Summary: Five double drabbles in which John and Cameron don't get that happy ending, inspired by the five senses. John/Cameron. Originally posted to livejournal 4.6.09
Sensation
I – "Last Resort"
Derek's voice echoes in his head and his jaw tightens. His head hurts and that might have something to do with the bloody patch at his right temple that he tries not to think about and tries harder not to touch. His bad knee is throbbing but the déjà vu hurts the most.
He hears her coming, her footfalls heavy and deliberate on the wooden floors. Closer and he can hear the thwup-click, thwup-click of her damaged leg.
She pushes open the half-closed door and he hears the hinges creak. She stares down at him and he can hear the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. Pleas will fall on uncomprehending ears but they rattle against his teeth. His breath comes short and quick, harsh in the silence, apologies for everything. Because he's tried everything and they're still at this moment.
"Cameron."
The safety comes off with a click but the trigger is whisper quiet. There's a tiny popping sound and then the dull heavy thud of a falling body.
The tears come in wracking sobs that fail to drown it out because it's her voice now, soft and biting.
Sometimes they go bad. No one knows why.
II – "Third Time's the Charm"
He didn't expect to taste metal the first time he kisses her and he doesn't. She's warm and soft and Cameron but her mouth is still against his. When he pulls away her face is near blank, faint curiosity the only emotion there. He turns away before she can ask any questions.
The second time, he can't remember the last time he felt warm and she's smiling, an event so rare he tells himself that she means it. It curves against his lips and it's a reminder that he can do it too.
Eventually, he reconciles himself to the shitty truth of unrequited love. Except this isn't a romance novel and he isn't some bare-chested hero or gentleman poet. His love isn't epic or earth shattering, it isn't going to move mountains, it has nothing to do with red roses and candlelight.
It isn't I love you. It's wishing for something behind brown eyes, inside a metal heart that ticks like a watch, for a spark, a skipped beat. He wants more because you can't love anything less.
The third time he bites his lip, drawing blood onto his tongue. Never again, he promises himself. Never.
It tastes like rust.
III - "Wouldn't Be Worth Much"
The manifestations of mutations in her programming are as intriguing as they are troubling. Like a virus, they move to fresh pasture and...she feels. The mutagen has hit her cognitive centers and the variance and magnitude of her autonomous reactions to non-physical provocation is unexpected.
She looks to John but this is war and he is their general and there's a correlation between the symptoms and John-related stimuli. Terminology is difficult, but words like 'good' and 'bad' take new meaning as her non-standard sensory processes reintegrate with altered analytical functions.
John used to tell her that there was a downside to everything. She finds hers when he insists on leading a mission himself and a flurry of medical personnel herald his return. Between shifts, she dares reach out and touch him for the first time in years. The data is far more than vital statistics (condition: critical). It's a whirl of good and bad and unnamed things. She can feel it against her rigid frame, threatening destruction from inside.
It's wrecking her and she does what she should have twenty years ago. Twenty minutes later the purge is complete and she stands over him, a stone sentry. She is cold.
IV – "Blue and Brown: Metal Bitch"
He knows the damage must be bad because she's never refused his help before, let alone locked her bedroom door. He picks it with ease. The lights are off, the shades drawn, when he gains entrance. She's a silhouette at the edge of the bed.
"You shouldn't be here." She sounds no different; it's a small comfort.
"Are you okay? I can help you. Let me–"
She sees his hand moving to the switch, but her warning comes too late. "No!"
Light floods the room. He stares, frozen.
Half her body has been ripped away, leaving metal gleaming in the poor lighting. He can see her now. The joints and pistons, the smooth cheekbones and sloping shoulders; the truth beneath her skin.
"John." She reaches out with silver fingers, looks at him with mismatched eyes. The blue is mesmerizing but he doesn't know how to read the flickering luminescence. He misses the brown entirely.
This is her face, he thinks. It's two steps to the door; he closes it behind him. A pause, and he hears the clink of metal on metal and can't stop the shudder. He can see them now.
He isn't who he thought he was.
V – "Contamination"
He can't do it. She disapproves – hell, everyone disapproves, and not just of this – but he can't do it. He's been alone for too long and he hasn't seen her since he was nineteen; two months isn't enough and he's too selfish to let his younger self have her.
He's too selfish to let her go, to let her see a world he can only describe, to escape this one that smells sterile and rotten, stale and poisoned. It fills his lungs with every breath, the living and the dead clinging to his shoulders. She is neither and both and she smells like home.
He can't do it so he doesn't; they program a triple eight for the mission instead. That night she tells him that she didn't want to go either and he smiles as he breathes her in.
When he wakes, the memories are shifting, blurring with speed. There are too many triple eight guardians in his past. Cameron Phillips was terminated in action six months ago. The pain is sharp but fleeting; dulling with time he has and hasn't lived.
He's the epicentre, ground zero, eye of the storm. Deep breath, soldier. There's loss in the air.