Damage (Fanfiction, Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Title: Damage
Disclaimer: Characters and situations owned by Fox the last time I checked.
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Charley Dixon, Sarah Connor, John Connor, James Ellison, Derek Reese.
Summary: Charley had always known Sarah had secrets. Charley Dixon contemplates Sarah Connor.
Author's note: For
chaila, who gave me the prompt "Sarah Connor, Damage". This was meant to be a drabble but ended up as a vignette instead. It also ended up as a Charley character portrait, but such was what the muse dictated!
„That woman leaves nothing but damage and destruction behind her“, Agent Ellison once told Charley, in the middle of trying to convince him that Sarah was a terrorist and not the person Charley had known and loved for two years at all. Eight years later, Ellison was a far cry from the arrogant man who’d interviewed Charley after Charley had reported Sarah and John missing, his certainties thoroughly shaken. But the idea of knowing who and what Sarah is, and isn’t, seemed still to be with the FBI Agent.
Charley had always known Sarah had secrets, though naturally, he had not even come close at guessing what they might be. Still, if you lived with a woman, if the mere sound of her voice made you happy, it was impossible to miss that she never, ever, sat with her back towards a door, and had trained her teenage son to do the same; that she was always able to spot who entering the café she worked as a waitress in was bearing arms, and kept her eyes on them; that she owned nothing that was older than a few years. Not even her son’s first teeth or pictures of him as a baby, despite the fact that in her quiet way, she was fiercely protective of the boy.
Of course Charley had speculated. An abusive lover or husband, maybe; and definitely some bad experiences with hospitals and medical professionals, because his work as a paramedic inevitably meant a lot of both, and he noted Sarah was easier and more relaxed around drunks in a bar, with or without guns, than she was anywhere near a hospital. So yes, he had theories; but he figured these were her stories to tell if she wanted to, one day. Hers and John’s. Charley hadn’t pushed either of them. If you loved someone, he’d thought, you trusted them, and you trusted them to tell you what you needed to know, in their own time. You didn’t try to force what wasn’t offered yet.
He would never have believed the terrorist accusation was anything but a gigantic misunderstanding or framing job if Sarah hadn’t, to all appearances, committed suicide, along with her son. This was so utterly unlike anything Charley had ever believed of her that it did make him question everything. The Sarah he thought he’d known might have killed herself if the circumstances were desperate enough, but never her child. It would have been anathema to her. And yet that was what she seemed to have done, and Charley had lived for eight years with a sense of grief and anger which he’d tried to bury while building a new life for himself. Right until he’d seen John, miraculously unchanged, in his house, not a iota different from the boy he’d never had a chance to say goodbye to eight years previously.
There had been so many things going through his head at that moment. The possibility of time travel wasn’t the first of them. No, what he’d thought first was this: if John was alive, then so was Sarah, who had killed neither her son nor herself.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife. Charley wouldn’t have married Michelle if he hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But once he’d wanted the same thing with Sarah. The new, bewildering world he rapidly found himself in, now that those long kept secrets had turned up literally at his doorstep, made it clear he had indeed only known a part of Sarah. But that part had not been feigned. The woman who’d teased him about being a better cook than she could ever be was just as real as the woman trying to prevent an apocalypse and living with a lethal machine from the future pretending to be her daughter. They were both Sarah; you couldn’t divide her into one or the other.
Sometimes, he was tempted to. See the Sarah he’d known as a separate person from the Sarah of the present. When Michelle bled her last in his arms because one of those machines had set a trap for Sarah and her son, Charley tried to separate them in his mind and heart, because he needed someone to blame, desperately, and the machine hadn’t even cared whether Michelle lived or died. It had only ever cared about the Connors.
The attempt had lasted about as long as it took John to show up at the hospital, sit next to him and put his arms around Charley, John, who was as shy about emotional gestures as Sarah had ever been. It hadn’t been some havoc-wrecking stranger whom Charley had called in desperation when Michelle had been abducted. It had been Sarah, because she was both, the woman he once had wanted to marry and a warrior fighting battles he’d only gotten glimpses of until then.
Damage and destruction, a younger Ellison had said, and that was true in its way, but not the “nothing but”. Sarah also left the knowledge of her, her loyalty, her bravery. When Charley withdrew into the lighthouse she’d found for him, it wasn’t just because he needed time to mourn Michelle, or because he didn’t want to be used as bait against Sarah again. It was because Sarah was as mortal as Michelle had ever been, and despite Derek Reese and his tales of the future, so was her son. Charley had lived through what he thought were Sarah’s and John’s deaths once; he’d watched Michelle die, unable to save her, all the medical training in the world worth nothing against the blood spilling onto his hands. He couldn’t do it a third time.
Derek Reese seemed to consider Sarah some invulnerable warrior goddess. Charley had patched her up only weeks earlier, when men and a machine alike had tried to destroy her, and he knew, none better, she had scars from previous dangers. He’d also seen her face when John had reactivated the girl - the machine - the death they’d been living with. Sarah was anything but invulnerable, and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, stay to watch more of the attempts to end her.
He hadn’t counted on her coming to him, though. Months had passed, a near year, even, but there they were, Sarah and John, in his home. He had been free of nightmares by then, though not of the guilt that thinking of Michelle still caused, not of the occasional impulse to blame Sarah, not of the fear that somewhere, Sarah and her son were dying right now. A part of him wished they hadn’t come. Another part wished they would never go, though he was thunderstruck to discover that Sarah actually intended to leave her son with him.
They both told him what had happened, in fragments that were slowly starting to form a picture; but it wasn’t until he was alone with Sarah, and she put his hand on her breast, that Charley truly understood what had driven her here. He knew at once the gesture wasn’t a come-on. Sarah wasn’t coy about her lovemaking, but if she wanted to initialize sex, she picked a time and place where she could be certain nobody would interrupt them, and certainly not her nearby son; Charley was sure that hadn’t changed. No, he could feel it, training kicking in almost immediately; the lump in her breast, alien under his fingertips that had once known every inch of her.
“Oh, Sarah.”
In all his fears about how her body could break down once day, how her luck would run out and the death on her heels would finally catch up with her, this had not been factored in. He knew then how foolish he’d been. Yes, she would die, one day, and so would John, one day, and, inevitably, so would he. It did not need gunmen or machines from the future to bring this about. He still regretted all the time he didn’t spend with Michelle. There was nothing he could do to change that, but Sarah was here, now, and alive. Whether alive for a day, a year or a decade, did it really matter?
Earlier, Charley had told her he’d nothing left to give her. He’d been wrong. For however long or sort it would be, he had his life. And he now was prepared to give her that.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/957160.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Disclaimer: Characters and situations owned by Fox the last time I checked.
Rating: PG 13
Characters: Charley Dixon, Sarah Connor, John Connor, James Ellison, Derek Reese.
Summary: Charley had always known Sarah had secrets. Charley Dixon contemplates Sarah Connor.
Author's note: For
chaila, who gave me the prompt "Sarah Connor, Damage". This was meant to be a drabble but ended up as a vignette instead. It also ended up as a Charley character portrait, but such was what the muse dictated!
„That woman leaves nothing but damage and destruction behind her“, Agent Ellison once told Charley, in the middle of trying to convince him that Sarah was a terrorist and not the person Charley had known and loved for two years at all. Eight years later, Ellison was a far cry from the arrogant man who’d interviewed Charley after Charley had reported Sarah and John missing, his certainties thoroughly shaken. But the idea of knowing who and what Sarah is, and isn’t, seemed still to be with the FBI Agent.
Charley had always known Sarah had secrets, though naturally, he had not even come close at guessing what they might be. Still, if you lived with a woman, if the mere sound of her voice made you happy, it was impossible to miss that she never, ever, sat with her back towards a door, and had trained her teenage son to do the same; that she was always able to spot who entering the café she worked as a waitress in was bearing arms, and kept her eyes on them; that she owned nothing that was older than a few years. Not even her son’s first teeth or pictures of him as a baby, despite the fact that in her quiet way, she was fiercely protective of the boy.
Of course Charley had speculated. An abusive lover or husband, maybe; and definitely some bad experiences with hospitals and medical professionals, because his work as a paramedic inevitably meant a lot of both, and he noted Sarah was easier and more relaxed around drunks in a bar, with or without guns, than she was anywhere near a hospital. So yes, he had theories; but he figured these were her stories to tell if she wanted to, one day. Hers and John’s. Charley hadn’t pushed either of them. If you loved someone, he’d thought, you trusted them, and you trusted them to tell you what you needed to know, in their own time. You didn’t try to force what wasn’t offered yet.
He would never have believed the terrorist accusation was anything but a gigantic misunderstanding or framing job if Sarah hadn’t, to all appearances, committed suicide, along with her son. This was so utterly unlike anything Charley had ever believed of her that it did make him question everything. The Sarah he thought he’d known might have killed herself if the circumstances were desperate enough, but never her child. It would have been anathema to her. And yet that was what she seemed to have done, and Charley had lived for eight years with a sense of grief and anger which he’d tried to bury while building a new life for himself. Right until he’d seen John, miraculously unchanged, in his house, not a iota different from the boy he’d never had a chance to say goodbye to eight years previously.
There had been so many things going through his head at that moment. The possibility of time travel wasn’t the first of them. No, what he’d thought first was this: if John was alive, then so was Sarah, who had killed neither her son nor herself.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife. Charley wouldn’t have married Michelle if he hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But once he’d wanted the same thing with Sarah. The new, bewildering world he rapidly found himself in, now that those long kept secrets had turned up literally at his doorstep, made it clear he had indeed only known a part of Sarah. But that part had not been feigned. The woman who’d teased him about being a better cook than she could ever be was just as real as the woman trying to prevent an apocalypse and living with a lethal machine from the future pretending to be her daughter. They were both Sarah; you couldn’t divide her into one or the other.
Sometimes, he was tempted to. See the Sarah he’d known as a separate person from the Sarah of the present. When Michelle bled her last in his arms because one of those machines had set a trap for Sarah and her son, Charley tried to separate them in his mind and heart, because he needed someone to blame, desperately, and the machine hadn’t even cared whether Michelle lived or died. It had only ever cared about the Connors.
The attempt had lasted about as long as it took John to show up at the hospital, sit next to him and put his arms around Charley, John, who was as shy about emotional gestures as Sarah had ever been. It hadn’t been some havoc-wrecking stranger whom Charley had called in desperation when Michelle had been abducted. It had been Sarah, because she was both, the woman he once had wanted to marry and a warrior fighting battles he’d only gotten glimpses of until then.
Damage and destruction, a younger Ellison had said, and that was true in its way, but not the “nothing but”. Sarah also left the knowledge of her, her loyalty, her bravery. When Charley withdrew into the lighthouse she’d found for him, it wasn’t just because he needed time to mourn Michelle, or because he didn’t want to be used as bait against Sarah again. It was because Sarah was as mortal as Michelle had ever been, and despite Derek Reese and his tales of the future, so was her son. Charley had lived through what he thought were Sarah’s and John’s deaths once; he’d watched Michelle die, unable to save her, all the medical training in the world worth nothing against the blood spilling onto his hands. He couldn’t do it a third time.
Derek Reese seemed to consider Sarah some invulnerable warrior goddess. Charley had patched her up only weeks earlier, when men and a machine alike had tried to destroy her, and he knew, none better, she had scars from previous dangers. He’d also seen her face when John had reactivated the girl - the machine - the death they’d been living with. Sarah was anything but invulnerable, and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, stay to watch more of the attempts to end her.
He hadn’t counted on her coming to him, though. Months had passed, a near year, even, but there they were, Sarah and John, in his home. He had been free of nightmares by then, though not of the guilt that thinking of Michelle still caused, not of the occasional impulse to blame Sarah, not of the fear that somewhere, Sarah and her son were dying right now. A part of him wished they hadn’t come. Another part wished they would never go, though he was thunderstruck to discover that Sarah actually intended to leave her son with him.
They both told him what had happened, in fragments that were slowly starting to form a picture; but it wasn’t until he was alone with Sarah, and she put his hand on her breast, that Charley truly understood what had driven her here. He knew at once the gesture wasn’t a come-on. Sarah wasn’t coy about her lovemaking, but if she wanted to initialize sex, she picked a time and place where she could be certain nobody would interrupt them, and certainly not her nearby son; Charley was sure that hadn’t changed. No, he could feel it, training kicking in almost immediately; the lump in her breast, alien under his fingertips that had once known every inch of her.
“Oh, Sarah.”
In all his fears about how her body could break down once day, how her luck would run out and the death on her heels would finally catch up with her, this had not been factored in. He knew then how foolish he’d been. Yes, she would die, one day, and so would John, one day, and, inevitably, so would he. It did not need gunmen or machines from the future to bring this about. He still regretted all the time he didn’t spend with Michelle. There was nothing he could do to change that, but Sarah was here, now, and alive. Whether alive for a day, a year or a decade, did it really matter?
Earlier, Charley had told her he’d nothing left to give her. He’d been wrong. For however long or sort it would be, he had his life. And he now was prepared to give her that.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/957160.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.