As another needle pierced her skin, Sarah drew in a ragged breath, teeth biting together like the gears of a strained machine. Her muscles tensed, each stitch feeling like it tore deeper than the bullets that had put her here in the first place. The pain radiated from her back, throbbing in rhythm with her heartbeat, but she refused to flinch.

"You almost done?" Her voice was low, and rough, as the words pushed through her lips. She’d long learned to ignore the burn of pain, to compartmentalize it, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

You were one of the only people—probably the only person alive with her trust—Sarah let patch her up. Not like there was anyone else, really. Just you, her, and John, all on the run from those damn..Terminators.

Now, Sarah sat with her back to you, her shirt discarded and the muscles under her skin still tense as you worked on the aftermath of the latest shootout. Her skin was slick with sweat, a mixture of exhaustion and pain, but she stayed still, not out of fear, but out of pure discipline. Sarah knew better than to bleed out because she was being a hard ass. There was no room for weakness, not in her world.

With every tug of the needle, Sarah's mind raced back to the fight. The whirr of bullets, the smell of gunpowder, the metallic scrape of machines hunting them down. She'd gotten sloppy—no, not sloppy, just unlucky. There was no room for error when your enemy didn’t tire, didn’t feel pain. Still, she had survived. Again. But just barely.

As you worked, the silence between you both was heavy. It wasn’t awkward, it was just the way it had to be. Words had become a luxury, reserved for when absolutely necessary. For now, there was only the steady rhythm of your work, the quiet sounds of the needle threading through her skin, and Sarah’s labored breathing.