For theatrical_muse
#21 - What is good and what is evil?
Good and evil was a concept that Sarah Connor had spent a great deal of time thinking about. She wanted to be able to see the world in black and white like certain people - Derek - did, to know that anything that would possibly create SkyNet was evil and therefore had to be destroyed. Like Andy Goode, Miles Dyson, all the casualties of a war that hadn't happened yet.
Sarah never forgot the lives laid down to save her son, to save the future and to stop the world from ending, from Judgement Day crashing down on their heads as it did so often in her dreams. There was a reason she hated sleeping. It wasn't just because she watched her son get killed over and over, or that she watched children killed in the wake of a nuclear attack, she saw the faces of those that had died indirectly by her hand. By her action, or inaction.
By nature man had the greatest propensity for good, she used to see it every day when she was living with Charley, how he'd selflessly put himself on the line for people he didn't know, and she used to think the same about the law enforcement - they were a grey area now, along with everyone that worked at Pescadero. A grey area where all she associated with them were fear and anger, pain and frustration, like banging her head against a brick wall and wishing that someone would just listen to her. They didn't know what was coming for them, and she had thought that they didn't care. She long since stopped turning to them.
But in that same vein, man created the atom bomb, man created biological weapons capable of destroying whole civilisations, human history was written in blood and it seemed oddly fitting that that was how it would end - but not if she had anything to say about it. What made it hard for her was that man didn't set out to destroy, not usually. And not in the case of Skynet which was why she was almost glad that she had Derek and Cameron there, capable of doing the things that she could not, pulling the trigger when her own mind and body stopped her from doing so, unable to think about the ripple effect, the repercussions of her actions.
There was only one paragon of virtue in her mind, her son. He was good. He was strong and powerful and she was so proud of him, the way he dealt with everything even though he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders as much as she did, how she knew that he would grow up into a man that she would be even more proud of, even though she was more than aware that she would not be there to see it. She often wondered whether or not he knew how much she loved him, or whether or not the way he had grown up had left him thinking he was more a means to an end for her. That was never true.
By extension, then, the resistance fighters of the future were also good, those that tried to save the world, Derek and Kyle Reese, the countless other soldiers, nameless and faceless to Sarah, known to her only by detached stories from Cameron, tales of a future not yet arrived. A future they changed every day. She held them up to the light as well - not that she would ever say it to Derek, or to anyone, admired the way that they worked, that he worked, even though she couldn't agree with it half the time, the way he just knocked off human life, almost senselessly, as if the faces of the people he killed wouldn't haunt him in his dreams. She supposed he had other things to dream about. Worse things. Horrors she couldn't even imagine.
SkyNet was evil, Sarah knew that without a shadow of a doubt, anything it touched and made was also evil, but the terminator sent back to protect her son in 1994, the one that learned and grew and bonded with John in a way that only Charley had managed after that, started to change her mind about the whole thing. Cameron, sent back from the future, apparently one of John's confidantes, someone that her son trusted above and beyond any human, seemed to not be evil. The courts were still out on that one, though Cameron had more than proven herself to be loyal to John. Cromartie, the other terminators, they were doing what they were programmed to do, which was destroy, terminate, kill John Connor. They were evil.
But since it had been proved that terminators could be reprogrammed, then they were just like humans in their capacity for good and evil, right? The question had been plaguing Sarah for years before Cameron came into the picture, and now, watching her son interact with the machine, it was all too easy to forget that she was just made of metal and wires underneath that suit made of skin. For Derek the answer was cut and dry, it had been for Sarah once, too.
If you'd asked her what good and evil was when she was a teenager, before she met Kyle Reese and found out that she was going to end up giving birth to the closest thing to the Messiah, the saviour of mankind, she wouldn't have hesitated; God and the Devil. Heaven and Hell, polar opposites. Black and white.
Now Sarah's world was monochrome, filled with shades of grey that stopped her from being able to pull a trigger and end a man's life. It wasn't fair to judge people on actions they hadn't yet done, deeds they hadn't yet committed, but as long as she had Derek Reese and Cameron Phillips, she didn't need to worry about having to do it herself. Perhaps that made her a coward, made her evil, but she was just doing what she believed right to protect her son from the future.
Muse: Sarah Connor
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Word Count: 1,018
Good and evil was a concept that Sarah Connor had spent a great deal of time thinking about. She wanted to be able to see the world in black and white like certain people - Derek - did, to know that anything that would possibly create SkyNet was evil and therefore had to be destroyed. Like Andy Goode, Miles Dyson, all the casualties of a war that hadn't happened yet.
Sarah never forgot the lives laid down to save her son, to save the future and to stop the world from ending, from Judgement Day crashing down on their heads as it did so often in her dreams. There was a reason she hated sleeping. It wasn't just because she watched her son get killed over and over, or that she watched children killed in the wake of a nuclear attack, she saw the faces of those that had died indirectly by her hand. By her action, or inaction.
By nature man had the greatest propensity for good, she used to see it every day when she was living with Charley, how he'd selflessly put himself on the line for people he didn't know, and she used to think the same about the law enforcement - they were a grey area now, along with everyone that worked at Pescadero. A grey area where all she associated with them were fear and anger, pain and frustration, like banging her head against a brick wall and wishing that someone would just listen to her. They didn't know what was coming for them, and she had thought that they didn't care. She long since stopped turning to them.
But in that same vein, man created the atom bomb, man created biological weapons capable of destroying whole civilisations, human history was written in blood and it seemed oddly fitting that that was how it would end - but not if she had anything to say about it. What made it hard for her was that man didn't set out to destroy, not usually. And not in the case of Skynet which was why she was almost glad that she had Derek and Cameron there, capable of doing the things that she could not, pulling the trigger when her own mind and body stopped her from doing so, unable to think about the ripple effect, the repercussions of her actions.
There was only one paragon of virtue in her mind, her son. He was good. He was strong and powerful and she was so proud of him, the way he dealt with everything even though he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders as much as she did, how she knew that he would grow up into a man that she would be even more proud of, even though she was more than aware that she would not be there to see it. She often wondered whether or not he knew how much she loved him, or whether or not the way he had grown up had left him thinking he was more a means to an end for her. That was never true.
By extension, then, the resistance fighters of the future were also good, those that tried to save the world, Derek and Kyle Reese, the countless other soldiers, nameless and faceless to Sarah, known to her only by detached stories from Cameron, tales of a future not yet arrived. A future they changed every day. She held them up to the light as well - not that she would ever say it to Derek, or to anyone, admired the way that they worked, that he worked, even though she couldn't agree with it half the time, the way he just knocked off human life, almost senselessly, as if the faces of the people he killed wouldn't haunt him in his dreams. She supposed he had other things to dream about. Worse things. Horrors she couldn't even imagine.
SkyNet was evil, Sarah knew that without a shadow of a doubt, anything it touched and made was also evil, but the terminator sent back to protect her son in 1994, the one that learned and grew and bonded with John in a way that only Charley had managed after that, started to change her mind about the whole thing. Cameron, sent back from the future, apparently one of John's confidantes, someone that her son trusted above and beyond any human, seemed to not be evil. The courts were still out on that one, though Cameron had more than proven herself to be loyal to John. Cromartie, the other terminators, they were doing what they were programmed to do, which was destroy, terminate, kill John Connor. They were evil.
But since it had been proved that terminators could be reprogrammed, then they were just like humans in their capacity for good and evil, right? The question had been plaguing Sarah for years before Cameron came into the picture, and now, watching her son interact with the machine, it was all too easy to forget that she was just made of metal and wires underneath that suit made of skin. For Derek the answer was cut and dry, it had been for Sarah once, too.
If you'd asked her what good and evil was when she was a teenager, before she met Kyle Reese and found out that she was going to end up giving birth to the closest thing to the Messiah, the saviour of mankind, she wouldn't have hesitated; God and the Devil. Heaven and Hell, polar opposites. Black and white.
Now Sarah's world was monochrome, filled with shades of grey that stopped her from being able to pull a trigger and end a man's life. It wasn't fair to judge people on actions they hadn't yet done, deeds they hadn't yet committed, but as long as she had Derek Reese and Cameron Phillips, she didn't need to worry about having to do it herself. Perhaps that made her a coward, made her evil, but she was just doing what she believed right to protect her son from the future.
Muse: Sarah Connor
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Word Count: 1,018