T:TSCC ficlet: you grown me like an evergreen (John, Cameron)
Title: you grow me like an evergreen
Characters: John, Cameron
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Some of John's thoughts on his relationship with Cameron, post-"Ourselves Alone." This is just me taking an experimental poke at a potential fandom. 500 words.
Note: Title from lyrics by Placebo
For alissabobissa, who patiently pestered me about watching her latest favorite show. Sister of mine, I hope you appreciate the irony that my muse apparently likes your silly John best of all.
you grow me like an evergreen
It's fitting that it masquerades as a pocketwatch, he thinks. It's either think about that or wonder where Riley is (what Cameron's done), so he ponders how a thing that should mark time (that thing that never stops, not even when they collapse it in on itself) instead marks when time ends. Because he's sure that if he destroys Cameron, it's all over.
He doesn't know why he feels that why, but he hopes he will, someday (the same someday he hopes will never be). It used to be a frightening burden to be John Connor. Now, it's simply frustrating and exhausting. It's nothing like the movies make a hero out to be; it's unglamorous, and the way is not at all obvious. Being John Connor is like walking through someone else's living room without bumping into anything.
Actually, it's like having a guide who can see in the dark but who won't tell you where the furniture is unless you're about to knock your goddamn shins against the coffee table. And even then she's more likely to just tug you by the arm without telling you why, to steer you away from danger. Replace the sofa and armchair with the possibility of land mines, and you have his life - his single step to the right or left that might be trivial or might literally mean the world.
It doesn't help that he's often pretty unsure of who's actually doing the guiding. She gives him orders, she takes his orders. She obeys her programming (his programming) above all - which is failing. Maybe. Enough, anyway, to make her pretty fucking nervous (no, not nervous: 'monitoring her potential for inefficacy or malfunction'.) So she's put her life in his hands, literally, which makes him pretty fucking nervous himself because his life is supposed to be in her hands.
And her hands kill harmless birds, apparently. It might be trivial, or it might be the end of the world. He snaps the not-watch open and stares at the end of things, glad, for once, that it's something definitive - a hinge springing open, a press of a button. She must know it's something he could never do. Or else she knows something he doesn't. He sort of hates her for being that person out of time, omniscient. Neverchanging, just like the other machines. Neverending. But, no, not neverending. He snaps the not-watch shut and drops it back under his shirt.
He thinks it must be just as strange for her to look into his eyes and know all the things he doesn't know. Yet. But he's noticed lately how sometimes when she talks with him, he can see himself reflected back in this world-weary frown that tugs at the corners of her mouth, the ghost of a sardonic expression he's seen all too often on Derek's face. Then she'll propose something not imminently practical - something too akin to his craziest plans or his most foolish notions - and he'll lie awake and wonder, once again, exactly why she's put her life in the hands of John Connor.
~
Characters: John, Cameron
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Some of John's thoughts on his relationship with Cameron, post-"Ourselves Alone." This is just me taking an experimental poke at a potential fandom. 500 words.
Note: Title from lyrics by Placebo
For alissabobissa, who patiently pestered me about watching her latest favorite show. Sister of mine, I hope you appreciate the irony that my muse apparently likes your silly John best of all.
you grow me like an evergreen
It's fitting that it masquerades as a pocketwatch, he thinks. It's either think about that or wonder where Riley is (what Cameron's done), so he ponders how a thing that should mark time (that thing that never stops, not even when they collapse it in on itself) instead marks when time ends. Because he's sure that if he destroys Cameron, it's all over.
He doesn't know why he feels that why, but he hopes he will, someday (the same someday he hopes will never be). It used to be a frightening burden to be John Connor. Now, it's simply frustrating and exhausting. It's nothing like the movies make a hero out to be; it's unglamorous, and the way is not at all obvious. Being John Connor is like walking through someone else's living room without bumping into anything.
Actually, it's like having a guide who can see in the dark but who won't tell you where the furniture is unless you're about to knock your goddamn shins against the coffee table. And even then she's more likely to just tug you by the arm without telling you why, to steer you away from danger. Replace the sofa and armchair with the possibility of land mines, and you have his life - his single step to the right or left that might be trivial or might literally mean the world.
It doesn't help that he's often pretty unsure of who's actually doing the guiding. She gives him orders, she takes his orders. She obeys her programming (his programming) above all - which is failing. Maybe. Enough, anyway, to make her pretty fucking nervous (no, not nervous: 'monitoring her potential for inefficacy or malfunction'.) So she's put her life in his hands, literally, which makes him pretty fucking nervous himself because his life is supposed to be in her hands.
And her hands kill harmless birds, apparently. It might be trivial, or it might be the end of the world. He snaps the not-watch open and stares at the end of things, glad, for once, that it's something definitive - a hinge springing open, a press of a button. She must know it's something he could never do. Or else she knows something he doesn't. He sort of hates her for being that person out of time, omniscient. Neverchanging, just like the other machines. Neverending. But, no, not neverending. He snaps the not-watch shut and drops it back under his shirt.
He thinks it must be just as strange for her to look into his eyes and know all the things he doesn't know. Yet. But he's noticed lately how sometimes when she talks with him, he can see himself reflected back in this world-weary frown that tugs at the corners of her mouth, the ghost of a sardonic expression he's seen all too often on Derek's face. Then she'll propose something not imminently practical - something too akin to his craziest plans or his most foolish notions - and he'll lie awake and wonder, once again, exactly why she's put her life in the hands of John Connor.
~