Author's Note: A few things I want to mention before we press on here. First off, thanks to those who either reviewed publicly or chatted with me via PM. I know some of you are still wary of the lack of Cameron here, are choosing to come along anyway. Anyone who read my last TSCC offering knows that I love our Tin Miss very much. Best. Terminator. Ever. However, for this particular story to go where it needs to, Cam needs to be MIA. It sucks, but I know that at least some of you are dealing with it, so thank you muchly.

Next is my customary ritual of begging for reviews. I'm trying to strike a balance between the angst inherent in any Sarah/Charley fic, and everything else that's not angst. I'm trying, but unless you guys vote yay or nay, I won't be able to gauge my success. Also, thanks to Uncommoner for smoothing out some rough edges in chapter one. I tweaked a few things in the Sarah/Charley dialogue from chapter two because some lines bothered me after the fact. It's nothing you need to reread, I'm probably the only one who'd notice the difference. Enjoy, hope to see you at the next update.


Sarah woke up to the sound of her own scream. The residual images from her latest nightmare were bad enough, but there was also the bullet wound to contend with. As soon as she gained enough awareness to realize that her dream was a dream, she also realized that her side hurt like hell. The cry of horror was replaced by a grunt of pain as Sarah bit her lip and hunched over in bed, trying to regain control. Charley burst in before she was anywhere close to doing it.

"You okay?" he asked urgently, coming to kneel before her. "What happened?"

Eyes closed, Sarah shook her head and held up the hand that wasn't clutching her ribs. Working to slow her breathing, she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder, moving down her arm. The contact was soothing, but it also made her shiver. Hopefully Charley would chalk it up to the cold sweat all over her skin.

"Are you hurt?" he asked softly.

No, just hurting. Sarah shook her head in the negative. "Nightmare. Nothing."

"Didn't sound like nothing."

The gentle rubbing was gone. Sarah felt both relieved and bereft, doing her best to ignore the latter emotion. Steeling herself, she raised her head and opened her eyes and looked into Charley's face. Then she looked further down and saw the pistol on the floor beside him. He'd obviously brought it in and set it aside. "You fly in guns blazing every time Savannah has bad dreams?" she asked, nodding towards the gun.

Following her gaze, Charley picked up the weapon, setting it on an otherwise bare nightstand. "Don't need to. Buddy sleeps next to her, finds me and whines every time the nightmares start. Usually I get in there before they get too bad."

"I'm glad," Sarah replied. It was true, but didn't sound that way. Her voice was still rough and her eyes kept flicking towards that gun. She was the one who told him to buy it. She was the one who told him to keep it close and be prepared. What he'd just done, it was something she'd done with John. He was a kid, kids had nightmares. They called out in the night for reasons that weren't life and death. And yet Sarah's first instinct at the hint of any distress from her son was to grab the gun. Just in case. She'd ordered Charley to have the gun around. Just in case. He was learning, and that should've made her happy. It didn't.

"Didn't mean to wake you."

Charley shook his head in the negative. "How do you feel?"

His hands moved towards her and Sarah knew he was repressing an urge to check the wound. "A little sore. Felt a lot worse. What time is it?"

Light was pouring in through the windows, but Sarah knew instinctively that it couldn't be that late. Bullet or no, she didn't sleep in. It was still early, and it was late when he arrived the night before. Charley should've been sleeping. Sarah knew she'd screamed a little, but not that loudly. She'd also tamped down on the cry within seconds. John used to sleep close to her, which made controlling her reactions a necessity. No one else seemed to be awake, so the scream couldn't have been ear piercing, and Charley made it in here in record time. He hadn't been sleeping, and Sarah fought the idea that he'd been watching over her from outside the room.

"Little after six," Charley stated, confirming Sarah's suspicion about the time. Touching her arm again, he held her gaze and prepared for a minor battle. "I want to check this."

"I told you, it's fine," Sarah retorted. The words could've sounded brusque or angry, but they didn't.

"You also said that last night," Charley reminded her, his own voice level. "But sometimes our definitions of fine don't really line up."

The look on his face was impossible to refuse and even though Sarah dreaded doing so, she allowed him to help get the shirt off so he could check her bandage. For a minute, she thought she was off the hook as Charley focused entirely on her injury. Then his eyes started to roam.

"Lots of bruises," he remarked, doing his best to stay neutral. The occasional glimpses of her arms didn't paint a full picture. He'd seen the full array of injuries last night but there'd been too much going on for him to linger or comment.

"Not really," she countered. Truthfully, Sarah thought this an attempt to be sneaky. He could've checked the bandage without removing the shirt. A slight inconvenience, but he could've dealt with it. Charley did this so he could ask about the bruises and the cuts and the scratches. It gave him an excuse and she'd actually gone along with it. Sarah must've been more tired than she realized, in more pain.

"Do I want to know?" Charley asked, carefully helping her slip back into the shirt.

"About the bruises? Job hazard."

She'd been littered with scars even years ago. Charley tried not to care about all the new ones. The old, Sarah made a few vague references to a lousy boyfriend. After John's father, but long before they'd met. Charley always wanted to push for more details, but he hadn't. Sarah would've run far and fast if he had. "Not the bruises, the nightmare. Seemed like a bad one."

"They're all bad."

"You…you need to talk?"

"No. They're all bad, they all run together. You lose the details."

Since Zeira Corp, since her reappearance in his life, Charley had gotten much better at recognizing Sarah's lies. He recognized one now, but said nothing. "Wound looks okay. With the amount of damage, I was worried about infection. Guess it's like you said, third time's the charm."

That reminded her. She shouldn't do this, but Charley needed to understand. "Fourth. I got shot in the shoulder when Cameron first arrived. Forgot about that one last night."

Charley's jaw dropped a little. "You forgot about a bullet in the shoulder."

"There was a lot going on."

"Last night, or when it happened?"

"Both. Sometimes you forget. The injuries, they run together."

"You lose the details," Charley said flatly. As usual, he had no words for this situation, so he went for the practical. "We need to get some food in you."

"Charley-"

"Savannah wanted a snack last night. I saw the cabinets, the fridge."

She couldn't very well tell him about the constant knots in her stomach, about the nausea that never seemed to ease. "I hate grocery shopping and Ellison knows a lot of takeout places. Mutually beneficial arrangement."

Charley couldn't help the frown marring his features. Ellison talked mostly with Savannah the night before, he and Charley's conversations were limited in the extreme. There was another bedroom, Savannah slept there last night, but Charley had put it out of his mind until now. "Ellison's living here?"

"Don't look at me like that."

"That's not what I... he's living here and you two haven't killed each other?"

Sarah was mildly insulted at the idea of James Ellison standing a chance against her. "We don't sit home nights and play Scrabble together. He's here because I need him to be."

Charley flashed to the previous night, to all of Sarah's countless assertions that she didn't need his help. "Ah," he said, wishing badly that he could stop caring about her.

Sarah's face softened marginally, along with her voice. "Don't look at me like that," she repeated. Then she rolled her eyes and made herself change tones. "Ellison needs to be here, I don't trust him."

"But you've worked with him all this time."

"I'm not worried about betrayal. I trust he's on our side." She did, surprisingly enough. All it took for that was weeks and weeks of an uneasy truce and hours upon hours of arguing, along with sporadic shouting matches.

"And you still need him here."

"I need to watch him. Babysit. Trusting him not to betray us isn't the same as trusting him not to do something stupid that gets us all killed."

There were footsteps in the hallway. In his haste to reach Sarah, Charley hadn't bothered to shut her door, which made it possible for him to turn his head and see Ellison on the threshold.

"Charley," he said, nodding a greeting. "Sarah."

"Morning."

Ellison's tone made it clear that he'd heard Sarah calling him an incompetent fool. Sarah's tone made it clear that she knew he'd heard, but didn't care. The expressions on both their faces told Charley that occurrences like these weren't rare, and Charley wondered how much time Sarah devoted to berating Ellison every time they spoke.

"Savannah will want breakfast. You hungry?"

Sarah opened her mouth to respond, but Charley cut her off. "She's hungry."

Ellison, still in sleepwear, nodded and moved off down the hallway. "I'll get dressed, pick something up."

Charley thanked him and Sarah glared. "I don't need you making decisions for me."

Charley merely stared. Her intimidation looks were bearable after a point, and he'd attained some level of inoculation.

Sarah relented. It was early and she was tired and achy, and maintaining the act with Charley was hard during the best of times. "I don't need you taking care of me," she said quietly, observing the bedspread. "You can't do that anymore, Charley."

He couldn't, he'd never had a chance at that. He shouldn't want to, not after all that'd been lost already. Charley brushed a hand over her chin, just for a second. A quick gesture, but it got her to look him in the face. "You're one to talk. You don't need to take care of me either, Sarah. You worry about Judgment Day, about…about John, but don't worry about me. Or Savannah."

"It's not that easy, Charley."

"No," he said meaningfully. "No it isn't. So maybe next time you're concerned about us, you find a different way of showing it. Like not bleeding to death because you're too stubborn to pick up a phone."

"It wasn't that bad. I've had worse."

"Is this your version of making me feel better?"

"This is my version of making you get it." Even though he knew enough to bring the gun in, and that understanding made Sarah want to cringe. "This is what I do. It's all I have anymore." John was gone, and Savannah was Charley's, and the only thing Sarah had left was the mission. "This is what I have, and this is what happens sometimes because of it." She gestured towards her most recent gunshot wound. "That's just how it is."

Charley opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn't trust himself to talk, to do it without saying the wrong things. Things that couldn't and shouldn't be said. He gave himself a moment and then, "You won't have anything if you keep going like this. I told you I'm not facing it alone. I'm not explaining your death to Savannah. To John."

Sarah looked away. He knew already that seeing John again was a long shot. Pointing this out would've hurt too much, so Sarah didn't. Charley didn't know about the lump in her breast, didn't know that he'd probably end up explaining her death to Savannah no matter what happened.

"Next time you get shot, don't worry about taking care of me or leaving me out of it. You said you couldn't do it on your own, you admitted that to me. Be smart enough to remember it next time, because you owe me that much, Sarah. After all this, you owe me at least that much."


Sarah grimaced while taking a seat at the kitchen table. Charley started to say something, then he stopped himself and she was grateful. Grateful enough to sip the orange juice he set in front of her without putting up a fight. She murmured her thanks and he nodded, pulling up a chair next to her. And then there was the silence again.

"So Ellison lives here."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Ellison stays here between missions. I stay here between missions. On good days, we stay out of each other's way."

Charley nodded. He didn't want to know what happened on bad days, and was glad Savannah wasn't around to see it.

"Sometimes I worry about him," Sarah offered.

"You mentioned."

"Not about his idiocy," Sarah grumbled, though that was always an issue. "Sometimes I think he's one of them."

Charley's eyes went wide. "Them. You think that Ellison's metal."

"Sometimes in the mornings, yeah I do. No human should be that cheerful before coffee, it's not natural."

She offered a small smile and Charley countered with a grin of his own. "Morning person?"

"One of many flaws."

Relaxing slightly, Charley leaned back in his chair, glad for a break from all the heaviness. "I don't know, I don't remember you being that bad in the mornings."

Because she'd slept in Nebraska. With Charley, the nightmares hadn't kept her up all night. Nebraska with Charley was easily the best she'd slept since before Reese entered her life. "You were smart enough to start the coffee early," she replied, because telling him the other stuff wasn't a possibility.

Savannah's arrival forestalled any response Charley may've had. Rubbing her eyes as she approached, the girl's whole face lit up when she caught sight of the adults. "Aunt Sarah!" she exclaimed, practically bounding towards the woman."

From his place next to Sarah, Charley caught the child in his arms, pulling her into an affectionate hug before she could reach her target. "Hey you," he greeted, settling her in his lap.

"Good morning," she said happily. "Aunt Sarah, you're okay!"

"I'm okay," Sarah confirmed, reaching over to touch Savannah's hair. Her dislike of morning people in no way extended to the child. Even as a kid, John could be a headache in the mornings. The life they usually woke up to, Sarah hadn't begrudged him his moodiness.

"I told you she'd be fine."

Savannah nodded agreement, but her eyes said something else. Her eyes had the look of someone who'd learned too early that adults didn't necessarily mean what they said. She squirmed in Charley's arms, eager to get closer to Sarah.

Charley loosened his hold, but not before reminding the girl that Sarah was hurt. A bear hug even from someone as small as Savannah wasn't what the brunette needed right now.

Sarah struggled as she watched the scene. There was the familiar frustration at Charley's continued overprotection. Then there were the conflicts that came with knowing he still cared, loving that he still cared, and knowing that he shouldn't. He shouldn't care, and she shouldn't allow it. So said the voice in her head every time she started to forget herself around Charley. The worst part, that inner voice seemed to alternate between sounding like Sarah herself, sounding like Derek, and sounding like Cameron. Dead and gone respectively, the latter two continued to find ways of haunting her.

Charley let Savannah slide from his lap. The girl stepped forward tentatively but did nothing else, mindful of Charley's warning.

To hell with it. Her attempts to keep both of them from getting attached were already failing, and with orange juice instead of coffee, Sarah lacked the stamina needed to keep the effort going. "Come here," she murmured.

Savannah obeyed, wrapping a tiny arm around Sarah's uninjured side. "I'm glad you're okay," she said, pressing lightly against the older woman.

Sarah hummed in agreement, allowing herself to kiss Savannah's temple. She felt Charley's eyes on them and then the moment was broken by Ellison's entry through the front door. He was laden down with groceries and the other two quickly moved to help him, Savannah taking hold of the smaller items. Sarah offered to help as well, more out of a need to move than any desire to assist him.

"Sarah please, we've got it."

She rolled her eyes and spoke quietly while Savannah talked Ellison's ear off. "Didn't we have this discussion already?"

"We had a discussion," Charley corrected. "We didn't talk about my not wanting to clean up again when you tear that thing open," he said, nodding at the bandage just visible under her shirt.

Grudgingly, Sarah relented, allowing the others to bustle around her. Her guilt kept her still, the knowledge that Charley must be getting tired of cleaning up her messes.


Half an hour later, Sarah, Charley and Savannah were enjoying what could've been a normal breakfast. Ellison had resisted Savannah's pleas that he join in, and Sarah hadn't missed the way his eyes kept darting between herself and Charley.

"I'm going for a run," he told them, changing his tone as he spoke directly to Savannah. "I'll be back soon."

"She really likes him," Sarah said quietly as Savannah was pouring a second glass of milk.

Charley shrugged in response. "He's a nice guy." The noise and expression he got for that remark made Charley revise an earlier opinion. Part of him really did want to know what happened on the bad days between Ellison and Sarah. Parts of it at least were bound to be entertaining.

"This is good," Sarah told him. Her plate was almost empty, a minor miracle even though she hadn't taken much to begin with.

"Uncle Charley's a good cook," Savannah agreed. She was eating French toast with syrup, but most of the syrup was on her face rather than in her mouth.

"She's a biased critic, I think." Grinning, Charley took a napkin to Savannah's face, wiping away the worst of the mess.

"I disagree," Sarah argued, taking a sip from her beverage. "I've missed your cooking."

She was being honest. About a small thing yes, but usually it took so much work to get her walls to crack even that much. "Yeah? Well, never thought I'd say this, but I've missed your cooking, too."

Sarah's laugh was pure disbelief, but it was also real. "You miss my cooking. You mean my pancakes?"

Charley faked confusion. "That's what I said Your cooking."

Savannah, unaware of Sarah's non-existent culinary skills, missed the joke entirely. She still smiled though, because the adults were smiling. Uncle Charley smiled enough, but he still seemed sad a lot of the time. Aunt Sarah almost always looked sad, and when the two of them were together, it seemed to get worse. Savannah still didn't understand that since they were supposed to be friends, but for now it didn't matter. For now, everyone seemed happy.

There was much Savannah didn't understand. The fate of her parents, where her new mother had disappeared to with Sarah's son and John Henry. She didn't understand all that seemed to happen between the adults in her life. But Savannah knew enough to realize that happiness shouldn't be questioned, not when it was such a rare thing. So Savannah basked in the moment and tried not to concern herself with how long it would last.