Fic: Letters. (Terminator: TSCC, John/Cameron, PG)
Letters. Terminator:TSCC, John/Cameron, PGish. This is a sequel of sorts to Dancers, a John/Cameron fic that I wrote ages and ages ago. I still miss them. If I were being fair, I would warn for character death, but this is time travel. We can pretend it never happens.
"Your handwriting is supposed to say something about you," Harper says, awkwardly. Making small talk, the last impulse of idiots and those about to jump.
The robot's gone crazy.
"Well, not-" Lee makes a gun with his forefinger and thumb and takes wild aim around the room, "crazy crazy. It's just pencils now, but I tell you, those things, they start acting different, you better watch it. My cousin was in Pasadena and he saw one just snap and flip over the canteen table. It took five seconds. Just like that- you're asking pass the salt and then wham, blitzo."
"They ran three diagnostics on it." Harper has to catch himself, considering his company. He almost says her, just like that, the way that Connor always did.
"Three, five, fifteen, a hundred and fifty. Hell." The taller man shakes his head. He picks a thin brush from the pile and slides it into the rifle barrel, scrubbing half-heartedly at the insides. "You can run all the tests you want. They might tell you how, but they're never going to tell you why. Or when."
Oh, but Harper is pretty sure he knows when.
John Connor woke up three years ago with a plan. Another plan, one of many, like the Reservoir plan that got seventeen men killed but earned them a power grid, a whole goddam power grid and three helicopters. That's the thing about Connor, they said, over and over again during breakfast and lunch and dinner, every meal looking mostly the same from season to season. Connor has ideas. Connor thinks big. Connor dreams. That's the difference, the men said to Harper. Because living the way they do takes the dreams out of mostly everybody.
Harper remembers that meeting, because he was finally old enough to sit in, not just guard the door or haul supplies or sew holes in camouflage jackets for the people allowed inside. A semi-circle of folding chairs and a dog-eared map had been all Connor used to convince them. They voted for it, thirteen of them, not counting Connor. Or Cameron, who stood silently behind him. Two and a half years to lay the groundwork, keep their heads down, gather people and clear roads and count bullets. People died to get the schematics, a handful of codes. People died all the time. But this was different. This felt different. The plan was working, as far as Harper could tell, though his job was just the messenger run through the valley. People had hope this time. That's what Connor said was important: not to give up, inside.
One day Cameron was waiting for him, for Harper, when he went to the dock to load up his scooter with dispatches and personal letters and a couple of cassette tapes that he owed Reggie Brighton in the next town over. She'd watched him silently as he packed everything up and strapped the shotguns into their slings.
"Harper," she'd said. "You like John."
"What?" He thought he'd heard her wrong. "What's that supposed to mean?" She'd given him a look he wasn't certain robots were supposed to have at their disposal, plainly telling him he was an idiot. "Yeah. Okay. Find me a human being who doesn't like John Connor."
"Yes. John Connor." Cameron folded her arms across her chest. "But you like John."
"John." He'd started to figure it out. "He's a good guy."
"He has osteoarthritis." He'd gaped at her. She hadn't blinked. "And high blood pressure. His diet is too high in sodium. He can reconfigure sentinal shields with a broken toothbrush but he is barely capable of monitoring himself." Harper had just kept staring at her, completely confused. "This is not public knowledge, Harper Addison. This is necessary information. Private."
"Why?" he'd asked. And the next day she was gone. Nobody would say where. Not even Connor, who just sighed and changed the subject whenever Harper brought it up. But he'd been truly surprised when Harper started handing him the low-sodium cans of soup and veggies in the weekly distribution.
"Great," Connor had said, eyeing the faded label with obvious distaste. "She picked you, huh?"
"Um," said Harper.
And then, the big day.
"Tell Cameron," he'd said, struggling for breath, with five medics crying openly around him. Connor had pressed their hands and made them promise. "Tell Cameron," he said. And then, nothing. That was the end. And in the midst of everything; as bombs went off with perfect timing and the radios crackled with joyous human voices and Lee and Angela and Luke got into the liquor cabinet and drank themselves stupid in the tunnel under the canteen; there was a blue light in the south quad and an arc of electricity a mile high. Cameron had walked into the base naked, straight to the laundry room and into an oversized pair of coveralls. "I have a message for John," she'd said. They made Harper explain, because of the eternal short straw encoded in his DNA. He stammered over the words, afraid that she would snap his neck when he was done. She didn't. She thanked him for the information. And then she'd taken the next watch at the tunnel, not speaking unless spoken to. She stood so still that scraggly birds landed around her feet and pecked at crumbs of stale energy bars and granola, left over from human sentries. When her time was up she gave watch over to Hannah, went downstairs, and cleaned all the guns.
"Like I said," Lee tells him again later, over their tinned meal. He nods at Cameron, who is now busy collecting pencils in a jar and asking everyone politely if they have any more, any pencils, wooden pencils would be best. "When it happens, it just happens."
That much is true.
"What are they for?"
They are mostly alone, outside the canteen. Everyone talks more loudly now, goes out in the sunlight a little longer every day. Things are changing. Faster and faster, for the better. But at the moment, in this hallway, it's just him and the robot. Cameron stops at his voice and turns gracefully on her heel, so that she is facing him. Harper swallows. "The pencils," he explains. "What are they for?"
"Come with me," she says. She leads him through familiar ground, the shorter tunnels, then into the deep, where the officers' quarters are. Where Connor slept, when he slept at all. Connor's room is the same size as the others, though he always had too much crap stapled up on the wall, too many mechanical parts on the tables and chairs, tools and wires carefully pinned to a pegboard and, weirdly, dried flowers in a frame. A plastic rocketship on a string. Photographs of people next to buildings and cars and what he's been told are soda fountains. Old magazines. National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Women's Day. Cameron doesn't mind the clutter, or else she's at home in it. She leads him in and right away he sees it, a patch of wall covered in little folded squares. He leans closer. They're notes. Like the ones he passed to Charlie at training. Folded-up notes with handwriting on them. Precise handwriting.
"What is this?" Harper asks. "Did you write these?"
"Yes."
"What are they?"
"They are for John," she says.
"John's dead." Harper swallows against the lump thudding in his chest, the heat gathering in his eyes. He cried for his father, but that was a long time ago. He didn't cry when Cara died, or Ellis. Or Vasquez. He's not going to cry now, dammit. "I'm sure you can understand that. He can't read these."
"You do this," Cameron says. "Humans. I've seen it. You write cards and you send flowers." He has no idea what the hell she's talking about, sending flowers. Something from old movies, paperback books. Something that people used to do. She looks at him the way birds look at him, sometimes, those rare daylights when one lands close enough for him to see their beaded eyes. Like the ones at Cameron's feet, the day before yesterday. They are still and wary, and he is large and slow-moving and alien before their darting animal consciousness. Cameron doesn't blink, though her eyes probably record his heart-rate, his height, the wet glint under his lids. For a second she almost looks straight through him. Away. It's impossible, or impossible to tell. "These are still for John," she says. Harper looks at them for a long time, in the unbroken silence of Cameron and the dull sound of bootsteps from the hall. The little pieces of paper, perfectly folded, covered in Cameron's strange handwriting- at once stolid and disturbingly girlish, the passionless notetaking of a machine who puts little circles over the i's. He thinks about the only dispatch he ever got from Connor, in Connor's uneven human scrawl with incomplete o's and a's.
"Your handwriting is supposed to say something about you," Harper says, awkwardly. Making small talk, the last impulse of idiots and those about to jump. "Can I-" he begins, and his voice catches for a second. "Can I write one? A letter to John?"
The machine smiles her borrowed human smile. Her teeth are perfectly white. Her eyes are serene. She hands him a pencil and a square of paper.
"Write clearly," she says.
"Your handwriting is supposed to say something about you," Harper says, awkwardly. Making small talk, the last impulse of idiots and those about to jump.
The robot's gone crazy.
"Well, not-" Lee makes a gun with his forefinger and thumb and takes wild aim around the room, "crazy crazy. It's just pencils now, but I tell you, those things, they start acting different, you better watch it. My cousin was in Pasadena and he saw one just snap and flip over the canteen table. It took five seconds. Just like that- you're asking pass the salt and then wham, blitzo."
"They ran three diagnostics on it." Harper has to catch himself, considering his company. He almost says her, just like that, the way that Connor always did.
"Three, five, fifteen, a hundred and fifty. Hell." The taller man shakes his head. He picks a thin brush from the pile and slides it into the rifle barrel, scrubbing half-heartedly at the insides. "You can run all the tests you want. They might tell you how, but they're never going to tell you why. Or when."
Oh, but Harper is pretty sure he knows when.
John Connor woke up three years ago with a plan. Another plan, one of many, like the Reservoir plan that got seventeen men killed but earned them a power grid, a whole goddam power grid and three helicopters. That's the thing about Connor, they said, over and over again during breakfast and lunch and dinner, every meal looking mostly the same from season to season. Connor has ideas. Connor thinks big. Connor dreams. That's the difference, the men said to Harper. Because living the way they do takes the dreams out of mostly everybody.
Harper remembers that meeting, because he was finally old enough to sit in, not just guard the door or haul supplies or sew holes in camouflage jackets for the people allowed inside. A semi-circle of folding chairs and a dog-eared map had been all Connor used to convince them. They voted for it, thirteen of them, not counting Connor. Or Cameron, who stood silently behind him. Two and a half years to lay the groundwork, keep their heads down, gather people and clear roads and count bullets. People died to get the schematics, a handful of codes. People died all the time. But this was different. This felt different. The plan was working, as far as Harper could tell, though his job was just the messenger run through the valley. People had hope this time. That's what Connor said was important: not to give up, inside.
One day Cameron was waiting for him, for Harper, when he went to the dock to load up his scooter with dispatches and personal letters and a couple of cassette tapes that he owed Reggie Brighton in the next town over. She'd watched him silently as he packed everything up and strapped the shotguns into their slings.
"Harper," she'd said. "You like John."
"What?" He thought he'd heard her wrong. "What's that supposed to mean?" She'd given him a look he wasn't certain robots were supposed to have at their disposal, plainly telling him he was an idiot. "Yeah. Okay. Find me a human being who doesn't like John Connor."
"Yes. John Connor." Cameron folded her arms across her chest. "But you like John."
"John." He'd started to figure it out. "He's a good guy."
"He has osteoarthritis." He'd gaped at her. She hadn't blinked. "And high blood pressure. His diet is too high in sodium. He can reconfigure sentinal shields with a broken toothbrush but he is barely capable of monitoring himself." Harper had just kept staring at her, completely confused. "This is not public knowledge, Harper Addison. This is necessary information. Private."
"Why?" he'd asked. And the next day she was gone. Nobody would say where. Not even Connor, who just sighed and changed the subject whenever Harper brought it up. But he'd been truly surprised when Harper started handing him the low-sodium cans of soup and veggies in the weekly distribution.
"Great," Connor had said, eyeing the faded label with obvious distaste. "She picked you, huh?"
"Um," said Harper.
And then, the big day.
"Tell Cameron," he'd said, struggling for breath, with five medics crying openly around him. Connor had pressed their hands and made them promise. "Tell Cameron," he said. And then, nothing. That was the end. And in the midst of everything; as bombs went off with perfect timing and the radios crackled with joyous human voices and Lee and Angela and Luke got into the liquor cabinet and drank themselves stupid in the tunnel under the canteen; there was a blue light in the south quad and an arc of electricity a mile high. Cameron had walked into the base naked, straight to the laundry room and into an oversized pair of coveralls. "I have a message for John," she'd said. They made Harper explain, because of the eternal short straw encoded in his DNA. He stammered over the words, afraid that she would snap his neck when he was done. She didn't. She thanked him for the information. And then she'd taken the next watch at the tunnel, not speaking unless spoken to. She stood so still that scraggly birds landed around her feet and pecked at crumbs of stale energy bars and granola, left over from human sentries. When her time was up she gave watch over to Hannah, went downstairs, and cleaned all the guns.
"Like I said," Lee tells him again later, over their tinned meal. He nods at Cameron, who is now busy collecting pencils in a jar and asking everyone politely if they have any more, any pencils, wooden pencils would be best. "When it happens, it just happens."
That much is true.
"What are they for?"
They are mostly alone, outside the canteen. Everyone talks more loudly now, goes out in the sunlight a little longer every day. Things are changing. Faster and faster, for the better. But at the moment, in this hallway, it's just him and the robot. Cameron stops at his voice and turns gracefully on her heel, so that she is facing him. Harper swallows. "The pencils," he explains. "What are they for?"
"Come with me," she says. She leads him through familiar ground, the shorter tunnels, then into the deep, where the officers' quarters are. Where Connor slept, when he slept at all. Connor's room is the same size as the others, though he always had too much crap stapled up on the wall, too many mechanical parts on the tables and chairs, tools and wires carefully pinned to a pegboard and, weirdly, dried flowers in a frame. A plastic rocketship on a string. Photographs of people next to buildings and cars and what he's been told are soda fountains. Old magazines. National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Women's Day. Cameron doesn't mind the clutter, or else she's at home in it. She leads him in and right away he sees it, a patch of wall covered in little folded squares. He leans closer. They're notes. Like the ones he passed to Charlie at training. Folded-up notes with handwriting on them. Precise handwriting.
"What is this?" Harper asks. "Did you write these?"
"Yes."
"What are they?"
"They are for John," she says.
"John's dead." Harper swallows against the lump thudding in his chest, the heat gathering in his eyes. He cried for his father, but that was a long time ago. He didn't cry when Cara died, or Ellis. Or Vasquez. He's not going to cry now, dammit. "I'm sure you can understand that. He can't read these."
"You do this," Cameron says. "Humans. I've seen it. You write cards and you send flowers." He has no idea what the hell she's talking about, sending flowers. Something from old movies, paperback books. Something that people used to do. She looks at him the way birds look at him, sometimes, those rare daylights when one lands close enough for him to see their beaded eyes. Like the ones at Cameron's feet, the day before yesterday. They are still and wary, and he is large and slow-moving and alien before their darting animal consciousness. Cameron doesn't blink, though her eyes probably record his heart-rate, his height, the wet glint under his lids. For a second she almost looks straight through him. Away. It's impossible, or impossible to tell. "These are still for John," she says. Harper looks at them for a long time, in the unbroken silence of Cameron and the dull sound of bootsteps from the hall. The little pieces of paper, perfectly folded, covered in Cameron's strange handwriting- at once stolid and disturbingly girlish, the passionless notetaking of a machine who puts little circles over the i's. He thinks about the only dispatch he ever got from Connor, in Connor's uneven human scrawl with incomplete o's and a's.
"Your handwriting is supposed to say something about you," Harper says, awkwardly. Making small talk, the last impulse of idiots and those about to jump. "Can I-" he begins, and his voice catches for a second. "Can I write one? A letter to John?"
The machine smiles her borrowed human smile. Her teeth are perfectly white. Her eyes are serene. She hands him a pencil and a square of paper.
"Write clearly," she says.