Sarah Connor Chronicles Fic: Breath and Shadow (PG)
Title: Breath and Shadow
Fandom: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rating: PG
Summary: There are things she remembers.
Spoilers: Up to and including s2 season finale.
Notes: First fic in this fandom. Title part of a quote from Sophocles. Many thanks to sabaceanbabe for the beta!
Re: Timeline - I'm going with the idea that Judgment Day doesn't happen in 2011, but is pushed to a couple of years later.
There are things she remembers. Some are things she pushes aside - memories of a bright, open house, or stories and her father's voice. Those memories have no place here. They are for the past, or maybe, one day, for the future.
Other memories mark the beginnings of who she is - who she needs to be - today. She remembers being met by Mr. Ellison and a woman after gymnastics, and others coming for them - for her. She remembers being held tightly, a quiet voice telling her to close her eyes. She remembers warm arms around her, the bounce of being held by someone running, and the rush of cool air against her skin.
"Who are you?" she remembers asking, when they reached a quiet place, somewhere dark and safe. Mr. Ellison wasn't with them anymore.
The woman had smiled down at her then. She remembers that smile because it was so different from her mother's - not smooth and perfect and cold, but real, a little messy, maybe a little sad. "My name is Sarah."
* * *
There isn't much she doesn't hear about, sooner or later. Crucial or inconsequential, it eventually all filters up to her. Sometimes it comes too late, or as incomplete gossip, but part of who she is knowing what to do with what comes to her.
Usually.
Not always right away, of course.
Naturally, she hears about the kid that Derek and Kyle find - more than half-naked, apparently - hiding out in a place no one should be. She hears about newly charred walls in an already burned-out building. And she hears that the kid doesn't quite seem to get what's going on around him. At first she shrugs him off as one more traumatized kid, probably having lived alone for years. He'll adjust.
Or he won't.
It's not that she doesn't care. One more survivor, no matter how broken, is always good news. But the news comes with other information, more important to the big picture. Kyle has returned with intel confirming new trends. Skynet is…becoming increasingly confusing. This is unexpected - confusing isn't something she associates with metal. A certain underlying predictability has saved them more than once.
But now, word keeps coming that metal might be targeting metal, and no one claims reprogramming. There are stories of fluid-forms approaching human patrols and leaving cryptic messages instead of killing everything they see. If she didn't know better, she'd think that there was some kind of dissent in the ranks.
But machines don't disagree.
Except one, of course, and sometimes she wonders if he was only a figment of her childhood.
* * *
She remembers the smell of hair dye, the feel of gentle fingers and her scalp and watching in a dirty mirror as Sarah made her hair dark, less noticeable. She'd imagined Sarah's fingers were paintbrushes, spreading darkness as they brushed through her hair.
They travelled a lot. At first, she missed her mother, her house, her toys. She missed John Henry, and Mr. Ellison. There were nights she'd cry as quietly as possible, while she thought Sarah was sleeping.
But Sarah had never really seemed to sleep.
"Imagine," Sarah had said one night, sitting on her bed, "that John Henry is telling you to be brave. You can cry before you sleep, but in the morning, remember to wake up and be strong and brave."
"He did that before," she'd replied, her throat sore. "Told me to be brave. When I was hiding. He was my friend. He tried to keep me safe."
"I know." But she'd sounded doubtful.
"But now you keep me safe?"
"Yes." There hadn't been any doubt.
* * *
"That kid keeps hanging around," Derek says as he walks into the room. "Giving me and Kyle looks. It's a little creepy."
She looks up from her map. "Get Allison to talk to him. She's good with the traumatized ones."
Derek shrugs. "He watches her too. Calf-eyes, maybe."
She can't help but smile. Allison has a way about her - it isn't just the dogs that tend to fawn when she's around.
By the time the others arrive, she and Derek are halfway through the logistics of the next supply exchange with Perth. Submarine routes are getting too busy for her liking, and they're trying to figure out the reasons for up-swings in metal traffic at certain times and places. If it continues like this, they'll have to come up with new routes - without open communication, training and supply channels, there's no point in doing anything.
It isn't until the end of the meeting that she hears more about it, and even then it isn't direct.
"-the guns," Kyle is saying to Derek, off to one side of the room. "Seems to know what he's talking about and -"
"-and the dogs don't have a problem with him, so he isn't metal," Derek finishes off.
"Maybe we could try him out on patrol -"
"Who's this?" she interrupts, looking up from her notes. "That kid again?"
"Yeah." Kyle frowns at her. "I can't figure him out. He's too - confused in some ways. Too comfortable in others. Nothing about him fits."
Nothing about anything fits. She remembers a time when it seemed that everything fit perfectly. Some days, she wonders if she's just making those memories up. "Send him out on basic recon. Watch him. Could be something's up. Could be he's just not used to people, and won't feel he fits in until he has something to do."
Kyle frowns some more, but Derek shrugs. "Sure."
They're halfway across the room when she asks, not really listening for the answer, "What's his name?" She can't keep thinking of him as the half-naked kid Kyle and Derek found.
"John Connor," Derek says, not stopping. "And he says it like we should know it."
* * *
There were lessons. At first they'd seemed like a game - how quiet can you be? How well can you hide? Look around, close your eyes, and tell me everything you remember. What are people really saying, behind their words?
Eventually, she'd figured out they weren't games. She'd pretended they were anyway, because it had helped her not be scared. And when it was too scary, she remembers that Sarah's lap had been warm, and that Sarah's words had been reassuring.
The lessons had become harder, more challenging. She'd grown used to being constantly tested, pushing herself harder than Sarah expected. The gun training, the survival skills, the ability to plan - they became part of her, who she would need to be.
"Could you survive without me? If we got separated?" Sarah had asked her once. She can't remember how old she'd been, or how long they'd been running. She just remembers the question.
"No," she'd said.
"Wrong answer."
She'd thought about it. Really thought. If she could find Mr. Ellison…maybe John Henry or her mother would come for her.
Even then, she'd known not to rely on shadows of the past, no matter how much she wished she could.
"Not yet," she'd answered, finally, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
Sarah had nodded. "We'll keep working."
She remembers her eleventh birthday, when they met with Mr. Ellison in a tiny, isolated roadhouse. She'd read while he and Sarah talked in hushed, urgent voices. She'd heard bits and pieces, "…told him I'd stop it…" and, "…nothing to find," and Mr. Ellison had sounded as frustrated, as angry as Sarah sometimes did.
After Mr. Ellison had left, Sarah had given her a new gun, a book on battle strategy, and sat her down to tell a story of the future, and a story of the past.
* * *
The name doesn't quite register, not at first. After all, she's busy, and it's been years.
She confers with a couple of the tech guys, trying to figure what's going on with the metal behaviour - programming glitches, maybe? Or it could be a deterioration of components. She follows that with a strategy meeting, to discuss whether the behaviour is in fact calculated and representative of a new set of tactics that they'll need to anticipate. Her day is full, after the meeting about Perth. Full, and long, and she only eats because Allison stops by with some food.
After the meetings, there are supply lists to go over, new wishlists to be made up and long-term patrols to approve.
"It's the paperwork that'll kill me," Sarah had said once, in the early days after the world ended, a half-smile on her face. "The paperwork or the people."
"Or the radiation," she'd replied, unthinking, preoccupied. Years later, she still regrets saying that.
It isn't until night - when she's thinking about falling onto a cot for a couple of hours - that something clicks into place.
John Connor. The story of the past, and a story of the future.
* * *
She remembers the day the world she knew ended. Mostly, she remembers the feeling of inevitability, and the sensations, not the minute details. Sarah, she always suspected, remembered every detail.
She remembers the end of world as full of warmth - warm, sooty winds and warm earth, bodies still radiating fading heat and the stuffy air of temporary shelter.
Even today, she's more comfortable with the cold.
She'll never forget the feel of Sarah's hand in hers, strong and hard, and Sarah's words, "We're ready for this, Savannah. Remember that. We're ready."
* * *
"Find him," she tells everyone. "Find him now." They don't question her.
Allison gets back to her first. "He's out on patrol. Kyle's with him."
"Get them back."
Allison shakes her head. "Radio silence."
"Send someone out after them."
"You know Kyle," Allison says, doubtful. "You think someone else can find him easily? He's due back in two days. Better to wait."
It's true, but it doesn't make it any easier.
She doesn't get any sleep that night. Or the next. She paces until her legs shake. She makes plans until there's nothing else to plan, and then she goes to a weapons storage room and counts bullets. She sits and watches the people around her. She looks down at her hands, and remembers what Sarah's hands looked like, towards the end - battered and thin, and missing two fingers. She doesn't look in the cracked mirror in the bathroom, because she's afraid she'll see Sarah looking back at her.
She's still sitting - cross-legged, on the floor - when they bring him to her. There's dried blood down one side of his face, and he looks exhausted, but he holds the gun like he knows how to use it.
Of course he does.
"John Connor?" she asks, standing. He looks just as she remembers, a boy who saved a child.
"Yes." He's almost frowning. Perhaps he almost recognizes her, all of these years later.
She breathes out, slow and precise. It feels like she's been holding her breath for years. "My name is Savannah Weaver. I knew your mother."
End.
Fandom: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rating: PG
Summary: There are things she remembers.
Spoilers: Up to and including s2 season finale.
Notes: First fic in this fandom. Title part of a quote from Sophocles. Many thanks to sabaceanbabe for the beta!
Re: Timeline - I'm going with the idea that Judgment Day doesn't happen in 2011, but is pushed to a couple of years later.
There are things she remembers. Some are things she pushes aside - memories of a bright, open house, or stories and her father's voice. Those memories have no place here. They are for the past, or maybe, one day, for the future.
Other memories mark the beginnings of who she is - who she needs to be - today. She remembers being met by Mr. Ellison and a woman after gymnastics, and others coming for them - for her. She remembers being held tightly, a quiet voice telling her to close her eyes. She remembers warm arms around her, the bounce of being held by someone running, and the rush of cool air against her skin.
"Who are you?" she remembers asking, when they reached a quiet place, somewhere dark and safe. Mr. Ellison wasn't with them anymore.
The woman had smiled down at her then. She remembers that smile because it was so different from her mother's - not smooth and perfect and cold, but real, a little messy, maybe a little sad. "My name is Sarah."
* * *
There isn't much she doesn't hear about, sooner or later. Crucial or inconsequential, it eventually all filters up to her. Sometimes it comes too late, or as incomplete gossip, but part of who she is knowing what to do with what comes to her.
Usually.
Not always right away, of course.
Naturally, she hears about the kid that Derek and Kyle find - more than half-naked, apparently - hiding out in a place no one should be. She hears about newly charred walls in an already burned-out building. And she hears that the kid doesn't quite seem to get what's going on around him. At first she shrugs him off as one more traumatized kid, probably having lived alone for years. He'll adjust.
Or he won't.
It's not that she doesn't care. One more survivor, no matter how broken, is always good news. But the news comes with other information, more important to the big picture. Kyle has returned with intel confirming new trends. Skynet is…becoming increasingly confusing. This is unexpected - confusing isn't something she associates with metal. A certain underlying predictability has saved them more than once.
But now, word keeps coming that metal might be targeting metal, and no one claims reprogramming. There are stories of fluid-forms approaching human patrols and leaving cryptic messages instead of killing everything they see. If she didn't know better, she'd think that there was some kind of dissent in the ranks.
But machines don't disagree.
Except one, of course, and sometimes she wonders if he was only a figment of her childhood.
* * *
She remembers the smell of hair dye, the feel of gentle fingers and her scalp and watching in a dirty mirror as Sarah made her hair dark, less noticeable. She'd imagined Sarah's fingers were paintbrushes, spreading darkness as they brushed through her hair.
They travelled a lot. At first, she missed her mother, her house, her toys. She missed John Henry, and Mr. Ellison. There were nights she'd cry as quietly as possible, while she thought Sarah was sleeping.
But Sarah had never really seemed to sleep.
"Imagine," Sarah had said one night, sitting on her bed, "that John Henry is telling you to be brave. You can cry before you sleep, but in the morning, remember to wake up and be strong and brave."
"He did that before," she'd replied, her throat sore. "Told me to be brave. When I was hiding. He was my friend. He tried to keep me safe."
"I know." But she'd sounded doubtful.
"But now you keep me safe?"
"Yes." There hadn't been any doubt.
* * *
"That kid keeps hanging around," Derek says as he walks into the room. "Giving me and Kyle looks. It's a little creepy."
She looks up from her map. "Get Allison to talk to him. She's good with the traumatized ones."
Derek shrugs. "He watches her too. Calf-eyes, maybe."
She can't help but smile. Allison has a way about her - it isn't just the dogs that tend to fawn when she's around.
By the time the others arrive, she and Derek are halfway through the logistics of the next supply exchange with Perth. Submarine routes are getting too busy for her liking, and they're trying to figure out the reasons for up-swings in metal traffic at certain times and places. If it continues like this, they'll have to come up with new routes - without open communication, training and supply channels, there's no point in doing anything.
It isn't until the end of the meeting that she hears more about it, and even then it isn't direct.
"-the guns," Kyle is saying to Derek, off to one side of the room. "Seems to know what he's talking about and -"
"-and the dogs don't have a problem with him, so he isn't metal," Derek finishes off.
"Maybe we could try him out on patrol -"
"Who's this?" she interrupts, looking up from her notes. "That kid again?"
"Yeah." Kyle frowns at her. "I can't figure him out. He's too - confused in some ways. Too comfortable in others. Nothing about him fits."
Nothing about anything fits. She remembers a time when it seemed that everything fit perfectly. Some days, she wonders if she's just making those memories up. "Send him out on basic recon. Watch him. Could be something's up. Could be he's just not used to people, and won't feel he fits in until he has something to do."
Kyle frowns some more, but Derek shrugs. "Sure."
They're halfway across the room when she asks, not really listening for the answer, "What's his name?" She can't keep thinking of him as the half-naked kid Kyle and Derek found.
"John Connor," Derek says, not stopping. "And he says it like we should know it."
* * *
There were lessons. At first they'd seemed like a game - how quiet can you be? How well can you hide? Look around, close your eyes, and tell me everything you remember. What are people really saying, behind their words?
Eventually, she'd figured out they weren't games. She'd pretended they were anyway, because it had helped her not be scared. And when it was too scary, she remembers that Sarah's lap had been warm, and that Sarah's words had been reassuring.
The lessons had become harder, more challenging. She'd grown used to being constantly tested, pushing herself harder than Sarah expected. The gun training, the survival skills, the ability to plan - they became part of her, who she would need to be.
"Could you survive without me? If we got separated?" Sarah had asked her once. She can't remember how old she'd been, or how long they'd been running. She just remembers the question.
"No," she'd said.
"Wrong answer."
She'd thought about it. Really thought. If she could find Mr. Ellison…maybe John Henry or her mother would come for her.
Even then, she'd known not to rely on shadows of the past, no matter how much she wished she could.
"Not yet," she'd answered, finally, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
Sarah had nodded. "We'll keep working."
She remembers her eleventh birthday, when they met with Mr. Ellison in a tiny, isolated roadhouse. She'd read while he and Sarah talked in hushed, urgent voices. She'd heard bits and pieces, "…told him I'd stop it…" and, "…nothing to find," and Mr. Ellison had sounded as frustrated, as angry as Sarah sometimes did.
After Mr. Ellison had left, Sarah had given her a new gun, a book on battle strategy, and sat her down to tell a story of the future, and a story of the past.
* * *
The name doesn't quite register, not at first. After all, she's busy, and it's been years.
She confers with a couple of the tech guys, trying to figure what's going on with the metal behaviour - programming glitches, maybe? Or it could be a deterioration of components. She follows that with a strategy meeting, to discuss whether the behaviour is in fact calculated and representative of a new set of tactics that they'll need to anticipate. Her day is full, after the meeting about Perth. Full, and long, and she only eats because Allison stops by with some food.
After the meetings, there are supply lists to go over, new wishlists to be made up and long-term patrols to approve.
"It's the paperwork that'll kill me," Sarah had said once, in the early days after the world ended, a half-smile on her face. "The paperwork or the people."
"Or the radiation," she'd replied, unthinking, preoccupied. Years later, she still regrets saying that.
It isn't until night - when she's thinking about falling onto a cot for a couple of hours - that something clicks into place.
John Connor. The story of the past, and a story of the future.
* * *
She remembers the day the world she knew ended. Mostly, she remembers the feeling of inevitability, and the sensations, not the minute details. Sarah, she always suspected, remembered every detail.
She remembers the end of world as full of warmth - warm, sooty winds and warm earth, bodies still radiating fading heat and the stuffy air of temporary shelter.
Even today, she's more comfortable with the cold.
She'll never forget the feel of Sarah's hand in hers, strong and hard, and Sarah's words, "We're ready for this, Savannah. Remember that. We're ready."
* * *
"Find him," she tells everyone. "Find him now." They don't question her.
Allison gets back to her first. "He's out on patrol. Kyle's with him."
"Get them back."
Allison shakes her head. "Radio silence."
"Send someone out after them."
"You know Kyle," Allison says, doubtful. "You think someone else can find him easily? He's due back in two days. Better to wait."
It's true, but it doesn't make it any easier.
She doesn't get any sleep that night. Or the next. She paces until her legs shake. She makes plans until there's nothing else to plan, and then she goes to a weapons storage room and counts bullets. She sits and watches the people around her. She looks down at her hands, and remembers what Sarah's hands looked like, towards the end - battered and thin, and missing two fingers. She doesn't look in the cracked mirror in the bathroom, because she's afraid she'll see Sarah looking back at her.
She's still sitting - cross-legged, on the floor - when they bring him to her. There's dried blood down one side of his face, and he looks exhausted, but he holds the gun like he knows how to use it.
Of course he does.
"John Connor?" she asks, standing. He looks just as she remembers, a boy who saved a child.
"Yes." He's almost frowning. Perhaps he almost recognizes her, all of these years later.
She breathes out, slow and precise. It feels like she's been holding her breath for years. "My name is Savannah Weaver. I knew your mother."
End.