TSCC fanfiction: Monster.
MONSTER
Premise: Couldn’t resist making a fic using the quote in the Halo 3 promo video, it fits so well with John and Cameron. Which reminds me, it belongs to Bungie and MS, I’m just using it for a while. The setting is post BTR, the lovers have been reunited and are now fighting to either destroy Skynet or get a chance to travel back in time.
John Connor stands at the edge of a barren cliff.
Nothing especially remarkable about it, everything is barren in the post Judgment day future. Down below his soldiers fight what seems a losing battle against the forces of Skynet, self-appointed Imperatrix Mundi of the scorched earth. For now.
Skynet knows this. John knows it too. No king rules forever.
This is why it fights teeth and claw to eradicate all threats to her kingdom. This is why right now, down in the valley, rebel machines and humans face oblivion, fighting odds of six to one in favor of Skynet. It is also why he desecrated what is most loved to him in order to win this war, or at the very least get a chance of once again fight it in the past.
Once he lost her years ago, Cameron could never return, not as she used to be. Not exactly. When John found out about Skynet’s experiment, he had to relieve the AI from it, or they would have never stood a chance to defeat her. Who else was best fitted to utilize this resource than his best friend, confidant, and lover? Thus he transferred Cameron’s persona into this more advanced chip, and then put that into the more advanced chassis that could house it.
One of a kind, not enough resources to create another unless it proved an earth shattering success. This information and a thousand specifications is what John knew about the unspecified Terminator chassis model. Also, that it would prove the turning point in the war between man and Skynet, for either of them. Luckily for the humans, John managed to steal it, and bestow its powers, its curse on his most trustworthy ally.
Cameron is now faster, stronger, tougher and the cherry to top it all, an onboard arsenal of weaponry. But the price for invincibility could not have been steeper. In moving her to her new brain and body, she was forever changed. Not a simple physical change, like the fact that she is no longer a cyborg and as far as outward appearances go, she can no longer make any claim to the smallest bit of humanity. Her endoskeleton is now a gynoid, and her skin is liquid metal.
The changes go deeper than that.
John has seen that there is a monster now lurking inside her. Nothing is safe if it dares attack him in any way. It was after a lost battle where a soldier’s younger brother died, and said man came to him when the platoon returned to the bunker. Consumed by anger the soldier punched John in the face. The General knew it was a mistake on his part, he screwed up and people had died, but such was life in war. They all had to live with that, the soldier should not have decked him on the jaw, but most definitely the punishment for that action, should not have been Cameron dislocating the man’s shoulder.
Days later John received a bullet wound from a Skynet Terminator, and unlike those times before she was transferred into the new chassis, Cameron did not even bother with checking on his status first. She simply made a wild sprint at the enemy machine, and after tackling it off the ground with a thundering force so loud it shook every wall in proximity, she proceeded to mount the Terminator and pound it with her fists. No weapons of any kind, when she has plenty. Cameron just punched the machine until it was thoroughly deformed, then proceeded to tear away pieces of it.
It was not Cameron going berserk, or her eyes glowing blue like furious torches what scared John the most. It was not the unnatural animalistic growls coming from her during the whole ordeal.
What scared him, forever tainting the image of Cameron in his mind, was the fact that once she had torn away the armor, she started ripping away internal parts of the other machine with her teeth. Like an animal. She was gone and in her place, a dire wolf was left.
That day John Connor understood that his Cameron was gone. She was mostly there, but the price paid for putting her inside the most advanced chassis ever made by Skynet, was that some part of her mind got consumed by madness. Sure, it hides in the back of her head lurking in the darkness, but it does not need much provocation to surface.
He hears steps behind him, and knows who it is without turning because she is meant to be there right now. It is time, every piece of the board is in position and it is time for him to move his queen.
John is sure she knows that he knows about the animal, the monster. They never speak of it though. Cameron smiles a lot nowadays, a gentle curve of her lips that reaches her eyes. He is sure it is her way of balancing her other side for him.
Nothing is said, they just scan the battle below them.
After a moment, Cameron reaches for his face with her hand. It is a gesture she uses to reassure him and to scan his vitals. This has always torn him apart, how no matter what, he will always be a mission to her. Her hand lingers though, and he knows she does have more than just intention behind her caress, so he reaches up and tangles his fingers with hers.
With a kiss on her hand, John lets Cameron go, and stares vacantly at the valley. He is worried because this is the most crucial battle they have fought to date. After the scan, she must have picked up on just how worried he is because she steps behind him, hands on his shoulders and her chest pressed against his back.
Her mouth reaches close to his ear, her voice is raspy and confident, speaks of promises only meant for him.
“I have defied God’s and Demons…”
He knows that, and the fact that it has always been for his sake.
“I am your shield; I am your sword…”
She always was, and will always be. That nihilistic loyalty of hers that he sometimes hates.
“I know you; your past, your future…”
No one understands him as she does. Possibly not even Sarah Connor did.
“This is not the way the world ends.”
This he does not believe entirely, but coming from her lips, he is compelled to have faith.
The next instant, when her voice is still dancing in the air, he sees her leap from the edge of the cliff with purpose and abandon. She lands more than thirty meters below, graceful like the ballerina she is, and then darts forward at blurring speed. To go alone into the midst of the enemy forces.
John Connor closes his eyes and asks forgiveness from his mother, for he pities the machines that are about to face their fates. Those same machines she fought so fervently against.
The monster is unleashed.
They have to either destroy Skynet, or force it to build the TDE. They have to get away from the humans one way or another, before things in the resistance start turning for the worst. Cameron may be a monster but she is his monster, he is responsible for making her that, and will love her all the same. For as long as he lives.
John turns around, walking away from the battle, certain of its outcome and that his mind will be better occupied in finding a way to get him and Cameron far from all the paranoia at the base. Justified as it may be.