Prompt – John/Cameron: death

I could not die with you,

For one must wait

To shut the other's gaze down,--

You could not.

And I, could I stand by

And see you freeze,

Without my right of frost,

Death's privilege?

-- from the poem 'I cannot live with you' by Emily Dickinson.

'Death's Privilege'

Cameron still looked like a teenage girl. Her hair was still a soft brown wave, her skin smooth and flawless. She was the picture of youth, health and beauty. John, on the other hand, looked every one of his 84 years (plus and minus all the years he had time traveled over – after around the third trip he had stopped counting what age he was technically; it was enough work just keep tracking of the days and months and years he actually lived through, let alone the ones he had skipped past).

John Connor was now white haired, aged spotted, wrinkled, shrunken, and, up until a few weeks before when he had become completely bed ridden, he walked at a slow shuffle with a cane. All the damage that time could do showed on his body. Only his eyes remained the same as the eyes of the young man who had looked into the future and fought it with every tool at hand, including the woman/machine who still stood by his side.

"Vital signs weakening," she told him softly, her basic programming overriding all the social nuances she had learned over the long years.

"I know." He drew up the covers slightly and sighed tiredly, "Christ, I know."

In all the training and preparation for war his mother had given him she had never mentioned, and perhaps never known, that battle was the easy part. Cleaning up took the real skill. It had been almost two generations since John and his armies had shut down Skynet's control center, turned the factories turned off, and powered down the metal soldiers, or, as John whimsically thought of it now and then, taken back the Wizard's gift of a brain, a heart and the nerve, so the humans could have a home.

'Metal' now once again referred to the material used to make tools. People weren't afraid to go out in daylight anymore. Cities had been rebuilt. The population had crept up, and then jumped up when an old fashioned baby boom took place with people no longer worried about HK's striking and T-infiltrators attacking. Humanity had even gotten back to the point where they were putting on music concerts and art shows. Sarah Franklin-Connor, great-granddaughter of the legendary Sarah Connor, was learning how to play the violin, not how to make plastique.

John Connor knew humanity was now well back from the brink, and he mourned each and every death that had paid for that victory. Over the years his family had expanded and many of them had given their lives in the war against Skynet: his mother, his uncle, his aunt, several of his cousins and in-laws, his wife, two of his children, far too many of his soldiers, all of them men and women he had looked on as family, his father, who he had looked on almost as a son – the list went on and on. Everyone fighting to the bitter end, determined to give their life's blood, if necessary, to stop Skynet. And they had.

Now he took a somewhat labored breath as he reflected on the bitter twist of fate that he was actually living long enough to die in his own bed, when there were so many others who deserved to, and hadn't.

And Cameron, dubbed Cameron-the-Everlasting by one of the soldiers at the end of the 2028 Battle of San Diego, who had fought and worked along side him every step of the way, now patiently stood the last vigil, waiting any last orders. It had freaked him out in late 2012 when she started referring to him as "John Connor" rather than "John." He knew that meant he was becoming his future self, and he was scared ape-shit because he didn't feel like that heroic bastard yet.

Now, decades later, he still didn't feel completely like the future self he had been told so much about. Over the war-ridden years he would catch he aging reflection in a mirror now and then, and be shocked to see a man, then a middle aged man, than an old man, and now a dying man, rather than that feckless, doubting boy from so long ago that he still often felt like.

When he had once confessed to Cameron, sometime in the mid 2020's, how he felt he could never live up to being 'John Connor,' she had simply told him, "You are John Connor." Before he could protest his feelings of inadequacy she had added, "It's the name you were given." And he had shelved the debate and gone back to lobotomizing a T-800.

Cameron now fiddled with a dial of a humming monitor at his bed side, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He smiled, and even managed a laugh before it turned into a fit of coughing. Cameron hastily increased his O2 amount.

"What's so funny?" she demanded.

"Time," he croaked. She gave him what he privately called 'Classic Puzzled Cameron Look #3' where she raised her eyebrows and pulled in her lips in the precisely calculated amount needed to look curious rather than demanding. "After all that it looks like Father Time is going to win the final round, as always," he explained.

"There are still options-" she began the old argument.

He tried to wave her words away impatiently and was mildly outraged that his hands were no longer responding to his brain's command. "We've been over this," he said crossly. "I'm tired. I'm ready. And the war is over, so I think an old man can finally get some peace and quiet, even if it's only in the grave."

"There's still work to be done," she pointed out.

"And I'm sure you and Jane will do fine."

"You're daughter and I do not have an optimal working relationship."

"She'll come around. You've got time, after all."

Cameron nodded solemnly. "My batteries can be recharged."

John smiled. "Good old energizer bunny Cameron."

They both lapsed into silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the room coming from the soft beeps of the medical equipment.

"I love you Cameron," he said suddenly. "I don't think I ever got around to telling you that."

"No, you never told me that." To the untrained ear she sounded flat and unresponsive. After so many years John could tell she was shocked. She then said slowly. "I don't have a heart, but I think I have observed enough to know what love is despite lacking one, which after all humans use metaphorically-"

"Not really time for a statistical analysis," he quipped, his tone suddenly very young.

"Yes, I love you too," she blurted out.

"Better late than never," he said. He stiffened slightly, feeling yet another pain in his chest. In response to his body's signals a drip attached to his arm automatically increased his painkiller dosage. He looked upwards and said vaguely, "I think its time for my last words."

He struggled to think of something appropriately wise and prophetic to say. All that dancing with Time, and he had never really given much thought to what the last actual few steps would be like before he bowed gracefully to his partner and shuffled off this mortal coil.

"You have already made multiple recordings, records, wills, and statements for posterity," Cameron pointed out.

John ignored her and said, "Tell all the Connor's you get to know… tell 'em all that you got to know when to fight and when to run. And that… that you can't run forever…" He gave another cough/chuckle. He pressed his head deeper into the pillow and closed his eyes. He was so very tired. "Not even you Cameron… you can't run forever. Eventually, we all have to… we stop running."

Cameron didn't need to hear the monitor's insistent buzzing to know he was gone. John Connor, her John, was dead, and she suddenly became fully aware of the definition of the world 'forever.' But, since she had no heart to break, she would soldier on.