but appreciated that Natalie knew about colors and cut and fit, and was willing to give her hints to look for. It was enough of a distraction that Sarah didn't realize she had spent a few hundred dollars in clothes, shoes, and makeup, even with the sales and opening up a new store account, all in the space of several hours. Once she realized it, she was horrified at the extravagance, but Natalie only laughed delightedly and was pleased to be able to play with it all right away for their sleepover.
"We can mix and match your new stuff and some of mine. I promise, I'm not carrying any weirdo germs or anything," Natalie said, gesturing for Sarah to come with her into the bathroom. It was a fairly large one compared to the one in the apartment Sarah shared with Pops and Kyle, and she apparently had an entire drawer of makeup next to the sink. "The top one's my Mom's, which she hardly ever touches anymore. I swear, she has a mascara in there that's like ten years old or something. Better not touch any of that stuff."
Sarah pretended she understood the reference, and simply nodded. "Hey, we'll try whatever you want and see what fits me."
Natalie all but squealed in delight, and Sarah could see the girl that had so desperately tried to fit in. Sarah had learned to tamp down on those instincts, but Natalie never had to. She grabbed eye shadow palettes, blushes, brushes and different color eyeliner as well as makeup remover. At Sarah's odd look, Natalie grinned. "Trust me, it makes taking it all off so much easier. I tried different wipes and stuff, even baby wipes, and it's irritating on eyelids. I may have a serious thing for eye shadow, just so you know."
Not really understanding it, she followed Natalie to her bedroom and sat still as Natalie went wild trying different shadow and liner combinations, snapping pictures on Sarah's phone so that she could look at them later. At the moment, Sarah felt too overwhelmed to really pay attention to the combinations of colors. People paid money for this? It was such an extravagance. Why bother? A single high end palette could be a week's worth of food.
But she wasn't on the run anymore. Terminators were gone. She could figure out who Sarah Connor really was, now that she wasn't going to be Mother of the Resistance anymore.
"This doesn't feel like me," Sarah finally sighed, wiping off yet another combination. "And it's too much effort."
"Eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss?" Natalie offered. "You don't have to go all out with four or five colors at once, either. If you notice, I usually don't. We're just playing around."
"This is silly. I don't know how to do any of this stuff."
"How else are you gonna learn? It's not like I woke up one day and knew how to do it. My mother didn't teach me, after all."
Sarah frowned, suddenly self conscious. "Where is she, anyway?"
"Probably still holed up in her room," Natalie replied, voice flat. "She hardly ever comes out."
Not wanting to touch that can of emotional worms, Sarah picked up the palette of eye shadows that Natalie had been using. "So how'd you learn this stuff?"
"YouTube," Natalie replied promptly, probably grateful for the diversion. "And just messing around to see what worked. I usually like the plain colors or the dramatic look," she said, waggling her eyebrows playfully on "dramatic."
She looked at the palette. "I think most of these are too dark."
"For you, yeah. But with the right shadow brush, you could work the colors as eyeliner."
"That seems like too much hassle."
"You can spend ten minutes on yourself in the morning, right?"
"I guess so."
Natalie pointed at her face. "That's all I need. Promise."
Disbelieving it, Sarah let Natalie brush two colors of shadow on her lids, put on mascara and liner, then the lip gloss. "Lucky you, you don't need foundation too much. If you did, it still probably wouldn't take you long." She sat back and looked at her handiwork. "I like it. This would be an everyday, simple kind of thing."
Sarah nearly did a double take. "Oh." She leaned in closer to the mirror Natalie held out to her. "I like it," she said shyly. "I look pretty."
"Yeah, exactly. Why shouldn't you rock those eyes? Seriously, a good feature on you." Natalie grinned at her. "Now let's jazz up your jeans a bit. Kyle's eyes will pop out of his head when he sees you next."
She frowned at Natalie. "But I still said some really bitchy things..."
"Well, have you tried apologizing?"
Sarah shot her a look that clearly said "What are you, stupid? Of course not!" as clearly as if she had said the words. "He wouldn't believe it, anyway, because I meant it."
Natalie sighed. "Okay, then. We're going to try something." She got up and started digging in the back of her closet until she found a workbook. "We're going to do some of these exercises, and I'm gonna snap pics of it so you can do them on your own."
"The hell?"
Wiggling the workbook in her hands, Natalie shrugged. "I got this when I tried therapy. Didn't stick with it long, the whole drugs thing, but I kept the book and did it when I found it after I got sober. Amazingly enough, my therapist hadn't been full of shit." She laughed at Sarah's doubtful expression. "It's about feelings," she said, waggling her fingers at her. "You know, those icky, awful things we don't want to feel, so we throw them around so that someone else can feel that shit for us."
"I have no idea what you just said," Sarah lied.
"Yeah, well, I'm your therapist as well as beauty coach," Natalie teased, plopping down in front of Sarah. "So I need to throw around some of the lingo, right?"
Sarah sighed. "Why are you trying so hard?"
"Oh, come on. You guys have to have been together since like, junior high. Don't throw that away if you can fix it."
The comment made Sarah wonder how long Natalie's parents had been together before her father died. That had to have been a long time for it to have devastated the family so badly, for her mother to still live like a ghost in her own home.
"What if he's still angry with me?" Sarah asked in a small voice.
"That's where the makeover comes into play. Distract him so he's thinking with the wrong head, and then you can apologize." She laughed at Sarah's incredulous look. "Hey, just because my love life is nonexistent right now doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. It means I want to live vicariously through you right now."
That made sense, too. She sighed. "Okay. Tell me what's in this magic workbook of yours."
Beaming, Natalie proceeded to do just that.
***
Sarah wasn't sure what she expected getting back to the apartment, but being ignored certainly wasn't it. Frowning, she shrugged out of her leather jacket and hung it up on the peg near the door that she usually used. She was wearing one of the new blouses that Natalie had convinced her to wear, a bright blue frilly thing, as well as tighter jeans "to show your ass off" and heeled boots that had her wobbling a bit. Her other clothes were in her duffle bag, and she had all the store bags with her as well. That should've been a tip off that something was different, but Pops was in the kitchen as always, and Kyle was in the living room staring at the TV with fierce concentration on his face. It was some kind of survival show, two men going through some kind of wilderness that Sarah had never seen, arguing how best to get back to civilization. She didn't see the appeal of it, but maybe he was drawn to the greenery and seeing nature. It was highly unlikely that either of them would ever be trapped anywhere that they would need to learn how to find water in a jungle or that seep wells could at least give a little moisture until they found flowing water less likely to contain pathogens.
Kyle noticed when she banged the bedroom door open and knocked into it with some of the shopping bags. "What is all that stuff?"
"I went out, remember?" Sarah asked, trying to keep the testiness from her voice. She was supposed to matter to him, right? Didn't that mean that he should notice her more? Never mind that being noticed bothered her, that she had to be invisible and not hunted; Kyle was different, because he was supposed to find her. Instead, she had to find him. She had to be the one to teach him things in this world she was only learning herself. It was hard not to resent that, to resent the fate she tried so hard to escape.
Yet here it was, staring her in the face.
He frowned at her. "You're different."
"Eloquent," she replied tightly. Her lips stretched in a grimace of a smile. "Is it bad?"
"It's..." Kyle's hands fluttered helplessly. "Different."
"You said that."
"It's impractical," Pops called out from the kitchen.
Sarah glared at him. "What?"
"You cannot run in those heels. Your gait is unsteady, the center of gravity shifts too much, and it would be too easy to overturn your balance if attacked."
"Okay, that," Kyle jumped in, trying to look helpful.
Upset and not knowing why, she spun on that tottering heel and dropped the shopping bags so that she could slam the bedroom door shut in Kyle's face.
God, she wanted to cry. She wanted to wail. For once, couldn't she do something nice and get some kind of recognition for it?
And to her horror, the tears came. Wiping them away angrily left smears of black mascara, glittery teal eye shadow and black liner on the back of her hands. "Well, fuck," she grumbled, frustrated as she looked at her hands. What did her face look like if that mess was sticking to her hands? The gloss on her lips was starting to feel cloying and sticky, and she bit it off her lips with a vengeance as Kyle knocked on the door.
"Sarah?"
"The hell do you want?" she said, trying to find some way to wipe the makeup off of her hands. All she managed to do was smear it further into her skin, and she didn't want to rub it off on her brand new clothes. What had happened to the tissues they had on the bedside table? And her hand lotion was gone. Seriously, was that how Kyle spent the night without her?
Without saying anything else, Kyle came into the room. "Hey," he murmured hesitantly. His face fell when he saw hers, the smears of paint and tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"What for? This was stupid."
"It's important to you."
"I'm being such a fucking girl," she sneered, shaking her head. "It was stupid. I can't be like them. I can't do this and make it look like I want to be this way. I can't be soft, I can't be nice, I can't do this right-"
Kyle grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. Sarah got up on her tip toes to keep herself from being bent over backward, and she could easily feel the desperation and lust in his touch. She caught hold of his shirt, makeup smearing across it and the top of her new blouse without her realizing it.
"You're better than you think you are. You're more important than you think you are," he growled against her mouth. "Maybe history doesn't talk about you because John wanted to protect you. Because your memory was too precious to share. I know I can't share you, I can't leave you alone."
"You love who you think I am. I'm an asshole, Kyle, and you deserve better-"
"Never say that about yourself in front of me again," he said, and she could see the echoes of the military in his stance. He would have been fierce and determined as a fighter, and he would do whatever it took to get the job done. "You're human," he said, eyes blazing as he looked down at her. "No more, no less."
"Some legend, huh? You must be so disappointed," Sarah began lamely.
"I see someone who survived, who continues to survive. I see someone trading one kind of armor for another," he said, cupping her chin in his hands. "I see war paint, Sarah. You're fighting so hard to find a future for yourself, to be more than just an observer. I don't have that. I don't know where to begin, to even start. It's too different, and the flashes of what I saw in the other version of me make no sense." His hands dropped from her face and his shoulders sagged. "Maybe there's a little truth in what you said. Maybe he used me. Maybe that's the only reason why he found me in the first place."
"He was your friend," Sarah said. "Shitty, but he was."
"Yeah. I think he liked me, respected me. I was one of his best, he saw to that." There was a mournful expression on his face, and Sarah couldn't help but touch his cheek and bite her lip, sorry she had put it there. "I had other friends, but it was different, because we could die at any moment. Or there were transfers to different units based on skill sets. It was hard to get close to someone when you could see them shot up to pieces without any warning. But John... He survived it all, and it was easy for him to be everybody's rock, for all of us to rely on him."
"That's not healthy."
"What was in that life?" Kyle challenged.
Sarah had no answer for him, and felt small because of that.
"You're braver than I am. Maybe you call it being an asshole, but I see it as being brave to keep going, not being afraid of what this future is going to be."
"It was just clothes and makeup," Sarah whispered.
"You look good, by the way," he said, voice faltering.
"What are we doing, Kyle?" Sarah asked, her voice cracking a little. He deserved better than her, someone who could make him whole, give him a future he didn't have to be afraid of.
She must have mumbled some of that, because he shook his head. "I'll always be afraid of the future, Sarah. I can't not. I can't stop being on guard. It wasn't Skynet this time, it was Genisys. It could be anything next time."
Sarah blinked away tears. "It should be done. It should be over. This is what you came for, after all. You saved my life. You saved the future. You should have some of it back. You shouldn't have to still be on guard."
He cupped her face in one hand and pulled her close with his other. "Someone has to. The people in this time don't know what to expect. They won't know what to expect. We do."
"Don't we get a chance to start over? To be something different? To take off the armor?"
"I don't know how else to be," he replied sadly. "And I don't think you do, either."
"So this is our future? Save it from being the fucked up monstrosity you remember? Try to fit in in the meantime?" He voice was bitter. "I'm so tired of that bullshit."
"I know," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her again. This time, she let him bend her over and lay her down on the bed. He removed her clothes gently, reverently, lips brushing across her skin as it was exposed. His touch was soft, delicate, conveying without words that he worshiped her, adored her despite her faults, would do anything at all for her.
All she was capable of doing at the time was letting his mouth roam over her skin, lick into the cleft between her legs. She grasped the hair on his head to keep him in place, arching up as his tongue found her clit and cleverly fell back into the rhythm that he knew she liked. Sarah kept her eyes shut as she gasped and moaned, bucked against his face and arched as she approached orgasm. Kyle brought her over that precipice, lapping at her until her breathing evened out, and stretched out over her.
His lips were shiny and his eyes worshipful. She helped him strip off his clothes and slide on the condom, even though she felt the dirty smears of makeup on her hands was rather a good analogy for how messed up her life had been from the start.
Kyle sliding his cock into her was comfortable and wonderful, though. This felt like home. This felt proper. This part felt right, something she definitely couldn't screw up.
When Sarah came again, she sank her teeth into the meat of his shoulder, and Kyle cried out in ecstasy. He jerked inside her, muscles tensing beneath her fingertips before his entire body relaxed and his expression smoothed out.
She cradled him close, his erratic heartbeat a counterpoint to her ragged breathing. This was probably the first time in a long time that she hadn't directed the sex or ordered him to do something kinky. If she had to call it something, she would have said that it was lovemaking, it was comforting, it was fusing their bodies together.
For some reason, that thought hurt her more than the thought of him not needing her.
***
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To Chapter Seven - Concern And Guilt