TSCC Oneshot: All the Shattered Ones
Dec. 18th, 2009 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesterladyficThis begins the flood of TSCC Oneshots I've written over the past month.
Title: All the Shattered Ones
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Cameron
Summary: After Cameron imitates Riley's voice, John snaps, grows up a little bit, and becomes slightly reckless.
Disclaimer: I don't own TSCC. The title is from the song by Trading Yesterday
All the Shattered Ones
It was where his rage was coming from that really got to him. He walked away from her, fast and deliberate, and he wished she were flesh and bone so he could smash her face in.
But the irony was that if she were flesh and bone, he wouldn’t have needed to do so. He could go crazy thinking about it.
He did what he had to do, to make up for what he should have done. He was a failure and a leader and somehow he had to learn, but why did it have to come at such a cost? That’s all that had ever been, payment of what should never need to be given. Human lives to protect a living eked out of garbage and sewers and radiated rock. Hunted and dying. That’s what the future held and that’s what he strove to prevent and because he'd decided to play house and play chess at a non essential part of the game, one more life had been lost.
And it hurt him, tore desperately at his heart and his mind until he wanted to rip them out of his body. Maybe she could do it for him, but that would defeat her entire purpose and she would never do it. She would never see the need for it. And that’s what made him so angry.
She confronted him in the shed. He’d been pacing there for hours, hours after he’d left her and walked away so viciously and done what needed to be done. He’d grown up and it left him with a raw need to take it out on someone, to take it out on her. And she wouldn’t even care.
“You are still upset,” she observed.
“Wow, you’re really on top of it tonight,” he said quietly.
Somehow he always was quiet around her. Yelling didn’t have an effect, so why do it? But the icy rage was still hard to bear, even just inside his own skin.
“Tell me what I did wrong.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand more than you know.”
She just stood there, with that blank expression that still seemed to beg him for something, to express emotions that couldn’t lie beneath. It made him furious.
“You understand? That’s such idiocy, Cameron!” He crossed over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Do you understand that you hurt me? That hearing her voice was like getting my soul ripped apart? That guilt is so deep within me I’ll never be able to rid myself of her blood!”
And that was the part that really got to him, the fact that Riley’s death was emotional only in the sense that she was a fellow human being and he hadn’t helped her when he should have. It wasn’t because his first true love was dead or that his sense of a normal life was dead. And shouldn’t a normal teenage boy be mourning those things instead? Wouldn’t someone normal not be ashamed inside because he would rather have a living machine than a living girl?
Because Cameron was alive and before him and a constant presence and Riley was dead in a morgue and he felt a cold relief that it was Cameron who’d survived and hadn’t gone bad and didn’t have to be put down like a rabid dog.
He shook her until he felt his hands would fall off. He knew it wouldn’t bother her at all.
“Do you feel anything in there? Any understanding of what it means to have that done to you? To do that to someone? Is there a single spark of humanity in you?” he raged at her. Finally, his breath grew so ragged that he stopped and slid down to the floor, whispering. “Did you mean it when you told me, told me you-“
“Loved you,” she supplied calmly.
Her face came closer, more on level with his, and she opened her mouth to reply and suddenly he didn’t want to know the answer. He could see her face and emotions, or lack thereof, and he could remember countless similar occasions and could predict more like it. And that was all he needed to know.
And then the only thing that mattered was her and the fact that they weren’t dead yet. Seeing death made you need to celebrate life so he grabbed her face roughly and smashed his lips onto hers, pulling her so that she fell into his lap.
Willingly, he thought vaguely, even as his thoughts were overwhelmed with the sensations of her lips and hands and what it felt like to finally feel what he’d imagined a million times. It's not like she didn't have the strength to resist him if she wanted to. He wondered why he’d waited to do this; he wished he’d waited longer. She responded beneath him and she must, she must feel some part of this. He found himself pouring into her his emotion, trying to make her feel his feelings if she couldn’t have her own.
Partly to punish her for what she couldn’t help, more to punish himself, and there was another part that simply wanted what it wanted and to hell with the consequences.
After, when she actually smiled up at him, he found himself not regretting it at all.
Title: All the Shattered Ones
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Cameron
Summary: After Cameron imitates Riley's voice, John snaps, grows up a little bit, and becomes slightly reckless.
Disclaimer: I don't own TSCC. The title is from the song by Trading Yesterday
All the Shattered Ones
It was where his rage was coming from that really got to him. He walked away from her, fast and deliberate, and he wished she were flesh and bone so he could smash her face in.
But the irony was that if she were flesh and bone, he wouldn’t have needed to do so. He could go crazy thinking about it.
He did what he had to do, to make up for what he should have done. He was a failure and a leader and somehow he had to learn, but why did it have to come at such a cost? That’s all that had ever been, payment of what should never need to be given. Human lives to protect a living eked out of garbage and sewers and radiated rock. Hunted and dying. That’s what the future held and that’s what he strove to prevent and because he'd decided to play house and play chess at a non essential part of the game, one more life had been lost.
And it hurt him, tore desperately at his heart and his mind until he wanted to rip them out of his body. Maybe she could do it for him, but that would defeat her entire purpose and she would never do it. She would never see the need for it. And that’s what made him so angry.
She confronted him in the shed. He’d been pacing there for hours, hours after he’d left her and walked away so viciously and done what needed to be done. He’d grown up and it left him with a raw need to take it out on someone, to take it out on her. And she wouldn’t even care.
“You are still upset,” she observed.
“Wow, you’re really on top of it tonight,” he said quietly.
Somehow he always was quiet around her. Yelling didn’t have an effect, so why do it? But the icy rage was still hard to bear, even just inside his own skin.
“Tell me what I did wrong.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand more than you know.”
She just stood there, with that blank expression that still seemed to beg him for something, to express emotions that couldn’t lie beneath. It made him furious.
“You understand? That’s such idiocy, Cameron!” He crossed over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Do you understand that you hurt me? That hearing her voice was like getting my soul ripped apart? That guilt is so deep within me I’ll never be able to rid myself of her blood!”
And that was the part that really got to him, the fact that Riley’s death was emotional only in the sense that she was a fellow human being and he hadn’t helped her when he should have. It wasn’t because his first true love was dead or that his sense of a normal life was dead. And shouldn’t a normal teenage boy be mourning those things instead? Wouldn’t someone normal not be ashamed inside because he would rather have a living machine than a living girl?
Because Cameron was alive and before him and a constant presence and Riley was dead in a morgue and he felt a cold relief that it was Cameron who’d survived and hadn’t gone bad and didn’t have to be put down like a rabid dog.
He shook her until he felt his hands would fall off. He knew it wouldn’t bother her at all.
“Do you feel anything in there? Any understanding of what it means to have that done to you? To do that to someone? Is there a single spark of humanity in you?” he raged at her. Finally, his breath grew so ragged that he stopped and slid down to the floor, whispering. “Did you mean it when you told me, told me you-“
“Loved you,” she supplied calmly.
Her face came closer, more on level with his, and she opened her mouth to reply and suddenly he didn’t want to know the answer. He could see her face and emotions, or lack thereof, and he could remember countless similar occasions and could predict more like it. And that was all he needed to know.
And then the only thing that mattered was her and the fact that they weren’t dead yet. Seeing death made you need to celebrate life so he grabbed her face roughly and smashed his lips onto hers, pulling her so that she fell into his lap.
Willingly, he thought vaguely, even as his thoughts were overwhelmed with the sensations of her lips and hands and what it felt like to finally feel what he’d imagined a million times. It's not like she didn't have the strength to resist him if she wanted to. He wondered why he’d waited to do this; he wished he’d waited longer. She responded beneath him and she must, she must feel some part of this. He found himself pouring into her his emotion, trying to make her feel his feelings if she couldn’t have her own.
Partly to punish her for what she couldn’t help, more to punish himself, and there was another part that simply wanted what it wanted and to hell with the consequences.
After, when she actually smiled up at him, he found himself not regretting it at all.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 10:30 pm (UTC)great imagery and emotional transferance
though I have to say, I don't think John loved Riley at all ... she was a distraction from Cameron and the reason he was so messed up was because it was the first time he had ever used someone.
but other then that, wish this would have been in the show.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 11:16 pm (UTC)And I agree with you, that's why I had the paragraph about him being upset that he wasn't upset for the right reasons.
Anyway, thanks so much for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-29 01:34 am (UTC)This is so in tune with how John felt then...and it was quite obvious to everyone -even him- that his relationship with Riley wasn't about the poor girl at all ;)
In her way, Cameron loves him- whether she realizes it and lie about it, or she is oblivious at it- but Sarah's anti-metal training and the pilot accident turned his doubts in self-loathing before he could interpret her behaviour lucidly.
Can I invite you to write a post-final jameron reunion? maybe after he rescues her chip and reactivate her?
you have such wonderful, IC voices for those two characters ...and your writing conveys beautifully the mood for whole season 2 (yes, i'v just finished eading your others, too) .
I could read your stuff forever and never get tired.
Bravo!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-29 02:08 am (UTC)Perhaps I will write that, we'll see. My muse tends to ponder on scenes that I think could be done slightly differently and then change it. But I've been writing so much TSCC lately that anything's possible.
SO stay tuned for more cause it's coming.
Thank you again so much!