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A Tale of Two John Connors
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2010
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Character/Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers for the whole series.
Summary: He was born at Pescadero State Hospital in 1994. The
only coherent word his mother uttered before he was taken from
her was "John."
Author Notes: More fic: http://fiction.deslea.com
His name is John Connor.
Before that, it was Aidan West.
That was the name his adoptive parents gave him. Lucy and Andy
West, of La Mesa California. And that was all well and good until
Andy died in a car wreck when Aidan was two. Until Lucy married
Wilson Scott. Wilson Scott, who terrorised them from the day he
moved into their home. Their hell was punctuated only by his
occasional short stints in prison - invariably on petty charges
that never reflected the full extent of his activities.
Aidan hit the road when he was fourteen. He'd learned
everything he could learn from that old fucker - how to load a
gun, how to get drugs and guns and fake ID, and how to survive.
As for Lucy, well, she was long gone, half catatonic with fear.
There was no saving Lucy.
His first stop was social services - or at least the social
services database. He was tall and he could have passed for
eighteen with the right ID, but his file would have told them the
truth. So he did it the old-fashioned way - he hacked in from an
internet café.
That was when he learned about Sarah Connor.
Sarah Connor was a homicidal paranoid schizophrenic. She blew
up a computer factory and did time at a state mental hospital.
She blew up a bank. She died in 1999. She had another child, to
whom she was devoted, who died with her. None of this shocked
Aidan all that much - he'd lived with a homicidal maniac for most
of his life. Except this one actually seemed to love her child.
Sarah was pregnant when she was arrested. Two fellow industrial
saboteurs, Mexican nationals both, died in the explosion. It was
likely one of them was Aidan's father, but no one knew for sure -
least of all Sarah, drugged up through her brief trial and
seemingly oblivious to her condition.
A prison nurse had considerately annotated on his file that
Sarah was delirious through her labour, and appeared to believe
she was giving birth to her much-loved older child. The nurse
named him John - the only coherent word Sarah had spoken
throughout her pregnancy and birth. Social Services removed him
within the hour.
A fucked-up mother who got her older son killed and probably
never knew he existed was no great prize in objective terms. But
Aidan figured it was still better than Wilson Scott.
He took the news philosophically and changed his name back to
John Connor.
In 2009, John Connor was sixteen - eighteen on his fake ID -
and running drugs back and forth across the border. He'd just
arrived in San Diego when he saw Sarah Connor on the news. She
was alive, and she'd been arrested. And then she got out again,
before John could decide whether to try and break her out (as he
knew his dead brother had done once before).
It was just as well, really. John was little fish in the scheme
of things, and he knew it. Running drugs and risking juvie was
one thing, but busting out of prison was big time. Especially for
someone who didn't even know he existed.
The next time he saw her was in Juarez in 2014. It was the
first time in the flesh. He was down there, running guns this
time, and so was she. She had a ten year old girl with her and a
guy who screamed "cop." Cops turned bad sometimes, but this one
didn't strike him like that.
When the bombs fell, they were far enough away to live, but not
so far that they weren't afraid.
"What's your name, kid?" Idle words around a campfire.
He told her.
The cop confirmed John's story. He thought she knew.
Sarah's reaction was one of mistrust. She wasn't sure it wasn't
a trick. But she didn't turn him away, either.
They stayed like that for days, waiting for the mushroom cloud
over LA to subside. Cautiously getting to know each other. Sarah
told him of her past, of *her* John, and of a future he would not
have believed a week previously.
Then the creepy metal woman arrived, naked, in a flash of blue
light. Hugged the little girl, Savannah, with one arm and
stretched out the other to him. Said, "Come with me if you want
to live."
That was when Sarah apparently decided John was the real deal.
They went.
The metal-woman's name was Catherine, and she explained that he
was John-Connor-Leader-of-the-Resistance in this timeline. He
would fill the void created by the other John's time-jump. How
did she know? Because she'd seen it, and so had the other John.
She was here with that John's blessing.
Sarah was instructed to remain at this John's side.
Sarah argued. She argued *bitterly*. They might be
interchangeable in human history, but not to her. She wanted her
sons. *Both* of them.
That seemed to touch Catherine, who had never let go of the
little girl, but she didn't relent. "These two Johns are
contingencies for each other, Sarah. It's how they're made. It's
why they were made. You can't have them both. Not at the same
time."
Then she let go of the girl, with seeming reluctance, and she
disappeared into the night.
It was 2027 when John met the other John for the first time.
He was thirty three. Savannah was twenty three, and Sarah was
fifty three. Savannah and Sarah were in hiding, lest the sight of
the real, aged Sarah somehow cause Kyle Reese's crush to
dissolve. The cop had died honourably long ago.
The other John was sixteen.
He was brought in by the Reese brothers - brothers he knew he
would have to send back before much longer, to keep the timeline
intact.
"We told him we didn't know a John Connor. At least, not one
that's a kid like this."
He knew that no one could ever know that there were two John
Connors. Not even the other John's family. They were
contingencies, after all. It's what they were made for.
"And I'm Superman. Good one, kid. Don't you know your mother's
half out of her mind with worry?" He wondered if Sarah would love
him so much now, with her other son back in her arms.
"My mother?" the other John echoed. Suddenly very pale.
"I'll take care of this," John told the Reese brothers. "It's
fine."
That was how John Connor met John Connor.
The war ended on 21 December 2029, when a large group of liquid
metal prototypes signed a peace treaty with John Connor - a deal
brokered by Catherine after years of delicate negotiations.
The reaction from Skynet was bloody, but lasted only a day
before the combined force of the human assault and the TXs'
ability to manipulate other Terminators forced them into
submission.
The two John Connors fought side by side. In this timeline, at
least, both contingencies survived.
Sarah had both her sons in the same moment in time, and she
wept joyfully over both.
And John Connor knew his mother loved him at last.
END