Title: Enough
Rating: PG-13ish
Characters: John/Cameron
Disclaimer: It's not mine, of course.
Summary: John thinks about the events of Samson and Delilah and struggles to come to terms with his feelings towards Cameron and his destiny. I was motivated (like many others apparently) to write a fic based on the scene in the season 2 premiere of The Sarah Connor Chronicles where Cameron tells John she loves him. I suspect it's about to be rapidly made AU by the upcoming episodes.
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A fly zipped around the darkened church in drunken, haphazard flight. It circled the large crucifix and bumbled a few times against the stained glass windows before apparently deciding that a living creature would make a more desirable perch. It landed on John Connor's head as he lay sleepless in a heap of blankets on the floor. John flicked it away without ever consciously noting its presence, so absorbed was he in thought.
He stared up at the beams of the ceiling, replaying the day's events to himself. Funny, he thought. It had been his birthday, he'd seen his young father, he had had a gun aimed at his head, been tied up, seen his mother beaten, killed a man, lost his home, been in two car wrecks, had a rogue terminator try to kill him, been injured, threatened and scared, and now was faced with the almost certain prospect of moving, again, and the new identity that went with it. And yet… it was Cameron's last words before he'd snatched the chip out of her head that were keeping him up tonight.
He was a freak. He'd known it always, really, only now it had taken on a new dimension. Before it had been the isolation of knowing with certainty the horrors the future held for him. A lifetime of training, mental preparation, dozens of teachers – all preparing him for a terrible destiny, while the rest of the world ate and laughed and fucked, not knowing that their world was already dead, not knowing they were ticking down to that apparently inevitable war with Skynet that would kill most of them and make soldiers of the rest.
No, now he was an even bigger freak because he had fallen for the very thing he was supposed to be preparing to destroy. He was supposed to hate her, he thought. His Mom did. She might respect the necessity of Cameron but he knew in her heart she hated her. And Derek…. Derek mostly just hated her, period. Why couldn't he do that? John had given it some effort, sometimes. He'd been so angry with her for preventing him from saving Jordan, for a while he thought he'd succeeded. Then she'd spoken about grief… and he realized that he wasn't mad at her anymore, and had never hated her at any point. Cheri had been the other tactic he'd tried – diversion. Immerse your thoughts in the pretty, mysterious, and
almost certainly human girl in school and forget about the robot. It had worked well enough… until he fell asleep. Then it was all Cameron, and all pretense stripped away.
He'd never had sex before, but that hadn't stopped him from dreaming about it in incredibly vivid detail… what she'd be like, what she'd feel like. How she'd tell him that she could feel and want and she wanted him now. And sometimes it was even worse, in a way. Sometimes he'd dream she was just a normal girl, and he was just a normal guy. There'd be dates and sweet, romantic moments and three heartfelt little words exchanged… and he'd wake up to the rude calling of his alarm clock and feel like crying inside for a dream that couldn't ever be.
FreakFreakFreak. And she'd called him on it too. One last desperate plea for survival. I love you and you love me. But she'd been right in deducing his feelings, throwing it back in his face that he loved a long bit of code and coltan covered by a pretty face.
The persistent, idiotic fly made another attempt to alight on his face. This time it tried his ear. He shrugged it off again, determined to wallow in his misery.
They don't feel. They don't know love. He squirmed at the memory. It was bad enough having his mother tell him what he already knew... and even worse that she wasn't willing to even address what Cameron had claimed she knew about him. Damn it. He knew she had heard. Given her past, it had to be the ultimate perversion for her; watching her son love a terminator. The same machines that had destroyed her love all those years ago. And Derek… would Derek even follow a leader who spent every moment not preparing to destroy machines fantasizing about one? Would any of them?
The fly landed on his head again. He irritably flicked it away, and it zoomed in circles around the room. Just like me, he thought. Around and around and around in his head, no stopping and no peace.
I love you, I love you please! I love you and you love me! Under a completely different set of circumstances those words would have been a dream come true. Then however, he had never been more shocked in his life before. She'd sounded so sincere… and her face. For all the world, she looked like a young girl, pleading, scared, real. He'd pulled the chip out and it felt like his heart cracked.
Why had she said that? Why had she tried that tactic? If her AI was good enough to realize that his feelings for her were a weak spot, why was it also not intelligent enough to realize that he wouldn't believe that she loved him, no matter how much he wanted her to. If she'd just stuck to claiming she'd run a test and was now repaired, he would have been more likely to believe in her sincerity. He wanted to ask her about it. Maybe he should. Or maybe it was a topic best left alone. She was just outside, he knew. Patrolling, or maybe perfecting her Armenian, or whatever else she did since she wasn't otherwise occupied sleeping.
The imbecilic fly made yet another attempt to land. This time the hand that came down was looking to swat, not merely shoo, but the insect was too quick for it. It took off again and John tracked its flight. If it goes in Cameron's direction, he thought to himself, I'll talk to her. It's like a coin toss with wings.
The fly made a beeline for the double doors leading to the outside world.
It occurs to him that legions of loyal troops are not likely to be impressed that their messianic savior makes decisions based on the flight patterns of a bug. Fine, he thinks to himself, unconsciously running his fingers through his newly short hair. Forget the damn fly. He's going because he wants to know, damn it.
He slips out the front door as quiet as possible. His mom and Derek might have seemed to resign themselves momentarily to Cameron's continued presence, but he's pretty sure that he'll get an earful if they know he's sneaking off to go talk to her in the dark of night.
Cameron isn't in front of the church. It takes a few minutes to find her, and in the back of his mind he's starting to wonder if maybe her chip isn't all fixed up after all when he sees a gate to the church's miniscule courtyard cracked open. She's sitting on a bench in front of a statue of Mary with an infant Jesus protected in her arms. Cameron seems to be considering them intently. She doesn't seem startled, however, when John walks up behind her. He looks at the statue too, and for a moment forgets to ask Cameron the question he came out here for. His mom was, in some ways, like Mary, he realized. Both knew they were giving birth to boys who would lead lives of crushing responsibility. Both had changed so that their lives completely revolved around their destined offspring… nudging and molding them into the roles they knew they must one day fill. Had Jesus ever fallen in love with someone as completely inappropriate as John had? Had he ever wanted to shy away from his destiny and lose himself in her?
To his surprise, it's Cameron that breaks the silence.
"Is it enough?" she asks. He's confused for a second and she seems to sense that, because she continues on after a second. "Your mother said that you were alive, and that would have to be enough. Is it enough?"
He's facing down a hard life with tough choices. Terror and despair and a desperate struggle to survive if they fail to stop Skynet, and what is turning out to be a miserable prolonged battle to keep preventing Judgment Day even if they do manage to stop it this time. He's not ready. He's scared to death he'll lead humanity to its doom. And he's in love with a robot. A robot that if he succeeds won't even exist. He doesn't think he can do this. How is just being alive 'enough'?
"No" he finally answers. He's a little ashamed of how broken his voice sounds. He's all set to feel a fresh bout of self pity when he realizes that she's reaching out for his hand. She curls her fingers around his palm and gently strokes his knuckles with her thumb.
It's funny how even when he's feeling crushed and overwhelmed inside there's a part of him that always wants to kiss her, he thinks. The piece of him that wants to is becoming more insistent in his mind too, as he looks down at their hands.
"Why are you doing this?" he asks thickly. She looked up at his face. Her eyes seemed so dark, this close.
"You did it to me, Before." Some faint ghost of an expression seemed to flit across her face, but he couldn't identify it and then it was gone. "It seemed like the right thing to do" she stated in her usual calm monotone.
He stared down at their hands. She brushed her thumb lightly across his knuckles… just like he'd done not twelve hours earlier. But she'd been de-chipped. There was no way, no way for her to remember that. She'd have had to have picked it up somewhere before then. He suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe, his mind was tumbling over itself so fast. She'd learned it somewhere… from him? Who else? She'd known he loved her. Cameron, the girl so dense at reading emotions that the rumor around school was that she was autistic, hadn't… surely she hadn't figured it out from the subtle signs she'd seen in this timeline. And even if she had, then how the hell was she so much better at reading him than anyone else?
They must have been close, he realized. Very close, in her "Before." He was vaguely aware of his heart skipping a beat as he continued furiously thinking.
He'd cleaned her chip up as best as he could, jammed it back in, and hoped for the best. Cameron, the most advanced learning computer in the era, de-grimed like an NES cartridge and back to perfect operating condition? Yea right. There wasn't a way to truly repair a normal physically damaged CPU in this time. Certainly not one as advanced as Cameron's. She'd fixed herself, somehow, he realized. Just like she said. And as to that other thing she said…
I love you and you love me! He'd assumed it was a trick, a last-ditch effort from a programmed killing machine about to fail its mission. But what if it wasn't? She'd said she lied to him about "important things." What if, rather than deceit to save a failed killing mission, it had been honesty, complete honesty, in a last effort to prevent her from failing him?
He could be over-thinking it, missing something, a wrong conclusion or faulty logic somewhere down that crazy path his thoughts had taken... Or he could be right. He looked up again, to see her still quietly gazing at him, her face (if still mostly expressionless) looking much warmer than when she'd been on the warpath. So. She definitely wasn't killing him and she maybe loved him. By virtue of that nearly indestructible build of hers, she was likely to be there with him throughout the long, dark road ahead. And someday in his future and her past he would catch up to her and he would know the truth. He smiled gently at her and interlocked her fingers with his. It was enough.