SCC Fic: Hold Your Hand
Title: Hold Your Hand
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 856
Summary: Found this on my hard drive and as it appeared completed for the most part and was the product of a request made by either lint138 or alissabobissa . I think. Can't really remember. But I think the request was for a fic in which John and Cameron hold hands and Cameron wears boots. Anyway. It seems I wrote it and never posted it. So here. There's hand holding and boots.
(I Wanna) Hold Your Hand
New Mexico. 1998.
Cameron Phillips walks from the high school to the residence she has appropriated. School registration requires a mailing address. Hers is 128 Pinewood Road. The name on the mailbox was Smith, white block letters now covered by a shiny coat of black paint.
Vehicular transportation is unnecessary because she does not tire and the journey by foot allows for data collection. She acquires footwear made of animal hide - this explains the ‘cow’ but not the ‘boy’ - called ‘boots’, cuts her hair to match Mandy Jenkins’ and takes a stick of ‘eyeliner’ from Leslie Parker’s bag left unguarded in the girls’ bathroom.
It’s a Thursday when Roy Fraser stops her after last period and asks if she wants a ride home. He stops at a white line painted on the road 1.6 miles from Pinewood Road even though there is no red light and no octagonal sign indicating that he should do so. A man steps onto the road, ushering several children across.
“We’re supposed to hold hands!” one of them says to their partner, even as she struggles to keep the straps of her backpack on her shoulders as the group half-walks, half-runs to the other side.
“Why are they doing that?”
Roy stops tapping the steering wheel to the rhythm of the cassette in the tape deck. “Wha?”
“That.” Cameron points.
“Oh. Huh, they’re little kids, you know. Hold hands when you cross the street.” He laughs so she laughs too.
“Why?”
“Huh?” Roy has reapplied pressure to the gas pedal, his attention apparently poorly divided between the task of operating the vehicle and speaking. “Oh. ‘S’for safety or whatever. Don’t you remember when you were a kid?”
She smiles and laughs because she is a cyborg and there are no ‘kid’ cyborgs and she has learned that smiling and laughing is a sufficient answer 87% of the time.
Safety or whatever.
Los Angeles. 2008.
John is very angry. He is angry because she malfunctioned and did not obey his orders. And because she made a mistake with Jodie. John doesn’t like mistakes and she makes too many. Humans make even more but she isn’t human.
He might also be angry because she failed to procure the cheese puffs. Or because she was apprehended by the authorities. He is not angry because she gave away $1173 to Jodie’s friend, but it is likely he will be when he finds out.
John might be angry because she tried to kill him on his birthday.
There are many reasons why John might be angry, but he says nothing as he takes her hand and pulls her away from the house, away from Jodie, down the dark driveway to the truck.
His hand is large and comparatively weak around hers, but she follows, her fingers squished in his grasp as he leads her away to safety.
John is very angry.
Los Angeles. 2009.
He doesn’t need to look in the rearview mirror (but he does anyway) to know that she’s twitching. Spasming. Flickering. Dying, some part of his stupid brain pipes up. Stupid adrenaline. Stupid heart pounding so fast he’s afraid he’ll get them into an accident. Wouldn’t that be perfect.
Mom’s talking and barking orders but she’s glad to see him; he can tell by the way her voice breaks at the end of sentences. She sounds like she did that day at Pescadero. Except maybe less crazy.
He glances at her hard face, the set jaw and firm, bitter line of her mouth. Maybe a little more crazy.
There’s barely time to throw the truck into park and kill the engine before she’s out, checking her weapon before setting her sights on the Zeira Corp building.
Cameron’s slower to join them, her long hair pulled forward to hide the mangled half of her face.
“You ready, girlie?” Sarah asks.
He thinks she nods but it could’ve been just another twitch. It seems to satisfy his mother though, and Sarah turns on her heel, knowing they’ll follow.
John clears his throat. “You know what you gotta do?”
“Yes. I know.”
The asphalt is mostly even but he thinks her gait isn’t as precise as it usually is and he wonders if there’s more damage he can’t see and it’s in the middle of all the erratic thinking that he nearly loses his own footing. Hero tripping over his own two feet before he even sees the battlefield.
A powerful grip steadies him; a girlish, cold hand on his arm that reaches down to take his own. He can feel the jerky, uncontrollable movements of her fingers and twines them with his as if that can somehow stop the tremors that reverberate through both of them until he can’t remember if they’re hers or his.
And then they’re there.
“Goodbye, John.”
Her path leads to a basement, his is an elevator going nine stories up and this is the ground floor. Ground zero. The end.
“Be safe,” he says, and then he lets go.
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 856
Summary: Found this on my hard drive and as it appeared completed for the most part and was the product of a request made by either lint138 or alissabobissa . I think. Can't really remember. But I think the request was for a fic in which John and Cameron hold hands and Cameron wears boots. Anyway. It seems I wrote it and never posted it. So here. There's hand holding and boots.
(I Wanna) Hold Your Hand
New Mexico. 1998.
Cameron Phillips walks from the high school to the residence she has appropriated. School registration requires a mailing address. Hers is 128 Pinewood Road. The name on the mailbox was Smith, white block letters now covered by a shiny coat of black paint.
Vehicular transportation is unnecessary because she does not tire and the journey by foot allows for data collection. She acquires footwear made of animal hide - this explains the ‘cow’ but not the ‘boy’ - called ‘boots’, cuts her hair to match Mandy Jenkins’ and takes a stick of ‘eyeliner’ from Leslie Parker’s bag left unguarded in the girls’ bathroom.
It’s a Thursday when Roy Fraser stops her after last period and asks if she wants a ride home. He stops at a white line painted on the road 1.6 miles from Pinewood Road even though there is no red light and no octagonal sign indicating that he should do so. A man steps onto the road, ushering several children across.
“We’re supposed to hold hands!” one of them says to their partner, even as she struggles to keep the straps of her backpack on her shoulders as the group half-walks, half-runs to the other side.
“Why are they doing that?”
Roy stops tapping the steering wheel to the rhythm of the cassette in the tape deck. “Wha?”
“That.” Cameron points.
“Oh. Huh, they’re little kids, you know. Hold hands when you cross the street.” He laughs so she laughs too.
“Why?”
“Huh?” Roy has reapplied pressure to the gas pedal, his attention apparently poorly divided between the task of operating the vehicle and speaking. “Oh. ‘S’for safety or whatever. Don’t you remember when you were a kid?”
She smiles and laughs because she is a cyborg and there are no ‘kid’ cyborgs and she has learned that smiling and laughing is a sufficient answer 87% of the time.
Safety or whatever.
Los Angeles. 2008.
John is very angry. He is angry because she malfunctioned and did not obey his orders. And because she made a mistake with Jodie. John doesn’t like mistakes and she makes too many. Humans make even more but she isn’t human.
He might also be angry because she failed to procure the cheese puffs. Or because she was apprehended by the authorities. He is not angry because she gave away $1173 to Jodie’s friend, but it is likely he will be when he finds out.
John might be angry because she tried to kill him on his birthday.
There are many reasons why John might be angry, but he says nothing as he takes her hand and pulls her away from the house, away from Jodie, down the dark driveway to the truck.
His hand is large and comparatively weak around hers, but she follows, her fingers squished in his grasp as he leads her away to safety.
John is very angry.
Los Angeles. 2009.
He doesn’t need to look in the rearview mirror (but he does anyway) to know that she’s twitching. Spasming. Flickering. Dying, some part of his stupid brain pipes up. Stupid adrenaline. Stupid heart pounding so fast he’s afraid he’ll get them into an accident. Wouldn’t that be perfect.
Mom’s talking and barking orders but she’s glad to see him; he can tell by the way her voice breaks at the end of sentences. She sounds like she did that day at Pescadero. Except maybe less crazy.
He glances at her hard face, the set jaw and firm, bitter line of her mouth. Maybe a little more crazy.
There’s barely time to throw the truck into park and kill the engine before she’s out, checking her weapon before setting her sights on the Zeira Corp building.
Cameron’s slower to join them, her long hair pulled forward to hide the mangled half of her face.
“You ready, girlie?” Sarah asks.
He thinks she nods but it could’ve been just another twitch. It seems to satisfy his mother though, and Sarah turns on her heel, knowing they’ll follow.
John clears his throat. “You know what you gotta do?”
“Yes. I know.”
The asphalt is mostly even but he thinks her gait isn’t as precise as it usually is and he wonders if there’s more damage he can’t see and it’s in the middle of all the erratic thinking that he nearly loses his own footing. Hero tripping over his own two feet before he even sees the battlefield.
A powerful grip steadies him; a girlish, cold hand on his arm that reaches down to take his own. He can feel the jerky, uncontrollable movements of her fingers and twines them with his as if that can somehow stop the tremors that reverberate through both of them until he can’t remember if they’re hers or his.
And then they’re there.
“Goodbye, John.”
Her path leads to a basement, his is an elevator going nine stories up and this is the ground floor. Ground zero. The end.
“Be safe,” he says, and then he lets go.