Title - Human

Synopsis - John's thoughts on Sarah Connor and living on the run. Takes place during the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles timeline, but references (somewhat indirectly) all three Terminator movies.

Disclaimer – I don't own Terminator or anyone associated with the franchise.

Note – Another T:SCC fic. Mostly a character sketch of who John is. Inspired after a Terminator movie marathon.

I'm all she's got.

I often wonder what would have happened to my mom had Kyle Reese never showed up in her life. I mean, had I never sent him back—had I never been the "chosen one."

If my mother had simply been allowed to live without the knowledge that in the future machines were going to take over the world and exterminate humanity, what would she have done?

Would she have finished college? Would she have married? Would she kiss another son goodnight? Would she have had dreams and hopes and goals for him that didn't involve military training?

Sometimes I wish that I had never happened to her. I wish she could have lived out a normal life and die happy and blissfully ignorant.

Of course, I know that future was never possible, what with Judgment Day and all, but I still think about it. I think about whom I could have been had the doctors been right and my mother had been crazy. I think about growing up in foster care and stealing from the ATMs with Tim, and I think about going to school and parties and kissing girls. And then I think about how if I were to have that life my mother would have to be crazy.

I sometimes think she is crazy. And I'm crazy for staying with her.

But I'm all she's got, so I stay.

When the mood strikes her, she tries to be a mom. She makes pancakes and teases me about girls and complains about the music I listen to, but she knows and I know that she's just going through the motions. Like some kind of robot-mom, trying to ignore the fact that her pancakes are always burnt, that the girls don't notice me, and that if it weren't for my music I probably would have gone crazy and killed both of us by now.

Music is so purely human, alive and rich with feeling and emotion. It's the only human connection I have to the world. My mother knows this, and that's why she doesn't complain too much when I keep my headphones on during dinner.

I think about my future a lot. I think about how I've never been able to have a past or a present; it has always been about my future. I wonder when my future will become my present. Will I recognize it after searching for it all my life? Will I accept it?

I do not always feel human. Like the terminators, I've been programmed since birth for one mission.

But if I had the choice, I don't think I would be able to say no to my destiny. Does that make me arrogant? Self-seeking?

Cameron is making her rounds throughout the house. She never sleeps. She stops outside my door, and even though the door is closed, I can imagine her standing on the other side of the wood, calculating and scanning through dull eyes. She knows I'm awake, but she won't come in, and a few minutes later, I hear her soft but firm tread as she continues walking.

Until Cameron showed up, there was only one enemy chasing us. We thought we had stopped Skynet. We thought we had avoided the future. We thought that, but I don't think either of us ever believed it.

And though we still lived on the run, we were burned out. Tired of running and lying and hiding. My mother wanted to be Sarah Connor, but I never wanted to be John Connor because John Connor died with Skynet. He was nothing more than a name, a concept. We ran from the people that we no longer had to be.

I hated running, but I am all she's got. I kept running with her.

And then Cameron came, and the terminator, and all those wonderful walls that I had built up came crashing down and John Connor was staring me in the face with my destiny. My damn destiny.

But my mother was suddenly alive. Now she has a purpose, a mission: to take down Skynet and to protect me, John Connor.

She has Cameron to protect her and keep her informed. But she has me to remind her to be a human. To feel and to love and to cherish.

Maybe that's my destiny: to remain human.

So I stay, because someone has to look after her. But mostly I stay because without her I'd become a shell of a human being. She believes in me, more than I believe in myself. She protects me, she holds onto me, she smothers me, but she's there. She's the one constant in this crazy life that I live.

She's all I got, so she stays.