A/N: I wrote this little drabble-y ficlet after "Stitcher in the Rye." I can't get enough of Kirsten and Cameron's dynamic as coworkers, as friends, and potential love interests. I love them. There might be a companion drabble-y ficlet for this coming soon, in Cameron's point of view. Look for that. Anyway, enjoy! R&R! Thanks! ~Mac

Disclaimer: I don't own Stitchers.

Trust Is The First Step

"Trust is the first step to love."

-Munshi Premchand

When the residual paranoia is mostly worn off and she is no longer seeing the world entirely through Justin Lange's suspicious eyes, Kirsten finds that she does trust Cameron. She trusts him, even though she learned more about him from Maggie's quick jabs in the office than she has straight from his lips, even if he's still keeping secrets from her, even if what's left of her residual instincts are to distrust him. All she knows is that she trusts him and will continue to trust him, despite all this. They say trust is earned, that it's a gradual process, but Kirsten doesn't do gradual. So maybe it happens little by little, but now, for her, it's like it's always been there.

If Kirsten thinks about it, she can understand why she's come to trust him. In the short time that she has known Cameron—the time measured physically with clocks and calendars—he has been more dependable than anyone she's ever known. Maybe he made the same promises to Marta and maybe he wasn't able to keep them because of circumstances that were out of his control. Kirsten knows that it doesn't follow then that he's going to break the promises he made to her. The only thing that matters to her is this single, verifiable truth: Cameron says he'll protect her and he does.

Cameron follows through every time. Even when she puts herself in danger, even when he could end up heart himself instead, he does everything in his power to keep her safe. A man holds her at gunpoint and Cameron takes him out with a bucket. Kirsten puts herself in front of a van intent to run her down and Cameron pulls her out of the way just in time. When the police open fire, Cameron pulls Kirsten to the ground and shields her with his body, protecting her a priority even when his own heart is breaking as his one time friend is killed.

Sometimes it feels like he's smothering her, like he's taking it too far, but he's never let her down. That's the thing that's important. He shows up, even when she refuses to see reason about residual emotion and frustrates him beyond belief. He picks up the phone when she calls, even when he's mad at her. He shows up at her house knowing that Marta is there, armed with a gun and hate for him. It adds up to one thing.

Cameron will risk himself before he will risk her.

Kirsten imagines that he would climb into the tank and do the Stitch for her, if he could. As long as she's in the program, he'll stay, because he needs to take care of her, even if every second that he's there, it hurts him. He'll carry what happened to Marta with him everywhere, because it is his reminder of what could happen if he doesn't protect Kirsten. He carries a far heavier burden on his shoulders than he needs to, but he chooses to do so, for her.

And if he does all that for her, the least she can do is trust him.

So, Kirsten trusts Cameron. It may not be unconditional, that's not in her nature, but she does trust him. She'll continue to trust him as long as he's there as a constant—a constant that isn't a symptom of her disorder. She has depended on him, is depending on him and will depend on him, not because she can't tell the difference between the past, present and future versions of his dependability, but because he's actually always there. Cameron has proven himself to her just by filling the space beside her.

Now, Kirsten intends to prove herself to him by trusting him as completely as she knows how. She'll accept that he hasn't told her everything, that there are still secrets he wants to keep to himself. She'll trust that the revelation of those secrets are more likely to hurt him than they are likely to hurt her. So, she'll never ask him about the scar. She trusts that he'll tell her when he's ready. Just like he did with the truth about what happened to Marta. She trusts that he'll never hold back anything that she needs to know.

This is the start of something, the first step toward whatever there is growing between them. Maybe they're following the same track that he and Marta had taken, maybe it's a product of the connection they experience during the Stitching process, but with one key difference. Kirsten is not Marta. She will not fail Cameron by taking his protective nature for granted. He's going to worry, he's going to shower her with concern, and it's going to be annoying sometimes, and beyond frustrating other times. And Kirsten is going to appreciate it anyway, because it's nice to have someone that cares. It's nice to know that Cameron cares, even when he knows that she doesn't know how to return that feeling on her own yet, because he obviously feels everything so deeply and abundantly. So, he'll keep feeling and fielding emotion enough for the both of them, and she'll keep seeing the proof of it.

Because maybe they're "getting there" too and this is the first step on that path. It's her way of saying that she might just want the same thing as him, whatever that is. Kirsten supposes she'll know when they get there.

Until then, there's trust and that's enough.

-fin-