Title: Girl Meets Boy

Genre: Television

Series: Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

Characters: Cameron Philips/Allison Young

Spoilers: 2x22 "Born To Run"

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Her father told her stories when she was young, fairy tales that haunted her present with eerie accuracy.

Word Count: 1250


Prompt: Saving Private Ryan-"You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel."


Allison Young didn't delude herself by thinking that her story started with 'Once Upon a Time', because there certainly was no 'happily ever after' coming. Fairy tales were all well and good as a girl, but as a fighter she had no time for the pretty contrivances of Disney or Grimm. Maybe before D-day, before the machines destroyed their way of life and left a smattering of survivors to try and fight for a dream that flickered less brightly every day. It didn't matter how the human race tried to tape the pieces back together, the picture would never be the same. There would always be scars, heavy lines of weight that curved the back of every person until no amount of spirit could make them do anything but bow down to Skynet.

In the kindness of strangers Allison was raised, never knowing her blood kin or any semblance of a normal life. The children's wing of the Los Angeles bunker was overcrowded and violent breeding ground for trouble. Small and delicate Allison had learned quickly when to hide and when to fight, because no adult's eyes could be everywhere at once. It was years later, eleven years old and already innocence lost, that Allison met the man she would consider her father. He'd appeared in the doorway, blocking the minimal light from the hall and creating an intimidating shadow that lay heavily across the dirt-smudged floor where they played. His eyes scanned the dozens of children's faces without emotion, no pity or lust in them, not like the others that arrived from time to time to gaze into the room. He didn't bring food or clothing like those with sympathy; nor candy and toys and a promise of a warm bed to sleep in like the others. His body was completely without motion as he stood there, no shifting of feet, no blinking of eyes.

He was like something she'd never seen before and when his eyes scanned her face he looked at her like she was something he'd never seen before. He walked forward, his steps graceful compared to the heavy steps of the warriors that marched past the open doorway day and night, and knelt beside her. "Can I tell you a story, Allison Young?"

He told her many stories, different adventures of the girl made of stone and the boy she loved. He described the scenes clinically, never sparing a detail, and despite the dryness of the his voice, without inflection or dramatics, he captivated her. He came every day, always with a story to tell. Some were long and took many days to tell. Sometimes he told her handful of facts instead. The stone girl was fond of knee boots and wearing her hair loose. The stone girl had a terrible temper but hid it well. The boy she loved was a savior, a hero to all. The boy she loved was just a boy, and fallible like all humans.

Before he left, every day always returning, he'd ask her what she wanted. At first it was nothing because Allison Young didn't know to want. She knew hunger, she knew cold, she knew pain, she knew sadness, but Allison Young didn't know to want. After weeks of always nothing, the strange man who embodied nothing tilted his head. He studied her, eyes blank, and asked a different question. "Are you cold?"

"Yes."

He brought her a blanket and the story of how the Boy touched the Girl's heart.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

He brought her food, and the story of the Girl and her walks at night.

It continued for years, and though Allison grew, he didn't. He didn't suddenly have gray hair, or lines in his face, and if you had asked any of the adults in charge of the children what his name was they couldn't tell you. She was just seventeen when she was recruited into the Resistance, her speed a deciding factor that had drawn the attention of General Reese. Her father came to visit her one last time, before she moved to the infantry barracks and the people she would fight beside (living and dying every day) would replace the children of the wing (living and dying every day). They sat beside each other and they never touched, never had. They sat close enough to feel the heat of each other's bodies but not to touch skin. They sat together and he told her one last story and though she smiled, she was glad it was just a story. Just one last story, just one last question.

"You want to fight in the war?"

It surprised her, the sudden note to his voice. It wasn't a question, not really, it was a declaration with a small lilt to the end of it, a small note of resolve. She nodded despite the rhetorical nature.

"All right. All right." He'd never repeated himself before, and Allison was more unsettled by their last interaction than she showed.

Allison Young didn't believe in fairy tales, didn't believe that a girl of stone could become flesh, didn't believe that there was a hero who would save them all from Skynet, didn't believe that she was destined for anything other than a chestful of shrapnel and a slow death of choking on her blood. Allison ran through the battlefield like gravity didn't exist and the only thing holding her down was the heavy weight of the large gun she carried. With every machine she killed the closer to home she felt. She wore boots to her knees and left her hair loose and didn't think of her 'father' at all. She drank with her comrades, and left the smudges of dirt and blood on her face and wore them like a mask. When the rain, acidic and burning, took away her mask she worked extra hard to build a new one. For weeks it worked, she didn't dream of the cold girl and the warm boy or of the strange connection they shared, yin and yang, night and day. If her life began to resemble the fairy tales she worked hard to forget, if the echoes of those stories rippled across the pond of her mind, she'd never admit it.

If her general had the look of the Boy Hero, she didn't say anything. As her skills evolved and her ability to survive anything thrown at her became known she worked closer with the leader of Resistance, slowly taking the role of confidante and close friend, and the echoes of fairy tales deafened her ears to the approaching crescendo of too many coincidences, too much happenstance, too many names she already knew.

Then it happened, one day, an ordinary day in the life of a teenage girl fighting millions of machines that slowly but surely were killing off the last remnants of human life, he appeared out of nowhere, wearing nothing, and looking horrified. A boy who looked like General Reese, a boy whose look of horror could never match her own, a boy who was the Boy Hero.

Then she knew, she connected the dots, she stringed together the morals of the stories that her 'father' had told her and came to the only conclusion she could.

Allison Young wasn't made of stone, and stories were just stories.

John Connor may be the hero John Henry had foretold, but he'd never be the boy the Girl of Stone loved.


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