Chapter Text
The screams of the T-1000 rattled in the back of Sarah's teeth. If they could even be called screams. Halfway between the labored creaking of metal and the reedy call of a trumpet, the noise could not be called a voice. It was too layered, too musical and complex to come out of any truly living thing. Yet Sarah knew it was a cry of agony; this thing— this monster whose body she'd seen shatter like glass and still manage to reforge itself, wailed in pain as it died. Perhaps for the first time it knew weakness and suffering. Far beneath her she saw bodies and faces conjured like ghosts from within the T-1000's shape. All people it had killed and replaced, she assumed. Devoid of mechanical purpose, Sarah could only see the act as repulsively sentient. What had only moments before seemed a thing capable of no greater thought than the thrumming core directive driving it to kill, now played the cruelest trick possible. It revealed an organic urge to live, and worse still an animalistic struggle against death. How awful to think that only in dying had it come to comprehend death and that in that revelation it had immediately thought of its victims. It wasn't enough to suggest remorse but it betrayed a secret capacity for life that lasted only a few excruciating moments and left Sarah with a searing ache across her being. Eleven fucking years and these things still couldn't even die properly, they always had to leave one last hurt.
A stray thought tugged at the corners of her mind as she watched the ever changing metal construct writhe in the molten steel dissolving it.
Where was its mind? From where in its shapeless body did its consciousness stem? Did it think with every drop of itself? The T-800’s CPU had been located in its head, though if this had been a design or limitation she couldn't be sure. The 1000 had to have one somewhere but surely it would've been immediately noticeable no matter how covertly the liquid metal had tried to hide it. Destroying its CPU would have stopped it. No, this thing didn't have a CPU. It was one. A machine made entirely of thinking, living metal. If 800's came coated in a layer of organic tissue the 1000 was itself a kind of organic material.
Most disturbing was the last idea these implications led her to: did this mean that, as it melted, it had been fully aware of everything taking place? A glistening face on the surface of the orange glow beneath her was all that remained now. Did it reach out for itself in that primordial bath, pieces of a mind grasping for permanent things which nothing could sever only to find them missing. Sarah imagined what she might feel looking at her own intestines and the thought proved either too foreign or too horrifying to process and came up blank. Perhaps the boundaries our imaginations impose on us are part of what make us human. She had no doubt the T-800 she'd destroyed all those years ago had been restrained by nothing and followed no code beyond efficiency of death. Its amputations had done little to phase it. Yet below her the T-1000 still shrieked its blazing death, and she felt horribly sure that it had understood every instant.
A yellow golden mouth widened and twisted inside out on the surface of the steel. It disappeared, the screaming stopped. She supposed she'd never know.
Distantly she heard John and his protector come to stand beside her. He has no name, she thought, surveying the damage done to him. She hadn't been able to bring herself to think of him as a T-800 since he'd ripped orderlies off her, tossing them aside like playthings, and her son grasped the fraying bundle of nerves and instinct that was her body and promised her he was here to help. The T-800 was her monster, her nightmare, the weapon that had forced her to survive and shredded her life in the process, and she couldn't call him that.
He'd just become him, a name euphemistic in its vagueness. And now he'd lost an arm for John. Possibly a great deal more from the looks of him, scrapes of silver and chrome shone through the gaps of what remained of his ratty t-shirt and leather jacket and he leaned precariously on his right leg, his left knee twisted beyond usage. Better than dying for John, he'd survived a hell of a lot for him.
"Will this melt in there too?" John held up the T-800's right arm.
"Yes." His hollow molten eye moved in perfect synch with his green, split face kept whole by the unification of the consistency in his gaze. He looked at John for a moment, then his eyes fell to the remnant in his child’s hands. Sarah could not tell in that moment what passed between him and the machine that was his predecessor, but it straightened the corners of his lips a degree and summoned cold mounting dread to the deep parts of her stomach. "Throw it in." The words came with a finality Sarah felt she or John couldn't be prepared for.
"And the chip," he instructed. She looked from the dark spot of the melting arm to the fractured silver piece in John's pudgy hands. God, he was still soft and tender and he shouldn't be here, shouldn't see what he'd seen. He should have everything taken care of for him and never need to worry. Sarah should be able to keep him safe, should be able to let him grow into a boy before he even thought of becoming a man. And yet here he was, beautiful and mean, bitter all the way through and so, so kind despite all his reasons to be cruel. Her gorgeous child, the life her body had created cell by cell, he deserved more than this. She wanted to give him more.
"It's over," Sarah gasped through the haze of blood loss and adrenaline crashing down around her. Rage and vindication ripped through her like a bomb as the chip fell and disappeared below. Screw Skynet. There would be no Judgment Day, she wouldn't allow it. Screw John Connor, master military leader, there was no future now she could be certain of and that fact demanded hope.
"No." He stared into the heat, unblinking. There were wrinkles between his eyebrows and his eyes spoke weariness and mourning. "There's one more chip."
Oh. She looked at him as if struck. He's leaving us too.
He tapped one gloved finger to his temple, lips hardened the slightest bit in his stoic version of grim certainty.
He's a killing machine, he doesn't belong here. He'll always be a needle in my side, a ticking time bomb, a reminder of all that might still go wrong. That tech is too dangerous to ever risk discovery.
"And it needs to be destroyed also." Still she stared at him in disbelief. What was he? A machine might die to protect its target if told to do so, but this wouldn't be for John. Danger would not vanish from his life so easily. They'd always be running from something, the only difference now being they might have something to run toward. Without him they were exposed, fragile tissue and bone so easily rended, ready to catch the next bullet waiting around the corner.
You'd do that for us? The words stuck far back in her throat, emerging as another ragged breath. Deeper still another feeling bubbled, desperate and laden heavy with years of missing a man she'd been allowed to love for only one night. Stay.
"Here," with his remaining hand he pressed the control panel into her hands, "I cannot self terminate. You must lower me into the steel." Her and John's thoughts ran together, him speaking when she could not.
"No." Disbelief, and then a plea, " no .” John’s voice broke and turned shrill as his desperation soaked into every fiber of his being. “No! No, it’ll be ok! Stay with us.” His breath shook and his mother’s heart ached as she heard the tears gathering in his voice. Stunned into silence, all she could bring herself to do was watch, watch as his little hands clung to the torn and bloodied leather jacket, powerless to halt the machine’s movements, watch as his cheeks streaked with tears and cut through smudges of dirt and washed strips of skin clean.
His deep guttural voice came in apologies so dispassionate and yet so earnest it only fueled John’s desperation to make him stay. Sarah’s insides twisted as an unwelcome truth encroached upon her.
Machines don’t do this.
“I must go away, John.” He moved John out of his way with one gloved hand, his grip on the boy’s arm firm and careful as he effortlessly dragged a hanging post of rust iron chains to the edge of their grated platform. John begged again. With his tears now shoved to the side his voice grew strong.
“No. Don’t do it, don’t go.” Anger curled the last word, a shade of the man he might become rising to the surface. He belonged to John, was made for him, how could he abandon him?
Shameful memories unwelcome and unbidden burned in Sarah’s mind. John, three years old, smiling and cooing “dada” at her then boyfriend, a small-time arms dealer whose name she’d since lost to time. And though his name had faded the sound of his mocking laugh would never leave her ears. I’m not your fucking daddy, he’d growled in the tiny boys face, smiling wider when John’s lip quivered and he began to wail. Every instinct within her called for bloodshed, animal motherhood roaring within her to lunge at him, to tear and kick and slash till he was reduced to a grotesque pulp.
But she was alone. Hunted women with small children were seldom welcome in the kinds of places they needed in order to prepare John for the future. There was nowhere else to go.
So she stayed silent. Whisking him away to their shared room — barely more than a cot tucked into a sizable closet — had helped contain the sparks of rage that threatened to ignite the room, but did nothing to soothe John’s fear and confusion. She held him for hours, stroking his hair and telling him how much she loved him, how she would always protect him, and how much he meant to the future of the world. All the while she fought back her own sobs of grief, never able to bring herself to mention his father, a man who’d loved him all his life and yet would never know his son.
“It has to end here.” He couldn’t even look at John as he said it, eyes transfixed by the death that beckoned him below.
“I order you not to go,” John bit through clenched teeth. “I order you not to go!” He grabbed and pulled at the unflinching form, each cry growing more shrill with fury. His little hands beat against a metal chest and the muted ring of each impact shook Sarah from her stupor. Illuminated by the harsh glow of the steel John’s face shone like orange glass. The lashes around his wide blue now eyes clumped together and his voice strained, raw and weak from pleading. All the while the controls sat heavy in Sarah’s hand, her executioner's axe. For an instant she thought John looked to her, looked to his mother for help where he was too powerless, too small to fight. Her breath caught in her chest.
He stood in silence. Had she not known the sheer processing power he wielded she might say he struggled to find the right words. His hand loosed its grip on the chains and floated to John’s cheek where he gingerly traced the path of each tear.
“I know now why you cry.” He lifted his index finger to inspect a bubble of water. The way he stared, focus sharpened to a razor edge, made Sarah certain he was analyzing it, searing its molecular composition into the forefront of his consciousness for the rest of his life. “But it’s something I could never do.”
John lunged forward, burying himself in his chest, one large arm enough to wrap the boy tight against him. He shook his head, shuddering and crying against a no doubt still warm body. How deep did his human charade go? As he wept against his chest sucking in ragged breaths, did John hear his heart still beating?
It took effort for him to wrench his gaze from the top of John’s head, the boy's face nestled in the fold of his body. When their eyes finally met she shook with the strength of the sob that wracked her. Tears she’d kept in small boxes over decades fell on her cheeks and she grieved everything she’d lost, everything she’d robbed John of, the cosmic cruelty that had forever displaced them in time.
The yellow plastic of the control panel cracked as it connected with the ground. Despite her tears she stood as strong as she ever had, her visage made that much more commanding by her wild hair and bloodsoaked skin. Perhaps she looked like the Sarah Connor that Reese had so adored, mother of the future, first soldier in the fight for freedom, unquestioned, unbeholden, a warrior. A part of her sharpened and glowed at the thought and she spoke in the voice that woman might have.
“No.” Amusement curled in the corner of her mouth at his minutely bewildered face. “You’re getting us out of here.” She beckoned for her son, already beginning to turn and leave without a thought.
“I can not pass for human. I am of no use to you.” His voice came, dispassionately flat, certain what he spoke was fact.
“Not with that attitude,” she retorted dismissively and began leading John back through the maze that brought them there.
“Large trunk, close by, generic.” John nodded. Sarah brushed dirt from his cheeks, her hands awkward and rough though he didn’t seem to mind. “If you don’t find anything, come back in thirty minutes.” He stalled, looking hesitantly between his friend and his mother until he caught her eye and took off in a light jog.
He shouldn’t be out there alone.
She bit back the worry and pressed it into guilt she could save for later. Good mothers don’t send their eleven-year-olds out to steal cars.
Good mothers also don’t often have open bullet wounds.
Her thigh shrieked as she bent to sit, hand gripping his arm for balance as she sank onto a low yellow step. Her breath came in sharp whistling gasps through her teeth, eyes gnarled shut as she waited for each howling nerve to grow quiet in stillness.
“Tape,” she barked, hand extended toward him. The weight and feel of the new roll of duct tape that he placed in her hands sent a shiver of delight along her spine. What a tiny luxury, yet too many times she’d had to do more with less, and having it soothed a knot of exhaustion living just between her eyebrows. It made one less thing to worry about.
First, a base ring of tape around the wound to give it something to stick to. This took infuriatingly long to accomplish. Blood had soaked through the fabric of her pant leg and her hands kept coming up slick and cold but she’d already lost too much blood for that fact to scare her. In any case, that was the easy part.
Then came the binding.
“Fuck!” she gasped, bent over and shuddering as the roll slapped to the ground. The gaping hole in her shoulder rendered her right hand near useless, her little remaining strength overcome by flooding pain. She’d never be able to tie a proper tourniquet in this state.
“Hey,” she croaked, slapping his hand and panting. “You’ve gotta pull this tight enough to stop the bleeding, I can’t.” He knelt silently before her as best he could, maneuvering his twisted knee with superhuman carefulness. He took up the task without question. Watching his left hand move with undisturbed deftness, Sarah wondered if he even noticed the missing arm. Once, he told John he felt something like pain, that he recognized injuries not unlike humans, but they served as no deterrent. Would this be any different?
She had no time to think further as blinding dull cold pain, its teeth reaching to the bone, tore a guttural scream from her throat. Her mind emptied save for the cavernous raging freeze already emanating from her thigh. That’d surely seal the wound for now. He wrapped again, another shout, this one grunted through clenched teeth. Again, a snarl and labored breathing, sweat and spit dripping from her mouth as she doubled over heaving. He secured the final end and set the tape aside, satisfied with his work.
He didn’t move to stand.
“I can not pass for human. You should terminate me now while John searches for vehicles.” He paused, silent and expressionless to such a degree it unnerved her. “He will not interrupt.” With that he rose to his feet, unblinking eyes staring down at Sarah expectantly.
“I made my decision, Tin Man. Don’t try to change my mind. Sit.” Next the steps she’d perched on stood a massive support beam, its base insulated with bricks and bolts as thick as her wrist. She waved loosely in its direction, it should serve as an acceptable seat for him. Gingerly, he lowered himself to the stone base, watching Sarah unrelentingly.
Sitting like this she tried to picture him in the technicolor glow of her childhood favorite film, dancing lightly and drumming on himself in time with crashing symbols crooning “if I only had a heart.” He might do it if John asked him to.
“I don’t understand. My continued existence threatens the safety of the both of you. It would be best if I were destroyed.” Sarah released a drawn out sigh. Lips pursed, she nodded slowly as she considered his reasoning. Like everything he did there was a clear logic to it, maybe even more sound than her own. None of that could change how she’d felt when asked to watch him die, to pull the trigger herself.
“Easier,” she corrected, “not better.” Apparently he had no retort for that and she turned away from him, avoiding his overwhelming gaze. Her eyes bore into the darkness beyond their temporary shelter, eyes hawklike, searching for any sign of movement. The cops might be close behind them, though she wasn’t inclined to believe it. In any case they needed to be back on the move as quickly as possible. “Can you repair yourself?”
“I would require tools.” He inspected the mangled lump of cables dangling from his shoulder. “It will take time to rebuild a limb. I will be unable to load a gun to defend you.” She heard the suggestion in his words. Useless . The word soured on her tongue and injected a thread of spite into her tone.
“So we get you a baseball bat or an axe, problem solved.” His minute frown tightened. “Aren’t you programmed to handle this type of situation, improvise if seriously damaged and kill your target no matter what?” She cocked an eyebrow as she challenged him to lie.
“Yes,” he gritted out after some time, reluctantly conceding to her understanding of his design. She let out a low chuckle under her breath, sparing a self satisfied glance in his direction. A gust of wind flew through her, raising goosebumps along her skin. How long since John left? In the gathering darkness she could barely make out what lay beyond their door, and nothing else indicated each second slipping away.
Was that a siren in the distance?
Her left hand came to rest on her right elbow, thumb mindlessly rubbing her arm as her knee started bouncing. Whispers of paranoia gathered at the edges of her thoughts, unaffected by her attempts to wash them away. No matter what she did it would always come back, that certain knowledge that something was not right, that each move could very well be her last.
“He has been gone for twenty-one minutes.” He said it like a fucking clock, empty of anything save for the measure of time. Sarah’s hackles rose at the interruption. Was he complaining all of a sudden? Trying to press her to give in and kill him before John got back? Over her shoulder she shot him a stern look of confusion, wordlessly demanding an explanation.
“You are thinking of John.” Her gaze sharpened, jaw set tightly, teeth grinding together. “Your left hand is resting in a gesture of comfort, you are concerned for his safety.” His hand raised limply to indicate where she still traced circles against her skin. Instantly it fell to her side, abandoning the vulnerable touch. The taught line of her focus returned to the outside world, to John’s continued absence. The steel trap of her jaw did not release. Minutes ticked by at an excruciating pace, Sarah’s tense breathing her only method of keeping time.
Eons later two pinpricks of headlights appeared in the distance, the humming engine music to her ears. John had swiped a small boxy grey thing, a four seater with decent trunk space and no distinctive bumper stickers to be seen. Sarah rocketed to her feet, the numbness of her thigh lending her stability and speed as she staggered toward him. Just as he slammed the front door behind him she reached him, the car still thrumming with life.
“Special delivery for– Mom?” He went silent, on her face an expression he could not parse. Her hands cupped his face on either side, their pressure tender and soothing against his skin. John blinked slowly, fighting the childish part of him that yearned to shut his eyes and curl into her, away from the chaos of the world. He told himself he didn’t need that kind of thing anymore, that she’d taught him to grow out of it and there was no going back now. He took care of himself, he didn’t need his mommy to make things better.
“Brilliant boy,” she breathed, pressing a kiss to the line of his hair before swallowing him against her chest. Eyes closed, she basked in the smell of the top of his head. Sweat, grease, blood, and oil obscured it, but underneath it all lay the scent she’d known since the day he was born. The smell of her son, a chemical salve to her every ailment, her wandering limb restored to his rightful place. A year without this had bled her dry, how she could survive another second without it was beyond her.
Released as quickly as he’d been entangled, John reeled a moment, looking hesitantly to Lug Nuts for aid. Unfortunately his robo-pal had no insight to offer, and only limped toward the two of them. He moved better than his mom, but way slower, dragging his metal hunk of leg with each step. John rushed to his side, small frame barely able to support his weight but desperate to help nonetheless.
“Hey dork, how’re ya holding up?” His laughter faltered, his voice reedy with tension.
“I look like crap,” his friend reassured, and flashed John his own mimicked half smile.
“Yeah, you do,” John echoed, shoulders relaxing as a massive right arm wrapped snugly around them.
Beyond them, mom had taken over the car. She’d already completed a frantic search through the car seats and came up empty handed. The trunk opened with a resounding chnk , revealing glimpses of what John thought might be some garbage bags and a spare tire.
“Jackpot,” she hissed under her breath, already rifling through the contents. “John, here, you need a change of clothes.” A white and green striped t-shirt flew into his face, not long followed by a pair of light blue jeans. Tugging the clothes aside, John saw his mother already kicking off her shoes and moving to slip off her shirt.
“Mom, mom – Mom wait a second, wait!” She stilled, her freezing blue eyes shrinking his confidence a degree. “What are we doing, I mean– what’s the plan here, anyway? What’re we supposed to do with rusty over here?” John looked up at his friend, “No offense.”
“I can not rust, none taken.” Mom leaned forward, thankfully keeping her shirt on, and rested her weight against the car. He chewed his cheek to quiet the churning in his stomach at how waxy her face looked.
“I need to go to the hospital. I’d ask him to patch me up but he’s in worse shape than I am.” She looked over the beaten and exposed endoskeleton, simultaneously distressed and enraptured by the tiny intricate mechanisms spanning every inch. “I’m going in by myself, the two of you lay low close by and if you can get started on some basic repairs even better.” He nodded and she faintly heard a smooth whirring sound as he did. “Hopefully I’m in and out in one to two nights, but if they try to keep me longer don’t come get me. I’ll make it out myself.” The hard edge of her voice stung, John’s cheeks growing hot as tears pricked his eyes. He remembered her face, cold and furious, only nights before when he’d come to rescue her from that awful place, that place he’d sent her to because he hadn’t believed her.
Maybe something slipped, John’s lip trembled a bit too blatantly, his breathing a bit too shallow, whatever it was it prompted his mom to awkwardly add a final thought in a gentler voice, the one she used when she knew he was upset.
“There’s no terminator after us now, just people. Like to see them try and stop me.” She turned back to the donated clothes she’d selected for herself, clearing her throat before resuming changing.
For now John supposed that would have to be enough. They still had half a shitload of LAPD guys chasing after them and not a lot of places to go, this was probably their best option.
Once changed John turned back to his mom, his army green backpack stuffed full with his Public Enemy shirt, baggy jeans, and undeniably kickass camo jacket. No way in hell was he ditching these clothes, especially now that they were all badass and bloodstained. That might be the only upside to this shitfest. He stifled a smirk, laughing internally as he thought I killed a terminator and all I got was this bloody t-shirt.
“Ready?” his mom asked, stuffing the spare tire and clothes into the back seat. She’d done her best to look like an innocent bystander, a style she still somehow managed to pull off with remarkable believability. Her black tank top had been changed for a loose fitting turquoise turtleneck with long sleeves to hide the wiry muscle of her arms. Pants looked like they’d been a challenge for her. For one thing she’d been forced to cut her old ones off to preserve the tourniquet around her mid thigh, for another, no matter how oversized her new jeans might be, the bulge of tape and fabric remained obvious underneath. Thin red lines of blood had begun to seep through to the denim, leaving John to wonder if it was old or new. “Get in, we need to move,” came her ever efficient voice.
“What about him? He needs some new stuff too.” John’s pulse spiked, his palms suddenly cold and clammy. A nonsense thought wriggled into his mind. What if she was lying? Just waiting to get him in the car so they could leave his friend behind? What if–
“He’s going in the trunk. Can’t risk anyone spotting him even by accident.” She hadn’t even looked up as she said it, so completely focused on readying herself and selecting the closest emergency room she could still go into unrecognized. She looked up from where she’d splayed a map and phone book across the hood of the car. “Can you fit?”
“No problemo.” John snickered at the shape his deep accent twisted the words into, their delivery so casual it circled back around to sounding alien. “My organic tissue will regenerate faster if allowed to repair undisturbed. I will redirect 95% of my operations to this task, rendering my speech network unresponsive.” He’d already begun folding himself into the trunk in what looked to be an uncomfortably tight squeeze. John chastised himself for not finding a larger car or even a truck so his friend wouldn’t have to crumple himself up like this.
The last words he spoke only to John, gaze pressing a heavy weight onto his chest. His mom wouldn’t worry if he looked like he’d never wake up, probably wouldn’t even care if he did die. No, not right, she’d saved him too, told him to stay when John couldn’t make him listen. She had to care at least a little.
“A touch and I will restore all systems to their proper states.”
“So you’re basically just going to sleep?” John asked indignantly.
“This process could be called sleep.” John flung his hands up and groaned exasperated at the mangled behemoth before him.
“Man, why didn’t you just say that? You don’t have to make it all dramatic sounding like you’re gonna die or something.”
“I can not die, John.” John’s face heated with emotion, his jaw clenched tightly and he folded his arms across his chest, looking sideways at him before he spat back.
“Yeah, yeah whatever. Shut up, ok?” Instant regret swallowed him whole as he saw the red light of his friend’s eye fade to a dull flicker. He scraped the back of his hand against his nose, sniffing deeply to hide any incriminating sign of tears. Sometimes he couldn’t stand how much of a stupid crybaby he was. Some great military leader he’d be, John Connor the wimp.
He folded his friend the last bit into the trunk and raised his hand to close it. As soon as his fingertips touched metal he stopped, taking in his sleeping form. His eyes were open. Weird. His chest didn’t rise and fall as he breathed. Double weird. John’s fingers itched to poke him, to see if he’d jump up all freaked out like Tim did whenever he snuck into his bedroom in the middle of the night. Or if he’d be all dorky about it and sit up slow and straight and ask John if he was alright. Second one, obviously, but even so he held the image of him bolting up half asleep, ready when John needed him, close to his heart.
He shrugged his backpack off and tucked it gingerly underneath his head, careful not to disturb him, then shut the trunk and joined his mother in the front seat.
“Where’s your bag?” She asked, eyes scanning for it.
“I put it in the back, not like I’m gonna need it or anything, jeez. It only has my old clothes in it anyway.” He evaded her eyes; the dirt underneath his fingernails was far more interesting.
Nothing else was said.