Run Back into a Burning Building
Disclaimer: I don't own T:tSCC.
AN: A One-shot that takes place a year or so after John jumps over Judgement Day to rescue Cameron. As always please review and let me know what you think. Enjoy!
"Hit the deck!"
The world exploded in a brilliant flare of orange and white, light and sound bombarding him from every direction something heavy crashed into his chest and John felt the wind get knocked out of him as he hit the ground. The world dissolved to white and the ringing in his ears for a long moment.
He blinked trying to clear his vision shaking his aching head until the weight on his chest came into focus.
"Cameron?" he coughed hoarsely as a glint of silver and a blurred face came into view and sharpened.
"John, are you injured?" she demanded.
"Banged up, nothing major, what about you?"
"I can't move my legs,"
John glanced down at the length of their bodies and winced.
"You've got more shrapnel in your back than a fricking war museum," he informed her.
"The lower half of this endoskeleton is non-functional. The shrapnel has perforated my primary and secondary hydraulics,"
John heaved and gently rolled her off to the side.
"D'you know what hit us?"
"Low-setting HK plasma blast," Cameron informed him.
"Low-setting...shit!"
John stood up and grabbed his weapon.
"John, wait!" she called.
"They're after the TDE if they get access to it we're all screwed to hell!" John said moving away.
"Wait!" she shouted grabbing his ankle. "The building is structurally unstable and on fire and there are at least three T-888 patrol endoskeletons in there, if you go in you will die!"
"If I don't we'll all be dead!" John snapped, "Let me go, Cameron!"
He jerked his ankle in her vicelike grip ineffectually.
"John, please...I don't want you to go, stay with me, please John!" she begged.
John could only remember hearing that particular pleading tone of voice once. His features softened and he stopped struggling. Cameron relaxed her grip slightly as he knelt down next to her.
"There's something you should know," he said quietly, "I didn't come for John Henry, or the Resistance, or the Future...I came across time for you Cameron,"
"John, don't, John, this is not the right thing to do, I won't let you do it!"
Her grip tightened around his ankle once more.
"Twice now, you've told me you loved me, whether you meant it or not..." John shrugged philosophically, "I love you too,"
The butt of John's rifle smashed down against the vulnerable exposed part of her wrist and Cameron let go for just a second but it was enough for John to escape and start sprinting towards the burning wreck of what had once been the burning wreck of ZeiraCorp.
"John, don't! John Connor!" she screamed using a tactic she'd seen proven effective by Sarah.
He didn't even slow.
The heat from the fire made it impossible to follow him with her infrared. She turned over onto her stomach and began pulling herself towards the flaming structure, she knew full well she would be utterly ineffective as damaged as her endoskeleton was but she could not leave John.
Something flared on her scanners and in a massive explosion of heat and light and metal fragments the building collapsed.
Her CPU calculated the chances of any human surviving that blast...0%. It was hot enough and violent enough to damage the T-888 endoskeletons.
John Connor was terminated.
Cameron ran the calculation again, and again, and again.
"Hey, Tin Miss? Where's John?"
Kyle Reese leaned over her his sooty face twisted with worry.
"He didn't know, I didn't tell him so he couldn't have known," Cameron told the man.
Kyle looked taken aback as her face twisted into the most human expression he'd ever seen on a cyborg and then went perfectly blank.
"John Connor is dead," she told him in a flat voice.
"No..."
"He went to keep the T-888 from compromising the Time Displacement Equipment, the explosion when he destroyed the device was..."
Cameron choked on her own report, the words and facts would not come as her CPU was overcome with the little glitches she'd come to think of as chip damage.
"What didn't you tell him? Goddamnit you fucking machine, if you withheld..." Kyle took a shuddering breath, "What. Didn't. You. Tell. John!"
"The chip was damaged, glitching, I reverted back to my original programming. He was going to kill me...I never told him, that all those things I said were true, and now he'll never know," her voice was flat and lifeless.
Kyle stood and was about to wave Derek over when Cameron grabbed onto his ankle to get his attention.
"Kyle,"
The young fighter jerked, the machine had never used his name before.
"Sarah Connor will need to be protected in the future, find the Time Displacement Equipment, take my chip, give it to Sarah Connor,"
Cameron reached up and yanked off the offending clump of loose flesh and hair covering the port, and flicked off the port cover with a bit of sharp metal.
"Why me?" he asked.
Cameron grasped the edge of her chip with two fingers.
"There is no fate, but what we make,"
She twisted and pulled and her eyes went dark.