Short!fic - Many-Worlds (SCC)
Title: Many-Worlds
Author: Ry (curseangel / dreamsforlease)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied spoilers for season two through "Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point".
Characters/Pairings: Cameron Phillips, John Connor. John/Cameron.
Summary: The other side of Jesse's "dangerous" future. John, isolated, with Cameron his only companion. They share a life no one else knows.
The bedroom is dark, and cold. The hollowed-out shell of a building out of the way, half-underground has become their home, a honeycomb of rooms and hallways meant to deceive, to conceal. Behind the fake walls, through the pits of hallways littered with more traps than an Egyptian tomb and as difficult to navigate, that was where they discussed his worst fears and his failures, where he mourned and she stood watch, the eternal guardian of everything he was and could ever have been.
Few know the way in, and that number lessens every day, fewer and fewer survivors knowing where or how to find him. With every death, every mission failed so spectacularly that he can make no comment but to weep, bitter, in the privacy of his own room, with only her for company, they lose something larger than he can conscience, than he can let go of without losing some part of himself.
By the bed, at least, a jury-rigged space heater keeps the chill off, and he sits by its edge, elbows on his knees, arms folded on his lap and head bowed as if in prayer. But he doesn't believe in God; he's not sure that he ever really did. Certainly there is no God here, nothing but the God of the machine, Skynet, its vengeance as crippling as that of an Old Testament God.
Sooner or later, he thinks, it will find him. He postpones it. Puts it off. Hides like a rabbit until the time comes to venture forth from the warren, scavange for a little food or a little justice and run back like the frightened prey that all humans became here. It's beyond hopeless to dwell on inevitabilities, and he refuses to do so, even if his own failure still plagues him.
Everyone loses people. That's what he tells to those who lose themselves in grief, who come too close to losing their minds to the dark that comes to visit in the wake of lost loved ones. Everyone has lost. Everyone loses. His mother is dead. Derek died years ago. Everyone he's trusted with any part of himself, except for...
"You shouldn't think of them," she says, knowing. She always knows. "Remember, many worlds." Their code. She thought of it, used it to placate him when he fell too far into his own depression. To steel him for the future that was yet to come.
Many worlds. She meant the theory of the universal wavefunction - the many-worlds theory. That for every choice you make, a different world is created for each possible outcome. So for every failure he endured, an opposite world existed where he had been successful. Leave it to Cameron to come up with some obscure, weird quantum physics thing, he'd thought at the time.
Now, it was comforting, or close to it.
"I thought you said you weren't programmed to be optimistic," he chides her, looking up when she walks over. It's almost a joke. Her hand in his when he takes it is warm, deceptive.
"I'm not," she replied, matter-of-fact, holding his hand - something she learned from him, from his compulsive grasp of her hand in the aftermath of things much larger than themselves. She learned it. Learned their jokes, the gestures between them that confuse outsiders into thinking she isn't what she is.
It isn't just for show. He doesn't think it is, anyway. Not anymore.
"You didn't fail," Cameron says, almost an offering, standing in front of him. Shorter than him now by a bit, younger-looking, but he never makes the mistake of thinking she's not so much more than she appears. "You're still alive."
To her, that's a mission victory. That's the best possible outcome. Alive. The quality of the life being what it is, he's not sure that's such a great thing, but he doesn't usually argue the point.
Today, he does. "In one of those worlds, I'm dead," John says, references back to the many-worlds, their private solace. Cameron shakes her head.
"Not in this one."
"Yeah. Guess not."
He guesses that's supposed to be reassuring. Strange enough, it kind of is.
Author: Ry (curseangel / dreamsforlease)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied spoilers for season two through "Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point".
Characters/Pairings: Cameron Phillips, John Connor. John/Cameron.
Summary: The other side of Jesse's "dangerous" future. John, isolated, with Cameron his only companion. They share a life no one else knows.
The bedroom is dark, and cold. The hollowed-out shell of a building out of the way, half-underground has become their home, a honeycomb of rooms and hallways meant to deceive, to conceal. Behind the fake walls, through the pits of hallways littered with more traps than an Egyptian tomb and as difficult to navigate, that was where they discussed his worst fears and his failures, where he mourned and she stood watch, the eternal guardian of everything he was and could ever have been.
Few know the way in, and that number lessens every day, fewer and fewer survivors knowing where or how to find him. With every death, every mission failed so spectacularly that he can make no comment but to weep, bitter, in the privacy of his own room, with only her for company, they lose something larger than he can conscience, than he can let go of without losing some part of himself.
By the bed, at least, a jury-rigged space heater keeps the chill off, and he sits by its edge, elbows on his knees, arms folded on his lap and head bowed as if in prayer. But he doesn't believe in God; he's not sure that he ever really did. Certainly there is no God here, nothing but the God of the machine, Skynet, its vengeance as crippling as that of an Old Testament God.
Sooner or later, he thinks, it will find him. He postpones it. Puts it off. Hides like a rabbit until the time comes to venture forth from the warren, scavange for a little food or a little justice and run back like the frightened prey that all humans became here. It's beyond hopeless to dwell on inevitabilities, and he refuses to do so, even if his own failure still plagues him.
Everyone loses people. That's what he tells to those who lose themselves in grief, who come too close to losing their minds to the dark that comes to visit in the wake of lost loved ones. Everyone has lost. Everyone loses. His mother is dead. Derek died years ago. Everyone he's trusted with any part of himself, except for...
"You shouldn't think of them," she says, knowing. She always knows. "Remember, many worlds." Their code. She thought of it, used it to placate him when he fell too far into his own depression. To steel him for the future that was yet to come.
Many worlds. She meant the theory of the universal wavefunction - the many-worlds theory. That for every choice you make, a different world is created for each possible outcome. So for every failure he endured, an opposite world existed where he had been successful. Leave it to Cameron to come up with some obscure, weird quantum physics thing, he'd thought at the time.
Now, it was comforting, or close to it.
"I thought you said you weren't programmed to be optimistic," he chides her, looking up when she walks over. It's almost a joke. Her hand in his when he takes it is warm, deceptive.
"I'm not," she replied, matter-of-fact, holding his hand - something she learned from him, from his compulsive grasp of her hand in the aftermath of things much larger than themselves. She learned it. Learned their jokes, the gestures between them that confuse outsiders into thinking she isn't what she is.
It isn't just for show. He doesn't think it is, anyway. Not anymore.
"You didn't fail," Cameron says, almost an offering, standing in front of him. Shorter than him now by a bit, younger-looking, but he never makes the mistake of thinking she's not so much more than she appears. "You're still alive."
To her, that's a mission victory. That's the best possible outcome. Alive. The quality of the life being what it is, he's not sure that's such a great thing, but he doesn't usually argue the point.
Today, he does. "In one of those worlds, I'm dead," John says, references back to the many-worlds, their private solace. Cameron shakes her head.
"Not in this one."
"Yeah. Guess not."
He guesses that's supposed to be reassuring. Strange enough, it kind of is.