SCC Ficathon: One Day
Title: One Day
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. All of it's fair use.
Summary: "One day, John tells her, you will know more than I do."
Notes: Written for mahaliem in the Sarah Connor Chronicles Flash Fiction and Art Challenge, who wanted either Gen, Ellison meets Cameron, or John/Cameron, sweet rather than porny. I did a little bit of both.
One Day
One day, John tells her, you will know more than I do.
She listens, and watches. There is a scar on his left cheek, a criss-cross of damaged tissue. His eyes look far older than he is, which she's faintly surprised she can notice. His eyes look hard but he is soft all over, a human body, such a weak shell. It's hidden under his voice. Vulnerability.
Knowing is not knowledge. She has managed to integrate this in a subprogram, hide it behind a few codes. Knowledge is what is stored in her databanks; knowing is something she cannot put in binary.
When, she asks.
Soon, he answers.
Traveling through time doesn't phase her the way it does humans. She is timeless, forever and a day, born to a time but attached to none. Her brain can handle it, it was made to handle anything.. Humans weren't made to handle much at all; it is one of the things she admires about them.
Or maybe just about John.
Admiration does phase her. That she wasn't meant to handle, that she can't find the original code for in all of her programming.
His eyes are young now, just as vulnerable as his shell. The hardness she sees in Sarah echoes that which she's used to in John. She's not sure she's using the right tenses when she puts her thoughts into words; binary paths know no tenses. Sometimes she wonders if Sarah shouldn't rather be made of metal, but then she asks herself, shouldn't you rather be made of flesh.
Of course not.
Is it right for me to feel things, she once asks John.
He looks at her, steady and sharp. She holds his gaze, for as long as necessary. Time isn't an issue.
Is it wrong for me not to, he answers, except it's not much of an answer at all.
She looks away.
"Freeze!"
She does. Turns around, hips rotating to bring her torso round, see the man who has just spoken. She moves her feet around, deliberately slowly. He looks like an animal any brisk movement might scare away. It's not that she fears the bullets in his gun, but John might come out of the store any second. A stray bullet could prove disastrous; her brain is running numbers on that.
"You're the Jane Doe that's been spotted with the Connors. I have footage," the animal man says, and there is sweat on his temple.
Has he ever seen what her kind can do? He breathes fear. If she were a wolf, she is sure she could have smelled it on the air.
She has the grace of a wolf anyway. John steps out of the store and the animal man aims his gun his way. She's off in a split second, sailing through the air, and it's not strong jaws and sharp teeth closing around the animal man's arm but her combat boot knocking the gun from his hand right as it fires.
The bullet lands harmlessly - mostly - in a passer-by's Golden Retriever. The dog howls, its master gasps.
John looks at her with wide brown eyes. She smiles, reassuringly. Without looking, she roundkicks the animal man in the face. He drops on the floor, unconscious.
"Time to run," she says, and John follows.
Is knowing, she asks, weeks later, and pauses, looks for her words. The reason why? The reason why you don't feel.
John frowns. I feel. Just not...
He looks at her with that knowing look. The look that says he sees into her future, no matter that it is his past, a past that he has not yet lived.
When I go back, she tells him, I will kill you.
You'll bring forth another me, he retorts.
He might not be a better you.
He's the only me you'll have, he adds, and she thinks that in his tone she can hear the word 'ever'.
She doesn't understand what it's there for.
Sarah and John are fighting. It is odd, she thinks, that in such moments Derek and she have something in common. They are outcasts, pariahs that have no place in the family argument. It doesn't matter that he is John's uncle, it doesn't matter that she is John's daughter. It happens often, and pariahs ought to stick together, she has learned this from watching humans. Derek and she do not stick together.
"Would you wish we had stuck together if I die for him?" It is one of the questions that rattle around her brain, that she cannot answer, so she asks it. It is one of those human questions.
"What do you even understand of death?" Derek answers, not looking at her. He's cleaning out his gun, and he's very busy pretending he's not listening to Sarah and John's argument.
She can listen to their argument even as she talks to him; she doesn't mind. "Death is going to sleep. Never waking up. The end of existence, consciousness gone." She pauses. "John told me about Heaven." She means their John, her John.
Derek looks up at her, eyes hard as diamond. They could cut through glass, but not through her. "There's no heaven for tin cans."
"I know," she answers, obviously. She doesn't have a soul; she would know. "But I like to know where you will go."
She sees his gaze steel over, his shoulders tense further. He takes it as a threat; it isn't. She does not want him dead, and if she did he would get no warning. Even if he had one, it would not matter. He would not stand a chance.
"I've seen the way you look at her," she tells him, because it is something else they have in common.
He punches her, hard. Hard, for a human. Her head turns a little with the hit, and within seconds Sarah is there to hold him back, and John is shouting to know what happened, his hand out in front of her as if that might stop her from retaliating. She does not want to retaliate; she wanted them to stick together.
Because he looks at her that way, his sister, mother to his nephew, and she looks at him that way, her father, writer of her programs.
Will I erase myself, she thinks to ask, one day, if you're not here to program me, but different.
Paradox, John answers, and it sounds as if he is calling her name. Except she doesn't have a name.
If you erase yourself, then who will be there to erase you, he develops, and she knows this. This isn't Back to the Future. This timeline isn't going to be blasted to oblivion, it's just going to become unreachable.
If all goes according to plan, she intercedes.
If all goes according to plan, he concedes, and she looks at the fine veins on the fleshy pad of his thumbs, the inside of his wrists. You'll be trapped over there. In a better future.
She thinks a better future should have him in it. But she's ignorant still; soon, she will know more than him.
Cameron, he says, and now she has this, at least. A name, her name.
John, she answers, but he's already turned away.
There is hesitation in John's eyes, so soft. His vulnerability is laid out in the open for all to see (she is the only one there). His pulse races. Sweat breaks out over his palms and she blinks patiently at him, unmoving. She counts his breaths.
Thirteen, she's at, when he closes the gap - at last, she thinks, and it's a nice thought to have - and presses his lips to hers. They're soft, as soft as the rest of him, and she wonders what she tastes like to him.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he confesses, and there's the same tremor to his voice as to his hands.
She takes them in hers, small but steady, and strong. She could crush his hands; instead she holds them. "It's alright," Cameron vows to him. "There is a better future ahead, with you in it." It is truth, the truth she now knows. "I know more than you do. Trust me."
She tries to smile, not an act. It feels odd, on the inside. She thinks she succeeds, because he smiles back, and then there is the caress of his tongue on hers.
At last, she knows more than he does.
~ fin ~
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. All of it's fair use.
Summary: "One day, John tells her, you will know more than I do."
Notes: Written for mahaliem in the Sarah Connor Chronicles Flash Fiction and Art Challenge, who wanted either Gen, Ellison meets Cameron, or John/Cameron, sweet rather than porny. I did a little bit of both.
One Day
One day, John tells her, you will know more than I do.
She listens, and watches. There is a scar on his left cheek, a criss-cross of damaged tissue. His eyes look far older than he is, which she's faintly surprised she can notice. His eyes look hard but he is soft all over, a human body, such a weak shell. It's hidden under his voice. Vulnerability.
Knowing is not knowledge. She has managed to integrate this in a subprogram, hide it behind a few codes. Knowledge is what is stored in her databanks; knowing is something she cannot put in binary.
When, she asks.
Soon, he answers.
Traveling through time doesn't phase her the way it does humans. She is timeless, forever and a day, born to a time but attached to none. Her brain can handle it, it was made to handle anything.. Humans weren't made to handle much at all; it is one of the things she admires about them.
Or maybe just about John.
Admiration does phase her. That she wasn't meant to handle, that she can't find the original code for in all of her programming.
His eyes are young now, just as vulnerable as his shell. The hardness she sees in Sarah echoes that which she's used to in John. She's not sure she's using the right tenses when she puts her thoughts into words; binary paths know no tenses. Sometimes she wonders if Sarah shouldn't rather be made of metal, but then she asks herself, shouldn't you rather be made of flesh.
Of course not.
Is it right for me to feel things, she once asks John.
He looks at her, steady and sharp. She holds his gaze, for as long as necessary. Time isn't an issue.
Is it wrong for me not to, he answers, except it's not much of an answer at all.
She looks away.
"Freeze!"
She does. Turns around, hips rotating to bring her torso round, see the man who has just spoken. She moves her feet around, deliberately slowly. He looks like an animal any brisk movement might scare away. It's not that she fears the bullets in his gun, but John might come out of the store any second. A stray bullet could prove disastrous; her brain is running numbers on that.
"You're the Jane Doe that's been spotted with the Connors. I have footage," the animal man says, and there is sweat on his temple.
Has he ever seen what her kind can do? He breathes fear. If she were a wolf, she is sure she could have smelled it on the air.
She has the grace of a wolf anyway. John steps out of the store and the animal man aims his gun his way. She's off in a split second, sailing through the air, and it's not strong jaws and sharp teeth closing around the animal man's arm but her combat boot knocking the gun from his hand right as it fires.
The bullet lands harmlessly - mostly - in a passer-by's Golden Retriever. The dog howls, its master gasps.
John looks at her with wide brown eyes. She smiles, reassuringly. Without looking, she roundkicks the animal man in the face. He drops on the floor, unconscious.
"Time to run," she says, and John follows.
Is knowing, she asks, weeks later, and pauses, looks for her words. The reason why? The reason why you don't feel.
John frowns. I feel. Just not...
He looks at her with that knowing look. The look that says he sees into her future, no matter that it is his past, a past that he has not yet lived.
When I go back, she tells him, I will kill you.
You'll bring forth another me, he retorts.
He might not be a better you.
He's the only me you'll have, he adds, and she thinks that in his tone she can hear the word 'ever'.
She doesn't understand what it's there for.
Sarah and John are fighting. It is odd, she thinks, that in such moments Derek and she have something in common. They are outcasts, pariahs that have no place in the family argument. It doesn't matter that he is John's uncle, it doesn't matter that she is John's daughter. It happens often, and pariahs ought to stick together, she has learned this from watching humans. Derek and she do not stick together.
"Would you wish we had stuck together if I die for him?" It is one of the questions that rattle around her brain, that she cannot answer, so she asks it. It is one of those human questions.
"What do you even understand of death?" Derek answers, not looking at her. He's cleaning out his gun, and he's very busy pretending he's not listening to Sarah and John's argument.
She can listen to their argument even as she talks to him; she doesn't mind. "Death is going to sleep. Never waking up. The end of existence, consciousness gone." She pauses. "John told me about Heaven." She means their John, her John.
Derek looks up at her, eyes hard as diamond. They could cut through glass, but not through her. "There's no heaven for tin cans."
"I know," she answers, obviously. She doesn't have a soul; she would know. "But I like to know where you will go."
She sees his gaze steel over, his shoulders tense further. He takes it as a threat; it isn't. She does not want him dead, and if she did he would get no warning. Even if he had one, it would not matter. He would not stand a chance.
"I've seen the way you look at her," she tells him, because it is something else they have in common.
He punches her, hard. Hard, for a human. Her head turns a little with the hit, and within seconds Sarah is there to hold him back, and John is shouting to know what happened, his hand out in front of her as if that might stop her from retaliating. She does not want to retaliate; she wanted them to stick together.
Because he looks at her that way, his sister, mother to his nephew, and she looks at him that way, her father, writer of her programs.
Will I erase myself, she thinks to ask, one day, if you're not here to program me, but different.
Paradox, John answers, and it sounds as if he is calling her name. Except she doesn't have a name.
If you erase yourself, then who will be there to erase you, he develops, and she knows this. This isn't Back to the Future. This timeline isn't going to be blasted to oblivion, it's just going to become unreachable.
If all goes according to plan, she intercedes.
If all goes according to plan, he concedes, and she looks at the fine veins on the fleshy pad of his thumbs, the inside of his wrists. You'll be trapped over there. In a better future.
She thinks a better future should have him in it. But she's ignorant still; soon, she will know more than him.
Cameron, he says, and now she has this, at least. A name, her name.
John, she answers, but he's already turned away.
There is hesitation in John's eyes, so soft. His vulnerability is laid out in the open for all to see (she is the only one there). His pulse races. Sweat breaks out over his palms and she blinks patiently at him, unmoving. She counts his breaths.
Thirteen, she's at, when he closes the gap - at last, she thinks, and it's a nice thought to have - and presses his lips to hers. They're soft, as soft as the rest of him, and she wonders what she tastes like to him.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he confesses, and there's the same tremor to his voice as to his hands.
She takes them in hers, small but steady, and strong. She could crush his hands; instead she holds them. "It's alright," Cameron vows to him. "There is a better future ahead, with you in it." It is truth, the truth she now knows. "I know more than you do. Trust me."
She tries to smile, not an act. It feels odd, on the inside. She thinks she succeeds, because he smiles back, and then there is the caress of his tongue on hers.
At last, she knows more than he does.
~ fin ~