Love Lost
While John mourns the passing of his mother, Cameron gives him the strength to go on. Takes place after 'Born to Run'.
With his eyes closed, John listens to the rain landing on the canopy overhead, and feels a heavy mist cooling his face from all directions. It reminds him of the rainforest. Of being there with his mother. He had hated it, and nearly hated his mother. He had wondered at the time if the training was his punishment for what he would one day do.
Now, he'd happily go through it all over again- if it meant being with his mother.
Opening his eyes, he looks down at the piece of metal in his hand. It has been faithful to him these past months. No, these past years. It really has been years.
He holds something that his mother never wanted him rely on- let alone need.
Cameron.
What's left of her, at least. A warped, misshapen finger, with a blackened band fused to it, and a diamond, cracked and crumbling from the intense heat that consumed her.
"I don't feel sorry for myself anymore," he tells the piece of scrap, "I feel sorry for everyone else."
"I know where you came from- where you will come from -and I'll find you again. We'll be together, someday. I know that now."
"Derek told me that everyone dies for me, but you were right, Cameron. You were right when you said that I live for everyone else."
"It's not what you meant, but I'm empty. A vessel for everyone else's ideas after they die. They take bullets for me, they blow themselves up for me, but they're really doing it for themselves. So their ideas and their hopes can live on by forcing me to carry them. Everyone except for you two- mom, Cameron."
"Especially you, Cameron. You had another choice. You didn't have to return to me, you could have stayed with your own kind. We only had a few years, but you taught me enough about John Connor to know that this isn't my fault. That none of this is anyone's fault- not even Skynet's."
He places the metal to his cheek, against the scar he received when his plasma rifle exploded. He remembers clawing at the ground like an animal, trying to get close enough to the weapon for it to kill him, but only getting close enough for a flying piece of the receiver to scar his face.
"The day you died, I lost it. I started killing everything in sight, and I didn't care that my rifle was overheating. If it weren't for Kyle and Bedell, I'd be dead... and I hated them for that. For not letting me die."
The image of his lover's body being vaporized by high yield plasma flashes before his eyes.
"Thank you. Thank you so much... for everything you gave me."
Tears finally flow freely with the memory of his 21st birthday in 2028- 45 years after his birth. Cameron finally got him a cake.
He laughs, remembering how awful it tasted. He thinks that she might have made it with pigeon eggs and dog's milk, but it was still the best birthday he'd ever had. It was the first time since the jump that the guilt of leaving his mother wasn't crippling.
"I miss you... I miss you so much..."
He grew up in the future. He grew up with Cameron. He learned why his mother gave him body armor for his birthday. It was what he needed, and what she wanted him to have. He learned in the future why his mother had pushed him so hard. He went to the future alone, but he felt her every time he fought. Every time he squeezed a trigger, he could feel his mother's finger curling around his own.
He came back alone, but every time he wakes up, he feels Cameron beside him. Every front for Kaliba he burns, he feels her behind him. Feels her smiling so faintly that only he can see it. And as he watched his mother die slowly, he felt her hand on his shoulder.
"Thank you... I love you both."
