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laniew1You should read this first.
TITLE: The Wind Speaks
AUTHOR: Melanie
SUMMARY: He’s probably crazy, it’s too bad that they don’t have head-doctor that could diagnose that as easily as Kate as made the boy human.
SPOILERS: Spoilers up to the S2 finale.
The Wind Speaks – Part 2
He doesn’t know what he thought it was going to be like, coming through to the future, chasing after John Henry for control of Cameron’s chip.
He didn’t think they were going to lock him up, that they weren’t going to trust him.
He has to keep forcibly reminding himself that these are not the people that he knew.
Derek isn’t quite so hard, quite so insane.
Allison is not a human version of Cameron.
And his father, who he’s never met, has only seen a handful of times when the man was a small child is still alive.
This Kyle Reese will never travel back to the past, even if there was a way for him to do so, because there’s no reason to protect Sarah Connor. There’s no John Connor, leader of the resistance that the metal is attempting to erase.
There’s just John Connor, scared out-of-time teen-ager that everyone thinks is nuts.
There’s no reason to protect that kid.
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He can feel the dragging sensation of the sedative and he smashes his fists against the walls, bangs his forehead as well when the pain in his hands gets to be too much.
He curses fate and metal and his mother and fights for every last conscious second before the darkness drags him down.
******************************************************************************
He’s sitting up and he’s groggy and…
He hears the gunshot and doesn’t understand what’s going on until the support that was in front of him is no longer there. Hands grab him under his arms and he would thank them but he can’t seem to make his tongue work just yet.
He blinks and the world comes into a hazy sort of view.
“Weaver?” he says. He can see her on the ground and he wonders where she went, she’d left him alone in the hallway with people that he knew but that didn’t know him.
“Hello John,” she says. Her voice is familiar and he clings to familiar because nothing else is familiar. Weaver, or the metal pretending to be Weaver at least knows him. Knows who he’s supposed to be.
******************************************************************************
His mom, he sees her and his entire world stops. He was sure she would be dead. Cameron had said that she died, that she got sick and died.
He wonders if Cameron lied to him, lied about his mom in an attempt to tie him that much closer to her.
******************************************************************************
He leaves with Weaver because they still have a mission.
John Henry is out there, somewhere, with Cameron’s chip and either one or both of them could be trying to betray them.
Betrayal by John Henry doesn’t concern John as much as the possibility of betrayal by Cameron does.
Cameron knew him, Cameron knew his true purpose and what Cameron’s chip knows could bring an axe down on John’s neck.
He doesn’t want to die, not yet.
******************************************************************************
He goes back every couple of days, Weaver makes sure of it and it takes him a day to feel settled again. To remember how to act around other humans, to remember how to talk and have conversations.
Weaver is okay, she’s not actively trying to kill him so he counts her among his allies, but she’s not the best conversationalist and he thinks she sometimes forgets that he’s human.
He makes six trips back to the base, spends time with his mom, with Allison (who’s not Cameron, every time she talks it gets easier to remember that), with Derek and Kyle. He lets Kate poke and prod at him and doesn’t ask why she’s not poking and prodding at his mom.
Sarah Connor is looking drawn and tired, she looks sick; he doesn’t understand why no one else can see it. He can remember Cameron’s voice in his ear telling him that his mom had died. That there had been nothing he could do to prevent it.
Sarah will tell when she’s ready, if he does it she’ll be mad and he can’t stand to have her mad at him. Not right now.
The last time that he leaves the camp before they find John Henry his mom hugs him tightly, whispers ‘I love you’ in his ear. Derek claps him on the back and tells him that they’ll see him soon.
Kyle just nods at him; John thinks that Kyle doesn’t really like him very much. Allison isn’t there; she’s helping Kate in the infirmary.
John thinks its better that way.
******************************************************************************
There’s pain, lots of pain and Weavers voice in his ear telling him that he better not die. Weaver is carrying him and he’d be embarrassed, but the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t think he would be doing anything but curling up in a ball to die if Weaver wasn’t there.
He hopes that Weaver destroyed John Henry, he hopes that Weaver got Cameron’s chip back.
He hopes that Weaver isn’t taking him to metal to be finished off now that their mission is completed.
******************************************************************************
He drifts in and out, he sees his mom and Derek and Kyle and Allison and Kate and their faces are all pale and white and scared.
He doesn’t know what they’re scared of, he’s the one laying on the bed, he’s the one that can’t move without having Kate yell at him, without having Derek pushing him back down and telling him to stay in that gruff voice that is utterly familiar even as it isn’t.
He doesn’t tell anyone that his mom comes to him when he’s able to stay awake for more then 30 minutes at a time.
She sneaks in, making sure to do so when Derek and Kyle aren’t standing guard like they’re afraid he’s going to die if they’re not keeping both sets of eyes on him, he doesn’t know why they care, he’s not much of a threat like this.
Stuck flat on his back in a bed, Weaver hadn’t even needed him for her mission. She’d destroyed John Henry, she’d gotten Cameron’s chip back from him.
All John had done was bleed all over the place and get in the way.
His mom touches his hand and she stares at him like he’s the best, most precious thing she’s ever seen.
Kyle’s not going back to the past, John shouldn’t even exist. John wonders what Sarah Connor would have been like without a savior son to raise. Would she have gotten married, had other kids that could have had normal lives and normal educations?
She taps her fingers against the back of his hand and he focuses on her.
“I’m dying,” she says softly, John bites his lip and doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t tell her he knows, doesn’t tell her that she can’t die, she’s Sarah Connor.
He just looks at her.
“There’s nothing they can do, I’ve managed to stick around a lot longer then they gave me, a lot longer then the tin miss said I would.”
“Mom…” John says, nothing else comes out. Because he doesn’t know what else to say besides ‘don’t go’, ‘don’t leave me’.
If he says those words she’ll still go, and he doesn’t want her last memory of him to be of him begging her to not leave him.
He’s a man now; he can at least pretend to act like one.
“I don’t want you to see me like that, I want you to remember me strong and…” she looks away and John purses his lips together to keep from begging her to stay. He should get a choice in the matter, he knows that even if he could find the right words that she’s already made her choice.
And it’s not to be here at the end.
She touches his hand and when he turns it over, thinking she’s going to lace their fingers together like she used to when he was a kid she puts a chip in it. It’s familiar, it’s Cameron’s.
“You’ll destroy that,” she says. She looks at him, a look of utter seriousness on her face. “No playing with it, no trying to get information off of it,” John nods, to show he understands. “I’m serious, just… the information she had, it’s no good anymore because you’re not who you were supposed to be, but it could still bring you nothing but pain and misery.”
“Okay,” he says softly. He closes his hand around the chip, and ignores the twinge in his heart.
She touches his head, smoothes his hair back.
“I’ll send Savannah and Ellison to you once it’s done,” she says.
When she’s dead he knows, it’s selfish but he hopes they never come. If they never come then his mom will still be alive, she might eventually come back. He nods to show he heard her.
“I love you John.”
He doesn’t get to say the words back to her because she’s gone before he blinks and he wonders if he imagined the whole thing, then he feels the chip in his hand and knows that he didn’t.
******************************************************************************
When he thinks about it he doesn’t know why she didn’t stay if all she was going to do was go off and die.
She could have sent for Savannah and Ellison, if she didn’t want any of them to see her like that, she could have just refused to see them. Kate would have allowed that he thinks.
He just doesn’t understand why she’s letting Savannah and Ellison see that when it should be his right, as her son, to sit there and hold her hand and tell her that it’s all going to be okay even when they know its not.
He doesn’t tell anyone that she’s gone off to die, he just tells Derek that she won’t be coming back and hopes that Derek can make Kyle understand that looking for her would be a pointless mission.
She tells Kyle in a letter who he is to him, he doesn’t know if Kyle really believes it. Doesn’t know if Kyle really wants to.
But Kyle relaxes around him, now that he knows that he’s not somebody else’s kid. That he’s his kid.
Kyle doesn’t know how to be a dad, but that’s okay because John’s not sure how to have a father, especially a father who’s only a couple of years older then him.
He’s had pseudo fathers, Charlie was the one that he let in the closest, but he’s never had a father try to raise him that is actually bound to him by blood and bone and genetics.
Kyle shows him the letter that his mom left, and its short, three little paragraphs that explain Kyle’s appearance in the past, the way he’d tried to protect her, the way that she’d fallen in love with him.
The child that they’d had together even if he’d never known that the John that sent him back was his.
John wonders if that other version of him had felt grief at sending the only parent he had left back knowing it was a suicide mission.
He’s glad he doesn’t have to make that choice, though he’s still not sure how he even exists if this version of Kyle Reese never went back.
******************************************************************************
He’s not counting the days so he’s not sure how he knows that its 36 days after his mom left that Savannah and Ellison appear in their camp.
He doesn’t recognize Savannah, but he recognizes Ellison and they both recognize him on sight.
“John!” he hears and when he turns Savannah is already flying at him, arms going around him in a tight hug that has him questioning if she’s not part metal and trying to kill him, Ellison is gaping at him in disbelief. There are guns up and trigger happy fingers itching to fire them.
The metal have been suspiciously quiet, the humans are gaining ground every day. They’re winning, slowly, and it still makes everyone nervous because no one is really sure what’s changed.
Savannah is sobbing against his shoulder and John feels himself go to his knees because them being here can only really mean one thing.
He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t. He lays his forehead against Savannah’s shoulder and they cling to each other.
They’re not siblings, there’s not an ounce of blood shared between them.
But they have the bond of being raised by Sarah Connor and that’s sometimes stronger then blood.
******************************************************************************
Savannah sits next to him and Kate does a cursory examination, checking her general health before she’s released into John’s care.
Ellison has been escorted away already; Kyle is hovering in the doorway, Derek right beside him. They don’t know what to make of these newcomers to their camp. Don’t know what their connection to John is.
John hasn’t been able to say anything because he thinks if he opens his mouth the only thing that’s going to come out is a wail because his mother his dead.
Better he remain silent until he has a better handle on his emotions.
“She left some tapes for you,” Savannah says, her voice is soft but the room is empty besides them and Kate and the men in the doorway. They all three stiffen but John just nods to show he heard.
“We burned her body,” Savannah continues, “that’s what she wanted.”
John closes his eyes, bows his head.
He’d hoped for a burial, even though he knew his moms thoughts on it. Hoped to have someplace to visit once this was all done and they’d won.
“I’m sorry, John,” she whispers. John wants her to stop talking now.
“I knew,” he says. His voice cracks, it doesn’t sound like his voice at all. “Cameron told me that… she said…” John covers his face with his hands and breathes. His hands smell like dirt, like gun oil. “I’d hoped she was lying… I’d hoped that…”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers again, she lays a hand on his leg, leans into his side. She sounds remorseful; John tries not to feel jealous that his mom had been okay with Savannah there at the end but not him.
“She told me,” he breathes it out. “Mom did… she came… before she left,” he presses his fingers to his eyes. He’s not a little kid. He’s not going to cry, his mom is dead. People’s parents die all the time.
“If she was just going away to die why didn’t she stay here?” he asks, he knows he sounds pitiful, whining, like a little kid. He doesn’t expect an answer, there’s none that he would probably accept anyway.
“She didn’t want you to see her that way, she wanted you to remember her strong, vital; not sick and dying.”
John huffs out a bitter laugh. “At this point all I remember is her giving me up, again.”
TITLE: The Wind Speaks
AUTHOR: Melanie
SUMMARY: He’s probably crazy, it’s too bad that they don’t have head-doctor that could diagnose that as easily as Kate as made the boy human.
SPOILERS: Spoilers up to the S2 finale.
The Wind Speaks – Part 2
He doesn’t know what he thought it was going to be like, coming through to the future, chasing after John Henry for control of Cameron’s chip.
He didn’t think they were going to lock him up, that they weren’t going to trust him.
He has to keep forcibly reminding himself that these are not the people that he knew.
Derek isn’t quite so hard, quite so insane.
Allison is not a human version of Cameron.
And his father, who he’s never met, has only seen a handful of times when the man was a small child is still alive.
This Kyle Reese will never travel back to the past, even if there was a way for him to do so, because there’s no reason to protect Sarah Connor. There’s no John Connor, leader of the resistance that the metal is attempting to erase.
There’s just John Connor, scared out-of-time teen-ager that everyone thinks is nuts.
There’s no reason to protect that kid.
He can feel the dragging sensation of the sedative and he smashes his fists against the walls, bangs his forehead as well when the pain in his hands gets to be too much.
He curses fate and metal and his mother and fights for every last conscious second before the darkness drags him down.
He’s sitting up and he’s groggy and…
He hears the gunshot and doesn’t understand what’s going on until the support that was in front of him is no longer there. Hands grab him under his arms and he would thank them but he can’t seem to make his tongue work just yet.
He blinks and the world comes into a hazy sort of view.
“Weaver?” he says. He can see her on the ground and he wonders where she went, she’d left him alone in the hallway with people that he knew but that didn’t know him.
“Hello John,” she says. Her voice is familiar and he clings to familiar because nothing else is familiar. Weaver, or the metal pretending to be Weaver at least knows him. Knows who he’s supposed to be.
His mom, he sees her and his entire world stops. He was sure she would be dead. Cameron had said that she died, that she got sick and died.
He wonders if Cameron lied to him, lied about his mom in an attempt to tie him that much closer to her.
He leaves with Weaver because they still have a mission.
John Henry is out there, somewhere, with Cameron’s chip and either one or both of them could be trying to betray them.
Betrayal by John Henry doesn’t concern John as much as the possibility of betrayal by Cameron does.
Cameron knew him, Cameron knew his true purpose and what Cameron’s chip knows could bring an axe down on John’s neck.
He doesn’t want to die, not yet.
He goes back every couple of days, Weaver makes sure of it and it takes him a day to feel settled again. To remember how to act around other humans, to remember how to talk and have conversations.
Weaver is okay, she’s not actively trying to kill him so he counts her among his allies, but she’s not the best conversationalist and he thinks she sometimes forgets that he’s human.
He makes six trips back to the base, spends time with his mom, with Allison (who’s not Cameron, every time she talks it gets easier to remember that), with Derek and Kyle. He lets Kate poke and prod at him and doesn’t ask why she’s not poking and prodding at his mom.
Sarah Connor is looking drawn and tired, she looks sick; he doesn’t understand why no one else can see it. He can remember Cameron’s voice in his ear telling him that his mom had died. That there had been nothing he could do to prevent it.
Sarah will tell when she’s ready, if he does it she’ll be mad and he can’t stand to have her mad at him. Not right now.
The last time that he leaves the camp before they find John Henry his mom hugs him tightly, whispers ‘I love you’ in his ear. Derek claps him on the back and tells him that they’ll see him soon.
Kyle just nods at him; John thinks that Kyle doesn’t really like him very much. Allison isn’t there; she’s helping Kate in the infirmary.
John thinks its better that way.
There’s pain, lots of pain and Weavers voice in his ear telling him that he better not die. Weaver is carrying him and he’d be embarrassed, but the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t think he would be doing anything but curling up in a ball to die if Weaver wasn’t there.
He hopes that Weaver destroyed John Henry, he hopes that Weaver got Cameron’s chip back.
He hopes that Weaver isn’t taking him to metal to be finished off now that their mission is completed.
He drifts in and out, he sees his mom and Derek and Kyle and Allison and Kate and their faces are all pale and white and scared.
He doesn’t know what they’re scared of, he’s the one laying on the bed, he’s the one that can’t move without having Kate yell at him, without having Derek pushing him back down and telling him to stay in that gruff voice that is utterly familiar even as it isn’t.
He doesn’t tell anyone that his mom comes to him when he’s able to stay awake for more then 30 minutes at a time.
She sneaks in, making sure to do so when Derek and Kyle aren’t standing guard like they’re afraid he’s going to die if they’re not keeping both sets of eyes on him, he doesn’t know why they care, he’s not much of a threat like this.
Stuck flat on his back in a bed, Weaver hadn’t even needed him for her mission. She’d destroyed John Henry, she’d gotten Cameron’s chip back from him.
All John had done was bleed all over the place and get in the way.
His mom touches his hand and she stares at him like he’s the best, most precious thing she’s ever seen.
Kyle’s not going back to the past, John shouldn’t even exist. John wonders what Sarah Connor would have been like without a savior son to raise. Would she have gotten married, had other kids that could have had normal lives and normal educations?
She taps her fingers against the back of his hand and he focuses on her.
“I’m dying,” she says softly, John bites his lip and doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t tell her he knows, doesn’t tell her that she can’t die, she’s Sarah Connor.
He just looks at her.
“There’s nothing they can do, I’ve managed to stick around a lot longer then they gave me, a lot longer then the tin miss said I would.”
“Mom…” John says, nothing else comes out. Because he doesn’t know what else to say besides ‘don’t go’, ‘don’t leave me’.
If he says those words she’ll still go, and he doesn’t want her last memory of him to be of him begging her to not leave him.
He’s a man now; he can at least pretend to act like one.
“I don’t want you to see me like that, I want you to remember me strong and…” she looks away and John purses his lips together to keep from begging her to stay. He should get a choice in the matter, he knows that even if he could find the right words that she’s already made her choice.
And it’s not to be here at the end.
She touches his hand and when he turns it over, thinking she’s going to lace their fingers together like she used to when he was a kid she puts a chip in it. It’s familiar, it’s Cameron’s.
“You’ll destroy that,” she says. She looks at him, a look of utter seriousness on her face. “No playing with it, no trying to get information off of it,” John nods, to show he understands. “I’m serious, just… the information she had, it’s no good anymore because you’re not who you were supposed to be, but it could still bring you nothing but pain and misery.”
“Okay,” he says softly. He closes his hand around the chip, and ignores the twinge in his heart.
She touches his head, smoothes his hair back.
“I’ll send Savannah and Ellison to you once it’s done,” she says.
When she’s dead he knows, it’s selfish but he hopes they never come. If they never come then his mom will still be alive, she might eventually come back. He nods to show he heard her.
“I love you John.”
He doesn’t get to say the words back to her because she’s gone before he blinks and he wonders if he imagined the whole thing, then he feels the chip in his hand and knows that he didn’t.
When he thinks about it he doesn’t know why she didn’t stay if all she was going to do was go off and die.
She could have sent for Savannah and Ellison, if she didn’t want any of them to see her like that, she could have just refused to see them. Kate would have allowed that he thinks.
He just doesn’t understand why she’s letting Savannah and Ellison see that when it should be his right, as her son, to sit there and hold her hand and tell her that it’s all going to be okay even when they know its not.
He doesn’t tell anyone that she’s gone off to die, he just tells Derek that she won’t be coming back and hopes that Derek can make Kyle understand that looking for her would be a pointless mission.
She tells Kyle in a letter who he is to him, he doesn’t know if Kyle really believes it. Doesn’t know if Kyle really wants to.
But Kyle relaxes around him, now that he knows that he’s not somebody else’s kid. That he’s his kid.
Kyle doesn’t know how to be a dad, but that’s okay because John’s not sure how to have a father, especially a father who’s only a couple of years older then him.
He’s had pseudo fathers, Charlie was the one that he let in the closest, but he’s never had a father try to raise him that is actually bound to him by blood and bone and genetics.
Kyle shows him the letter that his mom left, and its short, three little paragraphs that explain Kyle’s appearance in the past, the way he’d tried to protect her, the way that she’d fallen in love with him.
The child that they’d had together even if he’d never known that the John that sent him back was his.
John wonders if that other version of him had felt grief at sending the only parent he had left back knowing it was a suicide mission.
He’s glad he doesn’t have to make that choice, though he’s still not sure how he even exists if this version of Kyle Reese never went back.
He’s not counting the days so he’s not sure how he knows that its 36 days after his mom left that Savannah and Ellison appear in their camp.
He doesn’t recognize Savannah, but he recognizes Ellison and they both recognize him on sight.
“John!” he hears and when he turns Savannah is already flying at him, arms going around him in a tight hug that has him questioning if she’s not part metal and trying to kill him, Ellison is gaping at him in disbelief. There are guns up and trigger happy fingers itching to fire them.
The metal have been suspiciously quiet, the humans are gaining ground every day. They’re winning, slowly, and it still makes everyone nervous because no one is really sure what’s changed.
Savannah is sobbing against his shoulder and John feels himself go to his knees because them being here can only really mean one thing.
He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t. He lays his forehead against Savannah’s shoulder and they cling to each other.
They’re not siblings, there’s not an ounce of blood shared between them.
But they have the bond of being raised by Sarah Connor and that’s sometimes stronger then blood.
Savannah sits next to him and Kate does a cursory examination, checking her general health before she’s released into John’s care.
Ellison has been escorted away already; Kyle is hovering in the doorway, Derek right beside him. They don’t know what to make of these newcomers to their camp. Don’t know what their connection to John is.
John hasn’t been able to say anything because he thinks if he opens his mouth the only thing that’s going to come out is a wail because his mother his dead.
Better he remain silent until he has a better handle on his emotions.
“She left some tapes for you,” Savannah says, her voice is soft but the room is empty besides them and Kate and the men in the doorway. They all three stiffen but John just nods to show he heard.
“We burned her body,” Savannah continues, “that’s what she wanted.”
John closes his eyes, bows his head.
He’d hoped for a burial, even though he knew his moms thoughts on it. Hoped to have someplace to visit once this was all done and they’d won.
“I’m sorry, John,” she whispers. John wants her to stop talking now.
“I knew,” he says. His voice cracks, it doesn’t sound like his voice at all. “Cameron told me that… she said…” John covers his face with his hands and breathes. His hands smell like dirt, like gun oil. “I’d hoped she was lying… I’d hoped that…”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers again, she lays a hand on his leg, leans into his side. She sounds remorseful; John tries not to feel jealous that his mom had been okay with Savannah there at the end but not him.
“She told me,” he breathes it out. “Mom did… she came… before she left,” he presses his fingers to his eyes. He’s not a little kid. He’s not going to cry, his mom is dead. People’s parents die all the time.
“If she was just going away to die why didn’t she stay here?” he asks, he knows he sounds pitiful, whining, like a little kid. He doesn’t expect an answer, there’s none that he would probably accept anyway.
“She didn’t want you to see her that way, she wanted you to remember her strong, vital; not sick and dying.”
John huffs out a bitter laugh. “At this point all I remember is her giving me up, again.”