TITLE: Well Deserved Oblivion
RATING: T (Language, adult themes)
AUTHOR: Castellan Craft
WARNINGS: Spoilers through "To the Lighthouse."
TIMELINE: Set during "To the Lighthouse."

SUMMARY: Sarah and Charley share a moment's respite after the revelation of Sarah's possibly deteriorating health. A comparing of scars is had.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1. Unknowingly written for RoxyBisquaint due to being inspired by a random post season 1 forum comment on the Sarah Connor Society about wanting Sarah/Charley angst.
2. No outside beta, only passed over a few times by myself as this was written before I was able to twist my usual beta into watching the show.
3. I've already been told this should have had more Smex. Know that despite how much of a dirty minded ho I am, and how much I would have liked that myself, I wasn't straying from cannon with this and so didn't add it. I don't personally think they did it in cannon, but you're allowed your opinion on that. If you happen to write a differing one, I will gladly read it.
4. The justification for the drunkeness is that if Cameron's was right in Adam Raised a Cain that Sarah was going to leave and thought she was dying to boot, I'm pretty sure she'd be a bit more fatalistic. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

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The six pack of beer Charley had brought home that night had already been polished off with ruthless efficiency. They were now a third of the way through a decent bottle of brandy.

Charley couldn't really find it in his heart to stay angry with Sarah. He'd certainly tried when she had shown up unannounced at the lighthouse. He still harbored resentment over Michelle's death, he still felt completely drained of all he had to give, but the hate was just too much to carry anymore. When she'd crumpled into his arms in the kitchen, worried that her son's future might not include her, he felt sympathy creeping its way back in. Without many options at hand he ended up offering her a beer, thus why they were both well on their way towards Numb while sprawled out in the living room.

He kicked his feet up on the coffee table while watching her pull her knees up to her chest to curl up tightly on the end of the sofa. "You brought up How Beasley earlier… you been thinking about Nebraska a lot lately?"

"Not so much 'a lot.' Just…" At a loss for words, she drained her glass to buy herself time. "It's hard not to think in passing about what could have been when you're trapped in this kind of life."

Charley slid off the recliner and fell heavily on the couch next to her to be within easy reach as he refilled Sarah's glass. "What could have been always seemed a bit useless to dwell on." He adopted a wicked smile as he poured himself another shot. "What was is certainly worth remembering though."

All he received in response was the clink of ice cubes and a noncommittal sound muffled in her glass.

"Oh come on," he goaded, trying his best to crack a smile across her face. "You were so cute that first time."

"Depends on what the hell you're talking about. There's a lot of 'firsts' in life Dixon."

His smirk still in place, he nudged her lightly with an elbow. "You know… Sunday night? In the back of your station wagon?"

Sarah choked slightly on her brandy. For a minute he was worried she was offended, but was relieved when the coughing subsided into laughter. "Of all the things to bring up…" She was shaking her head in disbelief.

He twisted awkwardly on the cushions to face her more fully. "Hey, cut me some slack. For almost 2 weeks I thought I was doing something wrong after that night. You hated that uniform, but wouldn't let me get you out of it!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Like that skirt left you with anything to complain about-"

"Hey, I wasn't over exaggerating with the 'catnip' comment."

"And it's not like it got in the way."

"It still messed with my head," he said in mocking and exaggerated tones. Charley absent mindedly refilled her glass once again. If there ever was a night that called for getting completely smashed, this was it.

She let her eyebrows sink in confusion. He was always amused by how much more openly emotive she was when tipsy. Eight years past, yet he could still remember all the little quirks he'd sounded out of her in those 6 months they'd spent together. "It was my issue. I don't see what had you so self conscious."

"Well, maybe I'm just too damn nice for my own good and worried endlessly that I was heaping so many unreasonable expectations on my girl friend that I'd given her body image issues and would never get to see her naked."

Sarah snorted into her glass, narrowly avoiding choking again. "I was right though," he declared, the ice in his own glass rattling emphatically as he shook a finger at her. "It was a body image issue."

"Oh, well pardon me for having apprehensions over the possibility of the 'a killer robot gave me that scar, but it's ok now cause I melted it into slag' discussion." She let her head fall a moment, and for want of something to do with her free hand found herself idly tracing the contours of his with the tip of a finger. "How did you know not to ask?"

Charley didn't pull away from her hand, but had to fight back a laugh as he answered. "John."

Sarah's face was the epitome of incredulity. "You told my son about-"

"No, no, no, he overheard me and my friends talking-"

"You told all your friends about our sex life?" She smacked a palm to her forehead.

"Well, yeah," he admitted sheepishly. "But I was nervous! You can't expect me to not compare notes with the guys and look for reassurance while you fucked with my head."

Her eyes narrowed. "And John?"

"Took pity on me. Told me it how it wasn't my fault, how you'd come around, and that you'd been through hell and it wouldn't help to dredge it up. In exchange I had to promise to never ever force him to contemplate the idea of his mom getting it on again. That's why I cleared out the storage room into the other bedroom when you two first moved in. That way he'd be on the other side of the house instead of the other side of a thin wall."

Sarah buried her face in the side of his arm to muffle the laughter that was racking her at that. Charley set his own glass on the coffee table before plucking hers from her hand before it spilled due to the great shuddering brought on by the amusement.

"So do I finally get to ask?" He was tentative, but managed to keep it lighthearted.

She paused as she struggled to turn the inquiry over in her mind. He glanced at the now half empty bottle and guessed she was about 3 drinks ahead of him. Considering the night she'd had, that was likely all for the better. "You mean about the scars?"

He brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes and smiled as gently as possible. "Yeah. I may have been polite about not asking, but that didn't mean I wasn't curious… and, well, the killer robot talk is already out of the way."

Her eyes narrowed and stared distantly at nothing in particular. "I don't know-"

"Oh, come on." Charley took her nearest hand all in a rush, and ran the tip of her finger over a ridge just behind his left ear. "I fell off the swing set in elementary school. The teacher was in a panic, but all the other kids either thought it was either 'gross' or 'cool.'" He let her hand go then, but his expression begged her to reciprocate.

She smirked at the utter normalcy of the story but her face quickly fell blank as she looked down at herself, arms held aloft and eyes giving away that she knew every mark by heart despite her clothes being in the way. "I wouldn't even know where to begin…" Sarah slowly turned her eyes to her glass of brandy on the table. The ice had mostly melted and she wasn't much in the mood for a watered down drink, so grabbed the rest of the bottle instead. "Choose," she told Charley, slamming back a great mouthful and muffling a cough brought on by the burn.

"Hey, that was my best bottle!"

"I'm not contagious," she replied, offering it to him in reply whilst completely unrepentant. "Not like we won't finish it."

He took it while still trying his best to look disgruntled but the twitching smile at the corner of his lips was making a mockery of his attempts at irritation. "The through and through on your right shoulder," he said, followed by a far more moderate sip then hers.

"Augh." She snatched the bottle back swiftly. "Liquid metal bastard pinned me through the shoulder with a finger." Several gulps helped mitigate her disgust of the memory. "He was trying to get me to yell for John for help. That was the one I melted into slag."

"Wait, liquid metal? Do I even wanna know?"

She pondered how one might explain, her hands moving as if (ineptly) sculpting, but she finally gave up. "No." Her last sip before handing the bottle back was so dainty, Charley nearly laughed at the contrast to her earlier more fervent drinking. "Just like the others, you won't even know one till you blow a hole in it or it tries to kill you." She then added with some vehemence, "I didn't call for him."

He paused and mulled that over and decided he really didn't want to keep going down that tangent. "On a lighter note," he said with a lift of his eyebrows and a rising of his arm. "I got this from my motorcycle." When he saw her squint from not being able to see anything, Charley grasped her hand once again and ran it around the edge of the very old scrape. It really couldn't be seen, but one could still feel the slightly tougher skin.

"Road rash?"

"Sort of but not nearly as impressive. I did say lighter didn't I?" He held his hands up and hung his head to add to an oncoming overdramatic display of self deprecation. "I had just gotten my bike the day before and drove it to the bar for a drink with my friends. After I'd parked it, I made to kick my leg over and get off but the cuff of my jeans caught and I fell flat on the pavement. The guys helped me up, but were laughing the whole time."

They shared a good healthy laugh themselves over the tale until it finally slackened off from aching sides and shortness of breath. She spread her arms in invitation of his next inquiry.

Charley ran a finger through the air along the lower left area of her ribs, hesitant to touch her but close enough to sometimes catch a fold of fabric. "That really faint long one."

She looked surprised. "I barely notice that one anymore myself. John was still really young at the time. I spent a lot of time down south with a group of gun runners and the fighting in Nicaragua was good money to them. A deal went bad one day though… we made the mistake of selling to a really small independent group of Contras that turned out to just be a load of loose cannons. A week after we'd sold them a crate of rifles one of them apparently backfired and did a number on the guy shooting it, so they came looking for us. I got grabbed while split off from the main group trying to do some early training with John. Luckily he was hiding and told the rest of the camp what had happened to me." She turned to look at Charley ogling her raptly. "Better then TV?"

He blinked and glanced away a few times to help break the intensity of his stare. "It's just… gun runners? All that time in Nebraska and I never would have guessed." He oddly felt the need to put a protective arm around her shoulders. "So where'd the scar come into it?"

"Well," she said taking the brandy back. "They mostly just took out their frustrations on me while trying to figure how to go after the larger group. One of them had a real piece of crap asp. That scar came from a pretty deep burr in the metal. Two of them got bullets to the head for it later of course. My comrades weren't all that happy to find their hermanita in such sad shape after all." Sarah looked torn between grateful and regretful while taking another sip. He was surprised she wasn't pulling away from him; in fact, she let her head come to rest against his shoulder and he took a smidge of confidence in it.

He squeezed her shoulders just a little and planted a peck on the top of her head. "Well, I'd never want anything to happen to my hermanita either," he said in a sappy attempt at being endearing.

"Touching," she said with a smirk. "But considering it means 'little sister,' that would make an awful lot between us very wrong." She lifted the bottle. "I'll forgive you and just blame it on this."

He looked at how close it was to empty. "Better save me from further embarrassment and finish it then." As she consented to his request without a second's hesitation, he pulled her a little closer. "What about that one in your leg?"

It took a minute for her to reply as she waited on the last drop to fall, not being one to leave a job unfinished. "Which one?" There was a sardonic edge to it.

Charley tilted his head till his face was pillowed in the layers of her hair and laid a hand gently on her left thigh. He wanted to do something, offer some sort of tender comfort to the flesh he knew was torn to hell beneath his hand, but instead kept his hand still as stone so as not to insult Sarah. The first time he'd run his hand over the ridges of that scar had been quite a bit different and she might not place that all he could really feel right now was a wish to make it all go away for her: as if ridding the surface of all signs of suffering could somehow heal all the damage deep underneath.

"That was when the first one came," she whispered. She'd gone stiff in his arms. "Shot it all to hell, hit it with a car, blew it off a bike, blew it up in a truck… it didn't seem real. Even with all the flesh gone it kept coming. It was shrapnel from an explosion that tore my leg up; John's father told me to run as he shoved a pipe bomb right under the damn thing's ribs. That was how Kyle finally died… in the blast." Charley pulled his head back when a single faint shudder broke her stiffness. He couldn't find an angle with her still so close that would let him see her face, but when he felt a few stray pricks that were warm and wet soak their way into his shirt he didn't need to see.

"Ah, hell Sarah, I didn't mean…" Charley pulled up short, at a loss for words.

"It's ok," she said, skillfully hiding the sound of a sniff by shifting her weight in his arms. "You of all people know that if I don't want to talk about something I won't."

He knew that fact well, but it still didn't make him feel any better about bringing it up. "Are there any funny stories in there," he asked while rubbing a hand up and down her arm as if the warm her. "Something nice to end on?" He knew it would be ending soon; that last shot at the bottom of the bottle was going to set in any time now and he knew she was at her limit in more then one way tonight.

"Heh," she laughed lightly while simultaneous not bothering to hide a sniffle this time. Her shoulders were slumping and she was settling even more of her weight against him. It looked to be almost a struggle to lift her right hand enough to slip it under his. She turned it over so his palm was resting just over where her thumb met her hand. At first he didn't know what she was up to, but then as he ran his fingers over her hand he could feel something that was close to a callus and very old. "Pugsley gave me that," she murmured.

"Who?" He was completely baffled now.

"My iguana in college. He had a habit of sneaking out of his cage." She yawned grandly. "I asked Ginger to feed him for me one day since I was late for class; stupid move really since she never liked him. He'd gotten out and was sunning himself on the windowsill when I got home. He was so famished he leapt a good 3 feet off the sill to my shoulder and ran down my arm after the peach in my hand." Sarah went almost completely slack and he settled her till her head came to rest in his lap. "Shouldn't have over slept… wouldn't have gotten nicked… just fed him…"

Charley laughed as quietly as he could till he was sure she was out cold. Finally confident he wouldn't rouse her, he scooped her up and carried her to the bedroom. He'd sacrifice his bed for the night since it wouldn't do to have Sarah wake up on the couch with a stiff neck on top of all the other many pains she'd be feeling in the morning. He was as gentle as possible about setting her down, but it devolved into a struggle when he tried to pry off her boots. Victory over the footwear was eventually had though. He settled to sit next to her on the bed and reached out to smooth her hair out of an eight year old habit. For just a minute the urge to steal a kiss rose, but after a moment more it struck him that he respected her too much for that and planted a light peck on her forehead instead.

He reached under the bed and pulled out his new rifle. He'd lied earlier; he did still have one thing left he could give.

He knew his eyes wouldn't stay open the entire night, but he also knew that the gesture of trying to keep watch on the road leading to the lighthouse for as long as possible wouldn't be lost on her…

… If her impending hang over wasn't too crushing that is.

As he reached for the box of bullets in the drawer of the bed side table, he pulled out the bottle of ibuprofen that also resided there and left it prominently on the table top as an after thought.

Meanwhile, Sarah Connor was oblivious to the world. It was a well deserved oblivion though.