Futures (A Cold Night For A Lifetime)

[powergrapes]

Title: Futures (A Cold Night For A Lifetime)
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairings: Sarah/Derek, John/Cameron, John/Other
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 1
Description: Let's assume the best-case scenario for the gang: they destroy Skynet and live happily ever after. This is one version of their "happily ever after".

Comments

[indiefic]

Oh my god, I LOVE this!!

Sarah is a psychiatric nurse. Derek owns a shoe store. They visit the mall on the weekends.

God, imaginging them like that makes my ass twitch. (In a good way, damn I love this, but still ..) It's like seeing a lion in some rickety little cage in a rundown zoo. Sad. Very sad. But weirdly appealing too. Because it's safer.

Kate's never met her, but she lies awake at night wondering about her. She wonders what it is that John does with her on these visits. She's always too afraid to ask.

I wasn't crazy about the third movie and honestly, I don't remember much about Kate, but this is such an appealing character study for John. That he finally has this mostly normal life with a wife and kids. His wife knows and she still loves him and he's finally safeguarded humanity, but in the process has managed to fuck up his own life.

Without Skynet, without an enemy to rally against, without a place to direct his teenage anger, Derek Reese faltered and got mixed up with the wrong people. Derek reads about himself on the internet, looks at his arrest reports, and learns what he would have been like without Skynet. It creeps him out, but he can't stop.

I love that. I love the whole paradox in that Derek managed to save the world and doomed himself. It's a lovely mindfuck.

Trading barbs have always been a cornerstone of their relationship. It used to be foreplay. Now they're just hurtful words.

GUH! That's superbly executed.

"You first."

Damn!

She's going down the alphabet until she hits 'zoologist'.

"What happens after five years as a zoologist?" John asked her once.

"Start over," she replied.

That's excellent. It's well funny and perfectly in character.

"When you're at war, you don't give orders you don't mean."

I love how layered this is. Because on the surface it's just Cameron telling John 'no', but the larger themes are so impressive. The fact that John managed to kill Skynet, but he still clings to its personification. That he has the happy, perfect family but he actively tries to sabotage it with Cameron. The fact that Cameron is Skynet, but she's the one who keeps John honest (in a sense).

"You're a married man. How would you like it if I stepped out on your mother every month?"

"I wouldn't care," John shrugs, then broke into a wide grin. "She'd castrate you herself."

I love Derek and John's banter, them talking as men. It's lovely. And then ..

"Yes," Derek agrees with a nod. "But Kate wouldn't stick up for herself."

Ouch. Derek never was one to pull punches, was he? Plus the whole irony of him being the moral authority here and the fact that John, the savior of humanity, is torturing the person who should be closest to him ...

"Oh," John says. What did he know about shoe stores? But for that matter, what did Derek?

werd

Neither wants to admit how empty they feel inside.

Love, love, LOVE it!!! God, it hurts in the best way. And it's so right on with the whole paradox theme. The fact that if they ever do manage to win, they'll probably break themselves in ways they can't even imagine. Because this life is the only one they know, the only one they're good at. And in a normal setting, they're all just a bunch of self-sabotaging emotionally fucked whackos. They only work on the macro scale, not the micro.

Lovely. Absolutely lovely.

[powergrapes]

Can I just say that you leave the best feedback? So detailed and analytical! Makes a person feel good. :D