[SCC] Telltale Hearts - John, Sarah - Teen - for Equustel
TITLE: Telltale Hearts
AUTHOR: indiefic
CHARACTERS: Sarah Connor, John Connor, Riley, Allison, Derek Reese, Kyle Reese
RATING:: Teen
WORD COUNT: 2,902
WARNINGS: Spoilers for all of T:SCC and the Terminator universe.
DISCLAIMER: Owned by Warner Bros, Friedman, et all. No profit gained, no infringement intended.
TIMELINE: Post Born To Run, set in 2027 or thereabouts. John jumped a few months ago.
SUMMARY: for equustel in the V-Day fic exchange from the prompt "John meets tunnel-rat Riley in the future". Many thanks to sabaceanbabe and cj2017 for the feedback.
***
2027 - Resistance Headquarters - Home Plate - Beverly Hills, CA
West claps John on the shoulder, shaking his head. "Just rats," he says with a sneer. He clears his throat and spits in the direction of the tunnel where a small, pitiful group of humans scrounge for anything they can find.
John nods, adjusting his grip on the rifle as he turns to follow West. Something catches his eye and he glances again at the tunnel rats. She's standing there, watching him intently. She's filthy, her blonde hair unrecognizable beneath layers of grime. But her eyes. Her eyes are exactly the same. Haunted. Haunting. Wise beyond her years.
He takes a step toward her, but she fades back, disappears into the shadows. "Riley," he says urgently, advancing on her. "Riley!" In his mind's eye, he sees her on the cold metal slab. His nostrils burn with the morgue's stench of sanitized death. "Riley!"
Allison wakes him none too gently and he reflexively grabs the shoulder she punched. "Oww!" he says, squinting at her as he struggles to brush off sleep. He sees the hurt and anger in her eyes before she rolls away, leaving him to stare at her back.
John screws his eyes shut tightly and shakes his head. Fuck. He can almost taste Riley's name on his lips.
He lays back down, head pillowed on his arm as he stares at the lines of Allison's back, imagining the warm, human flesh beneath the worn blue sweatshirt. He wants to reach out. He wants to touch her. But he can practically feel the resentment radiating from her. He rolls onto his back and stares at the rusting metal mesh of the bunk above them.
He lays there, listening to the sounds of camp. Of all the future hells he imagined, he'd never envisioned a nightmare quite like this. Is this his doing? Did jumping through time and effectively negating the existence of John Connor, Savior of Humanity, cause this particular perversion of reality? As much as John reflexively shuns the idea that the universe revolves around him, he has seriously contemplated that option. Because of all the potential apocalyptic nightmares he's considered over the years, this one was never one he considered. His psyche apparently wasn't that twisted.
He finally gives up, pushing himself up off the bunk. Though Allison undoubtedly feels him leave, she doesn't react. Frowning, John grabs his flak jacket and heads out into the tunnels.
He passes two fellow soldiers, Mendoza and Simms, in the corridor and nods in acknowledgment.
Home Plate teems with people. John never expected that. He figured it would be small enclaves here and there. And that is true. But here, at headquarters, there are hundreds of humans. There are enough humans for a class system to emerge, for there to be haves and have-nots. There are soldiers who constitute the organized human resistance. There are freelance vultures only out for themselves. There are civilians, mostly the elderly and the young or the severely wounded. And then there are the tunnel rats, the ones who choose to live outside of human society, surviving on its scraps. Tunnel rats are reviled. Most soldiers wouldn't take the time to spit on them. The civilians chase them off at every turn.
It was just chance that John blundered past them that day. He took a shortcut, one of the unstable tunnels that anyone with an ounce of sense would avoid unless there was a trip eight on their ass. He found a band of rats, huddled around a small fire, sharing the meager rations they'd managed to steal.
Riley didn't recognize him, of course. Why would she? How could she? She ran, the way the rats always run from soldiers.
But John has spent the last three weeks searching for her in every shadowed corner, even when Allison is standing at his side.
***
"I said keep pressure," Sarah snaps, pressing Nguyen's hands against the wadded up shirt so hard that Derek rouses from his stupor to groan. Nguyen goes pale, even in the fading light, Sarah can see that, but he does what she says. He holds the fabric against the gruesome wound, trying to ignore the sickly warm sensation of Derek Reese's blood squeezing through his fingers.
"Ah fuck," Greenberg curses, dropping to his knees next to the trio. The medic's face is tight as he tears through his pack for supplies. "I'm going to need blood."
Sarah starts to roll up her sleeve and Greenberg gives her an incredulous look.
"I'm O Negative," she says, trying to cut him off. "Universal donor."
Her explanation does nothing to soften his features.
Sarah looks pointedly at the saturated ground beneath Derek's prone form. "You have any better ideas?" she demands, concentrating on Greenberg's grizzled features, willing herself to see him. Willing herself not to see Charley.
Greenberg gives her a hard look and rocks back on his heels, setting down the pack with a finality that causes Sarah's chest to ache. Sarah starts to speak, but he interrupts her. "You don't have any extra to spare," he says, eyeing the sloppy bandage across her midsection. "And I can't save Reese's life at the cost of yours."
Sarah grinds her teeth together and slumps back against the pile of rubble they're using as cover. She wishes she had the strength to at least walk away, but she can't even do that.
Despite the futility of the situation, Greenberg doesn't leave his patient. He grabs the pack again, finds a bag of saline and manages to rig up a drip with Nguyen's help.
"I think the bleeding is slowing down," Nguyen says, his voice shaky.
"Probably because he doesn't have any more to lose," Greenberg says harshly.
***
"Got it," John says to Emmerson, taking the chip and shoving his earplugs back in place before the hard-ass lieutenant can lecture him on the importance of being careful with Skynet tech acquired in the wild. As if John needs any pointers on that particular account. No one else in the resistance has ever willingly cohabitated with metal.
Compelled by that line of thought, John looks up and tries to catch Allison's eye. She glances away quickly. Apparently he's still on her shitlist. Frowning, John slumps down in his chair, looking at the chip while he considers different strategies for getting back on Allison's good side.
John stares at the chip, and then up at Allison. She's no longer watching him, her attention on something Mason is saying about the dogs. John watches her, fascinated by the way her lips pucker ever so slightly as she concentrates on the words. It's a gesture so quintessentially Allison. So human. So decidedly not metal.
John can't help but draw parallels between Allison and Cameron. It's unavoidable and he's stopped trying to push those thoughts away. Knowing Allison has made it so much easier to dissect his relationship with Cameron. After spending days and nights with Allison, after learning the taste of her lips and the sound of her breath, Cameron's physical form no longer haunts his dreams. Not that he isn't haunted by Cameron. He is. In fact, searching for Cameron is still what drives him. But his current fascination with Cameron has little, if anything, to do with the artificial human flesh stretched over her endoskeleton.
He wonders why he did it. Why did he send a machine with that particular form back in time to protect his younger self?
By jumping to the future he obliterated any chance of ever learning the answer to that question. There is no longer an adult John Connor to put those events into motion. But the question remains. Was Cameron's form chosen simply for the obvious, that to a sixteen year old boy a beautiful woman is absolutely fascinating, even if the boy knows she's coltan alloy underneath? He suspects that is a lot of it. And he hates himself for being so easily swayed.
And he often wonders if it's really any different than what Jesse did with Riley.
John shifts uncomfortably in his seat, glancing again at Allison. Riley died because Jesse thought her death would be effective manipulation. The adult John Connor sent Cameron back for manipulation as much as for protection. If protection was his only motivation, he certainly could have sent another Uncle Bob clone. But he didn't. He sent Cameron.
And now the adolescent John Connor wonders if his elder self sacrificed Allison to create Cameron the way Jesse sacrificed Riley in the hope of preventing Cameron.
***
Sarah wakes with a start, reflexively grabbing the questing hand. She blinks quickly, her heartbeat quieting as her vision fixes on Kyle's smiling face. "Easy," he says with a grin. "It's just me."
Sarah wishes she could smile. Instead she frowns, sinking back against the wadded up coat. Her breath catches as her wound makes itself known.
Kyle's expression immediately sobers and he inches closer, reaching up to touch her face, desperate to offer comfort despite the fact that he knows damn good and well she won't accept any.
Sarah pulls away, lips pursed tightly together. She stares past Kyle's shoulder into the distance. "How's Derek?" She knows he was still clinging to life when she finally passed out from the pain.
Kyle straightens up, retreating a few inches. "Touch and go," he says quietly. He reflexively touches the inside of his elbow. "I gave him a few units. Bear donated too. Greenberg says he's as stable as he's going to get and that if he makes it through the night he has a decent chance."
Sarah presses her eyes together tightly, saying a silent prayer to whatever deities are looking out for Derek Reese. She doesn't hear Kyle move, but she can feel him withdraw. She doesn't dare open her eyes because she can't bear to see that wounded look on his face.
"Nguyen said you and Derek had one hell of a fight before that mortar exploded."
"Yeah," Sarah says, wondering what scenarios Kyle is dreaming up. That she and Derek had a lover's spat? She'd laugh if a piece of shrapnel hadn't torn itself through her side.
"What did you fight about?" Kyle presses.
Sarah shrugs as much as she can without causing herself searing pain. That I'm a cradle robbing old crone, Sarah thinks. Not that she'll ever say it. Mostly because she can't bear to face the fucked up situation that exists between herself and this Kyle, no matter how much Derek throws it in her face.
But she also can't tell Kyle about the fight because she has no explanation for why she should give a shit about Derek Reese, especially in light of the argument. As far as anyone knows, she and Derek are bitter enemies. And they are. But Sarah's already watched Derek die once and in this burned up cinder of a world, the idea of watching him die again is the one thing she can't take.
***
"You're not going to find her."
John spins around and looks at Allison. She's irritated. Visibly. And not the way Cameron used to be unsettled and then deny it because she was ostensibly not capable of emotional responses. Allison looks ready to throw a piece of rubble at him.
"Find who?" John asks, playing dumb and failing miserably.
Allison just crosses her arms over her chest and glares.
John sighs. "Fine," he says, abandoning the pretense. "How do you know I'm not going to find her?"
"She left. Marcus said that a bunch of the rats took off night before last. You must have spooked her pretty good."
***
When Sarah wakes, there's a small campfire flickering a meter away. It doesn't put off a lot of heat, but she's thankful for it nonetheless. She watches the flames, then turns her head and looks at Kyle. He's sitting on the ground, knees pulled up in front of him, staring blindly into the fire. Sarah can't help but remember a professor she had in junior college who talked endlessly about theta waves in the human brain and how they were tied to the retrieval of episodic memory. She looks back to the flames. The professor also said that the pattern of light from the typical campfire flickered at the same rate as theta waves.
She wonders what Kyle is remembering. She studies his profile. For so many years, she looked at John and saw the shadow of Kyle. And now she finds herself searching Kyle's features for any echo of her lost son.
"Derek's still breathing," Kyle says, never taking his eyes off the flames.
Sarah doesn't respond. She doesn't have to. She shifts her leg, tries to get more comfortable. This injury is going to be a bitch until it heals.
***
They didn't go far. John expected as much. Rats live off society, they can't afford to get far from Home Plate.
"You," Riley says in an accusatory tone, staring down at where John sits on a crumbling cinder block.
"Me," he says, trying to sound bored. He flicks the zippo in his hand, back and forth. He watches how Riley's eyes follow the movements. He holds it out to her and she stares at him with blatant suspicion. "Take it," he says.
She hesitates a moment and then takes it, backing away from him rather than turning around and walking away. "I like - " she starts casually, almost embarrassed.
"Shiny things," he continues, finishing the thought before she can.
She stares at him, uneasy.
John watches her take another step backward and to his own amazement, there is no pull to follow her. This Riley likes shiny things. She's skittish and tough. She has the same volatile mixture of fearlessness and terror that was always so mesmerizing to him. But this isn't the girl he saw in the morgue. This isn't the girl who trusted Jesse enough to follow her through time.
"Thanks," Riley finally says softly.
"Yeah," John says.
***
"He said he wished it was you," Kyle says, carefully gauging her reaction.
Sarah laughs, despite the pain it causes her. She has absolutely no doubt that Derek wishes she would have taken the brunt of the explosion rather than him.
Kyle's brow furrows and Sarah's sorry that she can't explain it to him. But that's never been an option. At this point, she's kept secrets so long that she doesn't know if she remembers how to tell the truth.
But in this gray moment where night meets dawn, she tries. For Kyle. She wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. "He reminds me ...," she says, trailing off.
"Of someone you knew before?" Kyle offers tightly, obviously not liking the idea.
Sarah nods, curling onto her good side. "When I saw his blood," she says, grasping for the words. "It felt ..."
Kyle inches closer, on the metaphorical edge of his seat. He prompts, "It felt," watching her closely, not wanting the answer.
She tries to wrap her mind around the concept but her thoughts are fuzzy with sleep and pain. "It felt like home," she answers dully, her chest tight with the weight of how much she's lost. John. Charley. Derek. Kyle. She looks up at the young man who is for all practical purposes, the only man she has ever truly loved. But this Kyle can never be that Kyle. And right now, for reasons she can't explain, Sarah really fucking needs Derek Reese to pull through, even when part of her thinks it might be best for all of them if he didn't.
Kyle stares at her in confusion.
Sarah has no answers for him. With a sigh, she closes her eyes.
***
"Do you know her?" Allison demands as John sneaks back into base.
"Her?" John says with a shrug. "No." He won't see Riley again. He's pretty sure of that. She'll go out of her way to make sure he can't find her. She doesn't need to. He won't look for her again.
Allison shakes her head in annoyance. "Then what are you doing?"
He searches for something to placate her and then shrugs. "I gave her a lighter." He lost Riley once. Now he's lost her again. In that, if nothing else, there is symmetry. This time hurts less. Maybe that's the trick. Maybe that's part of the lesson. Maybe he has to do this over and over again until he can do it without feeling anything.
Allison stares at him and he meets her gaze with an unfathomable expression.
"A lighter?" Allison finally says.
John nods. Slowly, he turns, intending to find some food. Behind him, he hears Allison follow.
***
[END]
AUTHOR: indiefic
CHARACTERS: Sarah Connor, John Connor, Riley, Allison, Derek Reese, Kyle Reese
RATING:: Teen
WORD COUNT: 2,902
WARNINGS: Spoilers for all of T:SCC and the Terminator universe.
DISCLAIMER: Owned by Warner Bros, Friedman, et all. No profit gained, no infringement intended.
TIMELINE: Post Born To Run, set in 2027 or thereabouts. John jumped a few months ago.
SUMMARY: for equustel in the V-Day fic exchange from the prompt "John meets tunnel-rat Riley in the future". Many thanks to sabaceanbabe and cj2017 for the feedback.
***
2027 - Resistance Headquarters - Home Plate - Beverly Hills, CA
West claps John on the shoulder, shaking his head. "Just rats," he says with a sneer. He clears his throat and spits in the direction of the tunnel where a small, pitiful group of humans scrounge for anything they can find.
John nods, adjusting his grip on the rifle as he turns to follow West. Something catches his eye and he glances again at the tunnel rats. She's standing there, watching him intently. She's filthy, her blonde hair unrecognizable beneath layers of grime. But her eyes. Her eyes are exactly the same. Haunted. Haunting. Wise beyond her years.
He takes a step toward her, but she fades back, disappears into the shadows. "Riley," he says urgently, advancing on her. "Riley!" In his mind's eye, he sees her on the cold metal slab. His nostrils burn with the morgue's stench of sanitized death. "Riley!"
Allison wakes him none too gently and he reflexively grabs the shoulder she punched. "Oww!" he says, squinting at her as he struggles to brush off sleep. He sees the hurt and anger in her eyes before she rolls away, leaving him to stare at her back.
John screws his eyes shut tightly and shakes his head. Fuck. He can almost taste Riley's name on his lips.
He lays back down, head pillowed on his arm as he stares at the lines of Allison's back, imagining the warm, human flesh beneath the worn blue sweatshirt. He wants to reach out. He wants to touch her. But he can practically feel the resentment radiating from her. He rolls onto his back and stares at the rusting metal mesh of the bunk above them.
He lays there, listening to the sounds of camp. Of all the future hells he imagined, he'd never envisioned a nightmare quite like this. Is this his doing? Did jumping through time and effectively negating the existence of John Connor, Savior of Humanity, cause this particular perversion of reality? As much as John reflexively shuns the idea that the universe revolves around him, he has seriously contemplated that option. Because of all the potential apocalyptic nightmares he's considered over the years, this one was never one he considered. His psyche apparently wasn't that twisted.
He finally gives up, pushing himself up off the bunk. Though Allison undoubtedly feels him leave, she doesn't react. Frowning, John grabs his flak jacket and heads out into the tunnels.
He passes two fellow soldiers, Mendoza and Simms, in the corridor and nods in acknowledgment.
Home Plate teems with people. John never expected that. He figured it would be small enclaves here and there. And that is true. But here, at headquarters, there are hundreds of humans. There are enough humans for a class system to emerge, for there to be haves and have-nots. There are soldiers who constitute the organized human resistance. There are freelance vultures only out for themselves. There are civilians, mostly the elderly and the young or the severely wounded. And then there are the tunnel rats, the ones who choose to live outside of human society, surviving on its scraps. Tunnel rats are reviled. Most soldiers wouldn't take the time to spit on them. The civilians chase them off at every turn.
It was just chance that John blundered past them that day. He took a shortcut, one of the unstable tunnels that anyone with an ounce of sense would avoid unless there was a trip eight on their ass. He found a band of rats, huddled around a small fire, sharing the meager rations they'd managed to steal.
Riley didn't recognize him, of course. Why would she? How could she? She ran, the way the rats always run from soldiers.
But John has spent the last three weeks searching for her in every shadowed corner, even when Allison is standing at his side.
***
"I said keep pressure," Sarah snaps, pressing Nguyen's hands against the wadded up shirt so hard that Derek rouses from his stupor to groan. Nguyen goes pale, even in the fading light, Sarah can see that, but he does what she says. He holds the fabric against the gruesome wound, trying to ignore the sickly warm sensation of Derek Reese's blood squeezing through his fingers.
"Ah fuck," Greenberg curses, dropping to his knees next to the trio. The medic's face is tight as he tears through his pack for supplies. "I'm going to need blood."
Sarah starts to roll up her sleeve and Greenberg gives her an incredulous look.
"I'm O Negative," she says, trying to cut him off. "Universal donor."
Her explanation does nothing to soften his features.
Sarah looks pointedly at the saturated ground beneath Derek's prone form. "You have any better ideas?" she demands, concentrating on Greenberg's grizzled features, willing herself to see him. Willing herself not to see Charley.
Greenberg gives her a hard look and rocks back on his heels, setting down the pack with a finality that causes Sarah's chest to ache. Sarah starts to speak, but he interrupts her. "You don't have any extra to spare," he says, eyeing the sloppy bandage across her midsection. "And I can't save Reese's life at the cost of yours."
Sarah grinds her teeth together and slumps back against the pile of rubble they're using as cover. She wishes she had the strength to at least walk away, but she can't even do that.
Despite the futility of the situation, Greenberg doesn't leave his patient. He grabs the pack again, finds a bag of saline and manages to rig up a drip with Nguyen's help.
"I think the bleeding is slowing down," Nguyen says, his voice shaky.
"Probably because he doesn't have any more to lose," Greenberg says harshly.
***
"Got it," John says to Emmerson, taking the chip and shoving his earplugs back in place before the hard-ass lieutenant can lecture him on the importance of being careful with Skynet tech acquired in the wild. As if John needs any pointers on that particular account. No one else in the resistance has ever willingly cohabitated with metal.
Compelled by that line of thought, John looks up and tries to catch Allison's eye. She glances away quickly. Apparently he's still on her shitlist. Frowning, John slumps down in his chair, looking at the chip while he considers different strategies for getting back on Allison's good side.
John stares at the chip, and then up at Allison. She's no longer watching him, her attention on something Mason is saying about the dogs. John watches her, fascinated by the way her lips pucker ever so slightly as she concentrates on the words. It's a gesture so quintessentially Allison. So human. So decidedly not metal.
John can't help but draw parallels between Allison and Cameron. It's unavoidable and he's stopped trying to push those thoughts away. Knowing Allison has made it so much easier to dissect his relationship with Cameron. After spending days and nights with Allison, after learning the taste of her lips and the sound of her breath, Cameron's physical form no longer haunts his dreams. Not that he isn't haunted by Cameron. He is. In fact, searching for Cameron is still what drives him. But his current fascination with Cameron has little, if anything, to do with the artificial human flesh stretched over her endoskeleton.
He wonders why he did it. Why did he send a machine with that particular form back in time to protect his younger self?
By jumping to the future he obliterated any chance of ever learning the answer to that question. There is no longer an adult John Connor to put those events into motion. But the question remains. Was Cameron's form chosen simply for the obvious, that to a sixteen year old boy a beautiful woman is absolutely fascinating, even if the boy knows she's coltan alloy underneath? He suspects that is a lot of it. And he hates himself for being so easily swayed.
And he often wonders if it's really any different than what Jesse did with Riley.
John shifts uncomfortably in his seat, glancing again at Allison. Riley died because Jesse thought her death would be effective manipulation. The adult John Connor sent Cameron back for manipulation as much as for protection. If protection was his only motivation, he certainly could have sent another Uncle Bob clone. But he didn't. He sent Cameron.
And now the adolescent John Connor wonders if his elder self sacrificed Allison to create Cameron the way Jesse sacrificed Riley in the hope of preventing Cameron.
***
Sarah wakes with a start, reflexively grabbing the questing hand. She blinks quickly, her heartbeat quieting as her vision fixes on Kyle's smiling face. "Easy," he says with a grin. "It's just me."
Sarah wishes she could smile. Instead she frowns, sinking back against the wadded up coat. Her breath catches as her wound makes itself known.
Kyle's expression immediately sobers and he inches closer, reaching up to touch her face, desperate to offer comfort despite the fact that he knows damn good and well she won't accept any.
Sarah pulls away, lips pursed tightly together. She stares past Kyle's shoulder into the distance. "How's Derek?" She knows he was still clinging to life when she finally passed out from the pain.
Kyle straightens up, retreating a few inches. "Touch and go," he says quietly. He reflexively touches the inside of his elbow. "I gave him a few units. Bear donated too. Greenberg says he's as stable as he's going to get and that if he makes it through the night he has a decent chance."
Sarah presses her eyes together tightly, saying a silent prayer to whatever deities are looking out for Derek Reese. She doesn't hear Kyle move, but she can feel him withdraw. She doesn't dare open her eyes because she can't bear to see that wounded look on his face.
"Nguyen said you and Derek had one hell of a fight before that mortar exploded."
"Yeah," Sarah says, wondering what scenarios Kyle is dreaming up. That she and Derek had a lover's spat? She'd laugh if a piece of shrapnel hadn't torn itself through her side.
"What did you fight about?" Kyle presses.
Sarah shrugs as much as she can without causing herself searing pain. That I'm a cradle robbing old crone, Sarah thinks. Not that she'll ever say it. Mostly because she can't bear to face the fucked up situation that exists between herself and this Kyle, no matter how much Derek throws it in her face.
But she also can't tell Kyle about the fight because she has no explanation for why she should give a shit about Derek Reese, especially in light of the argument. As far as anyone knows, she and Derek are bitter enemies. And they are. But Sarah's already watched Derek die once and in this burned up cinder of a world, the idea of watching him die again is the one thing she can't take.
***
"You're not going to find her."
John spins around and looks at Allison. She's irritated. Visibly. And not the way Cameron used to be unsettled and then deny it because she was ostensibly not capable of emotional responses. Allison looks ready to throw a piece of rubble at him.
"Find who?" John asks, playing dumb and failing miserably.
Allison just crosses her arms over her chest and glares.
John sighs. "Fine," he says, abandoning the pretense. "How do you know I'm not going to find her?"
"She left. Marcus said that a bunch of the rats took off night before last. You must have spooked her pretty good."
***
When Sarah wakes, there's a small campfire flickering a meter away. It doesn't put off a lot of heat, but she's thankful for it nonetheless. She watches the flames, then turns her head and looks at Kyle. He's sitting on the ground, knees pulled up in front of him, staring blindly into the fire. Sarah can't help but remember a professor she had in junior college who talked endlessly about theta waves in the human brain and how they were tied to the retrieval of episodic memory. She looks back to the flames. The professor also said that the pattern of light from the typical campfire flickered at the same rate as theta waves.
She wonders what Kyle is remembering. She studies his profile. For so many years, she looked at John and saw the shadow of Kyle. And now she finds herself searching Kyle's features for any echo of her lost son.
"Derek's still breathing," Kyle says, never taking his eyes off the flames.
Sarah doesn't respond. She doesn't have to. She shifts her leg, tries to get more comfortable. This injury is going to be a bitch until it heals.
***
They didn't go far. John expected as much. Rats live off society, they can't afford to get far from Home Plate.
"You," Riley says in an accusatory tone, staring down at where John sits on a crumbling cinder block.
"Me," he says, trying to sound bored. He flicks the zippo in his hand, back and forth. He watches how Riley's eyes follow the movements. He holds it out to her and she stares at him with blatant suspicion. "Take it," he says.
She hesitates a moment and then takes it, backing away from him rather than turning around and walking away. "I like - " she starts casually, almost embarrassed.
"Shiny things," he continues, finishing the thought before she can.
She stares at him, uneasy.
John watches her take another step backward and to his own amazement, there is no pull to follow her. This Riley likes shiny things. She's skittish and tough. She has the same volatile mixture of fearlessness and terror that was always so mesmerizing to him. But this isn't the girl he saw in the morgue. This isn't the girl who trusted Jesse enough to follow her through time.
"Thanks," Riley finally says softly.
"Yeah," John says.
***
"He said he wished it was you," Kyle says, carefully gauging her reaction.
Sarah laughs, despite the pain it causes her. She has absolutely no doubt that Derek wishes she would have taken the brunt of the explosion rather than him.
Kyle's brow furrows and Sarah's sorry that she can't explain it to him. But that's never been an option. At this point, she's kept secrets so long that she doesn't know if she remembers how to tell the truth.
But in this gray moment where night meets dawn, she tries. For Kyle. She wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. "He reminds me ...," she says, trailing off.
"Of someone you knew before?" Kyle offers tightly, obviously not liking the idea.
Sarah nods, curling onto her good side. "When I saw his blood," she says, grasping for the words. "It felt ..."
Kyle inches closer, on the metaphorical edge of his seat. He prompts, "It felt," watching her closely, not wanting the answer.
She tries to wrap her mind around the concept but her thoughts are fuzzy with sleep and pain. "It felt like home," she answers dully, her chest tight with the weight of how much she's lost. John. Charley. Derek. Kyle. She looks up at the young man who is for all practical purposes, the only man she has ever truly loved. But this Kyle can never be that Kyle. And right now, for reasons she can't explain, Sarah really fucking needs Derek Reese to pull through, even when part of her thinks it might be best for all of them if he didn't.
Kyle stares at her in confusion.
Sarah has no answers for him. With a sigh, she closes her eyes.
***
"Do you know her?" Allison demands as John sneaks back into base.
"Her?" John says with a shrug. "No." He won't see Riley again. He's pretty sure of that. She'll go out of her way to make sure he can't find her. She doesn't need to. He won't look for her again.
Allison shakes her head in annoyance. "Then what are you doing?"
He searches for something to placate her and then shrugs. "I gave her a lighter." He lost Riley once. Now he's lost her again. In that, if nothing else, there is symmetry. This time hurts less. Maybe that's the trick. Maybe that's part of the lesson. Maybe he has to do this over and over again until he can do it without feeling anything.
Allison stares at him and he meets her gaze with an unfathomable expression.
"A lighter?" Allison finally says.
John nods. Slowly, he turns, intending to find some food. Behind him, he hears Allison follow.
***
[END]