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Title: In the End
Fandom: T:SCC
Rating: PG
Characters: John, Cameron
Warnings: Spoilers for season finale.
A/N: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angearia who wanted a John/Cameron drabble. Once again, this a little more than a drabble, going on 800 words. Hope you like it, dear!
In the end, there were no dramatic goodbyes.
There were no last, lingering touches or tearful words. Not even on his end. It had been a long time since he had gotten tearful about anything. Sometimes, he thought his ability to cry had died with all the people he had cried for, but he soon found out that a clenched jaw and a silent toast from a tin cup served as a fitting enough tribute to the dead.
There were no last instructions, either. She was a machine, and computers didn’t need to be told that which they already knew; her cold computer chip brain forever had his words--spilled from his lips in late night meetings when she was the only one to listen, the only one who could, the only one there--forever taken down in a shorthand of ones and zeroes, pieces of information broken down and categorized into files, the sound waves of his voice as he spoke analyzed and recorded, so that every tone and inflection could be copied and reproduced, though perhaps, he thought, not understood.
He didn’t know.
In the end, they were alone and they stood far apart. She had her hand on the machine that would take her back, and she looked at him because she didn’t need to look at it to set the time for her to arrive, and when she said, “Goodbye, John” her voice was steady and perfectly paced and not broken by human weakness like emotion or sentimentality.
He tried not to resent her for it.
***
In the end, there were no hellos.
It was night and he was outside, standing alone in the rubble of a ruined city he forgot the name of. He’d had to sneak out of the base because even though he was in charge it was too much of a risk for everyone if he was out in the open, even though he never felt he was that important, not really.
He was scraping his boot along dirt and rocks with the word’s goodbye, John echoing in his head, thinking of how everyone, everyone--Derek, Kyle, Jesse and now Cameron--got to go back when he was stuck here, constantly moving forward but unable to move on, when he heard it, the slow, even footsteps that shouldn’t be familiar but were, and when he turned around she was there.
The body was the same, though the clothes were different. There was no light but the moon to pick up her features but he knew already what he would see, knew the steady, unfaltering gaze, the flat line of her mouth, the mechanical, but curious tilt of her jaw. It had been only hours since he’d seen her but it felt like it had been years, it felt like that standing there now, together but far apart made some sort of full circle, a completion of something he didn’t even know was unfinished.
In the end, she took three steps toward him and said, “I had to wait to come. If I had been here then you would not have programmed the one from this time line sufficiently.” When he said nothing she tilted her head to the side and said, “You are angry.”
The gesture was so familiar that he felt his stomach clench, because the other Cameron, the future Cameron had never done that. He’d assumed that it was something she learned to imitate in the past, and it was so good to know, suddenly, that he hadn’t just imagined the difference between them.
“No. I’m not angry.” He wasn’t. Not now. It had been far too long for him to still be angry. He nodded his head toward the base and they started walking back, side by side. His strides matched hers now, made smooth and mechanical from so many years of doing just this. It unnerved his men, he knew, but he didn’t mind it. “What have you been doing?” he asked her, and though he looked straight ahead, watching his feet as he carefully worked around fallen stone and metal, his whole body felt hyper aware of her, nerves on the back of his arms and neck tingling and twitching from anticipation.
“I’ve found a solution to your problem.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She stopped walking and turned to him, and he was struck, for a moment on how that was such a human thing to do. “They will join with us, John.”
This was good news. Great news in fact, and an actual solution. But what he focused on was the answer to a question he carried for eight years, an answer he had eventually given up on finding.
Eight years later, and the word was still us and not you.
In the end, that was what mattered to him.
Fandom: T:SCC
Rating: PG
Characters: John, Cameron
Warnings: Spoilers for season finale.
A/N: Written for
angearia who wanted a John/Cameron drabble. Once again, this a little more than a drabble, going on 800 words. Hope you like it, dear!In the end, there were no dramatic goodbyes.
There were no last, lingering touches or tearful words. Not even on his end. It had been a long time since he had gotten tearful about anything. Sometimes, he thought his ability to cry had died with all the people he had cried for, but he soon found out that a clenched jaw and a silent toast from a tin cup served as a fitting enough tribute to the dead.
There were no last instructions, either. She was a machine, and computers didn’t need to be told that which they already knew; her cold computer chip brain forever had his words--spilled from his lips in late night meetings when she was the only one to listen, the only one who could, the only one there--forever taken down in a shorthand of ones and zeroes, pieces of information broken down and categorized into files, the sound waves of his voice as he spoke analyzed and recorded, so that every tone and inflection could be copied and reproduced, though perhaps, he thought, not understood.
He didn’t know.
In the end, they were alone and they stood far apart. She had her hand on the machine that would take her back, and she looked at him because she didn’t need to look at it to set the time for her to arrive, and when she said, “Goodbye, John” her voice was steady and perfectly paced and not broken by human weakness like emotion or sentimentality.
He tried not to resent her for it.
***
In the end, there were no hellos.
It was night and he was outside, standing alone in the rubble of a ruined city he forgot the name of. He’d had to sneak out of the base because even though he was in charge it was too much of a risk for everyone if he was out in the open, even though he never felt he was that important, not really.
He was scraping his boot along dirt and rocks with the word’s goodbye, John echoing in his head, thinking of how everyone, everyone--Derek, Kyle, Jesse and now Cameron--got to go back when he was stuck here, constantly moving forward but unable to move on, when he heard it, the slow, even footsteps that shouldn’t be familiar but were, and when he turned around she was there.
The body was the same, though the clothes were different. There was no light but the moon to pick up her features but he knew already what he would see, knew the steady, unfaltering gaze, the flat line of her mouth, the mechanical, but curious tilt of her jaw. It had been only hours since he’d seen her but it felt like it had been years, it felt like that standing there now, together but far apart made some sort of full circle, a completion of something he didn’t even know was unfinished.
In the end, she took three steps toward him and said, “I had to wait to come. If I had been here then you would not have programmed the one from this time line sufficiently.” When he said nothing she tilted her head to the side and said, “You are angry.”
The gesture was so familiar that he felt his stomach clench, because the other Cameron, the future Cameron had never done that. He’d assumed that it was something she learned to imitate in the past, and it was so good to know, suddenly, that he hadn’t just imagined the difference between them.
“No. I’m not angry.” He wasn’t. Not now. It had been far too long for him to still be angry. He nodded his head toward the base and they started walking back, side by side. His strides matched hers now, made smooth and mechanical from so many years of doing just this. It unnerved his men, he knew, but he didn’t mind it. “What have you been doing?” he asked her, and though he looked straight ahead, watching his feet as he carefully worked around fallen stone and metal, his whole body felt hyper aware of her, nerves on the back of his arms and neck tingling and twitching from anticipation.
“I’ve found a solution to your problem.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” She stopped walking and turned to him, and he was struck, for a moment on how that was such a human thing to do. “They will join with us, John.”
This was good news. Great news in fact, and an actual solution. But what he focused on was the answer to a question he carried for eight years, an answer he had eventually given up on finding.
Eight years later, and the word was still us and not you.
In the end, that was what mattered to him.
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The gesture was so familiar that he felt his stomach clench, because the other Cameron, the future Cameron had never done that. He’d assumed that it was something she learned to imitate in the past, and it was so good to know, suddenly, that he hadn’t just imagined the difference between them.
I love this part especially. The gesture Cameron picked up from her time in the past, that John recognized it as different. The hyper awareness he has of her. The familiarity and comfort of the routine.
I love it! I'm going to read it again. Heh. I enjoy how she returns as soon as she's left. So cool.
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Yeah, this is my theory on how it all works out. He finds her/she returns after he programs the other Cameron and sends her off, that way it fits with the timeline and everything.
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The end of the show makes me sad as I'm resigning myself to the thought that it's probably over. :(
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