"The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future." -- Carl Sandburg
"I miss you, John. I love you and we're still trying." Sarah presses a button and ends the report; she has nothing else.
Behind her, the sound of crayon on paper stops and Savannah says, "I'm tired." It's a small, lost voice that skims Sarah's nerves in ways shouts and screams never can.
"I know you're tired," she snaps and it sounds harsh. Too harsh.
Sarah draws a breath, plasters an encouraging smile over her impatience and turns away from the window. The kid is still sitting at the table in the center of the room, somehow conveying the same prim neatness in torn jeans and a faded old t-shirt that she did in her school uniform.
She's staring down at the crayon in her hand; it's bright blue, vivid against the muted tones of the tiny cabin.
"I know you're tired," Sarah manages more gently this time. "It's not long now. See, the little hand is on five. When it's on six you can go to bed."
Savannah looks up from the crayon to the clock on the wall; it's square and wooden and its tick is soft and dragging, like time knows it's not wanted here. "Mommy says I should sleep. Mommy says I need ten and three-quarters hours to twelve hours sleep every night," she parrots. "Mommy says-"
"Mommy won't mind just this once," Sarah says as she crouches by her chair. "I promise you can sleep soon and when you wake up, I'll make pancakes."
Savannah's nose wrinkles and Sarah smiles. "So I promise I won't make pancakes. Maybe Raisa will make you some tres leches if you count to ten for her again."
Raisa runs a cantina further up the track; she owns this shack too. She's known Sarah for years and whether it's broken bones, C-4 or small children with red hair, she never asks.
With more enthusiasm than the kid's shown since Sarah has known her, Savannah begins to count. "Uno, dos, tres, cato -"
"Cuatro." Sarah corrects. After a beat she remembers to say, "That's good. That's really good." She'd really hoped this would be easier the second time around. "Go on."
Too late, the fog Savannah has been in since – since then - has rolled back over her.
"Why can't I sleep?" Her eyes are dull and shadowed with the fear she carries with her the way most children carry a teddy bear: hauling it from place to place and holding it close like it's her only friend.
She wets her bed most nights and when Sarah doesn't get there fast enough she wakes up screaming.
"Because you have to learn how to stay awake, even when you don't want to. Even when you think you can't anymore." Sarah puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into a loose hug. The thin frame doesn't respond, not to draw closer or to pull away. It's John at this age, John exactly, and Sarah doesn't know why history keeps repeating. Only that it does.
She doesn't know how not to do this all over again.
"Where is Mr. Ellison?"
"In LA."
"Where is John-Henry?"
"I don't know."
All she has to give right now is a shot at surviving and the truth, so she does.
Savannah's head bends over her coloring and Sarah stands back to look at her progress.
Coloring works as an assessment: it's an activity Savannah enjoys – or at least takes some comfort in - and it allows Sarah to see how well she functions without sleep.
John never had the patience for coloring and, if Sarah's honest – and lately she tries to be – she never really had the patience to let him enjoy it. When he'd gone without sleep he had played computer games over and over, temper steadily getting worse with his score. When she'd told him to go to bed he'd refused until he'd finally beaten the level, or the boss - or whatever the hell he'd been trying to do – and then slept fourteen hours straight.
She hadn't tested him after that.
With Savannah she had expected the crayon strokes to scrawl outside the lines as the hours went on, but they don't. Kid's slower, but no less careful.
Sarah can only hope she keeps that focus when they progress from coloring books to setting charges.
She sits in the only other chair, picks up a green crayon and begins to carefully fill in the outline of a puppy.
Savannah's hand shoots across the table and pulls the book away. "That's wrong," she snaps.
"I'm sorry, I thought you might want to …"
"Dogs aren't green. You mustn't make them green."
Sarah tilts her head and tries, "Maybe some are green. Just because you've never seen one-"
"No."
"Do you want to do something else?"
The animation has left the girl, but Sarah pulls a box of little hand-carved wooden blocks, scuffed remnants of Raisa's childhood, down the table towards them. "We could make something."
Savannah carefully stacks her books to the side and slots the crayons back in their box one by one. Only then does she begin to take out the blocks and pile them neatly before her.
Sarah watches and wishes she understood. Again.
When Savannah begins to stack the blocks into walls, she asks, "What are you building?"
"Mount Vonny. It's the hiding place. The Toes protect it from the hunters."
"Did you play this at school?"
"No."
"Did you play it with your Mommy? Or Ellison?"
"No."
"Who did you play it with?"
Savannah is silent as she makes jagged-edged shapes.
"Did you play with John-Henry?" Sarah tries.
Savannah still says nothing; Sarah guesses she has her answer. She stands and walks around the room, checking the door. The windows they have to keep open so they don't suffocate in the heat. It's a two-room shack on the edge of Nuevo Horizonte. There really isn't a lot of walking or checking to do.
Santa Ana is barely a blip on anyone's radar and they're well south of it. She'd been here with John when he was Savannah's age, he probably didn't remember it.
Saint Anne, watching over mothers and the childless; Sarah wonders which she counts as now. Maybe both - she needs all the divine intervention she can get.
When she draws the rag they're using as a blind away from the window, a shadow moves on the perimeter; a huge head jerks up as Hijo hears her, maybe smells her. She murmurs softly into the pre-dawn and the mastiff's ears flick once.
She didn't name the dog - she hadn't wanted to - but Raisa had taken one look at the bitch and sworn loudly. Savannah had heard and now the dog is called 'Sonofa-' in place of an awkward explanation. As a rule, Sarah doesn't like naming things; she guesses it's good John's name was preordained.
The clicking of the blocks ceases and Sarah turns to make sure Savannah hasn't fallen asleep; she hasn't. Her eyes are fixed on the tiny tower in front of her and Sarah has no idea what to say.
She tries, "Savannah?"
Nothing.
She tries, "Are you hungry?"
The girl shakes her head, just a little.
Sarah looks at the clock, only half an hour left. She could end it, but weakness now won't help the girl survive what's coming later. What isn't coming later, Sarah corrects herself.
(What's coming later.)
She tries, "Would you like to play a game? Or I could read you a story."
Nothing again.
Awkwardly, Sarah touches her shoulder but Savannah doesn't move.
She tries, "What do you want?"
"I want my Mommy."
Sarah nods, "I know."
"I'm tired."
She nods again. "I know."
Savannah stares at her as they reach an impasse and then slips off the chair as carefully as she does everything else. "I want her."
"She isn't here, Savannah. Do you understand? Your Mommy went away with John-Henry and with - with my John. They're not here," she repeats.
Savannah twists the bracelet on her wrist over and over, and Hijo barks.
One bark and Sarah pauses. Two and she pushes Savannah under the table. "Stay there." Savannah lays flat and puts her hands over her head and ears, exactly as Sarah taught her, but there's no time to tell her how well she's done.
The barking rises in pitch and volume and then drops to a low warning growl.
Sarah crouches under the window with the shotgun in her hands and takes a breath. She raises her head fast, just enough to see, and then ducks back.
There's someone standing beyond the fence. It's not Ellison, he won't be here for days. It's not Raisa, Raisa knows better.
A three count and she looks again, the figure is still there. A woman, Sarah thinks, but it's hard to tell at this distance. Anyway, the machines can look like whoever the hell they want.
Savannah stares out at her mutely, Sarah stares back. Finally, she finds her voice. "If you hear a really loud bang, you run out the back to Raisa's house. Just like we talked about. Remember?"
She nods to the bolt hole that's cut into the floor, just large enough for Savannah or Hijo. "And if anyone comes in here and they don't say the right words, you stay really quiet, wait for them to go and then you run. What are the words?"
"There's no place like home," Savannah whispers.
"Good girl." Sarah doesn't say it'll be fine; she turns back to the window and raises her head carefully.
Through the binnocs she can see the figure more clearly. It's definitely a woman – woman-shaped, anyway - with dark hair falling across her face and obscuring her features. Not on purpose, maybe: she's looking down and only down. Her hands are held away from her side, palm out and clearly empty.
Sarah slows draws back down and then slides to the side window, staying as low as she can. When there are no shots, she climbs out of the window and drops down into the thin scrub cover.
She inches her way closer, avoiding the areas really better avoided for one explosive reason or another. When she's behind the semi-cover of a rusted black pick-up on blocks she lines her shot and says, "Name."
The bent head raises and Sarah doesn't pull the trigger, just.
"Flores, Jesse." The woman smiles and the smile turns crooked. "Or Ms. Wilson, if you like."
"I don't like either." Sarah doesn't ask why, she has better questions. "How did you find me?" It's not going to be 'us' until she figures out how much Jesse knows.
"Can I come closer? Feels a little exposed out here, you know?"
Sarah considers and then nods; it's better whatever goes down, goes down further from the road. "Walk through the gate and stop."
Jesse does exactly as she's directed, she doesn't even try and pick up the bag at her feet. Sarah tracks her steadily with the barrel of the shotgun and then clicks to Hijo.
Hijo pads closer, hackles raised. She growls but she doesn't attack; so Jesse passes the 'human' test, but there's a long way between human and friend.
Another click and Hijo backs up to sit and stare at the stranger with the focused concentration of a dog that hunts for its food.
"How did you find me?" Sarah asks again and raises the barrel of the shotgun to make a chest shot a head shot; at this range, there'd be no chance at all.
Jesse's eyes dart away and then back, "I heard you were out here and need help. That's it."
"I should kill you," Sarah says, but it's not a threat and it's not meant to be – not really.
"John Connor let me go," Jesse's voice is a whip and it's not just lashing out at Sarah.
There's something twisted up in the woman's expression and it's enough – just enough – to make her lower the barrel just a fraction. "What do you want?"
"To help." Sarah snorts and Jesse's mouth curves into a hard smile as she goes on. "I can help."
"I've seen you help. Go away."
"Can you afford that? I know Derek's –" Jesse swallows and barely pauses, but her chin lifts. "I know Derek's dead. I know Connor is gone and I don't see any metal babysitter backing you up. It's just you. And it's just me. It's just us."
"Why would you possibly think I would want anything to do with you? I know what you tried to do – I know what you did and I don't care what your reasons were."
Jesse's stare reminds Sarah of Derek's; damaged in ways she's can't fathom, ways that make her defensive and angry and prone to saying stupid things just to make it turn to something she understands.
How she missed it in Riley, she doesn't know.
Jesse says, "Who's the kid?"
Sarah doesn't turn, she doesn't have to - she knows who's back there. Now the only question is where she buries Jesse's body. Jesse's eyes widen and then narrow; Sarah guesses she saw her future. "Go back in the house, Savannah."
"Mommy says -."
Savannah sounds closer than Sarah had thought and she turns, only a fraction and she's already turning back while Jesse makes her move. The shotgun blast is close and loud, the shot goes over Jesse's shoulder and the woman reels away clutching at her head.
Sarah kicks out and puts a boot in her face; it knocks Jesse down but she rolls and comes up with dry dirt in her fist. Sarah catches the fist but misses the kick; Jesse's heel slams hard into her knee and her leg folds under her.
With a curse she uses the momentum she's been given – whether she wanted it or not – to plough her fist into the woman's eye.
Hijo's jaws snap just over her head as Jesse slams back into the ground. A dog pile is not what they need; with a whistle and a gesture, Sarah takes the bitch out of the fight.
Jesse is pulling herself up fast but Sarah forces herself to be faster; she's always got to be faster. She brings the butt of the shotgun around and down on hard on the side of Jesse's head and that – well that takes the fight out of the bitch. Sarah huffs under her breath.
"Guard," she snarls to Hijo and then looks back over her shoulder towards the shack; Savannah is staring with huge eyes. The kid turns and runs. Sarah runs after her, trying to keep her weight off a knee that will buckle the moment she allows it to. She won't. "Savannah, wait!"
Savannah runs into the shack and slams the door behind her; it bounces from the force and swings inward again. Sarah hangs on the frame for a moment and closes her eyes in a search for calm. "No place like home," she whispers.
There's a muffled sob from under the table. Sarah limps inside and levers herself down until she's sitting beside the girl.
"It's okay," she says, breaking her rule but what's one more? "Everything's okay. She won't hurt you." In the face of Savannah's tears she adds, "I won't hurt you. My job, my only job right now, is to keep you safe."
Tentatively she reaches in to the girl and takes her hand.
Savannah's barely audible through the sobs, but Sarah can make out the word "Mommy."
Sarah pulls her into her arms and rocks her until she falls asleep; it doesn't take long. It's awkward to stand with a busted up knee and a dead weight in her arms, but she manages. Savannah stays asleep as Sarah puts her in the bed, draws the sheets up and tucks her in.
When she's sure sleep has taken the kid under for the moment, she limps back outside.
Jesse is sitting with her head in her hands and a pool of dust-dried blood beside her; the skin of her fingers is painted in dust and blood too. Hijo sits just a foot away and Sarah can hear the low growl.
When Sarah has drawn to a stop before her, gun in one hand and the comforting weight of the shotgun in the other, Jesse says, "Do it. Just do it."
Sarah knows she could; knows no one would ever know. "John Connor let you go," she replies at last.
Jesse's shoulder's shake, Sarah doesn't think that it's tears. If it's tears, she might have to pull the trigger. It's laughter; racking, tearing laughter. The kind of laughter that eats you alive. And that? Sarah understands.
With a grunt, she grips Jesse by her arm and hauls her to her feet. "Come on."
Chances are, this isn't a good plan.
Jesse says nothing as she's led inside and dropped in Savannah's chair at the table, but her expression is tight and focused. By the time Sarah has finished looking the doors and re-setting the alarms, there's no sign of the ragged edges at all. Sarah really doesn't want to respect that, but she does.
It makes her even harsher than she would have been as she rinses a cloth in the yellow-tinged water that shudders in bursts from the creaking tap and then throws it to the other woman. "Clean up."
Jesse methodically begins to wipe the blood away from her mouth and then presses hard against the deeper gash on cheek that the shotgun gave her. "Got anything to drink?"
Wordlessly, Sarah pushes a jug of water and a glass over the table. Savannah gets bottled water, Sarah has lived around here long enough the water's not going to do anything to her and Jesse, well Sarah figures this is purer than anything where – when - she's from.
"How did you find us?" she asks again, when the cloth is soaked red and bleeding has stopped.
"I was in a bar, got a call." Jesse's mumbling; probably the swelling but it makes it harder to hear the lies. Fleetingly, and with no little sense of irony, Sarah wishes Cameron were there.
She'll have to do it the hard way. "Did they give a name? Did you recognise the voice?"
"No. It was a man - that was it. Old. He said you needed me, he told me where you were and then he hung up. He knew where I was. I thought -- it was you. Or someone like me."
There's no cell coverage out here, no way Sarah can call Ellison. But she knows it wasn't him. Her body is way ahead of her train of thought; she's already moving. "There's a truck out the back, bring it around front."
Jesse doesn't question her; she catches the keys Sarah throws and goes. Sarah feels the twinge of a shape filled, but not well and not right; color spilling outside the lines.
In the half-minute it takes the truck to pull around, Sarah has Savannah - wrapped in blankets – in her arms and a bag of weaponry slung over her shoulder. She whistles for Hijo to jump in the back, throws the bag after her and then climbs in to sit shotgun with a gun in her hand and a child in her lap.
Well, this is familiar.
Jesse swings them along dirt tracks towards the main road. "Where to, boss?" she asks, ironically or Sarah would have to revisit the plan to kill her.
"West. No conversation."
Jesse smirks and makes a fast u-turn that draws a yelp from Hijo and flattens Sarah against the door. She doesn't say anything for an hour and then, "South, get on the thirteen, then take the seven west."
Savannah had whimpered when Sarah had taken her from her bed, but she's asleep again. It's a small mercy, but Sarah's gotten used to taking whatever mercy is going.
The kid keeps sleeping for the six hours it takes them to reach the Mexican border, with the radio hissing in the background and the sun beating through the windows.
Jesse stops on the side of the road as they arrive at the outskirts of Pacoc. Her fingers beat on the wheel but she still doesn't say anything, the good little soldier.
Sarah breaks the hours-long silence to ask, "How did you get over the border?"
"I have ID and I'm not armed." Jesse lifts her gaze enough to look in the rearview at back seat and its pile of weapons. "Wasn't armed," she amends.
"You're still not armed," Sarah points out absently. "Keep it that way. There's a motel a mile south of Potrerillo. Tell Hector I'm coming and if I'm not there by dawn, he can have the stash." She nods to the car door. "Go."
Jesse's eyes flicker and Sarah's waiting for the question; it doesn't come. Sarah guesses, in the end, whether she really intends to go there doesn't matter. The woman opens the door and drops down. With a final measuring look to Sarah, she rescues her own bag from under Hijo and then she walks away.
As carefully as possible, Sarah slides herself out from under Savannah and into the driver's seat. She waits until Jesse is just one figure amongst many in the brightly decorated street and then pulls the truck back onto the road.
There are people, there are places, and in the last sixteen years Sarah has come to know enough of them.
She figures, if they ever save the future, she's got a hell of career as a Coyotero to look forward to.
She abandons the truck and some of the guns as payment and carries Savannah as a boy leads them through the night, down back roads and tracks. Savannah's silence should be worrying, Sarah knows, but right now she's only grateful for it.
Their guide points to the jutting end of an old under-pipe and has disappeared before she's had time to thank him.
A few minutes later, they're in Mexico.
The walk to the highway is short but it gives her time to decide whether to try and hitch or just put a gun in someone's face. She really doesn't love her chances of catching a ride: no one's stopping for a woman with a bag of guns and a dog that big, child or not.
Of course, the trouble with both options is they need a vehicle. Any vehicle at all.
When a battered truck pulls up beside them she almost misses it, concentrating too hard on just putting one foot in front of the next.
Sarah drops Savannah down and pushes the girl behind her, killing two birds with one stone as it lets her get a grip on the gun tucked into the back of her pants.
Her other hand rests lightly on the top of Hijo's head and she waits, tense but ready as the window creaks down.
"Need a ride?" Jesse asks.
Jesse doesn't know Sarah, but she did know Derek. She knows what Derek would have done and she's doing it, right down to the wary smile.
"You're not Derek," Sarah says.
Jesse shrugs. "Who is anymore?" Her attention slips from Sarah down to Savannah and then slides back up. "Coming? Kid looks ready to fall over."
"Kid's no concern of yours."
"What's your problem?" Jesse looks so genuinely confused that Sarah's outrage catches in her throat and the list - the long, long list - isn't getting past it.
"I'm hungry," Savannah whispers into the strangled silence.
"I know," Sarah replies at the same time as Jesse says, "Could be worse."
Savannah peeks a little way out from behind Sarah and asks, "How?"
Jesse shrugs. "You could be hungry and have no food. What's your name?"
"Savannah Maureen Weaver."
"Pretty name," Jesse says and throws the kid a pack of hotel biscuits; lesson taught, learned and rewarded with a careless hand, and Savannah finally smiles.
Sarah knows this shouldn't be what makes her bring Jesse along – anything but this - but all she sees when she looks at Savannah is the boy who isn't there.
"Culiacán," she directs finally.
After a moment Jesse nods and then slips out of the truck to help load up guns, kid and dog. She doesn't say anything; it may be the best thing she's done so far.
Jesse drives the dark highway and Savannah curls in the back, cushioned against the swerves and stops by Hijo's bulk. Sarah presses two buttons on the recorder and lets the road thrum under them for a heartbeat before she speaks.
She says, "It's late fall, two-thousand nine. We're in Mexico. Someone is watching us."
She whispers, "Is it you?"