"gone to meet your maker" by mollivanders (T)
Fandom: Terminator / Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: John Connor / Allison Young, John Connor / Cameron
Length: ~2k words
Author on LJ: prefer-my-life
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read: It's frustrating when high-concept shows are canceled in the middle of their runs, and even more so when the creator doesn't have (or doesn't take) the opportunity to hint at how things would be resolved.* My personal post-"Born to Run" headcanon is that Sarah took John's as humanity's savior (a la irony_rocks's " White Rabbit," which has been recced here before), but if she was always going to be as Moses, this is the version of continuity I'd want to see. John Connor becomes the leader he was always supposed to be in a lot of fics, but this one takes into account his age, his strange relationship(s) with Allison/Cameron an what, exactly, Catherine Weaver and John Henry were more or less up to.
(He fucking hates her, this new girl, walking around in a machine’s skin.)
On good days he remembers to hate Catherine Weaver, who brought him here - left him on this side of hell and hasn’t reappeared since. The hate focuses him, makes him a better fighter, better leader. Other days, well - other days he’s more fickle. More like his old self.
(He’s only sixteen.)
There’s no place for hate in what he feels for Cameron, though. Misses her like hell, wishes he knew why she came here, why she brought him here, but never -
That was always the problem.
(And if he’s being honest - which he almost never is - she didn’t bring him here.
She left him. He followed. Simple as that.)
Once, he sees Riley and pretends he doesn’t know her, walks past her like it’s nothing until he’s around the corner and can vomit what little dinner he’d had outside. She doesn’t know him, of course, but he can’t spare much worry for her.
Their story’s already finished.
+
Two years after landing here, the machines finally capture him.
(He goes half-mad, just like his mother, when he realizes they don’t know they’ve got John Connor.
They don’t know him in this life.
He doesn’t exist. Not yet.)
When he leads the escape, Derek claps him on the back and Kyle looks at him with something like pride and John wishes that just once he could be alone here.
Somehow he ends up in Allison’s bed instead.
gone to meet your maker
*Seriously, has Josh Friedman or anyone explained what was going to happen had they stayed on the air?
Pairing: John Connor / Allison Young, John Connor / Cameron
Length: ~2k words
Author on LJ: prefer-my-life
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read: It's frustrating when high-concept shows are canceled in the middle of their runs, and even more so when the creator doesn't have (or doesn't take) the opportunity to hint at how things would be resolved.* My personal post-"Born to Run" headcanon is that Sarah took John's as humanity's savior (a la irony_rocks's " White Rabbit," which has been recced here before), but if she was always going to be as Moses, this is the version of continuity I'd want to see. John Connor becomes the leader he was always supposed to be in a lot of fics, but this one takes into account his age, his strange relationship(s) with Allison/Cameron an what, exactly, Catherine Weaver and John Henry were more or less up to.
(He fucking hates her, this new girl, walking around in a machine’s skin.)
On good days he remembers to hate Catherine Weaver, who brought him here - left him on this side of hell and hasn’t reappeared since. The hate focuses him, makes him a better fighter, better leader. Other days, well - other days he’s more fickle. More like his old self.
(He’s only sixteen.)
There’s no place for hate in what he feels for Cameron, though. Misses her like hell, wishes he knew why she came here, why she brought him here, but never -
That was always the problem.
(And if he’s being honest - which he almost never is - she didn’t bring him here.
She left him. He followed. Simple as that.)
Once, he sees Riley and pretends he doesn’t know her, walks past her like it’s nothing until he’s around the corner and can vomit what little dinner he’d had outside. She doesn’t know him, of course, but he can’t spare much worry for her.
Their story’s already finished.
+
Two years after landing here, the machines finally capture him.
(He goes half-mad, just like his mother, when he realizes they don’t know they’ve got John Connor.
They don’t know him in this life.
He doesn’t exist. Not yet.)
When he leads the escape, Derek claps him on the back and Kyle looks at him with something like pride and John wishes that just once he could be alone here.
Somehow he ends up in Allison’s bed instead.
gone to meet your maker
*Seriously, has Josh Friedman or anyone explained what was going to happen had they stayed on the air?