Title: Disambiguation
Author: mirroredsakura
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: John Connor / Cameron Phillips
tscc_las Challenge: Round #1 Challenge #1

Warnings: Season 1 & 2 spoilers and mild language

Summary: The story of Pandora is about a box. That's the clearest part. One version of the story says that the hope of mankind stays trapped in the box, safe for all eternity. The other says hope flies out after the plagues to fight and do battle. Which is the way to the future?

Disclaimers: None of the characters belong to me.

Challenge Prompt: "On the night we first met, John's father, Kyle Reese, told me words I remember to this day. He meant them as a warning, I think of them as words to live by. He told me of an apocalypse yet to come. Like a Pandora's box, he unpacked every horror, every evil, every dark this that haunts our future. He also left me an unborn son to whom he bequeathed what remained in the box after the nightmares fled. Hope." - Sarah Connor

xxxx

The story of Pandora is about a box.

It is also a story about the failings of humanity. It's a story about curiosity. It's a story about choice.

In Greek myth the gods presented Pandora, the first woman, to Epimetheus as wife. She was a gift and she was a punishment—retribution for the theft of the gods' secret fire. They gave her a box and she was told never to open it.

Pandora was curious. She wanted to know.

And when she opened the box, all the evils of mankind escaped.

Some versions of the story say that she slammed the box shut just in time, trapping forever the one thing left to mankind to combat those evils. Some say it called out to her, begging for freedom so that it could do battle with those evils, that she let it fly out in a rush of rainbow wings to be humanity's salvation.

Hope.

Which is better, Hope locked safe, or Hope set free?

I don't know which is the true version. Nobody does.

No one knows what those evils Pandora released were either. Disease. Plague. But there were others and we don't know. Was Skynet in the box?

Was I?

xx

I'M SORRY JOHN
I'M SORRY JOHN
I'M SORRY JOHN

They keep on scrolling—three little words on some tiny little screen they jacked straight out of the 90s and stuck in a CPU the size of ENIAC.

They're just words. And she's not the one saying them.

She is gone. Her chip's gone, half her head's gone, and all that's left of her is this tiny, broken body slumped silently in a chair.

I did that to her. I went in knowing she'd get hurt. She always gets hurt.

I didn't know she would disappear.

xx

There are many versions of our story.

I don't sleep. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week I am awake, I am aware. When the others are asleep, I watch. While they dream, I imagine. I calculate. Scenario after scenario, computational programs running on loop trying to determine what the road to the future will be.

I don't know the right answer.

I came back for a purpose. Find John. Protect John. Keep him secret, keep him safe. Hope is locked in the box.

But in our story, Hope is human. Hope is John Conner and he makes choices. He makes mistakes.

John isn't my John. Not yet. And in only 6.66% of my probability map, John becomes John Connor, Leader of the Resistance, by hiding away in a fallout shelter until Judgment Day.

So I join him. We stand. We fight. We try. Is it better?

It's human.

xx

They're trying to kill my son.

No, they're trying to kill my son. Your John may save the world, but he can't do it without mine.

Catherine Weaver talks like a crazy person.

It's not your average psych ward brand of loco—she's way too calm for that. But there are definite televangelist themes singing gospels in the background somewhere. Take a step back and I can see how Mom got the straitjacket treatment.

But what's it matter? Crazy Terminator bitchwhore or the PC's virgin mother, she's my only chance. She's my only way out.

I need that chip.

xx

Humans are moved by their desires. Their needs.

They fight, they live, they survive. They adapt. They change. They grow stronger. But they have to have a reason.

Even Hope needs a reason.

Will you join us?

I'm not the fate of mankind. I'm not whole. I'm not right.

But I'm gonna have to do.

xx

The first thing I find in the future is a coat.

Scratch that. The first thing I find in the future is Weaver dressed for business and loaded for bear while all I've got's my junk swinging in the breeze. Freeballing it just doesn't ever get familiar.

What I don't find is her.

There's so much here. Derek's here, the only other family I ever got. And he's alive, and he's well, and he doesn't know me.

My… my dad's here. The face I never knew, no matter how much Mom used to talk about him. He's real, and he's alive, but he doesn't keep a picture of a woman's sad smile around for luck.

And then there's… her. Here, she's a girl with a dog. She's Allison Young. She's alive, and she's well, and she's a complete and utter stranger.

She's not who I'm looking for.

But she might help me find my way.

xx

The story of Pandora is about answering a question.

It's a story about origins. About assigning blame. About mistakes.

In the second version, Hope is set free and gives humanity a fighting chance to make up for its biggest mistake.

I don't think of John with rainbow wings. I don't think he'd wear them well.

But he'll fight.

We all will.

We all do.

xxxx

I'm well aware there are even more deviations in the Pandora story (i.e. whether or not she was wife to Epimethius or Prometheus, whether it was a box or a jar, etc.) but I was pressed for time and had too restrictive a word count to go into that kind of explanation in-story. For those of you with an LJ, do consider looking in at tscc_las, we could always use more readers/voters!

Also: it shows just how long I've stayed away from posting stuff on this site... they've gone and changed their document editors again? No more html fixes. No more pretty section breaks. Woe. Woe.