Author: Prairiedog

Title: Knocked Up

Genre: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Terminator)

Chapter One

John Connor was running. What he was running from he was not quite certain but dogs leashed in backwards howled in front of him with low throaty barks and yips as he ran across their front lawns.

It had been an endless series of difficulties this spring and fall. It seemed like every week there was something going wrong for him. Even though they had defeated the T-1000 there were new challenges for them to face. His mother Sarah had post-traumatic stress disorder that she dealt with at the gun range. John was busily trying to prevent a paranoid delusional messiah complex with large doses of rock music and construction work. It didn't pay the bills but it did buy the beer as he busily flunked community college.

And then he had met another terminator. She was strong. And she was cute. And now she was his girlfriend. Her name was Cameron. They had known each other for awhile now.

Cameron had been quite vague when she had called him earlier to set up this meeting. She had called him on his cell-phone and told him not to meet her it was his historical destiny to meet her at a certain address. She was strange that way. The sound of the dogs barking came closer to him with each crash of his bare soles on the lawns of the houses he ran across. He had lost his shoes when a house party he was in went up in flames. It seemed there was a terminator of one shape or another that popped out of nowhere to attack him every week in the fall and spring.

It was night here in suburbia and except for the small metallic sprinkler heads that popped up through the unnaturally green lawns and showered everything with a metallic glistening wetness there was no sign of movement ahead of him. John kept his eyes peeled and his ears open. Like his mom said sometimes, 'Always be prepared with a bigger caliber John. You never know when you'll have to fight.'

John rounded a corner and took off to his right. He found himself on a nearly indistinguishable street except that more clouds had covered the light of the sky. The steady burning light of the streetlights had become more prominent. They cast deep electrically sharp shadows over the houses and the two lane street and the trees that stood there along the sides of the street like sentinel residents that had lived there doddering for decades. The suburban houses were surprisingly silent. Usually around this time there was a loud party, Latino music filling the oxygen rich air, or heavy traffic. Or all three simultaneously.

Cameron was there.

She was standing and waiting for him on the lawn. Her feet were also bare. Her eyes preternaturally alight with an inner core of - what he could not quite figure out. She turned to face him. Her face gave that funny little twist to the side.

"John." She said. "This is where they would look for prey. I asked you not to come."

There was a sound like a cat sighing behind him. More sprinklers rising up out of the green to water the lush lawns with water. Lawns nobody needed, except for their neighbor's to see. John began to turn his neck around to see what was there.

"John, don't turn around." She said. Her eyes were like glittering irises. The longer he looked at them the longer they threatened at any moment to begin spinning in a way that would invite madness the longer he gazed on them. The heated American air made it difficult to think clearly where he was. His heart pounded quickly. Everything around him felt like it was spinning while also staying in the same place.

"I'm sorry John, I'm sorry." She finished saying to him. In the distance a hundred meters away there was a soft glint of light reflected out of a dark parked car. Inside there was movement of binoculars. And a hand holding them. It was Ellison. Ellison the G-Man.

Ellison who for some reason was destined according to Cameron to become their strongest ally and for this reason they had to keep giving him surreptitious information until he came around and joined them in their fight for truth, justice, and the anti-terminator way.

It was Ellison the man that kept following him. Intently staring at them out of the darkness. John and Cameron ignored him for now. John forgot to ask Cameron why Ellison was here.

"I asked you to live with your heart John. You must do everything with it. That is the strength of humans John. You've been running too long." Cameron said.

"You have to repent of your mediocrity."

She finished.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he challenged her. Sure he had spent of his time on a construction crew and knocking back cheap beer but so what of it? Who the hell was she to judge him? He felt guilty and angry at the same time. Only Cameron could get under his skin like this.

He had struggled with everything in his life. The constant hair-trigger reflex as if something was going to reach out and try to kill him at any moment. The feeling that he was being watched. Evaluated. Measured. That he was never going to be free of his 'destiny'. That he couldn't slack off anymore. To him it seemed like he was beaten and knocked up by one terminator after another week after week. John just wanted to be normal. His mother would tell him that he was the hunted future leader of humanity destined for a future important to all humanity. Sarah would usually go on to tell him that he better know how to field strip and correctly clean the M-14 this time or Sarah was going to make him listen to even more heavy metal to man him up.

John preferred the idea of being more of just another guy making a safe off the grid living with pocket change for a cool beer at the end of the day.

To his disappointment his mom wouldn't hear of it.

It was always her talking about your glorious destiny this John, your glorious leadership of the future that John.

He hated it.

John wanted to be normal. To get a good night's sleep without waking up in panic every time a dog outside barked. To be able to work and live and have a nice life without answering to anyone, without being chased. John had wanted to be human. Blend in. Just to be another guy with a paycheck and a beer and a girlfriend waiting for him. And for a time he had tried that.

Then it had all begun to fall apart- pushing the two of them together. John Connor and his Terminator Girlfriend.

His hand rose up and he casually pushed her away from him. Cameron tilted to the side with a automated reflex then straightened and stood straight without a change in expression.

John knew nothing could stop her when she was determined. She had been buried alive last week at the construction site and still she had emerged to save the night once again. Even her hair had been perfect. It was like some new special terminator power

Her eyes were dull. John wanted her to be angry with him. Anger he could deal with. John knew the up and down and other side of anger. But it was the certainty that one day he would live more then he had ever lived before and then die that had given him control over his reactions. He still had a irrational desire to make her lose control even if Cameron could break his wrist if she lost control. Break him.

Except she never wanted to. She didn't react the way he wanted her to. She had a habit of breaking one of his fingers in the past whenever she saw him being a coward. And she didn't obey him the way terminators should. She was strange that way with strange movements and strange eyes and a strange grace that he had fallen in lust with.

Cameron warned him with that slight narrowing of her eyes and the almost subsonic whir of metallic muscles that if he kept on pushing on her she would break his finger again. By now they could read each others expressions just as easily as they could read each other's instant messages.

He opened his mouth- sometimes she respected what he had to say although sometimes he wondered if she was just recording what he said for future posterity before getting to what she was going to say anyway.

John spoke first.

"Let me tell you something about mediocrity. Recently I've been shot at, gassed at, nearly electrocuted and decapitated. I thought I could get away but even when I do I can't get away from this. My destiny. The great man I'm going to be." He said pronouncing the last sentence bitterly. "My mother won't ever let me forget and there's no way she can remember enough for me. About my dad. My real dad. There's never was one around. I hate him for that. I wish he was dead some nights and then I buy some smokes every evening and try not to cry. It's gotten so bad Cameron that my fruit loops in the morning taste like cigarettes."

"Your world needs you John." Cameron said. Cameron's eyes were like two glittering gems and her lips looked softer then Angelina Jolie's bosom. They'd make any red blooded man want to dive into there and swim around. "I need you." Her voice broke in a heartfelt sob that was programmed by her cold binary programming.

Somehow her hand was on his wrist pushing his palm over her stomach. The thin material of her blouse was no barrier and soon his hands moved the slipper-dry fabric out of the way. It pulled out of the front of her pants and his hand moved to touch her stomach. Her colder hands moved around his wrist holding it there for a soft moment. Her skin was like soft tissue paper but warm.

"I'm pregnant John. I'm so sorry. I did not know it could be this way…" she sobbed. "Between us." Her eyes glistening in honest disbelief. "This is not my programming. I am sorry John."

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She had said in the past she could not cry. Not that she couldn't be programmed to do it, only that they had never installed tear ducts. That she never could cry because she didn't have the parts. That is what she had said. That she wasn't like other girls. She wasn't like them at all. She awoke ever morning with that knowledge like a curse hanging over her head.

Yet she did cry now.

He stood there in shock. He momentarily leaned back on his heels. It wasn't possible. It was never possible.

Terminators don't cry they had told him.

Yet now she did.

Life was easier when it was a warm drive up the freeway north towards Sacramento with the top down in a convertible and latino jingles coming out of the stereo speaker sound and feeling alive and free and young and warm. Warm like the way a human life should be.

Sometimes- John Connor imagined his mother Sarah and the Terminator forming a family unit. Mom would make breakfast and the Terminator would be sitting at the breakfast table.

Mom would turn around from the stove holding a frying pan full of sizzling delicious smelling food and the Terminator would say, "Sit down John." with a tone that was almost a parody of authority.

Yeah, that was John's dream of a better life. And it was an impossible dream.

Sarah couldn't cook even to save all of humanity.

John's face shut down. He didn't know how to deal with this. Cameron wasn't supposed to cry. She was supposed to kick butt and save the way when he was too human to do it himself.

He had not expected these tears or this lust. He wanted to hate her. Be angry with her. Do anything to make her respond like a 'real' girl. Make her be angry. Have lust. Petty rage. Take pride in her appearance. Hate at least something instead of approaching life with a unnatural calm. Joy. Pain. Suffering. Cameron wasn't any of these things.

John could never figure it out. Maybe that is why he felt like he didn't love her. Maybe that is why he did. But now he was scared. Death didn't frighten him. Not knowing what to say to her tears did.

This was too real for John. It reminded him of his mistakes. And he felt angry with her. It had been a mistake and he wanted to take it back. He irrationally felt angry with her. She was a burden. He hated her! He loved her! He wanted her.

"No, no it's okay Cameron." He heard himself say. "We'll take care of it."