Liar

by mirroredsakura

Cameron-centric. "And be the roads heavy and muddy, or dry and good; be they stony or smooth; uphill or downhill; it is all the same—on, on, on, one must go, at the same pace, with no relief and no consideration."

Title: Liar
Author: mirroredsakura
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rating: G
Pairing/Characters: Cameron re: Sarah & John
tscc_las Challenge: Round #1 Challenge #3

Warnings: none

Summary: "And be the roads heavy and muddy, or dry and good; be they stony or smooth; uphill or downhill; it is all the same—on, on, on, one must go, at the same pace, with no relief and no consideration."

Disclaimers: Neither TSCC nor the snippets of Black Beauty belong to me. I'm just here to draw parallels between apocalyptic killer robots and talking horses. No, seriously.

XXXX

Challenge: Deception

Sarah Connor doesn't like me.

John doesn't believe it.

—No, that's not right. He knows, but he doesn't want to admit it. He loves his mother. He's also intimidated by her.

There are a lot of things he won't admit.

These are the facts: I'm a machine. I'm not a human. I'm not an animal.

I can run without stopping for days, months, years. I don't need food. I don't need water. My power supply is completely enclosed. Even if Sarah Connor lives to the ripe old age of a statistically-impressive number, my power supply will still not deplete itself by that time.

Unless I am torn apart. Unless I'm broken. Unless I die.

What do machines know about death?

I know it means not coming back. This Cameron will not be that Cameron, no matter which one or how many John Connor sends through the time machine to take my place.

I understand this now. Would she?

XX

We're programmed to repair ourselves when we are damaged.

Sarah doesn't take that into consideration. As far as she is concerned, machines are tools. She doesn't need to care about me. As far as she is concerned, I can run and run for as long as she wants and if I break down, then good riddance. I'm here just to do what needs doing.

But I can't.

This isn't what I was built for.

I can remember things now. Not everything. But they're things I shouldn't remember, stuff the scrub should have gotten rid of but didn't.

I was built to be an infiltrator. I was built to be small, frail-looking, harmless.

I'm not harmless. But I'm smaller, frailer, and weaker than the T-888s I've been fighting since I've come here. I'm not immune to an exploding car. I can't fix my own chip.

I get damaged. And there's nobody to fix me.

So I do what I can. I'm programmed to.

XX

It's my responsibility to destroy the evidence.

"Every last bolt."

"I promise."

I lie.

I keep things. For me. Bits and pieces, cords and wires, minute pieces of circuitry that I have no way of replacing myself but I keep simply because.

I have to. Just in case.

I don't wanna die.

XX

I read a book once.

It was called Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.

One part on page 140, chapter 29: Cockneys says this:

"Then there is the steam-engine style of driving; these drivers were mostly people from towns, who never had a horse of their own and generally traveled by rail.

"They always seemed to think that a horse was something like a steam-engine, only smaller. At any rate, they think that if only they pay for it a horse is bound to go just as far and just as fast and with just a heavy a load as they please. And be the roads heavy and muddy, or dry and good; be they stony or smooth; uphill or downhill; it is all the same—on, on, on, one must go, at the same pace, with no relief and no consideration.

"These people never think of getting out to walk up a steep hill. Oh, no, they have paid to ride, and ride they will! The horse? Oh, he's used to it! What were horses made for, if not to drag people uphill? Walk! A good joke indeed! And so the whip is plied and the rein is chucked and often a rough, scolding voice cries out, "Go along, you lazy beast!" And then another slash of the whip, when all the time we are doing our very best to get along, uncomplaining and obedient, though often sorely harassed and down-hearted."

I'm not a horse. I don't have a heart. I don't tire. I'm like a steam engine.

But I still know what the horse is talking about.

XX

When she finds out about the things I've kept away for myself, Sarah calls me a sneak. A cheat. A liar.

I'm all these things.

What other choice have I got?

It's simple: I'm a steam engine. I don't get choices.

XXXX

This version contains several revisions from the original submission. I wasn't quite happy with the way it was more disjointed in flow than necessary and tried to fix that up a bit, switched up the wording a little, fixed a typo, etc.

I've gotten some bad reviews for this one on the challenge comm about how OOC it is for Cameron to care about "dying" simply because time and time again she walks into battle in order to protect John. Is it? I don't think so. Sure, John Connor is Cameron's first concern. And her second. And her third. And probably her fourth and fifth and sixth. But somewhere in that massive CPU she's got for a brain, she definitely spares some computing power to think about herself. If it were "only about the mission," her behavior wouldn't reflect the degree of exploration into makeup and clothing (note: degree). It wouldn't reflect ballet. It wouldn't culminate in her magpie tendencies to forage for random Terminator parts for herself. The show gives the machines time to explore something of their own identities, to understand that they might have one. This fic mixes it up with a little Dollhouse (Whiskey/Dr. Saunders holding so tightly to her own imprinted life "I'm not even real and I don't wanna die.") and Prototype (Alex Mercer's fatalistic "I'm all these things.")