DISCLAIMER: The Bionic Woman and its characters are the property of NBC. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SEQUEL: To She That Believeth in Me
That Which Doesn't Kill You
By Geekgrrl
Jaime Sommers' alarm buzzed obscenely loud beside her head, slowly pulling her from a deep sleep. She cracked an eye open to see a bright red 7:00 a.m. staring back at her. Slapping the offending clock off, she flopped back into her pillow and sighed. Rolling to her side, she faced her girlfriend, still sleeping soundly.
Jaime noticed that Ruth's short blonde hair was sticking up everywhere, giving new meaning to the phrase bed head. Once again her lover had been right, the morning had arrived much too quickly. She didn't even want to think about trying to get Becca up. She knew they still had to grab a quick bite and pack the car, not to mention the two and a half hour drive ahead of them. Why had she agreed to this weekend at Jae's cabin again?
Jaime watched as Ruth sighed and settled deeper into her pillow and knew exactly why she had agreed. They still hadn't discussed the recurring nightmares, the time just hadn't seemed right, and although she felt guilty Jaime was glad now she had harassed Nathan for what she needed to know…
"Come on, you owe me Nathan." Jaime had been working on Berkut's resident computer guru since running into him in the break room earlier that bright Wednesday morning.
"What part of no don't you get? I'm still not out of the dog house with her from last time Jaime!" Nathan knew that Jaime wasn't going to let this go so easily. He glanced at the younger woman and groaned. "The puppy dog eyes are not going to cut it Sommers."
Big sad soulful eyes continued to stare right back at him, Jaime's bottom lip just slightly pouting.
"Oh, all right. Jeez, enough all ready." Nodding to the armed guard Nathan swiped opened the door to the computer lab with his security pass and entered, Jaime following him into the deserted room.
"Ruth is going to kill me if she ever finds out. Seriously." Nathan stopped and gave her a hard look, before turning to carefully put his coffee mug down on a side table far from his computer.
"And she has the Glock to do it too Jaime. You haven't seen her in full out pissed bitch mode. Trust me, it's not pretty." He shivered just thinking about that one mission in Moscow. Poor Russian bastard.
Jaime shivered for a completely different reason and smiled to herself, thinking it sounded pretty hot actually. A tight black t-shirt, Kevlar vest, big gun and even bigger attitude. She'd have to get Ruth to take her to the firing range sometime soon and have the older woman show her some of her moves.
Nathan tried to ignore the hungry look passing across Jaime's face, as he dropped into his chair and turned to the computer keyboard. Sighing, he punched in a security code and surfed to the file needed.
"This is still hard to watch after all this time." Monitor 5 flickered to life with the images Nathan had located.
It was the feed from the security camera in the hallway outside one of the medical labs on the lower level of Berkut's Wolf Creek complex. Jaime recognized the hallway from her own forced stay, when Will helped her escape. A wave of sadness and anger at her former lover rolled over her before she focused again on the security feed. The time code read 04:00, and a code red situation was obviously in progress, as red lights flashed and a claxon blared somewhere in the distance.
"Sarah was AWOL at this point, out of control. Word around here is that she was hacked. At the time though, no one knew what the hell was going on. Here she comes." Nathan pointed to the screen.
Sarah Corvus, dressed in nothing but a spotted hospital gown and a hand gun, entered the screen from the bottom left, just as a door opened across the hall from her. She stopped as a dark haired woman came out of the door, unarmed.
With jerky almost uncontrolled movements, Sarah yelled "No" repeatedly as she blasted four rounds into the woman's body. The brunette dropped, clutching at the gaping wounds in her chest.
Sarah wailed fanatically and continued to fire disappearing into the room, emptying her clip into the unseen staff inside. Staggering back out to the hallway, Sarah had the gun to her head frantically pulling the trigger despite the clicking obviously indicating she was out of ammo. As if finally realizing the gun was useless, she threw it away from her and seemed to drag herself further down the hallway, streaks of blood marking the wall as she went.
Nathan paused the playback and sighed.
"Jesus." Jaime muttered.
"That was Colonel Sandra Braddock." Nathan glanced up at his shocked friend.
"Sandy…" Jaime's stomach dropped as she realized exactly who has been haunting Ruth's dreams.
Nathan grimly moved on to the next sequence. A black ops team with Jae in the lead made its way down the hall. Jae paused as he recognized the body and after speaking briefly into his wrist mike he headed down the hallway after Sarah.
Time code showed 5 minutes later as a younger Ruth with shoulder length blonde hair entered the hallway with a medical crew running onto the screen. Ruth dropped to her knees, finding Sandy dying, if not already dead, in a pool of blood. The medical team quickly checked for vitals, then moved into the small room to look at the other victims inside.
Ruth pulled the limp woman into an embrace and just held her close, rocking her. Emergency attendants moved around her, security ran past but no one disturbed her. Finally Jonas walked up to Ruth, talking with her gently. He pulled her away from the body, covered in blood. Nathan stopped the feed, freezing the image on the screen.
"Oh, Ruth…" Jaime's heart broke for her obviously devastated lover.
"That which doesn't kill you…" Jonas Bledsoe stared at the monitor from the door of the computer lab, the slaughter frozen before his eyes from so long ago. Jaime and Nathan jumped, startled at his quiet entry to the lab.
"Makes you stronger." Jaime filled in the old familiar quote.
"Fucks with your head." Jonas smiled sadly and came deeper into the lab. "Sandy Braddock's death was one of many unexpected blows that day. Some of us were hurt more than others." His eyes seemed to fade as he sank into old memories of lost friends. "Just give Ruth some time Jaime."
Snapping himself back into the here and now, he turned and started to head out of the lab. "We need to go over some contingencies on that special assignment we've been discussing."
Jaime looked over at Nathan and mouthed a thank you before following their boss out of the Lab.
Nathan smiled and wheeled over to his coffee mug, pleased he could have helped Jaime without getting into trouble for bending of the rules.
Jonas stuck his head back into the Lab. "We'll talk more about this later, Nathan."
Sighing, Nathan just hung his head.
"What are you doing?" a soft mumble came from the blonde woman lying across from her, hazel eyes peering at her and startling Jaime from her thoughts.
"Watching you sleep." Jaime murmured back.
"I thought I could hear you blinking over there." Ruth stretched a bit, and yawned.
"I love you, y'know." Jaime ran her fingers through the soft blonde hair, not helping the bed head at all. Ruth pulled her closer, nuzzling into the warm dark hair and sighed.
"I love you too." Ruth placed a sleepy kiss on the soft lips "I'm still not going to wake Becca up for you. Nice try though." She chuckled against Jaime's smiling mouth.
"I'll meet you in the shower Sommers." Reluctantly rolling out of bed, Ruth slipped her night shirt and boxers on and headed for the bathroom. "We've got a lot of ground to cover this weekend."
Jaime watched her lover disappear out of the room and muttered sadly to herself. "Yes, we do Ruth. Yes we do…"
The End