Archive of Our Own ^beta

Title: Prima Facie (Complete)
Fandom: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Summary: During that first week, everything Cameron did had a flavor of wrongness to it. Her smile was too wide, her eyes a touch too cold, and there was the way she spoke – flat, alien, like she only knew one tone and timbre to her voice.
Characters: Sarah, Cameron and John
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, language
Spoilers: Only for the Pilot episode, with references to the movies.
Beta:
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.
Author's Note: Written pretty much the day after the pilot, so this has been sitting in my hard drive for a while. Anyway, this was me, trying to get her characterization and voice into my head. Any constructive criticism welcome.

This was a story of a woman who saved the whole world. This was a legend of a child who grew up to be a hero. This was a tale of a machine who became a girl.

But at first, none of this was true.

Sarah eyed the gleam of the blade as she twisted it in her hand, then quickly settled the weapon back onto the pile when it passed inspection. Most people thought a knife was just a blunt instrument – they didn't understand the concept of weight and mass, how an extra few kilos on the backend could ruin the balance between the tip and the grip. Sarah, of course, knew how to handle a weapon, but beyond that over the years, her appreciation grew steadily into an art form.

The kitchen table in front of her was three rows deep in guns and blades. The routine of weapons inventory was a familiar one to her. But for a second, Sarah's concentration waivered and she closed her eyes, resting her palms flat against the surface of the table as she breathed deeply. A headache was forming above her right eye; one that slow to grow with a dull throb.

She suspected it was a side effect to lack of sleep. The nightmares had started again; not that they'd ever really gone away, but for the last few months, she'd been able to thwart the dreams for a good portion. Now, they were back with a vengeance and every damn time she closed her eyes and slept, Sarah saw only one thing: a flare of light, a blast of heat, and a mushroom blooming in the sky that heralded the end of everything.

Judgment day.

The sound of movement nearby drew her attention, and fractionally opening her eyes, her gaze slid to the hallway. John and Cameron were occupied in the other room, unpacking. There was a brief, disquieted pause before Sarah reluctantly returned her focus to the inventory. The presence of the terminator was still a thing to get used to, though after three days and one time-traveling trip, Sarah was just thankful things were quiet for once.

Never safe, though. No one was ever safe.

"We'll need more weapons than this," Cameron spoke from a distance, and Sarah glanced up again to find the slim woman standing immobile in the hallway.

"I know," she agreed. "When we get a steady cash flow, we'll make another swing by Blake Street. Looked to be a good place to pick up…" whatever the hell they wanted, actually, as long as they had the money to back it up. The guys working Blake Street weren't picky with their customers or merchandise. "This will just have to do for now," she finished.

Sarah reached into the large brown paper bag, hand surfacing with a simple folding pocket-knife. It fit snuggly into the palm of her hand; an easy weapon to conceal. She flicked her wrist and wielded it expertly, the blade flying open with a flourish and a slice of air that was almost hushed.

"The school we enrolled in has metal detectors," Cameron spoke softly, smooth, intently following the movement of Sarah's hand as she flicked closed the pocket-knife and settled it among the rest of the weapons. "John won't be able to carry anything inside."

Sarah paused, jaw clenching. "Noted."

She glanced sideways at the smaller woman, taking in Cameron's appearance with a sweeping glance for the first time. Cameron was dressed in fatigues and a tank top, and though she still managed to look like a pretty and innocent young thing, the attire was old, tattered and from God knows where. With everything else ahead of them – settling into another town, setting up a secure safe-house, establishing identities and memorizing stories to go along with them – hell, after just time-traveling, they hadn't given thought to clothes shopping yet.

It wouldn't do for a seventeen year old girl to be wearing untrendy clothes. It'd turn heads and raise eyebrows, and the last thing Sarah wanted was people glancing twice at Cameron. Though Sarah knew the sharp angles and the attractive features of her porcelain face were going to draw enough attention.

There were benefits to camouflaging a terminator in such an innocent visage, but on the other hand, Cameron's face was one that people would easily remember. That had its clear disadvantages.

But everything had its price.

"First things first," Sarah decided, "We need to go shopping for clothes."

She'd never taken a girl shopping before, much less a terminator.

Though Sarah had long since stopped putting much thought into expanding her own attire beyond the customary tank-top and jeans, she realized a teenage girl's apparel required more attention and complexity. Sarah wasn't even quite sure she knew where to begin, though from distant memories nearly two decades old, she remembered a time where she'd been called stylish in her tastes in clothing. Well, as one could have been back in the eighties anyway.

She watched silently as the smaller woman thumbed through a rack of skirts, the terminator's gaze focused and ever-precise, giving the task the same intense consideration as she gave everything else. Sarah suspected Cameron was probably taking note of all the variations and patterns, cataloguing them into some database in her head that could be easily referenced to in the future.

"I like this one," Cameron declared, removing one particular skirt from the rack. It was a short, pink skirt with red flowers embroidered on it. She held it up for Sarah to inspect, seeking approval. "What do you think?"

Sarah suddenly wanted C4, desperately.

She couldn't even remember the last time she'd willingly worn a skirt outside of her waitress jobs. A little thrown, Sarah paused and then snagged the thing from Cameron's hands. She shoved the pink skirt back into the pile and pilfered another one – a plain white one – flowing, pretty, something that would go well with Cameron's figure.

And God help her, she did not just think that.

"Try this one instead."

Cameron stared at the offered item, and glanced up at Sarah. "Why?"

Sarah paused. "Because…" she offered lamely.

After a brief pause, Cameron obediently accepted the skirt. She held it up to the fluorescent lighting of the department store ceiling, inspecting it briefly, before she turned back to Sarah with a smile. "I like this one, too," she approved.

The smile was entirely an artificial one.

Sarah knew the story well.

A mother became a warrior. A son became a hero. Judgment day arrived, and the humans fought and died, grieved and lost, and in the distant future the boy-turned-man-turned-savior would do the impossible and lead them to victory.

No matter how many times Sarah tried to convince herself that they would stop Judgment Day before it ever happened again – that fate was what they would make of it – every time she glanced at Cameron, the proof was undeniable and her convictions crumbled bit-by-bit. It was hard enough getting through her day-to-day life, haunted by the dreams of children screaming – or worse yet, children being silenced. But looking into Cameron's eyes every day was like staring into the face of the sun – it would only blind you in the end.

During that first week, everything Cameron did had a flavor of wrongness to it. Her smile was too wide, her eyes a touch too cold, and there was the way she spoke – flat, alien, like she only knew one tone and timbre to her voice. Cameron would learn quickly, of course. Soon enough her artificial neural network would adapt and hone her social skills until they were as razor-sharp as her killing ones, but Sarah would always know the truth about what lay hidden underneath that flawless skin.

She wondered, though, if John was going to remain as astute.

"No," he muttered again, shaking his head in annoyance as he dropped to the living room couch and kicked his feet up on the table. "Football isn't about that at all."

Cameron stared down at him and paused. Then, just as gracelessly, Cameron crashed on the couch next to him mirroring John's slumped form. It looked awkward on a girl, her posture all splayed out and boneless, but she had yet to straddle any comprehension of gender differences. At this point she was still mechanically parroting behavior, echoing everything she saw until she was able to deconstruct the fundamental purpose behind any given act.

It was a work-in-progress. Painfully so, at times.

"If not for the pleasure in watching socially acceptable forms of violence," Cameron asked, "then why?"

John paused. "Alright, maybe it is partially that. But normal kids don't think about it that way. It's about entertainment. School spirit," John mocked, adept at acting normal; never being it. "Look, you gotta know these things. High school football games are all about being popular and getting drunk afterwards. You know, generally screwing around."

"Screwing around," Cameron repeated in a flat tone.

"Yeah." He shrugged, then dumbed it down for her, speaking in a slow voice as if talking to a child. "Immature stuff that we're supposed to like at our age."

Despite appearances, and the fact that John found it awkward and embarrassing, Sarah could already tell he was starting to gloss over Cameron's faults in that same way he had done with the other terminator – the one he had nicknamed briefly as Uncle Bob. That hulking frame had been as subtle as a sledgehammer, as graceless as a hurricane, but John had quickly taken to the T-101. In many ways, she knew John had adopted that terminator as the father-figure he had never had. She prayed and hoped he'd be mature enough now not to make the same type of connections with this other one.

Though, somehow, she knew John would never look to Cameron as any parental figure, that was for damn sure.

He never had a normal life; didn't have the luxury of an ordinary person's perception on the world. How could he when she'd been training him for Judgment Day since the cradle? He learned the mechanics of a gun alongside his arithmetic. He'd learned how to assemble dirty bombs when normal boys were roughhousing on playgrounds and tugging girl's pigtails. There were things missing and absent from his life, Sarah knew, but she hoped he'd always understand fundamental basics no matter how complicated and fucked up his life became.

A teenage boy's hormones were screwed-up enough already, but given the fact that Cameron had taken to prancing around the house half-naked, constantly attached to him at the hip, there were lines Sarah feared would get mixed up in John's head.

So far, he seemed to be handling it well enough, but she could see how that tide could shift so swiftly.

Cameron heaved an annoyed sigh as she reached for the remote control. "Sounds stupid to me," she muttered, a touch of humanity unexpectedly coating her voice. "Violence and aggression and all this testosterone bullshit." She tossed a look over her shoulder at Sarah. "Boys," she muttered in exasperation.

Beside her, John snorted an easy laugh and snatched the remote.

And a fear – a fear only a mother could possibly understand – worked up Sarah's spine.

She awoke that night with her heart thudding against her chest, breath coming in sharp, jagged burst and sweat soaking her undershirt. Though the routine of waking up from nightmares was a familiar one to Sarah, it never failed to be disorienting. She dropped her head into her hands and scrubbed fingers through the strands, still reeling from the afterimages flashing across her mind's eye.

This time the nightmare wasn't the same apocalyptic one; wasn't, even, a dream about the future.

This nightmare was all about her past.

Kyle Reese was much like everything else in her life – unforgettable and haunting, even after all these years. She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and climbed to her feet, snagging a sweater nearby to toss over her undershirt and boxers. The house was chilly in the middle of the desert night, but Sarah barely noticed the biting temperature as she padded across the floorboards barefoot.

The kitchen lights were on, and though Sarah never forgot the presence of a terminator in the house, it took a split-second to remember Cameron never slept.

The terminator was standing in front of the kitchen window, the moonlight streaming in to highlight the sharp angles of her face. She was frozen and calm, and for a moment, Sarah had a flashback to the other terminator – the T101, standing just like that, perfectly still – and stopped in her tracks and stared.

Cameron, of course, knew she was there. "Couldn't sleep?"

Sarah recovered. "What gave it away?"

"You're awake," Cameron answered, then turned her head slowly. Her eyes locked onto Sarah's gaze, direct and unflinching for a moment before they dropped to the hemline of her own shirt, toying with a loose thread from her PJs before she yanked it free. "It's just one of those questions you ask," she continued in a soft voice. "I've noticed that."

"What?"

"Humans," Cameron continued. "You ask questions when you already know the answer."

Sarah crossed the kitchen and swung open the fridge. When she emerged with a bottle of beer, she stepped back and straddled one of the stools nearby. In the background, she could make out the blurry outline of the TV, settled on some infomercial channel with the sound muted. Cameron had been watching television during the nights, apparently in the attempt to adapt quicker.

Sarah shifted her attention back to the terminator. "Those would be rhetorical questions," she explained, knowing it was necessary to clarify such things. "They don't need answers."

"Yes," Cameron agreed. "But John used to say that he liked that. Liked the luxury of idle conversation. People used to talk about the weather and sports. Movies. He remembered that."

Sarah stiffened for a second, acutely aware that the man Cameron spoke of was a man her son had yet to become. It wasn't the first time Cameron had mentioned him – this older John, the savior of mankind. It wasn't even the tenth time.

And like always, there was a touch of familiarity in Cameron's voice that threw Sarah's bearings.

She took a swig of her beer. "How well did you know him? The older John?"

Cameron paused for a second, clearly assessing the question from all angles. "After I was reprogrammed and commissioned by the Resistance, he examined our models and selected me for the task—"

"Models?" Sarah stopped her.

"There were several terminators to select from," Cameron explained. "John nearly chose another T101, but he feared the face and build would be too recognizable. He decided to go with a terminator with an unassuming look, instead."

"You?" Sarah mused with a curl of her lips. "Unassuming? He didn't know you very well, then, did he?"

Cameron paused for a long minute, staring at her.

"What?" Sarah asked.

Cameron glanced away, returning to her post by the window. "I thought that was another rhetorical question. You already know the answer."

"I do?"

"That's two," Cameron ticked off, like she was making a list in her head. "John never did anything without having a reason. You taught him that. He got to know me before he settled on my selection. He wouldn't have given this task to just anyone, terminator or not."

"So what made you so special," Sarah paused briefly, lifting the bottle to bring it to her lips, "…besides being 'unassuming', that is?"

Cameron tried a smile. "He said I reminded him of you."

The son would grow into the man that trusted machines.

The thought sickened Sarah; rolled her stomach unpleasantly when she gave it too much consideration. Despite his upbringing - raised in this pit of fear that she had made of his world - the proof was undeniable. John always knew the value of human life, but he'd soon account for that of a machine as well.

Sarah, herself, had no idea what to make of Cameron yet. The other woman – the thing, she corrected herself - was an asset as much as any weapon they had. Things were too complicated and messy for Sarah to waste a resource like it, but she couldn't deny the hesitation – the fear – that stirred within her.

Their protector was one in the same as their enemy – a terminator, cut from the same cloth as the rest.

In her head, Sarah always imagined the way to the future as a long, lonely road ahead of them leading into darkness; singular in its mysterious destination. She peered into the horizon, meeting blackness, and doubted she'd ever clearly see any of this for what was. It was too complex; too obscure; too fucked up.

But one thing was for sure. When she looked to Cameron, Sarah's gut-instinct told her she didn't see anything particularly worthy of trust. Just a hollow machine with a pretty coating. A person couldn't trust something they didn't understand.

But it'd take just one look to her son, one fleeting glance in his direction, and she'd remember she put her faith in John. She trusted him, and her son – this savior from the future she had yet to meet – had made this decision. This may have been a legend unfolding of a mother and a child that saved the whole world, but apparently, they wouldn't do it alone. For now, Sarah tried to reassure herself with that, and put her faith in her future son because it was all she had to make sense of anything.

When she thought about it, her faith in her son was all she'd ever had.

Fuck logic. She'd trust Cameron if only for that.