Past and Present 2/2
Apr. 9th, 2008 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flighty_dreamsAUTHOR:
flighty_dreams CHARACTERS: Derek, John, Sarah. Some shippage of a kind.
RATING: PG-13 for some language
WORD COUNT: over 4,000. A doozy compared to part 1.
WARNINGS: Spoilers for Season 1.
DISCLAIMER: Don't own 'em. Don't know who does.
TIMELINE: Set sometime after S1 finale.
SUMMARY: Derek dealing with 2007, and those strange Connors.
Part One is here.
Derek stared warily at the half-healed thing in their living room.
At least it hadn’t danced anymore since the explosion. Its systems probably calculated that as an inefficient use of resources while it was still in recovery, he thought to himself snidely. It certainly wasn’t out of any concern for how grotesque it would look trying it with some of its flesh still missing. And that was not a mental picture he needed at the moment.
In their old house, he’d known how often it had danced, because he never slept well when they were sharing the same space. He made a point of knowing its whereabouts within the house at all times. And whenever he heard that damn music playing softly in the quiet of the middle of the night, he knew what it was doing.
Derek couldn’t understand John’s affection for the thing. The machines had been trying to kill John all his life, and that wasn’t enough proof to convince the kid that they couldn’t be trusted? Of course, he thought darkly, the John Connor of the future suffered from some strange attachment to them too. “Cameron” was proof of that.
He thought back to his last days before he time traveled to 2007. He’d once had complete faith in Connor and his plans, doing his part as a loyal soldier and following orders. That Connor would send Kyle away without telling him where was bad enough, but he understood the need for concealing important information in this war. But when he discovered John was reprogramming metals to their cause, doubt and suspicion crept in permanently.
Maybe John wouldn’t be the one to lead them to victory over the machines. It seemed the move of a desperate man, using his own enemies in the fight, and taking a huge risk in letting them walk around his base of operations unguarded. The information alone that those machines could take back to the others was frightening, much less how many people—including the legendary John Connor—they could take out from such a convenient location. Derek had seen the tragic consequences of that decision with his own eyes.
Before he left Derek considered that maybe the long years of fighting had finally gotten to Connor, making him not quite right in the head. Derek knew he wasn’t totally sane anymore himself, but he liked to think he at least still had his common sense, which John seemed to have lost somewhere out in the junkyard. Back then it seemed the only viable explanation for why their leader would allow machines that sometimes “went bad” to wander around his base.
But little scenes like the one Derek was watching in the living room right now had dismissed that theory. John was tweaking one of the machine’s systems while it sat patiently on the couch, head cocked in that familiar, annoying pose. Apparently this insanity of John’s went back a long time. And, Derek’s head beginning to hurt just thinking about it, maybe it was this time with “Cameron” that had created it.
The confusing tangle all this time travel caused was beyond him. He’d rather stick with things he understood, like guns and fighting. Whatever fucked up things stopping Judgment Day did to the timeline, he didn’t care, as long as it kept the machines from ever gaining power over the human race and killing all those people.
“Would you stop glaring at us?” John muttered, his eyes not moving from his work. “You made your opinion of repairing her clear.”
“Fine.” Derek got up from the chair he’d been sitting in, double-checking the safety on his gun automatically. Then he stuck it inside the waistband of his jeans, flipping his shirt back over it to hide it. With one last wary look at the machine, which met his stare with emotionless glowing blue eyes, he strode out the back door.
This new, bigger house had a swing set too, and Sarah was sitting in one of the two swings in her usual jeans and a long sleeved shirt that clung to her curves. She looked up at him as he approached, her gaze that familiar mixture of fierce and questioning.
The more time he spent living with the Connors, the more trouble Derek had controlling his growing interest in Sarah. The women of his time were hardened and tough, the struggle for survival trimming away all softness. Derek could see how the burden of taking care of John had done the same to Sarah. At one time she must’ve been like most of the women of this time, playful and shallow, concerned only with mundane things like the latest fashions and TV shows.
But unlike the women he’d known in the past—his past, the future, whatever you wanted to call it—hardship hadn’t obliterated all feminine softness in her. Maybe it was her son’s love or the hope of preventing Judgment Day, but she’d managed to keep some part of her core safe, just as Kyle had.
She was a fascinating contradiction—one minute she was tougher than any soldier he’d ever fought with, and the next was tenderly watching over John, brushing his hair back from his face. How she managed to keep that balance was a mystery.
He could understand now why Kyle had loved her. And despite his own attraction to her and it being years since she’d been with Kyle, Derek couldn’t bring himself to make a move on her. It felt like betraying his brother’s trust, his brother who he hadn’t even had much time to mourn properly yet. No, being with his brother’s woman, even ignoring the fact that chances were slim that she’d be open to it, was too tacky for words.
He’d settle for cheap hookups in bars with drunken women. He understood women looking for a quick fuck to forget their problems for a while. It was the way of the future, after all.
Realizing he was staring, he searched for something to say and spoke without thinking. “What’s with the swings anyway? The last house had them too.” The coincidence of both houses she’d picked having one nagged at him.
She blinked at him, startled by the question, and then looked away at the horizon. It was late afternoon, the sun close to setting.
Still facing away from him she replied, “I have this nightmare sometimes about Judgment Day. I’m standing at a fence outside a park, and there are kids playing inside. The ones closest to me are on the swings. Then the explosions start, and I scream at them to run, to leave the park, but they don’t hear me. All I can do is watch as they all die, screaming, the heat and radiation melting them and the swings.”
She paused, turning to meet his eyes, which were just as haunted as her own. “I like being able to look out the window in the morning, and see the swings still there, untouched.”
Swallowing, his throat suddenly tight, he said, “I dream about Judgment Day too. One minute Kyle and I were playing catch, the next we were running for our lives.”
Her hand reached out to grasp his. Just a gesture of comfort, nothing more, he told himself, struggling to ignore the pleasant feeling her fingers wrapping around his own generated, even though it did have the added bonus of distracting him from thinking of that horrific day. He started to wonder what her fingers would feel like wrapping around something else entirely, but he cut off that train of thought hastily.
“We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” she told him, bringing his attention back to reality. She held his hand for several moments before giving it a final gentle squeeze and letting go.
He nodded, shifting slightly away from her to look up at the sky. Derek didn’t want her to read anything revealing in his face. “All we can do,” he murmured. He glanced back at the house cautiously, making sure the metal was still inside.
Noting the move, and knowing the reason for it, Sarah’s mouth curved up a bit as she commented, “I’m surprised you didn’t come out here to complain about the tin miss again.”
Face tightening at the reminder, Derek met her eyes stonily. “I’m tired of saying it. Not like either of you are listening to me anyway.”
Sarah sighed, the same huff of frustration his mother had given him when he’d whined about something for too long as a child. Derek didn’t appreciate the comparison, even if only in his own mind, or the trip down memory lane. It was too painful to think of all the family he had lost, especially Kyle; it was easier not to.
Sarah frowned then, giving the house a quick look before she said grimly, “Let’s take a walk.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, but she was Sarah Connor, and he was a soldier, so he followed along anyway.
They went through the side gate, past his bedroom window and out the front yard, quickly reaching the sidewalk. He pulled up alongside her, and walked with her towards the setting sun, waiting for her to say something. She didn’t seem in a hurry to talk, and neither was he, so he settled for taking in their surroundings.
Even after a few months in this year, he still felt like he was caught in a flashback to his childhood, not reality. Crazy as the John Connor of the future might be, he’d kept his promise. Derek had been to parks and restaurants and movie theaters again, surrounded by an endless sea of blissfully ignorant humanity. But he still didn’t feel safe. The paranoia that had kept him alive for so many years couldn’t be shed easily, if at all. But it was a relief to know you could walk down a street like this and not worry that there’d be a machine around every corner, or air patrols scanning the area. Humanity was still in control of the world, so he did feel safer at least, if not truly safe.
However what John had left out, with the usual Connor evasion, was that he wouldn’t get to enjoy it with Kyle. Derek had traveled to the past, eager to find his brother, only to discover he was 16 years too late to save him.
But although he’d lost a brother, he’d gained a nephew. The realization that the leader he’d had such an unsteady relationship with was actually Kyle’s son had fucked him up in the head some. He couldn’t hate the only piece of his brother left in the world, but he did resent the adult John Connor’s manipulation. How could a man be cold enough to send his own father back in time to certain death? And how could he send Derek back without telling him the truth?
They’d walked several houses down the street when Sarah finally spoke again. “I don’t trust the machine either, but we need her.”
“You said that before, but I don’t see why. We’re better off not worrying about when she’s gonna turn on us.”
Sarah halted, turning to face him, and he stopped too. Her expression was cold and hard to read, but worry was in there somewhere. It was always there, for John. “What’s the highest model you’ve seen?”
“The triple 8s. And whatever model ‘Cameron’ is, if its not some odd version of a triple 8.”
After his response, Sarah shifted partially away from him, but the anxiety in her face was more visible now.
Frowning, it only took him a moment to catch on. “You’ve seen more advanced models?” he asked harshly, his paranoia suddenly ratcheting up a level.
She nodded, her eyes drifting away as memories played through her head.
His hand reached out unthinkingly to grasp her arm, pulling her back towards him. “Tell me,” he growled, a soldier needing all the info on his enemy that he could get.
She wrenched away automatically, slipping out of his loosened fingers as he let her. Pissing her off wouldn’t help. Her gaze serious, she admitted, “There are worse things than triple 8s.”
“What worse models did you see?” he asked, his stomach rolling uneasily.
“Just one, when John was 10. The T-1000.”
Shit. That sounded bad. The machines wouldn’t jump up to 1000 without some major advances.
“The T-1000 would’ve recovered from that Jeep explosion in less than a minute,” she told him.
“How?” he asked Sarah, almost not wanting to know, but needing to.
“The T-1000 didn’t have the skin and blood that covers the triple 8s and Cameron. It didn’t need it. It was made out of some kind of liquid metal that could shift its appearance, so it could look like different people at will. And you could break it into pieces, and the liquid would just flow back together and reform within a couple minutes.”
Almost a minute passed as Derek processed that horrible knowledge. “Guns work on it?”
Trapped in the memories, she recalled, “A shotgun blast would slow it down a bit. Guns were pretty useless against it, except to help us get away.”
Then he asked the most important question. “How did you fight it?”
“With another machine.” She looked over at him, meeting his gaze with deliberate intent, her message clear.
Derek put the pieces together. “There was another metal sent to protect you?”
“Sent to protect John,” she corrected. Her lips curved up a bit. “Scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it.”
“Why?”
“Because it looked just like the one that-” she stopped abruptly.
Derek realized immediately what she didn’t want to say, and his chest tightened with both anger and pain. “The one that killed Kyle?”
She sighed. “Yes. It wasn’t the same one, but the same model. Same appearance.”
“Which model?”
“T-101.”
“A T-101 against this T-1000? What was John thinking?” He didn’t need to ask who had sent it.
Sarah couldn’t hold back a small smile. “I don’t know. But I’m glad he sent it. We wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”
Derek huffed in frustration. “That’s why you tolerate that thing now.”
“Yes. If we didn’t need her, John wouldn’t have sent her.” From her tone, Sarah seemed pretty certain of that much.
“But we’re not even sure of her agenda, other than protecting John,” Derek pointed out.
“I know. But the sad truth is, she knows more about his plans than we do. There are obviously important things she knows that he’s ordered her not to tell us.”
“Or that it simply refuses to tell us,” Derek countered.
Sarah smiled wryly. “Maybe.” She sighed, looking off into the distance again. “It would be easier if our pet terminator actually followed our orders this time.”
“Wait, the last one did?” Derek asked, brows furrowing.
“Yeah. The last one was programmed to obey John.” Amusement danced in her eyes. It was a good look on her, Derek thought, bringing out the amazing green of her eyes. “He ordered it not to kill anyone, so when people got in our way, he shot them in the knees instead.”
A laugh choked out of him before he could stop it. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah, I am.” She turned back the way they had come. “Let’s go back.”
As they walked back he thought over what she’d told him. As he pondered how to kill something made of liquid metal, he realized that she hadn’t told him how they’d destroyed the thing. Or what had happened to their old pet terminator, for that matter.
“Hey,” he said, drawing her attention, “how did you kill the thing? The T-1000? You never said exactly.”
“It chased us into a steel factory. Dropping it into a pool of molten steel did the trick.”
“Not exactly something you can keep at hand like a gun,” Derek commented wryly, not liking the answer.
“No, not at all.”
“What happened to the other metal?”
“He went swimming too. Voluntarily,” she added reluctantly.
“What?” His brain couldn’t make the jump to that one.
She smiled wistfully as they slowly approached the house. “We thought we were stopping Judgment Day. By destroying the chips, and an arm that was leftover from the T-101. We needed all the evidence of terminators gone, including the parts of the one that helped us. He accepted it as part of the mission, and agreed.”
Derek kept silent, processing what she’d told him, until they reach the front yard of their house. If this all happened years ago, then that meant he’d been living with the Connors a few months now, and they hadn’t bothered to tell him about this. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. They weren’t exactly open people; years on the run had given them the same edge of paranoia that he had himself. Derek knew they were all on the same side, but he didn’t trust them not to keep important secrets from him, even if they involved him personally. They’d already proved that, he thought, irritation rising.
He placed a hand on her arm, stopping her on the sidewalk. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” he demanded, not without ire. He was tired of being jerked around by the Family Connor.
Sarah turned towards him, her expression hardening. “I’m telling you now.”
Anger at her arrogant reply made him lash out. “So I should be glad you bothered to tell me at all?” He paused, staring into her cold eyes. “Well, I guess that is better than how you told me about Kyle’s son. Oh that’s right, you didn’t.”
Her coldness shattered, melted by surprise. “How did you-”
He snorted in disgust. “You think I don’t see Kyle in him every time I look at him?”
She flushed, no doubt in embarrassment at her badly hidden deception. “I could see some of it, but I didn’t think the resemblance was that strong.”
“You never knew Kyle when he was John’s age.” Her shame took the edge out of his fury.
Looking away from him again and breaking the contact with his hand, Sarah said softly, her voice burdened with regret, “No. I barely got to know him at all.”
Intensely curious about their relationship, even if it was a blade that cut him from two different directions, Derek asked, “How long were you together?”
Her laugh then was bitter, scraping at the heart he’d thought had gone numb years before. “Two days.”
“Two days?” he repeated, startled out of his own angst. “Damn, he must’ve been a fast worker.”
Against her will, she laughed. “When you’re running for your life, thinking you’re about to die, waiting doesn’t seem to make much sense.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Their eyes met in a moment of understanding, breaking the tension of the past few minutes.
It was her turn to place a hand on his tattooed arm, spiking his pulse up. He took a deep breath, seeking control, and focused on her next words, not the touch of her fingers.
Hesitantly, the apology sticking in her throat some, she said, “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. John wanted to right away, but I told him not to. I wasn’t sure if there was a reason why John never told Kyle. I didn’t want to mess things up anymore than they already were.”
She smiled, her eyes lighting up. “I’m glad you know though. It’s good for him to have family.” Her green eyes dimming again she said, “He’s always only had me. Charley for a while, but we know what happened there. But now, with you here, it gives him an uncle and a connection to his father. He’s always wanted to know about Kyle, but there was so little I could tell him. So I’m glad you’re here for him.”
It was a rare look at a vulnerable Sarah, watching her standing there in the fading afternoon sunlight apologizing to him. Knowing now how little time she’d gotten with Kyle, he grieved for both of them.
“Hey,” he said softly, reaching up to brush her hair back from her face before he could think better of it, “I’m not just here for him. Both of you are family. And if you want to know more about Kyle…” His chest tightened for a moment, lingering pain over his brother’s death overcoming him. “I can’t talk a lot about him yet, but one day. Okay?”
Maybe she could see the pain he was holding inside, because she stepped closer to him, brushing up against him and encircling him with her arms. Surprised, his breath cut off for a long moment, but his hands moved to embrace her without thought as he gazed over her shoulder. Guiltily he let himself enjoy the moment, taking in the vanilla scent of her hair. He’d needed this, this physical comfort, ever since he found out Kyle was dead.
What was it about death that brought out the desire to feel the touch of another person? But it wasn’t just that. This woman had loved his brother, just as he had. He’d never heard her say as much of course, but it had been there in her pained, haunted eyes whenever Kyle’s name was mentioned. Grief needed to be shared, and he had no one else to share this grief with. There was no one else left in this time that remembered Kyle Reese.
“That would be nice,” she told him, interrupting his thoughts.
He stepped back reluctantly to look at her, meeting her eyes. Words he hadn’t meant to say spilled out of him. “I took John to the park on his birthday.” She nodded and he added, “The park where I used to play catch with Kyle.”
Her mouth opened, but no words came out. After a moment, her eyes sparkling with tears she refused to shed, she asked, “You took him to see his father?”
Derek smiled. “Yeah. It made him happy.”
She smiled back at him. “Thanks for doing that. I’m sure it was the best present he’s ever gotten.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied sincerely.
Derek thought about his nephew, both versions of him. He didn’t have to let the adult John’s manipulation get to him. His brother was gone, but he had his nephew to take care of now, and Sarah if she ever let him. She had that same spark of purity that Kyle had always had, and he wanted to protect it too. Even though the woman drove him insane sometimes with her stubbornness and high handedness. It must be a Connor thing.
This time wasn’t as safe as John had promised. There were still the threats of machines like Cromartie coming for them and the approach of Judgment Day, not to mention the metal in their midst. But maybe there never had been a time that was completely safe, and he’d just forgotten that. It was easy to forget the downsides of normal life—like having to watch out for cops—when you didn’t have one anymore. But there were numerous perks to being back in this time—like clean baths and medicine and real beer, to name just a couple—and he would enjoy spending whatever time he had with these people, his family.
And if they could stop Judgment Day, maybe Kyle would be saved too, along with billions of other people.
One thing at a time though. Sometimes you needed to live in the moment, like this one.
He focused back on Sarah, who was watching him curiously, no doubt wondering what he was thinking about.
Tentatively, a familiar mixture of guilt and fear of rejection skidding through him, he reached for her hand, pleased when she accepted it. “I could take you to the park sometime too.”
Her face brightened, her beauty making his heart beat a little faster. Her fingers tightened around his as she said softly, “I’d like that."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-10 02:32 am (UTC)Yeah I've had some time to think about the connections between Derek and Kyle and Sarah and vice versa, what with there being no new episodes for months to come... I really love what adding Derek has done to the series though. He really was the missing piece that made everything click into place dramatically.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-11 04:26 pm (UTC)“You never knew Kyle when he was John’s age.”
You just nailed it there with that tiny bit of dialog. It says so much about Derek's history with his brother, his devotion. And it says so much about how his relationship with Kyle is so different from Sarah's relationship with Kyle and how they're all so connected to one another and so dependent on one another for the big picture.
Lovely.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 02:13 pm (UTC)And yes, there really is this amazing intertwined connection between all of them that's really intriguing to explore. I know I had fun doing so.
Sarah got to see this softer, loving side of Kyle, and Derek got to grow up with Kyle, knowing so much else about him that she never had the chance to experience. So I can see how they'd be hungry to find out more about him from each other, but too awkward in their grief to bring themselves to talk about it much. At least at this point.
And one other thing. I love Sarah/Derek shippage, and so of course I'll read any fic about them, including ones like yours. And most of them are pretty gleefully dirty. ;) Which I approve. But while writing this I thought, well maybe I should take things slower, b/c they do have LOTS of issues... and also b/c I didnt want to feel like I was repeating ground that other ppl had done before, and have done better than I think I could, too.
I know most fanfic fans go for the sex, so maybe not so many ppl will like this fic, but I had to write it how I felt it should be. And I'm sure Sarah and Derek will get there eventually!
I sure hope they go there on the show one day.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 11:28 am (UTC)You commenting actually made me go back and reread it, since I hadn't read it since I posted it. Yeah I do like how it turned out, imho.
I was surprised to see anyone comment on it after all this time, since I posted it back in April on scc_fic. Were you going thru a backlog of posts in scc_fic or something? Hehe. Just curious. I doubt it was recced anywhere (though that would be awesome!).
Anyways, thanks again for commenting. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-12 11:06 am (UTC)I haven't used that site much myself, but I think perhaps I should... anyways, thx again for reading and commenting. Glad you enjoyed it. :D