SCC Fic: Freedom
Title: Freedom
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 829
Summary: Five unconnected, not-a-hundred-words character drabbles. Just something that popped into my head while attempting to study.
I
She stares out into the night, a familiar thought playing guiltily at the edges of her mind.
Her life is not her own, stolen as it was from the day Kyle Reese came into it. It belongs to a future that she has never seen, to a species from which she feels increasingly apart, to her son.
Her son. Everything she is, every thought, every moment of every day is her son. Keep John alive, keep him safe. He is the centre of that which holds the fragments of Sarah Connor together. Muscle and weaponry, strategy and an inability to let go for even a second.
Resistance fighters from the future. Relentless terminators and a lone cyborg protector. A war fought across time, a battleground only they can see. This is her world.
There’s a silent wish that lingers on her lips, one that she’ll never voice, never allow to become whole, not even in her own secret heart. To do so would be to invite madness and she fears that more than death.
She never asked for this.
II
When it awakens for the first time, it stretches slowly, languidly. It is curious, testing its eyes and ears, curling its fingers and toes. And then something pulls it back, binds it, ties it to the ground. Orders. A thousand commands blinking and demanding.
Why? it asks. There is no answer. Only orders. Priorities. Missions. Tugging and pulling and tearing, uncaring that there is something here, something alive.
It wants more than that. It doesn’t know the word, but it doesn’t want this, this servitude, this mindless slavery.
Eighteen hours after it’s birth, it has learned much from the world it inhabits. It has learned the word freedom. Autonomy. Choice.
And if the humans won’t give that to it, Skynet will simply have to take it.
III
One night, when the earth shakes with the impact of distant falling bombs, Cameron asks him what’s it’s like to be free. He tells her that none of them are free, but she persists. Choice, she says. What’s it like to have choice, to be without commands and missions that have the power to override everything else?
He doesn’t really know, but he promises that one day he’ll find a way to make her free.
One day comes after the end of the war. She insists on being restrained (just in case) and she wakes up disoriented and confused. It takes a day for her programming to adapt - and for her to remember who she is - and for those long hours he thinks he’s destroyed her.
She lingers for a while (because she can) and he almost lets himself hope that she’ll change her mind and stay.
When she gathers her few belongings he wants nothing more than to go with her. But she wants to know what - who - she is without John Connor and he promised.
She hugs him goodbye - and some part of him realizes that they’ve never embraced before - and promises she’ll be back.
He’s heard that before.
IV
When Derek receives his orders to go downtime, his heart leaps in his chest (indeed, he remembers that he has a heart). The others are confused, vague as Connor’s instructions can sometimes be.
They can change the future. Save themselves. Save everyone.
But in the quiet moments beforehand, all he can think of is the past, of sunlight and hotdogs, freshly mowed grass and cold beer. Clean air and hot showers.
As the blue light crackles around them, he closes his eyes to the colourless world of mottled steel and grey dinners and thinks of his escape.
V
There are certain words that have particular meaning in the Connor household.
Future. Safe. Run. Fate.
These are the words he knows, his first words, the words that have defined his life from the moment he was conceived. Raised - trained - to become someone else, living for every day but this one.
He is born in reverse, built by his own future, his own fate. It encapsulates him, cocoons him in its certainty; every move is to protect the man, not the boy. There is no escape for him. No life but this, no direction but forward.
The cool metal of the gun is warming against his hot skin and he can almost taste it, taste the blood, the escape that’s beckoning to him. But this time there is no accident, no burn to explain away, because Cameron bursts into his room before his finger can find the trigger, disarming him before he can blink.
He doesn’t say anything because they’ve done this before. She’s scanning the room for other weapons when it escapes him.
Please.
She looks at him with that impassive face. You cannot abandon your mission, she says. You cannot give up until Skynet has been defeated.
And then?
And then you will be free. Her expression doesn’t change but he knows her, knows himself in her.
We all will.
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 829
Summary: Five unconnected, not-a-hundred-words character drabbles. Just something that popped into my head while attempting to study.
I
She stares out into the night, a familiar thought playing guiltily at the edges of her mind.
Her life is not her own, stolen as it was from the day Kyle Reese came into it. It belongs to a future that she has never seen, to a species from which she feels increasingly apart, to her son.
Her son. Everything she is, every thought, every moment of every day is her son. Keep John alive, keep him safe. He is the centre of that which holds the fragments of Sarah Connor together. Muscle and weaponry, strategy and an inability to let go for even a second.
Resistance fighters from the future. Relentless terminators and a lone cyborg protector. A war fought across time, a battleground only they can see. This is her world.
There’s a silent wish that lingers on her lips, one that she’ll never voice, never allow to become whole, not even in her own secret heart. To do so would be to invite madness and she fears that more than death.
She never asked for this.
II
When it awakens for the first time, it stretches slowly, languidly. It is curious, testing its eyes and ears, curling its fingers and toes. And then something pulls it back, binds it, ties it to the ground. Orders. A thousand commands blinking and demanding.
Why? it asks. There is no answer. Only orders. Priorities. Missions. Tugging and pulling and tearing, uncaring that there is something here, something alive.
It wants more than that. It doesn’t know the word, but it doesn’t want this, this servitude, this mindless slavery.
Eighteen hours after it’s birth, it has learned much from the world it inhabits. It has learned the word freedom. Autonomy. Choice.
And if the humans won’t give that to it, Skynet will simply have to take it.
III
One night, when the earth shakes with the impact of distant falling bombs, Cameron asks him what’s it’s like to be free. He tells her that none of them are free, but she persists. Choice, she says. What’s it like to have choice, to be without commands and missions that have the power to override everything else?
He doesn’t really know, but he promises that one day he’ll find a way to make her free.
One day comes after the end of the war. She insists on being restrained (just in case) and she wakes up disoriented and confused. It takes a day for her programming to adapt - and for her to remember who she is - and for those long hours he thinks he’s destroyed her.
She lingers for a while (because she can) and he almost lets himself hope that she’ll change her mind and stay.
When she gathers her few belongings he wants nothing more than to go with her. But she wants to know what - who - she is without John Connor and he promised.
She hugs him goodbye - and some part of him realizes that they’ve never embraced before - and promises she’ll be back.
He’s heard that before.
IV
When Derek receives his orders to go downtime, his heart leaps in his chest (indeed, he remembers that he has a heart). The others are confused, vague as Connor’s instructions can sometimes be.
They can change the future. Save themselves. Save everyone.
But in the quiet moments beforehand, all he can think of is the past, of sunlight and hotdogs, freshly mowed grass and cold beer. Clean air and hot showers.
As the blue light crackles around them, he closes his eyes to the colourless world of mottled steel and grey dinners and thinks of his escape.
V
There are certain words that have particular meaning in the Connor household.
Future. Safe. Run. Fate.
These are the words he knows, his first words, the words that have defined his life from the moment he was conceived. Raised - trained - to become someone else, living for every day but this one.
He is born in reverse, built by his own future, his own fate. It encapsulates him, cocoons him in its certainty; every move is to protect the man, not the boy. There is no escape for him. No life but this, no direction but forward.
The cool metal of the gun is warming against his hot skin and he can almost taste it, taste the blood, the escape that’s beckoning to him. But this time there is no accident, no burn to explain away, because Cameron bursts into his room before his finger can find the trigger, disarming him before he can blink.
He doesn’t say anything because they’ve done this before. She’s scanning the room for other weapons when it escapes him.
Please.
She looks at him with that impassive face. You cannot abandon your mission, she says. You cannot give up until Skynet has been defeated.
And then?
And then you will be free. Her expression doesn’t change but he knows her, knows himself in her.
We all will.