Author's Note: Written by request for coltanheart, originally posted to livejournal.
Note: This is a repost of a fic originally published 3.10.09, transferred from a previous account.
Tangent
I
Sometimes, he wonders what it would be like if everything happened the way it was supposed to. Of course his very existence is proof of the unfixed nature of time and there's no such thing as 'supposed to be' or 'according to plan'. There is no fate but that which we make, and he's already learned that his fate can – and will – be made and remade over and over.
But he's still human and knowing that idle what-ifs and hypothetical day dreams are futile and unproductive don't stop him from thinking about it anyway.
If she'd been sent to the right time, if something hadn't gone wrong in that complicated mess of calculations and ironic technology (time travel is not precise, John.)…if she'd found him at the age of sixteen instead of twenty, if she'd sat next to him in English and smiled instead of breaking down the door of room nine at the Motel 6 (come with me if you want to live.)…if she'd been there through those wretched years after Mom died (you do not smile, John. Should I show you how?)…
And maybe when it was his turn to fuck with his past, if would become when and the person he was now would never exist. He watches her lay out the spent weaponry on the polyester quilt of the second twin bed for disassembly and cleaning. She's watching him out of the corner of her eye, through the curtain of impractically long hair – but too soft and pretty to suggest cutting and there wasn't much pretty left in his life – and he just knows she's smiling.
This would never exist.
"We are scheduled to meet with Dakara Systems at nine o'clock tomorrow morning." She turned to face him, her eyes taking in his slouched position in the crappy motel desk chair, the worn and muted clothing that made up both their wardrobes, without moving. "We will need to acquire suitable clothing."
"No tie," he says.
"No tie," she echoes. "You should shave."
He smirks. "But you like it like this."
She reaches down, her fingers brushing against the rough stubble, moving along the line of his jaw. "The tactile sensation is interesting." Her curiosity and fascination with every aspect of life is unrelenting, constantly propelling them both in a direction that resembles forward. ("Can I kiss you?")
He reaches up, his fingers sliding under the hem of her tank top, stroking the skin of her waist. "Soft."
Her eyebrow quirks upward just a little. "The texture of my abdominal skin is not relevant to the current objective."
"Oh, no?" His hand moves higher, curving around her ribs; the skin is warm and smooth and somehow the knowledge that the underlying bones are in fact anything but calcium-based doesn't bother him at all. Future leader of mankind and girl cyborg. On some level it makes sense. "And what objective is that?"
She makes a face but reduces the higher processing power devoted to motor control, letting her base programming compensate, letting him pull her closer. She isn't surprised; this John is as physically affectionate as the John of the future, perhaps more so. The sensory responses he's capable of provoking are as stimulating now as they were in 2027 and she finds that she deliberately facilitates overtures such as these.
"My non-primary mission parameters are subject to orders from John Connor." Her expression is near blank but her thumb is rubbing circles into the hollow of his temple.
"Yeah?" He doesn't give her a chance to answer before covering her mouth with his. She doesn't try to refocus him on preparation for tomorrow; John is prone to high levels of stress (genetics are a bitch, he tells her, but she's never met Sarah Connor and thus cannot draw any significant conclusions) and the sensory data is distracting.
He pulls away long enough to tug her shirt off and she seeks him out with what he thinks of as the terminator brand of urgency.
She presses infinitesimally closer. "Yeah."
*
II
*
Another dead end lead gone bad, and the Dakara bust a month earlier seems like a walk in the park now. He's favouring his right leg and she's hiding the glint of exposed metal with her hair.
He spits blood and limps into the tiny office, impassively taking in the petrified man in the desk chair. No restraints required; the brunette girl between them is more than enough to keep him there.
"Enough."
She follows him out, closing the door behind her with a click. "John?"
"This isn't Skynet." Not yet, anyway. Probably.
Her gaze flickers to the door. "We should kill him."
"No."
"He has seen you."
"We're not killing him."
"He is a risk."
"I said no," he bites off. "Clean it up and then we're out of here."
She's built for efficiency and they're set up in yet another crappy motel room within the hour. He watches her unpack the med kit as he shrugs off his battered jacket, comfortable in the silence as they unwind from a two person army to something else entirely. It's not until she undresses that the extent of her damage is revealed. God damned trigger happy security guards.
"C'mere."
Handing him the pliers, she kneels at his feet, inadvertently jostling his bad leg. He barely winces but she notices anyway. "You first."
"It's nothing," he insists. She doesn't push the issue but he knows she'll be examining his knee before the night is through.
The bullets come out easily and the entry wounds are bandaged with practised ease. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. "You going to be okay?"
"The damaged tissue will have fully regenerated within thirty six hours."
"That's not what I asked."
She blinks, those big dark eyes staring up at him, the sometimes near imperceptible changes in the stillness of her face, the precise and calculated movements of her body composing a language they're both still learning. She's a constant enigma, this not a girl. "You're safe."
*
III
*
She doesn't sleep but she slides into bed anyway, arranging her body around his. Her hair is drying in curls and waves on her pillow and they both smell like waxy soap and cheap detergent.
"You had another nightmare last night." She leans her head against his shoulder and he can feel the rhythmic flutter of eyelashes against his skin.
"I have a lot of those."
"Yes. You were screaming at me."
"At you?" He's woken screaming for her before, seeking safety in his only companion.
"Yes. The content of your vocalizations suggested that I was attacking you." She looks up at him. "Are you afraid of me?"
"No," he sighs heavily. "It's just that sometimes, I worry that...sometimes..."
"Sometimes they go bad," she says.
"You're different," he says and means it. There's a spark of something more that animates this machine, that makes her a her instead of an it. He doesn't tell her, but he falls just short of calling it a soul (religion had never been his thing and he doubts he'll come out of this with his intact anyway) and all that really matters is that she is who she is and she's here with and for him and he doesn't want to let her go.
"Not enough," she reminds him of the day he spent running from her reverted self before her systems purged the murderous error. At the core of her programming, she is still a conception of Skynet, and hardened by her death and the subsequent years alone, he is still Sarah Connor's son.
"Enough for me."
*
IV
*
"God damn it." Not for the first time, he's grateful for steel toed boots as he takes his frustration out on a helpless dumpster.
She touches the back of his neck. He knows she's scanning him again and shrugs her off, resisting the urge to forcibly push her away. "John."
"What?"
"You are angry."
He glares at her and wishes she'd look hurt or flinch or something. But she doesn't and it's one of those ugly moments when he can't remember why he loves her at all. "Can't you leave me alone for five seconds?"
"That would mean leaving you unprotected."
"I protected myself just fine before you came along." Under his breath, he adds, knowing she'll hear, "Didn't need you then and don't need you now."
She follows him out of the shadowy alley as they begin the two mile trek to where their latest mode of transportation is inconspicuously parked in a busy lot, remaining a step or two behind as if that would somehow appease his anger.
"How do I know if any of this is changing anything?" he asks without looking back, the pitch and tone of his voice indicating that he's still angry.
"I don't know."
"Is Judgment Day inevitable? Should I just say fuck it, and try to fit as much of normal life as possible in the time I've got left?"
"I don't know."
They continue in silence for another 0.53 miles before she speaks again. "Would you prefer if we suspended our physical relationship?"
This time he does look back, his expression difficult to analyze. "Why would you say that?"
"You expressed a desire for a normal life. I am a cybernetic organism from the future and not included in the current sociocultural definition of normal. Additionally, a human male of your age would be expected to engage in a physical and emotional relationship with a human female of a similar demographic. Observational evidence indicates that you are a proponent of monogamy; therefore, in order for your desire to be realized, our relationship must return to its original equilibrium." She ensures that her facial mechanisms utilize the default template as she waits for his response.
"Is that what you want?" She's impossible to read when she goes all robospeak on him. He called it a defence mechanism and she informed him her defence systems were primarily non-verbal.
"What I want?" She tilts her head when she looks at him and he's forgotten how young she is again.
"Yes, what you want. Would that make you happy?" His respiration rate has increased and the focus of his gaze has not shifted in sixty seven seconds.
She thinks about telling him that as a machine, she can't be happy, but he doesn't like it when she says 'things like that'. She thinks about telling him that returning to their original patterns of interaction would reduce her wetware functionality from the calculated optimum condition she has achieved since their relationship reached its current state. She thinks about telling him how many times she has exceeded that expected threshold, pushing the parameters ever further, further than even his future self anticipated.
"No." The answer comes from deep inside her base, unedited and unanalyzed by her higher cognitive engines. "I am subject to your orders and thus your desires, but I would prefer that you did not seek external companionship."
The left corner of his mouth tilts upwards in what is called a half smile as he takes her hand. "Right back at you."
*
V
*
"So that's it, huh?"
"That's it," she agrees. The official launch of the Skynet program is scheduled to occur in sixteen hours and there is nothing more they can do now but take refuge in an abandoned Cold War era facility. They are not the only ones seeking safety in anticipation of the launch; there are others and she asks if they know about the coming attack on humanity as well.
"Nah, there are just a lot of paranoid freaks out there."
Technically, these 'freaks' are not paranoid, since Judgment Day is real and rapidly approaching, but she determines that this is irrelevant. Should they survive, they will likely become part of the human resistance and then their suspicious natures will be helpful in weeding out Skynet infiltrators.
"Do you think...do you think that if Mom was still around, we would have been able to stop it?"
"I don't know." In the future, the soldiers speak of Sarah Connor with reverence, but anecdotal evidence from people who have never met her is unreliable; she cannot accurately calculate the impact Sarah Connor could have made on their efforts to stop the birth of her creator.
"Are we ready? Am I ready?" he asks. There is a high probability that his questions are rhetorical in nature, but he looks to her for an answer anyway. "I don't know if I am. I don't feel like him. The John Connor. The general or whatever. Your John."
"You were already the John Connor when I first found you." She touches his cheek. "My John."