Summary: Takes place after the Season Finale Episode, "Born to Run." My own thoughts on the Terminator Series and the concept of John Connor. Will be a combination of my own storyline and that of the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Disclaimer: Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles is owned by Fox Productions.
Rating T- For Language and Violence. Rating Subjected to Change.
Warning: First chapter may have John look sadistic, dark, and maybe a bit mentally unstable.
Chapter 1- Breaking the Habit
Different.
Things were different. Much different.
He had fought. Bleed. Died. He had done everything that he could, everything that he was told as a child that he had to do in order to fulfill his destiny, to accomplish what he was born to do.
To fight the machines, to form the Human Resistance, to do what was necessary. Undoubtedly, to do what was necessary, meant to put himself through an emotional hell.
Future John, the one whom his mother said he was meant to become, the one who was supposed to be loved, respected, revered as a savior, a messiah. A lie. He was no messiah, he was no savior. He was a tormentor, a man whom had grown up with a chip on his shoulder of which he wished for the world to feel and suffer from.
He sent his father, Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect and impregnate his mother, Sarah Connor. Doing so, meant the death of his father and end of any childhood he could have had, one he had so desperately wanted since he was taken away from his mother and put into a foster home.
He then sent a Terminator, a T-800, a machine back ten years after his birth to protect him. He sent a man, one hell bent on protecting him at the cost of its own life. He knew, at the age of ten, John wanted a family, wanted a home. Wanted to belong. He found that in the machine, a creature created for the sole purpose of destroying him.
He used that, to slowly begin the process that would force him to grow to the cold hearted man that he was one day meant to be. And it worked.
The paranoia of his mother forced him to move around the country, jumping from state to state, never staying in one place for too long. He thought the running was over when they had met Charley Dixon, a man John soon saw as a potential father figure. And again, his dreams were taken from him once more.
Then he met her.
Cameron Phillips, the TOK-715, a Terminator, a machine bent on his sole destruction. She had met him at his school in Red Valley New Mexico, disguised as a student, waiting patiently for the day to met him, to talk to him. Protect him.
He had felt, even for those brief two days, that he belonged somewhere. That he was home. And then it was taken from him again.
Cromartie, a T-888, another Terminator that Skynet had yet again sent after him, came into his Chemistry class. He took a role call, and then came to his name. He then pulled out a gun and started firing. Cameron took the bullets and fell to the ground. He thought she was dead. He thought she was human. He found out later that she was wasn't.
Then he jumped eight years into the future. It was the year 2007, and he thought, just for a second, that he could get a new start, a new beginning. He was denied that luxury.
Cromartie had followed him, and after it had repaired its damages, pursued in its mission. To kill him.
John then met his Derek Reese, his father's older brother, his uncle. He had questioned why his future self had sent back his uncle to the past, why he had allowed his only family to return to the past. At first, he believed that it was some form of comfort, to make John realize that he still had family in the future, that it all didn't end with the coming of Judgment Day.
Looking back at it now, John mused at how stupid and naïve he had been. His future self didn't send his uncle back in time to comfort him, to in some odd way reassure him of his fate, to make his wish of a normal life more complacent. It was to make him suffer, harden at the time of Derek's murder.
It was all a plan, one conceived the ill and malevolent mind of the future, of himself. Sending a Terminator back in the form of a pretty teenage girl, one that could lie to him, one that could manipulate his feelings and do what she wanted. One that had a leaking power cell, the very one that caused the leukemia in his mother to start to develop. He now knew what Cameron's last message meant when she kept saying she was sorry. It wasn't for leaving him. It wasn't for lying to him.
It was for helping him become what he was today.
He smiled. No, it wasn't a smile. John Connor didn't smile, not for more then twenty years. It was cruel, dark, sinister. Yeah, the bastard had succeeded. The John Connor, the boy back in 1999, the one who jumped from 2007 to 2026, to the era where he didn't organize the Human Resistance, to the era where he was nobody important, was dying. Dying for a cause that didn't exist. And he wanted revenge.
He smiled again.
He couldn't stop the transformation he was going through right now, no, it was far to late to turn back, to make the clock move backwards. He was going to become John Connor, the man whom sent his father to his death, who sent a machine he had thought as a parental figure to make a meaningless sacrifice, who sent a young girl to be captured, tortured, copied, and killed. Who sent his last surviving family to be killed. Who sent a damaged Terminator to give his own mother cancer, and for the same damaged Terminator to lie to him everyday about the man he was to become. The man he was today.
He had wondered on several days since their arrival, why Catherine Weaver had brought him to future. He had no idea way other then he was supposed to fight the war, somehow aid his past self in what he needed to do. That wasn't the case.
Catherine found John Henry, whom turned out to be Cameron. She had switched the Turk for her chip, her memories and thoughts now trapped in the body of a Terminator meant once to kill him. It was on his orders, the orders of the another John, the one responsible for every bit of hell he had gone through in his life. And at that moment, he had enough.
He then shot her in the head.
Derek would have been proud.
He looked down at the palm of his hand, letting his fingers gently slide across the chip that hadn't been active for more then a decade.
He could've reactivated her, give her a new program, make her forget everything that she was told by the other John and stay by his side like he so desperately wanted those years ago. He had her body again, so it'd simply be a manner of removing her current chip for the one in his hand. He'd have Cameron back.
But he was John Connor. The bastard. The sole reason why so many had to die for no other reason then to cause himself more pain.
There is no fate but what we make.
He made his fate. He made the choice to be cold, alone, angry. To be consumed by his own hatred and relish in causing the people around him harm.
He had rationalized it at the time that it was only fair. That these people didn't deserve the happiness they got when he, the one who had lost so much was not even allowed a small glimmer of light in the dark abyss that was his soul and heart.
Absentmindedly, he brushed his foot against the cheek of the now dead woman at his feet, a bullet hole in the center of her forehead. He had killed her in cold blood, not even sparing her another look or glance after the deed was done. He had gained a habit of killing people who had wronged him in the past in some way or form. His latest victim was Jesse Flores.
He made her suffer with the same events as before. Made her go aboard the USS Jimmy Carter, made her destroy the entire ship and crew. Allowed Weaver to escape to the past. And most importantly, or to his sadistic glee, made her lose her child, the one she had no idea she was even carrying at the time.
John had to struggle with himself when Cameron came and told him about her conversation with Jesse, almost giving a cynical laugh of satisfaction when she said that the former XO had cried when she found out that she was now a living tomb. After all, he didn't want people to question his already deteriorating sanity.
'Served the bitch right.' He had no regrets with the trauma that the woman had gone through in that ordeal. She had caused others more emotional pain and suffering then she could possible have imagined.
After all, he was John Connor.
Shrugging his shoulders restlessly, he watched the Terminator Units he had assigned to the task of creating a TDE continue their work. Pulling out a old pocket watch, he opened it, revealing a red button in the center. He had all Terminator Units installed with a small explosive in their CPU, all of which would explode once a trigger activated the switch. A safety precaution he had said.
Once the machine was completed, the units all turned towards him, awaiting their next sequence of orders. That was when he took a look at each of the three Terminators in front of him.
The first was a T-800 Series, the very same series model that was sent to kill him mother and then to protect him. Short hair, hardened features, large muscle mass, and a indifferent expression on his face brought up memories John thought had died long ago. He named him Bob.
The next one was the model of a woman he knew he had loved at the tender age of sixteen, the series model TOK-715. Shoulder length hair, a petite frame, wide brown eyes giving her an expression of wonderment and curiosity. He gripped the chip in hand tighter. He named her Cameron.
The following Terminator held no sympathetic or guilty hold on his heart. It was a T-888 Model, with a lean build, short black hair, and average muscle mass. An Infiltrator that had been caught a few months back. But like all the machines under his command, had gotten attached, and gave him a name. His name was Richard.
Returning his gaze back to the kill switch in his hand, John flipped it closed one finally time before he gave them each a look, all characterizing one thing. Trust.
First he sent Bob back in time to 1994. Then he sent Richard to 2006. And finally, he was getting Cameron prepped for the trip to 1999. "Cameron?"
"Yes John?"
He looked at her and then looked back at the chip in his hand. It was up to him now. He could put the chip in her head, make her follow her directives again, make her keep secrets from him, make him the man he was today once again. And then he thought of his younger self.
He saw himself at the age of ten, watching Bob lower himself into the vat of molten metal, destroying himself. He saw himself at the age of sixteen, Cameron stuck between two trucks, shouting her love for him, and the pain that ripped through hi when he ripped her chip from her CPU.
He came to a decision.
Pulling his rifle out, John dropped the chip in his hand to the ground before firing, obliterating it. Tilting her head to the side, Cameron merely turned her inquisitive gaze back to John, silently asking for an explanation for his actions.
He smiled. And for some reason, for the first time in more then a decade, John Connor felt the genuine happiness that came with that smile. "There is no fate but what we make. Today, I'm doing what my predecessors should have done. Today, I'm deciding my own fate."
Different.
Things were different. Much different.
And they would stay different. He would make sure of it.
Terminator Units/Classes:
T-800 Model 101:
Outdated Terminator Unit. No Longer Mass Produced. Primary Function; Termination. Secondary Function; N/A.
T-888 Model 105:
Advanced T-850 Terminator Unit. Mass Produced. Primary Function; Termination. Secondary Function; Infiltration.
TOK-715 Model (N/A):
Unknown Terminator Unit. Mass Production; Unknown. First Series Model In Field. Primary Function; Infiltration. Secondary Function; Termination.
Equipment/Weaponry:
TDE (Time Displacement Equipment):
A machine which allows living tissue and mimetic polyalloy to be sent back and forward in time. Errors can occur regarding the time/place the subject wishes to arrive at. Currently in use by both Skynet and the Resistance.
/-//Author Note//-/ My first Terminator story. It was something I always wanted to do, but decided to wait until after the second season was over. Please review and tell me what you think. Criticism is welcomed.