Fic: Maybe, That First Time (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronciles)
Title: Maybe, That First Time
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Characters/Pairings: John Connor, Kyle/Allison, Derek
Rating: General
Word Count: 1196
Notes: Written for allchildren/sainfoin_fields who wanted: Kyle/Allison, escape. Hope the John POV works for you, the idea just sort of ran away on me.



At first, John doesn't believe that it's really not her. The dog should be a dead giveaway, but Skynet did a really amazing job when they made Cameron. He would have said it was closer to art than science if he didn't know better. Instead he says nothing, tries not to stare, tries not to assume. Never, in a million years, would he have guessed that the hardest part of living in the post-apocalyptic world would be trying not to treat a girl you just met like she's your robot sister.

The smile makes it easier to begin with. Cameron didn't smile, not really; terminators were build to terminate and smiling wasn't relevant to that pursuit. She was built to kill him, nothing could change that hardware. Allison smiles all the time though, middle of hell and she is smiling all the time. She's smiling at Kyle Reese.

Kyle doesn't smile so much, but when he does it is at Allison. Derek punches his brother's shoulder, teasing him. It's not like any of them can have those kind of secrets from each other. That doesn't mean they don't lie to each other. It just means the lies are the kind that eat away at you, not the energizing and exciting kind. Allison and Kyle are always volunteering to keep watch these days, and John and Derek pretend to take advantage and sleep, but they lie awake... listening.

To begin with, John isn't sure what he's so angry about. A cycle of theories pass through and are rejected: that Kyle is being somehow unfaithful to the memory of Sarah Connor whom he's never met yet, that he finally gets to meet the father who died before he was born and he's too busy screwing some girl to pay any attention to him, that this girl is going to be murdered by Skynet, that her murder is going to ultimately bring John the one person he can count on in this world. He rejects out of hand that he might be jealous because Allison looks like Cameron, but she can love and Cameron's circuits aren't capable of love.

Somehow John Connor has skipped over Judgement Day and into a future where no one relies on him, a future where the world doesn't rest in his hands. He starts to wonder if he will ever find Cameron, or whether she was only part of a future that doesn't exist anymore. The resistance feels like nothing but emptiness. They are going to lose, maybe they always were.

One night, he's sitting up on watch, ignoring the fact that Kyle and Allison have snuck off again (he heard her giggles) and staring at the fire which they probably shouldn't have built. There's something in his back pocket (new pants, recently foraged, they aren't full of holes yet) and John pulls it out to find it is a wallet, like the one he had back before he jumped forward. He opens it, thinking to look over the poor dead sod's cards and such.

It is his wallet. It has John Baum's driver's license and a lot of other useless crap. It has something else though, something he'd almost forgotten. A picture of his mother. Sarah Connor stares out at him, half mad and half right. He tosses the thing in the fire, the alias will trigger alarms for his companions, but he keeps the picture. So often these days he finds himself missing her, paranoia and all.

Derek catches him looking at the photo at some point. He's been looking more bitter than usual recently. John suspects he misses his brother, even though Kyle is still there with them in body.

“It's my mother.” John tell him, “Her name was Sarah Connor.”

Derek once told him that Kyle carried a picture of Sarah around, that John had given it to him. He looks across the camp to where Allison and Kyle seem so content. When Derek tell John that he is mom was real pretty, John almost laughs as the idea forms in his head.

“Toughest soldier I ever knew” he tells Derek, “Here, you take it.”

Derek seems surprised, but he tucks the photo safely away anyway.

As the days go by, John finds the others turn to him more and more for guidance, new people he meets have a strange look on their face when they are introduced. It seems as though he is becoming the leader of the resistance somehow, just like he'd always been told he would. It doesn't feel any better than having his childhood sacrificed had. Some days he just plain envies Kyle. Some days he feels malicious and waits for Allison's capture, not that he doesn't do everything he can to protect her.

The day he reprograms his first terminator, he realizes that he is running out of time. That is when he plans the attack to take over the time transport facility. He's known for months now what must be done.

John Connor sent his friend back in time to save his own mother's life and also to impregnate her, to ensure that he would be born. It's always seemed bizarre to him, weird, circular, and unnatural. He kind of thought by the time it happened that it would make more sense. Now it occurs to him that, given all the changes they've made, maybe he didn't know that first time. Either way, Kyle Reese is hardly his friend.

Sending Kyle and Allison back in time, to build that bank and not to save Sarah Connor, is a painful inevitability. John knows it has to be done, that it is the right thing to do. Sending Derek back to fill the gap left by Kyle, that's a little more complicated. He sort of wishes that he had the old Derek back, the one he'd known in 2008. Sometimes he wants to talk about things, but there is no one to talk to. One night he catches Derek staring at that snapshot though, and he knows that it is too late to turn back. He could have waited, could have waited until Allison was taken and Kyle destroyed, could have planted the image of his mother then, could have sent Kyle Reese to his death and left Derek to meet a treacherous bitch he couldn't help loving. He's already left that behind at this point, however. He said goodbye to the past he knew when he gave Derek the picture that had once been destined for Kyle.

In the end there is nothing else left he can do. He hugs Derek goodbye, like a father and a son and a brother. He watches the flash and then goes back to fighting Skynet, knowing he is alone, knowing Cameron can never be built, knowing these burdens are his alone. Unless, of course, he's written himself out of the story by mucking around with history. Sarah probably would have told him to leave well enough alone, but then again she'd been the one to tell him to always buck fate and change things to something better. He was what she'd made him after all.