Summary: Heroes are built, not born. Episode tag to Goodbye to All That. Originally posted to livejournal 10.08.08
Subplot
Marty was right when he said she sucked at being a mom. She's always known it, but John doesn't complain. Then again, he's never known anything else.
It's too late for her to change now, even if she knew how. He's too old to be tucked into bed with a bedtime story and a kiss. He's seen too much to listen to fantastic stories about faraway lands; the pretty lies are too airy and sugar sweet for her tongue.
She can't tease him about girls, not even the strange blonde one he seems to like. Her entire life revolves around protecting him, even from the parts of normal life she knows he's craving.
But he's not normal. They're not normal.
She reminds herself of that when she watches the bus pull away. Cameron was right: Marty was not a mission priority. Her son is the priority. The only priority.
There's no use in imagining what life could have been like.
*
She's waiting, looking out the window, when they return. They're tired and worn, but who isn't? Her eyes lock onto her son, scanning him for injury, before settling on his face. She knows that expression. She sees it every time she looks at Derek Reese. It's settling on her son's features, hardening into a grim mask he won't be able to take off.
They enter the house without a word and she watches him disappear up into the second floor, pausing only to glance at the woman he still calls Mom.
She won't ask what happened. Derek meets her gaze as he trudges past her to the back of the house, and she's just relieved that she's sharing the burden of making a hero.
Still, the guilt gnaws, somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, and she can't make it go away.
*
When night falls and Cameron returns, silent and stoic as ever, she locks the doors and windows, peering out into the darkness as if she can spot any threats with her weak human eyes.
She's running out of things to teach her son. Her jaw clenches and she reaches for her gun as she makes her last circuit of the house for the night.
She isn't a good mother. The least she can do is be a good protector.
When everything is quiet, she slips into John's room. He doesn't wake, not even when she bumps into the dresser, and some part of her adds that to the list. She kisses his forehead and adjusts the sheets around him. He looks like her son when he sleeps, she thinks.
Cameron watches from the doorway.
The John Connor she is sent back in time for was born in 1984. His birth is easily catalogued and referenced. It has a day and a time, to be marked annually with cake, congratulations, and the odd explosion. This is the John that Sarah Connor knows.
The birth of the John Connor that Cameron knows is less than precise. He is half-formed now, in transition. He needs to be helped, guided.
Built, is the word his future self uses. Like her. Built by the people who love them, he says.
In the future, she does not understand this; Skynet does not love her. Here, in the past, she wonders if this has something to do with her fragmented memories of Allison Young.
*
Find John Connor. Protect John Connor. Prepare John Connor.
She reminds herself of her mandate when she follows them around the academy, hidden in the shadows.
She wonders if Derek Reese received the same directions. It is possible, but unlikely, she decides; he is continually surprised by the younger version of his general. He does not know the details of his life as she does. He has not been briefed, has not been given the instructions she has.
And yet, Cameron is discovering that her mission and that of Derek Reese are beginning to coincide, even if the human soldier doesn't know it yet.
They are stealing Sarah's son and making him into a man prepared for a future she's still trying to prevent.
She wonders if John knew that all of this would happen.
*
He told her she was different and she believed him. She tells him she's different and he believes her.
He told her he would be angry, frustrated. Rebellious. She was to guide him, push him, put a gun into his hand and coltan around his heart.
He told her that in time, he would come to look at her the same way he did. He told her to be patient.
He told her that he would be lost, looking for someone to save him.
He didn't tell her how hard it would be to keep herself from being that someone.
*
When the T-888 advances on John, when it chases him, her mission priorities reassert themselves, forcing her to execute a manual override. She watches, obscured by the foliage, when they burn the damaged cyborg, when they trudge away with Bedel in tow. She leaves finger-sized indentations on the tree she's gripping, but she is satisfied.
"Hey! It's me! Connor! John Connor!"
She smiles imperceptibly on the drive back to the house they have taken for their own. Soon.