ext_66619 ([identity profile] chosenfire28.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] tamingthemuse2008-11-29 11:45 pm

123 - Despair - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles- Chosenfire38

Title: Reality
Author: Chosenfire
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN. All recognizable characters and situations belong to their respective owners and I make no profit off of playing with them.
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #123 - Despair
Characters/Pairings: Jesse, Derek/Jesse
Spoilers: Season 2.10 "Strange Things Happen At The One Two Point"
Summary: Jesse is a smart woman. It isn't hard for her to figure out what this all means now, for her and for Derek.



“John Connor is my nephew.”

The second he had said it she had wanted to laugh. It was ridiculous. She hadn’t though, couldn’t. Because he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t laughing. He was serious. She had never seen him look at anyone the way he had looked at her in that moment.

He wasn’t telling her a secret.

He was warning her.

Connor has his nephew, Kyle’s son, and she had never managed to get between Kyle and Derek. She would never mean more to Derek than his little brother did and now that he was dead Connor was all that he had left of his family.

In the future it was so rare to have any blood family. Most families were made out of blood that was shed together, not shared. Your family was your unit, your commander, and always Connor. But the few that had families, the men with wives, or the soldiers with siblings and children protected them with a fierceness that the machines had often exploited.

Studied.

Tried to figure out.

So Derek had always been completely focused on Kyle, his little brother and when he had gone on the classified mission for Connor he had despaired for months. Shut down, shut everyone out. Everyone but her, and Connor. Always Connor. The biggest supporter of family bonds.

John Connor was Derek’s nephew.

She hadn’t missed that either. Instead of saying Kyle’s son he had told her that Connor was his nephew. He had already been claiming him. Letting her know what that meant. It was things that he didn’t say though that burnt through her.

Because Derek didn’t talk about the John Connor he knew now. The one he protected. The one that was his nephew. There was a time he had told her everything, let it spill from his lips like the bitterness of poisons to wipe it from his heart and give it to someone strong enough to take it. Who cared enough to embrace his pain and understand.

She had once shared his burdens, shouldered them side by side and with a intensity that let him know that he was her family.

But he didn’t want to share this burden with her. He wanted her to understand that it was his, it was his and Connor’s mother, and to an extent the metal that was protecting Connor. Even when it came to the machine she knew Derek didn’t want to get rid of it because it was a threat to the Connor in the future. He wanted to get rid of it because it was a threat to him now.

She didn’t know this Derek as well as she had known the other one. The one that had shared her memories and experience, the one that had shared horrifying memories with her that he would never know. Because it wasn’t him.

It was enough to give a girl a migraine.

Even as she was stretched out beside him, bare skin against bare skin she still remembered the look in his eyes when he was told her. John Connor was his nephew and this wasn’t her Derek, it was his, he was John’s, and the future looked a lot less uncertain.

[identity profile] pesha.livejournal.com 2008-12-01 06:39 am (UTC)(link)
I loved the melancholia in this piece. It's quietly dark in the way that I see much of the show to be. There's this sense that somehow, no matter what happens, it's not going to turn out fine and everything really won't turn out alright.