strict machine
terminator: the sarah connor chronicles (john/cameron)
title from this goldfrapp song
She's just a machine.
John only knew her as Cameron Phillips for a day and a half but he still gets confused sometimes, can’t separate her from a pretty, big-eyed girl who smiled at him just a little too widely.
She gets tossed out a window and he wants to yell her name, she stands in a doorway and he resists walking through it just to brush by her.
She’s just a machine.
Granted, a perfect one, but if there’s one thing his mom has taught him, it’s that Terminators aren’t human—not even a little bit. It figures that the only girl to look sideways at him is a robot designed to destroy him and then reprogrammed and sent to protect him by his future self.
So John remembers that Cameron is beautiful, but so are mercury and volcanoes. It doesn’t mean they aren’t lethal. He’s seen what she can do and he remembers what the T-800 did to his father.
It’s not naivety which lends her that blank look, it’s mechanics. It doesn’t matter if she sometimes seems vulnerable or her eyes soften a bit when he does something nice for her.
It’s just programming. His programming.
Still when he asks her, she talks about this other John Connor-- this leader, this saviour, everyone, even his own mother expects him to become. She tells him stories he’s told--this John from the future—things he’s programmed her to love, the people he’s saved. If he didn’t know better, he might think she looks reverent.
Her eyes get this distant look, one he has to remind himself is data processing, not longing, and as she speaks her hand sometimes strays to his hair, fingers tangling absently just above his ear.
His breath hitches.
She stills. Asks evenly, “Are you alright, John?”
“Yeah,” he says and his mother is standing in the doorway, her eyes flat, her lips pressed into a tight line.
John steps away from Cameron without an acknowledgement or a goodbye. He doesn't have to be polite to a machine. He closes the door to his bedroom.
Through the wall, he can hear almsot everything. He hears his mother’s raised voice, harsh. “You can’t be telling him this.”
Cameron’s murmured response, quieter and even. It might be, “He asked.”
It might be, “The information could prove useful to him.”
The tight snap of each word his mother speaks, “He is my son and I say he’s not ready to hear it. Are we clear?”
Cameron’s soft acquiescence and his mother’s sharp quick footsteps toward his bedroom door. John wonders how my son has anything to do with it.
His mom’s face and voice are gentler with him. Masked, but still firm, steel resolve under soft skin.
“John,” she says softly.
“I know,” he answers and she smiles tiredly and shuts his door. She’s said it enough times before that he can almost convince himself.
Just a machine. Right.
So while his mom promises she’ll fix it, keep him from ever having to become this John who Cameron talks about, John decides he’ll try anyway. He works at becoming this hard brave man, the John who’ll have enough foresight to send a robot back to protect himself, who’ll risk anything to save humanity. The one who fights.
The one who never forgets that it’s just programming, it’s only programming, that’s it’s just a machine.
He watches Cameron’s lips turn up at the corners when he asks her about John Connor.
Right.
terminator: the sarah connor chronicles (john/cameron)
title from this goldfrapp song
She's just a machine.
John only knew her as Cameron Phillips for a day and a half but he still gets confused sometimes, can’t separate her from a pretty, big-eyed girl who smiled at him just a little too widely.
She gets tossed out a window and he wants to yell her name, she stands in a doorway and he resists walking through it just to brush by her.
She’s just a machine.
Granted, a perfect one, but if there’s one thing his mom has taught him, it’s that Terminators aren’t human—not even a little bit. It figures that the only girl to look sideways at him is a robot designed to destroy him and then reprogrammed and sent to protect him by his future self.
So John remembers that Cameron is beautiful, but so are mercury and volcanoes. It doesn’t mean they aren’t lethal. He’s seen what she can do and he remembers what the T-800 did to his father.
It’s not naivety which lends her that blank look, it’s mechanics. It doesn’t matter if she sometimes seems vulnerable or her eyes soften a bit when he does something nice for her.
It’s just programming. His programming.
Still when he asks her, she talks about this other John Connor-- this leader, this saviour, everyone, even his own mother expects him to become. She tells him stories he’s told--this John from the future—things he’s programmed her to love, the people he’s saved. If he didn’t know better, he might think she looks reverent.
Her eyes get this distant look, one he has to remind himself is data processing, not longing, and as she speaks her hand sometimes strays to his hair, fingers tangling absently just above his ear.
His breath hitches.
She stills. Asks evenly, “Are you alright, John?”
“Yeah,” he says and his mother is standing in the doorway, her eyes flat, her lips pressed into a tight line.
John steps away from Cameron without an acknowledgement or a goodbye. He doesn't have to be polite to a machine. He closes the door to his bedroom.
Through the wall, he can hear almsot everything. He hears his mother’s raised voice, harsh. “You can’t be telling him this.”
Cameron’s murmured response, quieter and even. It might be, “He asked.”
It might be, “The information could prove useful to him.”
The tight snap of each word his mother speaks, “He is my son and I say he’s not ready to hear it. Are we clear?”
Cameron’s soft acquiescence and his mother’s sharp quick footsteps toward his bedroom door. John wonders how my son has anything to do with it.
His mom’s face and voice are gentler with him. Masked, but still firm, steel resolve under soft skin.
“John,” she says softly.
“I know,” he answers and she smiles tiredly and shuts his door. She’s said it enough times before that he can almost convince himself.
Just a machine. Right.
So while his mom promises she’ll fix it, keep him from ever having to become this John who Cameron talks about, John decides he’ll try anyway. He works at becoming this hard brave man, the John who’ll have enough foresight to send a robot back to protect himself, who’ll risk anything to save humanity. The one who fights.
The one who never forgets that it’s just programming, it’s only programming, that’s it’s just a machine.
He watches Cameron’s lips turn up at the corners when he asks her about John Connor.
Right.