FIC: Fewer Than You Think (TSCC, PG13)
This fic is an entry in the Sarah Connor Chronicles Flash Fiction and Art Challenge (SCCFF), organized by svmadelyn. See the Master List here.
Title: Fewer Than You Think
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Fandom: TSCC
Spoilers: S1
Pairing (if any): Gen
Rating: PG-13 (some language)
Length: 4,830
Disclaimer: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC) is owned by Fox and many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: April 21, 2008 (Rev. 6/6/08)
Summary: He now owns 127 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world from the machines.
FEWER THAN YOU THINK
The first bullet misses the top of John's head by a couple of inches. The second bullet smashes into his left shoulder, tearing through soft tissue and splintering his clavicle. The bullet buries itself in the wall behind him. Blood pours out of the charred entrance and exit wounds, staining his t-shirt bright red.
John and Derek share a weakness for sweet and sour pork. On nights when Sarah and Cameron are out, John and Derek stay in, two wanted men surrounded by the greasy wreckage of Chinese food cartons and crumpled fortune cookie wrappers.
In the beginning, Derek complained about being left behind. In the past few weeks, he has stopped complaining. John is certain that Derek will never be happy about the situation, but he has his orders. The Chinese food helps.
“This is always better than your mom’s cooking,” Derek mumbles around a mouthful of orange chicken. He is slouching back in his chair, legs stretched out underneath the table, body uncoiled and relaxed. John realizes it’s an illusion of calm when Derek sits up so abruptly that his chopsticks clatter to the table. “Don’t tell her I said that. She’d bust my head.”
John laughs and takes another piece of pork while Derek is preoccupied with the chicken and his poorly concealed fear of Sarah Connor. “Mom’s not bad at pancakes,” John offers.
Derek’s left eyebrow shoots up.
John ducks his head so that his too-long fringe falls into his face. “Okay, you’re right,” he admits as he sneaks another piece of pork, “Mom’s pancakes are pretty awful.”
“You think?” Shaking his head, Derek reaches across the table to move the carton of sweet and sour pork away from John. “You know, John, your technique could use some work.”
John lets the sweet and sour pork hang in the air halfway to his mouth. “My technique?”
“Yeah, your technique. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the tunnels.” Derek swats John lightly on the side of his head. John figures the swat is intended to take the sting out his words and also to distract John from asking about the tunnels and his father and the future. Sometimes, John knows, Derek brings up the future and is willing to talk about what it was/is/will be like. This isn’t one of those times.
John collapses after the second shot. He is only dimly aware of the damaging path the bullet takes through his body. He feels pain and cold and then nothing. He is covered in blood.
“God, I missed this stuff,” Derek says as he crunches a fortune cookie.
John nods, wipes his fingers on his napkin, rescues Derek’s fortune from the congealing remains of their stir-fried vegetables. He reads:The fiercest dragon curls around its treasure, folds the fortune in half, and slips it into his back pocket. He now owns 127 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world from the machines.
John chews his own fortune cookie slowly, thoughtfully, considering whether he should say what’s on his mind. In the aftermath of the explosion, during the month it took him to rebuild Cameron, John worried that his embryonic relationship with his uncle would end before it had even started. Derek was furious that John was trying to rebuild Cameron. He yelled at John about how the machines were going to kill him and how no one should ever trust a machine and how especially no one should ever trust this metal bitch, and then he stopped talking to John entirely. After that, if Derek wanted to say something to John, he asked John’s mom to pass along the message. John was hurt, but it didn’t stop him from doing what he knew he needed to do. Now, months later, John thinks that he and Derek are finally getting back to where they were before the explosion: not just family, long-lost uncle and nephew, but sort of friends. The Chinese food really does help.
Derek presses hard on John’s shoulder to stanch the blood. He’s no field medic but he can recognize shock when he sees it: John’s pulse is thready, his forehead cool and clammy, his face pale, the skin stretched bone-white over his cheekbones. Derek has seen it too many times before.
John watches Derek spear the last chunk of sweet and sour pork with his chopstick, and when Derek grins at him, his grin a half-feral baring of teeth, his chopstick held up in triumph, John decides to confide in his uncle.
“Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“I found something on Vick’s chip that could be a lead to Sarkissian.”
Derek’s brows snap together. “I thought you weren’t going to use that thing anymore.”
John ducks his head to hide behind his hair. “I hadn’t gone through most of it.”
“I thought that thing was too dangerous, that you could crank the juice too high and activate it.” Derek pushes his plate away, pork-laden chopstick forgotten. He stands up, leans over the table, gets right in John’s face. “Listen, John. I’ve told you this before. One of those things is going to kill you. You shouldn’t be risking it.”
John can’t hold his uncle’s look. He drops his eyes to stare down at his fortune. He has to read it twice before he can understand the words: The brave must grab the dragon’s tail. “Sometimes,” he says slowly, “you need to risk something to get somewhere.”
“Heard that before,” Derek mutters bitterly as he starts shoveling the debris of their dinner into a garbage bag. He grabs John’s plate. “You done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.”
Derek ties off the garbage bag and tosses it against the kitchen door. John starts at the clank it makes. When Derek comes back to the table, he doesn’t sit down. He looms over John, glaring. “You want to risk yourself, and the future, for that thing.”
John says nothing. Instead of admitting Derek’s right or even defending himself, John cracks open the last fortune cookie.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Derek paces back and forth across the kitchen. “You want to get revenge on Sarkissian for your pet, which you should’ve left the way it was after he did us the favor of blowing it up.”
Tuning out Derek’s rant, John reads the last fortune: What is most valuable we cannot count. Sighing, he pockets the slip of paper. He now owns 129 pieces of Confucian advice, all of which will be useless on Judgment Day.
John can’t feel his left arm. He can’t move his fingers. Derek’s face keeps slipping in and out of focus. When it’s in focus, John thinks that his uncle’s face seems to have shrunken, or maybe sharpened, John can't decide. It occurs to John that Derek’s face has been shaped by the realities of a world where one survives, a world he’s not at all ready for, will never be ready for.
It also occurs to John (muzzily) that this is the first time he has been shot.
John says, “It‘s not really about Cameron. Well, mostly not. Mostly it’s because we need to find the Turk. And I think I’ve figured out where Sarkissian is hiding it because of what I found on Vick’s chip.”
Derek collapses into his chair. He waves a hand to indicate that John should continue, that he’s willing to listen.
“It turns out that Vick had information about Sarkissian. Vick knew that Sarkissian was trying to buy the Turk. I think Sarkissian was Vick’s secondary mission.”
“Metal don’t have secondary missions,” Derek says flatly.
John blinks. “You know this for a fact?”
“I know them. They don’t.”
John rubs a hand over his eyes. There is so much he doesn’t know about the machines, so much he has to learn. He tries again. “Based on what I found on the chip, I believe that Skynet knew that Sarkissian would steal the Turk. Vick was programmed to retrieve the Turk from Sarkissian so that it could be connected to ARTIE, like a brain attached to a nervous system.” He shrugs self-consciously. “It’s a hunch more than anything.”
Derek stares at John. “A hunch,” he repeats.
“Yeah, a hunch.” Even to his own ears, John sounds defensive.
“Did you tell your mom about your hunch?”
“No.”
Derek smirks. “Because she wouldn’t want you to follow it up. She didn’t want you to plug that thing in again.”
John concentrates on tracing the tabletop’s wood-grain with his finger. “Maybe,” he says finally.
“Yeah,” Derek nods. “So.” He stares harder at John. “What did you really find?”
John looks up, tries to read his uncle’s expression, then gives up. Derek is too closed, too much a soldier to give away his thoughts so easily.
Brushing his hair out of his eyes, John begins. He explains the images and maps on Vick’s chip, the repeated symbol he deciphered to be a secondary mission code. He describes the encrypted files he found on Sarkissian’s hard drive that seemed to refer to the same locations and maps. He relates how he put the pieces together, plays down what was his growing excitement as he became convinced that he wasn’t just imagining the connection between Vick and Sarkissian.
Derek listens closely. John is reassured that he hasn’t interrupted, that he seems to be open to what John is saying. When he finishes his explanation, John waits for Derek’s reaction.
It is so quiet that John thinks he can hear his watch ticking.
After a couple of minutes, Derek slaps his hands down on the table and leverages himself up. “So,” he says, “do you want to get out of here and actually do something?”
John sits back in surprise. It isn’t the reaction he expected. Then he grins. “Hell, yeah.”
“Let’s get out of here then. Think you can map us a route?”
John’s grin widens. “Absolutely.”
Derek rips his shirt to make a swath and sling for John’s shoulder. He swears under his breath when he sees the blood pooling under the wound, and bears down to apply greater pressure.
John’s eyes are tightly closed. His long lashes remind Derek painfully of Kyle. Sometimes John looks so much like Kyle that Derek’s breath catches. Missing his brother is a physical ache, a permanent sense of loss that crushes his lungs, scrapes him raw so that he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t feel. He will never come to terms with it. The only way he can function is to push the ache to the back of his mind and forget for a while.
Derek presses down harder on John’s shoulder. It’s pretty crowded at the back of his mind with all the things he’s trying to forget.
Everything has gone to plan so far. If John’s assumptions are correct, then the Turk has been hidden inside a shipping container in this nondescript building on East Olympic Boulevard. John and Derek are holed up behind a cinderblock wall, waiting for the night guard to finish his last round and settle in the guardhouse with his coffee. Derek is tracking the guard’s movements through field glasses.
“Shit,” Derek grumbles, letting the glasses fall to his chest as he sinks to the ground beside John. “The bastard just lit up a smoke. We can’t move until he goes into the guardhouse.”
John nods, and the two of them settle back to wait. It’s not uncomfortable - the heat of the day has long since burned off, the air is cool, the ground is dry - but John finds himself shifting from side to side, unable to relax. Finally he pulls his knees up, folds his arms loosely on top of them, rests his chin on his folded arms. Gathering his courage, he asks: “Can you tell me about him?”
Derek doesn’t pretend to misunderstand who the “him” is that John is asking about. John watches a muscle work in his uncle’s jaw. After a minute, Derek speaks: “Kyle was a good soldier. He was a good person. No matter what happened, he believed that we would be okay, that there was hope. He survived a fucking concentration camp, saw metal kill our parents and destroy everything around us, and he still believed there was hope.”
John smiles a little as he hugs the details about his father to himself. Every new thing he learns about Kyle Reese fills in the mental picture he has, satisfies some of the desperate hunger he has to know about the man who came across time to save his mother and by extension, him.
“Were we friends?” he asks.
Derek nods. “You were friends with Kyle. You knew him in Century.”
“Yeah, but were we friends?”
Derek looks hard at John. “You were friends,” he says again, then he stops and looks away, either at something in the distance or long ago, John can’t tell. “You gave it to him, you know.”
John is confused. “What? The picture of my mother?”
“Yeah, that. I hated that thing. I could never figure out why you gave it to him. It creeped me the hell out.”
John shifts uncomfortably.
“That wasn’t what I meant, though. I was talking about how Kyle believed there was hope because of you. You gave him hope.” Derek laughs bitterly. “He was such a pain in the ass. Always going on about how the two of you escaped from Century Work Camp. Always talking about the great John Connor. Always looking at that fucking picture of your mother. He was my little brother, and he could piss me off like no one could, but he always had my back, and I always had his, and we were the only family we had in the whole fucked-up world, and then he was gone.” Derek stops. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply in and out. Finally he says: “I want him back. I want my brother back.”
John presses his fingers into his eyelids, tries to regain control of his own breathing. After a minute, he looks at Derek. “I’m sorry. That he … that I sent him back and that he died. I had to, I have to. Even if I don’t want to…”
“Even if you don’t want to, you have to,” Derek agrees tightly. He keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to look at John. John can understand; he wouldn’t want to look at himself either.
John can’t keep his eyes open. The streetlight is too bright. It reminds him randomly of one of his fortunes: Burn the candle only when you need the light. He wishes someone would turn off the streetlight. He wishes Derek wouldn’t press so hard. He wants to change his t-shirt, which feels sticky and gross. He wants to itch his nose but his hand doesn’t seem to work. He wants his mom.
John and Derek are waiting in the near darkness, waiting for the guard to grind his cigarette butt under his heel, waiting for the guard to settle down for the night in the guardhouse, waiting for the other the break the silence between them.
Eventually John says: “Back in New Mexico, we actually used his last name. We were Sarah and John Reese.”
In the near darkness, Derek turns to look at John, but the look itself is invisible. John couldn’t have deciphered it anyway.
“That was how Cromartie found us,” John continues. “We should’ve used a different alias.”
Derek’s bark of laughter makes John jump.
“One of them is going to kill you, John,” Derek says bluntly. “I keep telling you. Maybe you should listen.” He scoops up the field glasses and gets to his feet.
John sighs. “Yeah, probably. But it won’t be Cameron. I’m sure of it. I trust her.”
“Yeah. That’s true in the future too. You trust them.”
“Did my father?”
“No one trusts them like you do.” There is something besides bitterness in Derek’s voice, but John can’t identify what it is. He stares at his uncle, trying to figure it out, but Derek is already turning away to peer through the field glasses.
“The guard’s gone inside,” Derek says. He reaches down to pick up their backpacks, one of which contains John’s laptop. “We’re in business.”
They give the guardhouse wide berth as they make their way into the warehouse compound.
John is out cold. Derek checks and tightens the field dressing before sliding an arm under John to lift him. John is heavier than he looks: there is muscle on that lanky sixteen-year old frame that Derek doesn’t expect. (There are many things about John that Derek didn't expect.) Derek rebalances John’s weight and sets off for the truck, which they parked two streets over.
Everything goes to plan. They are able to get into the warehouse, find the container, extract the Turk, then make a clean exit from the building. They skirt the guardhouse by retracing the path they used to bypass it in the first place, and end up back behind the cinderblock wall.
“Wait a second,” John whispers, holding up a hand in case Derek can’t hear him.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to check something.”
“What? Aren’t you sure it’s the Turk?”
John pulls the computer out of his backpack, studying it carefully as he turns it over in his hands. “It looks like Andy Goode’s machine, the one he had at the chess tournament.”
“Yeah, but are you sure it’s the same one?”
John kneels down, connects the machine to his laptop, and boots it up. Impatiently he taps his finger, murmuring, “C’mon, c’mon.” He stares at the screen, the elaborate scrolling text announcing the machine as The Turk, Grandmaster, then swivels it around to show Derek. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he says, grinning. “This is it.”
Derek snorts. “God, Wisher was an idiot.” John has no idea who Wisher is but he has no time to ask because Derek is ready to move out. “Pack it up, and let’s get out of here,” Derek orders as he peers over the wall to confirm that the guard is still comfortably engrossed in his television and coffee mug.
“Not so fast, gentlemen.”
John’s head jerks up at the strange voice.
Sarkissian looks nothing and exactly like his passport picture at precisely the same time. He is small and stocky, with a thatch of nondescript hair and a big nose. He is pointing his gun at Derek’s temple. John thinks about Cameron and his mother and now his uncle being threatened by this man, and he hates him more than he’s hated any human in a long time.
“We don’t have time for this,” Derek mutters. He jerks his hand from left to right, a prearranged signal to John that he should do what he’s trained to do: he should run.
John shakes his head slightly.
Sarkissian observes their byplay and nods his approval. “Very sentimental. Now, if you will just hand over my property, I will not kill your friend here.”
John narrows his eyes. “How do I know that for sure?”
Sarkissian waves the gun in the air before bringing it back to Derek’s temple. “You will have to trust me.”
John stands up slowly. “I don’t trust easily.”
“John,” Derek says angrily through gritted teeth, slashing his hand from left to right again. “Take the machine and run.” When John shakes his head again, Derek scowls and rolls his eyes. He snaps one arm up to grab Sarkissian’s gun-wielding hand, which he twists around the smaller man’s back. His other arm shoves John roughly in the direction of their truck. “I’ve got this under control. Run, damnit!”
John hesitates only a moment longer. He grabs his backpack, makes sure the Turk and his laptop are zipped inside, then turns to run.
John feels like he’s floating. It’s a weird feeling, and he isn’t sure he likes it.
He tries to say something, but the words die in his mouth. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“Why’reyoucarryingme?” To John’s ears, his words sound slurred. That’s wrong, he thinks. Future leaders of mankind should sound crisp and authoritative and something that he can’t remember. His brain doesn’t seem to be working right. He hopes he didn’t say that out loud.
Derek’s shoulders shake slightly, maybe with laughter. “Your mom’ll kill me if I don’t get you home in one piece.”
John tries to laugh too, but it comes out wheezy and weak. “Bit late for that, don’t you think?” he mumbles before passing out again.
John is staring down the barrel of the guard’s gun.
“Drop your weapon, or the kid gets it,” the guard says. The guard’s voice is wavering and he sounds terrified, and John is confused until he realizes the guard is talking to Derek.
“Drop yours, or your boss gets it,” Derek replies without missing a beat. Derek is behind him, so John can’t see his face, but he sounds cold and determined and lethally serious.
The next couple of minutes are a blur. Sarkissian barks: “Finish it!” at the same time that Derek shouts: “John! Duck!” Derek pushes Sarkissian out of his way as John throws himself to the ground to avoid the guard’s wild shot over his head. Derek dispatches the guard with a clinical gunshot to the right temple then falls to his knees beside John. “You okay?”
John pulls himself up, knows that the worst damage he has are a couple of bruises and a knee scrape. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He smiles at his uncle, is about to say “thanks,” when a glint over Derek’s shoulder catches his eye. Sarkissian has recovered his gun and is taking aim.
John doesn’t think. He hurls himself between the bullet and his uncle.
“John. John. Are you still with me?”
John is silent.
Derek drives through the dead streets of downtown LA, trying to avoid any bump or pothole that might jostle John’s shoulder and worsen the bleeding. Briefly Derek considers going home, but then he thinks about how much blood John has lost, how important John is, how much Sarah is going to kill him. He turns the truck around and heads towards the nearest emergency room instead.
John’s mother’s angry voice wakes him. “How could you let this happen, Reese? This is your fault. You weren’t supposed to leave the house. Your job was to protect him, that’s it. If something happens to him, what do we do? What were you thinking? Did you think about anything at all?”
“It was his idea.” Derek sounds defensive, which vaguely surprises John.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” his mom snaps.
Derek doesn’t reply, but John can imagine the expression on his face.
John’s mom is in full rant mode: “He’s a sixteen year old boy. You’re supposed to be the adult-”
“We got the Turk,” Derek interrupts.
“Yeah, well. At what cost?”
“The end justifies the means, that’s what he said.”
“When? Now, or in the future? Which John are you quoting? Because that doesn’t sound like my John.”
“Sarah.” Derek’s voice has gone very soft, as if he is about to break some very bad news. “They’re the same person.”
“Shut. Up.” John can hear his mother pacing back and forth across what seems to be a small room. She takes a deep breath that even John can hear, then says: “Just tell me what happened.”
Derek moves away from the bed and lowers his voice. John can’t hear his explanation, but he doesn’t mind. Maybe if the explanation satisfies his mom, he thinks tiredly, he’ll be able to go back to sleep.
John is drifting in and out of sleep when his mother’s voice jerks him fully awake. “It should’ve been you, Derek,” she says. Her voice sounds tight, anguished, and John can picture his mother standing beside his bed, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes blank with fear. He has seen that pain on her face before. He keeps his eyes tightly closed. He never wants to see it again.
When she speaks next, there is so much ache in her voice that John’s chest hurts. “You should’ve taken that bullet,” she whispers.
John hears a shuffle of steps that makes him think Derek has actually stepped back in surprise, as if she hit him.
There is a long silence then Derek says quietly: “I know.”
John opens his eyes. He scans the dimly lit hospital room, quickly absorbs the details of his bandaged chest and shoulder, the IV drip connected to his arm. Then he focuses on his mother and his uncle who are pointedly not looking at each other. He clears his throat to get their attention. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, and I don’t care. Everyone’s life matters. Mom, stop chewing out Derek. He’s right. It was my idea. And Derek, stop beating yourself up. I do think the end justifies the means. We got the Turk, and we got Sarkissian.” John tentatively moves his injured shoulder. “I’m patched up, and I’m going to be fine. Everyone’s life matters, and mine isn’t that much more important than anyone else’s. Now stop yelling, and let me get some sleep.” John closes his eyes to underline his last point and waits.
“Huh” is all Derek says.
John’s mom isn’t ready to let it go yet, but John can hear a change in her voice when she asks: “Why did you bring him here instead of bringing him home in the first place?”
“Better drugs?” Derek suggests.
John’s mom laughs. It's an exhausted sound, barely a laugh at all, but it's something.
John thinks he might actually be able to sleep now.
John owns 129 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world. He isn’t sure what kind of a leader he will be, can be, is, has been. His life is confusing. He keeps getting the verb tenses wrong.
John thinks that the drugs they’re pumping into his arm are finally kicking in. He feels weightless, free of the burden of being John Connor. In the small, lonely part of his brain that isn’t fuzzed by the sedative, he knows that he can never escape being who he is. True wisdom lies in knowing oneself is the one piece of Confucian advice he always remembers word for word.
John sleeps.
John opens his eyes. This time, his hospital room is blindingly bright, all white sunlight and white linens and white walls. He closes his eyes again.
“Hey. You’re awake.” It’s his mom’s voice. Even through the fog clouding his brain, John can recognize her voice.
“It was a stupid thing to do, getting shot,” he mumbles. He sounds delirious, even to himself. He feels the drip in his arm and thinks: Oh yeah, the IV. They must be really good drugs.
“I don’t think it’s ever a smart thing to get shot,” his mom says softly. She brushes his hair off his forehead, just like she did when he was little, and John leans his forehead into her hand. He remembers wanting her to be with him right before he passed out completely. He remembers thinking that if only she were there, she would be able to make his hurt go away. He missed her then more than he can ever tell her.
“Hey, sleepy head,” she says gently. “Are you just going to sleep the day away?”
John smiles drowsily. “Maybe. Would that be bad?”
“No.” He feels his mom’s warm lips on his forehead. “It might be a good thing.”
John nods and starts to drift off again, but then a thought occurs to him. He opens his eyes. Squinting against the intense brightness, he looks at his mother, then at Derek who is leaning against the wall of the hospital room, then at Cameron who is standing sentry in the hallway. He turns his head back to look at his mother. “Will you be here?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” his mother promises. Derek gives him a half-smile that John recognizes is his own promise. Cameron nods.
John closes his eyes again and goes to sleep.
John is dreaming. His dream is absolutely real, the edges of everything sharp and precise, the way dreams can be sometimes. He isn’t dreaming about fortune cookies or being shot or Judgment Day. He is dreaming about the old oak tree in their front yard. He is dreaming that he sees them standing under the tree, Derek and his mother - Sarah - standing so close that they don’t look like two people but like some new creature that he’s never seen before. They stand there in the shadowed grass as the light fades from the sky, and they don’t see him, or anything else.
John doesn’t make a sound, just watches them. He doesn’t tell them goodbye. He turns away and leaves them there.
END
Acknowledgements: This story reflects numerous web articles about gunshot wounds and hypovolemic shock. It was inspired by a Cate Kennedy short story (which is a million times better than this) called "The Correct Names of Things." The "greasy wreckage" of Chinese food containers, the idea of "owning # pieces of Confucian advice," and some of the fortunes quoted in the fic are direct allusions to Kennedy's story. Heartfelt thanks to Ms Kennedy for her inspiration, and for the various medical experts' reports on the web.
Author’s Note 1: As noted above, this fic is an entry in the Sarah Connor Chronicles Flash Fiction and Art Challenge (SCCFF), organized by svmadelyn. See the Master List here.
These were my prompts:
My recipient: wildtiger7
Pairing Request No. 1 and prompts/comment: John and Derek, friends. Derek and John go on a mission, not informing Sarah, and John gets hurt defending Derek. They then have to face an angry Sarah, and John defends Derek again, stating that everyone's life matters.
Pairing Request No. 2 and prompts/comment: John/Cameron, what happens after Cameron gets blown up at the end of the first season
I chose Request No. 1. Some elements of the request I managed better than others. Hope this isn't too disappointing!
Author’s Note 2: The title comes from an exchange between Derek and John in Episode 1.07 (The Demon Hand):
John: "Some people never give up. Some people always fight."
Derek: "Fewer than you think."
Title: Fewer Than You Think
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Fandom: TSCC
Spoilers: S1
Pairing (if any): Gen
Rating: PG-13 (some language)
Length: 4,830
Disclaimer: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC) is owned by Fox and many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: April 21, 2008 (Rev. 6/6/08)
Summary: He now owns 127 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world from the machines.
FEWER THAN YOU THINK
The first bullet misses the top of John's head by a couple of inches. The second bullet smashes into his left shoulder, tearing through soft tissue and splintering his clavicle. The bullet buries itself in the wall behind him. Blood pours out of the charred entrance and exit wounds, staining his t-shirt bright red.
John and Derek share a weakness for sweet and sour pork. On nights when Sarah and Cameron are out, John and Derek stay in, two wanted men surrounded by the greasy wreckage of Chinese food cartons and crumpled fortune cookie wrappers.
In the beginning, Derek complained about being left behind. In the past few weeks, he has stopped complaining. John is certain that Derek will never be happy about the situation, but he has his orders. The Chinese food helps.
“This is always better than your mom’s cooking,” Derek mumbles around a mouthful of orange chicken. He is slouching back in his chair, legs stretched out underneath the table, body uncoiled and relaxed. John realizes it’s an illusion of calm when Derek sits up so abruptly that his chopsticks clatter to the table. “Don’t tell her I said that. She’d bust my head.”
John laughs and takes another piece of pork while Derek is preoccupied with the chicken and his poorly concealed fear of Sarah Connor. “Mom’s not bad at pancakes,” John offers.
Derek’s left eyebrow shoots up.
John ducks his head so that his too-long fringe falls into his face. “Okay, you’re right,” he admits as he sneaks another piece of pork, “Mom’s pancakes are pretty awful.”
“You think?” Shaking his head, Derek reaches across the table to move the carton of sweet and sour pork away from John. “You know, John, your technique could use some work.”
John lets the sweet and sour pork hang in the air halfway to his mouth. “My technique?”
“Yeah, your technique. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the tunnels.” Derek swats John lightly on the side of his head. John figures the swat is intended to take the sting out his words and also to distract John from asking about the tunnels and his father and the future. Sometimes, John knows, Derek brings up the future and is willing to talk about what it was/is/will be like. This isn’t one of those times.
John collapses after the second shot. He is only dimly aware of the damaging path the bullet takes through his body. He feels pain and cold and then nothing. He is covered in blood.
“God, I missed this stuff,” Derek says as he crunches a fortune cookie.
John nods, wipes his fingers on his napkin, rescues Derek’s fortune from the congealing remains of their stir-fried vegetables. He reads:The fiercest dragon curls around its treasure, folds the fortune in half, and slips it into his back pocket. He now owns 127 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world from the machines.
John chews his own fortune cookie slowly, thoughtfully, considering whether he should say what’s on his mind. In the aftermath of the explosion, during the month it took him to rebuild Cameron, John worried that his embryonic relationship with his uncle would end before it had even started. Derek was furious that John was trying to rebuild Cameron. He yelled at John about how the machines were going to kill him and how no one should ever trust a machine and how especially no one should ever trust this metal bitch, and then he stopped talking to John entirely. After that, if Derek wanted to say something to John, he asked John’s mom to pass along the message. John was hurt, but it didn’t stop him from doing what he knew he needed to do. Now, months later, John thinks that he and Derek are finally getting back to where they were before the explosion: not just family, long-lost uncle and nephew, but sort of friends. The Chinese food really does help.
Derek presses hard on John’s shoulder to stanch the blood. He’s no field medic but he can recognize shock when he sees it: John’s pulse is thready, his forehead cool and clammy, his face pale, the skin stretched bone-white over his cheekbones. Derek has seen it too many times before.
John watches Derek spear the last chunk of sweet and sour pork with his chopstick, and when Derek grins at him, his grin a half-feral baring of teeth, his chopstick held up in triumph, John decides to confide in his uncle.
“Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“I found something on Vick’s chip that could be a lead to Sarkissian.”
Derek’s brows snap together. “I thought you weren’t going to use that thing anymore.”
John ducks his head to hide behind his hair. “I hadn’t gone through most of it.”
“I thought that thing was too dangerous, that you could crank the juice too high and activate it.” Derek pushes his plate away, pork-laden chopstick forgotten. He stands up, leans over the table, gets right in John’s face. “Listen, John. I’ve told you this before. One of those things is going to kill you. You shouldn’t be risking it.”
John can’t hold his uncle’s look. He drops his eyes to stare down at his fortune. He has to read it twice before he can understand the words: The brave must grab the dragon’s tail. “Sometimes,” he says slowly, “you need to risk something to get somewhere.”
“Heard that before,” Derek mutters bitterly as he starts shoveling the debris of their dinner into a garbage bag. He grabs John’s plate. “You done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.”
Derek ties off the garbage bag and tosses it against the kitchen door. John starts at the clank it makes. When Derek comes back to the table, he doesn’t sit down. He looms over John, glaring. “You want to risk yourself, and the future, for that thing.”
John says nothing. Instead of admitting Derek’s right or even defending himself, John cracks open the last fortune cookie.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Derek paces back and forth across the kitchen. “You want to get revenge on Sarkissian for your pet, which you should’ve left the way it was after he did us the favor of blowing it up.”
Tuning out Derek’s rant, John reads the last fortune: What is most valuable we cannot count. Sighing, he pockets the slip of paper. He now owns 129 pieces of Confucian advice, all of which will be useless on Judgment Day.
John can’t feel his left arm. He can’t move his fingers. Derek’s face keeps slipping in and out of focus. When it’s in focus, John thinks that his uncle’s face seems to have shrunken, or maybe sharpened, John can't decide. It occurs to John that Derek’s face has been shaped by the realities of a world where one survives, a world he’s not at all ready for, will never be ready for.
It also occurs to John (muzzily) that this is the first time he has been shot.
John says, “It‘s not really about Cameron. Well, mostly not. Mostly it’s because we need to find the Turk. And I think I’ve figured out where Sarkissian is hiding it because of what I found on Vick’s chip.”
Derek collapses into his chair. He waves a hand to indicate that John should continue, that he’s willing to listen.
“It turns out that Vick had information about Sarkissian. Vick knew that Sarkissian was trying to buy the Turk. I think Sarkissian was Vick’s secondary mission.”
“Metal don’t have secondary missions,” Derek says flatly.
John blinks. “You know this for a fact?”
“I know them. They don’t.”
John rubs a hand over his eyes. There is so much he doesn’t know about the machines, so much he has to learn. He tries again. “Based on what I found on the chip, I believe that Skynet knew that Sarkissian would steal the Turk. Vick was programmed to retrieve the Turk from Sarkissian so that it could be connected to ARTIE, like a brain attached to a nervous system.” He shrugs self-consciously. “It’s a hunch more than anything.”
Derek stares at John. “A hunch,” he repeats.
“Yeah, a hunch.” Even to his own ears, John sounds defensive.
“Did you tell your mom about your hunch?”
“No.”
Derek smirks. “Because she wouldn’t want you to follow it up. She didn’t want you to plug that thing in again.”
John concentrates on tracing the tabletop’s wood-grain with his finger. “Maybe,” he says finally.
“Yeah,” Derek nods. “So.” He stares harder at John. “What did you really find?”
John looks up, tries to read his uncle’s expression, then gives up. Derek is too closed, too much a soldier to give away his thoughts so easily.
Brushing his hair out of his eyes, John begins. He explains the images and maps on Vick’s chip, the repeated symbol he deciphered to be a secondary mission code. He describes the encrypted files he found on Sarkissian’s hard drive that seemed to refer to the same locations and maps. He relates how he put the pieces together, plays down what was his growing excitement as he became convinced that he wasn’t just imagining the connection between Vick and Sarkissian.
Derek listens closely. John is reassured that he hasn’t interrupted, that he seems to be open to what John is saying. When he finishes his explanation, John waits for Derek’s reaction.
It is so quiet that John thinks he can hear his watch ticking.
After a couple of minutes, Derek slaps his hands down on the table and leverages himself up. “So,” he says, “do you want to get out of here and actually do something?”
John sits back in surprise. It isn’t the reaction he expected. Then he grins. “Hell, yeah.”
“Let’s get out of here then. Think you can map us a route?”
John’s grin widens. “Absolutely.”
Derek rips his shirt to make a swath and sling for John’s shoulder. He swears under his breath when he sees the blood pooling under the wound, and bears down to apply greater pressure.
John’s eyes are tightly closed. His long lashes remind Derek painfully of Kyle. Sometimes John looks so much like Kyle that Derek’s breath catches. Missing his brother is a physical ache, a permanent sense of loss that crushes his lungs, scrapes him raw so that he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t feel. He will never come to terms with it. The only way he can function is to push the ache to the back of his mind and forget for a while.
Derek presses down harder on John’s shoulder. It’s pretty crowded at the back of his mind with all the things he’s trying to forget.
Everything has gone to plan so far. If John’s assumptions are correct, then the Turk has been hidden inside a shipping container in this nondescript building on East Olympic Boulevard. John and Derek are holed up behind a cinderblock wall, waiting for the night guard to finish his last round and settle in the guardhouse with his coffee. Derek is tracking the guard’s movements through field glasses.
“Shit,” Derek grumbles, letting the glasses fall to his chest as he sinks to the ground beside John. “The bastard just lit up a smoke. We can’t move until he goes into the guardhouse.”
John nods, and the two of them settle back to wait. It’s not uncomfortable - the heat of the day has long since burned off, the air is cool, the ground is dry - but John finds himself shifting from side to side, unable to relax. Finally he pulls his knees up, folds his arms loosely on top of them, rests his chin on his folded arms. Gathering his courage, he asks: “Can you tell me about him?”
Derek doesn’t pretend to misunderstand who the “him” is that John is asking about. John watches a muscle work in his uncle’s jaw. After a minute, Derek speaks: “Kyle was a good soldier. He was a good person. No matter what happened, he believed that we would be okay, that there was hope. He survived a fucking concentration camp, saw metal kill our parents and destroy everything around us, and he still believed there was hope.”
John smiles a little as he hugs the details about his father to himself. Every new thing he learns about Kyle Reese fills in the mental picture he has, satisfies some of the desperate hunger he has to know about the man who came across time to save his mother and by extension, him.
“Were we friends?” he asks.
Derek nods. “You were friends with Kyle. You knew him in Century.”
“Yeah, but were we friends?”
Derek looks hard at John. “You were friends,” he says again, then he stops and looks away, either at something in the distance or long ago, John can’t tell. “You gave it to him, you know.”
John is confused. “What? The picture of my mother?”
“Yeah, that. I hated that thing. I could never figure out why you gave it to him. It creeped me the hell out.”
John shifts uncomfortably.
“That wasn’t what I meant, though. I was talking about how Kyle believed there was hope because of you. You gave him hope.” Derek laughs bitterly. “He was such a pain in the ass. Always going on about how the two of you escaped from Century Work Camp. Always talking about the great John Connor. Always looking at that fucking picture of your mother. He was my little brother, and he could piss me off like no one could, but he always had my back, and I always had his, and we were the only family we had in the whole fucked-up world, and then he was gone.” Derek stops. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply in and out. Finally he says: “I want him back. I want my brother back.”
John presses his fingers into his eyelids, tries to regain control of his own breathing. After a minute, he looks at Derek. “I’m sorry. That he … that I sent him back and that he died. I had to, I have to. Even if I don’t want to…”
“Even if you don’t want to, you have to,” Derek agrees tightly. He keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to look at John. John can understand; he wouldn’t want to look at himself either.
John can’t keep his eyes open. The streetlight is too bright. It reminds him randomly of one of his fortunes: Burn the candle only when you need the light. He wishes someone would turn off the streetlight. He wishes Derek wouldn’t press so hard. He wants to change his t-shirt, which feels sticky and gross. He wants to itch his nose but his hand doesn’t seem to work. He wants his mom.
John and Derek are waiting in the near darkness, waiting for the guard to grind his cigarette butt under his heel, waiting for the guard to settle down for the night in the guardhouse, waiting for the other the break the silence between them.
Eventually John says: “Back in New Mexico, we actually used his last name. We were Sarah and John Reese.”
In the near darkness, Derek turns to look at John, but the look itself is invisible. John couldn’t have deciphered it anyway.
“That was how Cromartie found us,” John continues. “We should’ve used a different alias.”
Derek’s bark of laughter makes John jump.
“One of them is going to kill you, John,” Derek says bluntly. “I keep telling you. Maybe you should listen.” He scoops up the field glasses and gets to his feet.
John sighs. “Yeah, probably. But it won’t be Cameron. I’m sure of it. I trust her.”
“Yeah. That’s true in the future too. You trust them.”
“Did my father?”
“No one trusts them like you do.” There is something besides bitterness in Derek’s voice, but John can’t identify what it is. He stares at his uncle, trying to figure it out, but Derek is already turning away to peer through the field glasses.
“The guard’s gone inside,” Derek says. He reaches down to pick up their backpacks, one of which contains John’s laptop. “We’re in business.”
They give the guardhouse wide berth as they make their way into the warehouse compound.
John is out cold. Derek checks and tightens the field dressing before sliding an arm under John to lift him. John is heavier than he looks: there is muscle on that lanky sixteen-year old frame that Derek doesn’t expect. (There are many things about John that Derek didn't expect.) Derek rebalances John’s weight and sets off for the truck, which they parked two streets over.
Everything goes to plan. They are able to get into the warehouse, find the container, extract the Turk, then make a clean exit from the building. They skirt the guardhouse by retracing the path they used to bypass it in the first place, and end up back behind the cinderblock wall.
“Wait a second,” John whispers, holding up a hand in case Derek can’t hear him.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to check something.”
“What? Aren’t you sure it’s the Turk?”
John pulls the computer out of his backpack, studying it carefully as he turns it over in his hands. “It looks like Andy Goode’s machine, the one he had at the chess tournament.”
“Yeah, but are you sure it’s the same one?”
John kneels down, connects the machine to his laptop, and boots it up. Impatiently he taps his finger, murmuring, “C’mon, c’mon.” He stares at the screen, the elaborate scrolling text announcing the machine as The Turk, Grandmaster, then swivels it around to show Derek. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he says, grinning. “This is it.”
Derek snorts. “God, Wisher was an idiot.” John has no idea who Wisher is but he has no time to ask because Derek is ready to move out. “Pack it up, and let’s get out of here,” Derek orders as he peers over the wall to confirm that the guard is still comfortably engrossed in his television and coffee mug.
“Not so fast, gentlemen.”
John’s head jerks up at the strange voice.
Sarkissian looks nothing and exactly like his passport picture at precisely the same time. He is small and stocky, with a thatch of nondescript hair and a big nose. He is pointing his gun at Derek’s temple. John thinks about Cameron and his mother and now his uncle being threatened by this man, and he hates him more than he’s hated any human in a long time.
“We don’t have time for this,” Derek mutters. He jerks his hand from left to right, a prearranged signal to John that he should do what he’s trained to do: he should run.
John shakes his head slightly.
Sarkissian observes their byplay and nods his approval. “Very sentimental. Now, if you will just hand over my property, I will not kill your friend here.”
John narrows his eyes. “How do I know that for sure?”
Sarkissian waves the gun in the air before bringing it back to Derek’s temple. “You will have to trust me.”
John stands up slowly. “I don’t trust easily.”
“John,” Derek says angrily through gritted teeth, slashing his hand from left to right again. “Take the machine and run.” When John shakes his head again, Derek scowls and rolls his eyes. He snaps one arm up to grab Sarkissian’s gun-wielding hand, which he twists around the smaller man’s back. His other arm shoves John roughly in the direction of their truck. “I’ve got this under control. Run, damnit!”
John hesitates only a moment longer. He grabs his backpack, makes sure the Turk and his laptop are zipped inside, then turns to run.
John feels like he’s floating. It’s a weird feeling, and he isn’t sure he likes it.
He tries to say something, but the words die in his mouth. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“Why’reyoucarryingme?” To John’s ears, his words sound slurred. That’s wrong, he thinks. Future leaders of mankind should sound crisp and authoritative and something that he can’t remember. His brain doesn’t seem to be working right. He hopes he didn’t say that out loud.
Derek’s shoulders shake slightly, maybe with laughter. “Your mom’ll kill me if I don’t get you home in one piece.”
John tries to laugh too, but it comes out wheezy and weak. “Bit late for that, don’t you think?” he mumbles before passing out again.
John is staring down the barrel of the guard’s gun.
“Drop your weapon, or the kid gets it,” the guard says. The guard’s voice is wavering and he sounds terrified, and John is confused until he realizes the guard is talking to Derek.
“Drop yours, or your boss gets it,” Derek replies without missing a beat. Derek is behind him, so John can’t see his face, but he sounds cold and determined and lethally serious.
The next couple of minutes are a blur. Sarkissian barks: “Finish it!” at the same time that Derek shouts: “John! Duck!” Derek pushes Sarkissian out of his way as John throws himself to the ground to avoid the guard’s wild shot over his head. Derek dispatches the guard with a clinical gunshot to the right temple then falls to his knees beside John. “You okay?”
John pulls himself up, knows that the worst damage he has are a couple of bruises and a knee scrape. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” He smiles at his uncle, is about to say “thanks,” when a glint over Derek’s shoulder catches his eye. Sarkissian has recovered his gun and is taking aim.
John doesn’t think. He hurls himself between the bullet and his uncle.
“John. John. Are you still with me?”
John is silent.
Derek drives through the dead streets of downtown LA, trying to avoid any bump or pothole that might jostle John’s shoulder and worsen the bleeding. Briefly Derek considers going home, but then he thinks about how much blood John has lost, how important John is, how much Sarah is going to kill him. He turns the truck around and heads towards the nearest emergency room instead.
John’s mother’s angry voice wakes him. “How could you let this happen, Reese? This is your fault. You weren’t supposed to leave the house. Your job was to protect him, that’s it. If something happens to him, what do we do? What were you thinking? Did you think about anything at all?”
“It was his idea.” Derek sounds defensive, which vaguely surprises John.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” his mom snaps.
Derek doesn’t reply, but John can imagine the expression on his face.
John’s mom is in full rant mode: “He’s a sixteen year old boy. You’re supposed to be the adult-”
“We got the Turk,” Derek interrupts.
“Yeah, well. At what cost?”
“The end justifies the means, that’s what he said.”
“When? Now, or in the future? Which John are you quoting? Because that doesn’t sound like my John.”
“Sarah.” Derek’s voice has gone very soft, as if he is about to break some very bad news. “They’re the same person.”
“Shut. Up.” John can hear his mother pacing back and forth across what seems to be a small room. She takes a deep breath that even John can hear, then says: “Just tell me what happened.”
Derek moves away from the bed and lowers his voice. John can’t hear his explanation, but he doesn’t mind. Maybe if the explanation satisfies his mom, he thinks tiredly, he’ll be able to go back to sleep.
John is drifting in and out of sleep when his mother’s voice jerks him fully awake. “It should’ve been you, Derek,” she says. Her voice sounds tight, anguished, and John can picture his mother standing beside his bed, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes blank with fear. He has seen that pain on her face before. He keeps his eyes tightly closed. He never wants to see it again.
When she speaks next, there is so much ache in her voice that John’s chest hurts. “You should’ve taken that bullet,” she whispers.
John hears a shuffle of steps that makes him think Derek has actually stepped back in surprise, as if she hit him.
There is a long silence then Derek says quietly: “I know.”
John opens his eyes. He scans the dimly lit hospital room, quickly absorbs the details of his bandaged chest and shoulder, the IV drip connected to his arm. Then he focuses on his mother and his uncle who are pointedly not looking at each other. He clears his throat to get their attention. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, and I don’t care. Everyone’s life matters. Mom, stop chewing out Derek. He’s right. It was my idea. And Derek, stop beating yourself up. I do think the end justifies the means. We got the Turk, and we got Sarkissian.” John tentatively moves his injured shoulder. “I’m patched up, and I’m going to be fine. Everyone’s life matters, and mine isn’t that much more important than anyone else’s. Now stop yelling, and let me get some sleep.” John closes his eyes to underline his last point and waits.
“Huh” is all Derek says.
John’s mom isn’t ready to let it go yet, but John can hear a change in her voice when she asks: “Why did you bring him here instead of bringing him home in the first place?”
“Better drugs?” Derek suggests.
John’s mom laughs. It's an exhausted sound, barely a laugh at all, but it's something.
John thinks he might actually be able to sleep now.
John owns 129 pieces of Confucian advice, none of which will help him save the world. He isn’t sure what kind of a leader he will be, can be, is, has been. His life is confusing. He keeps getting the verb tenses wrong.
John thinks that the drugs they’re pumping into his arm are finally kicking in. He feels weightless, free of the burden of being John Connor. In the small, lonely part of his brain that isn’t fuzzed by the sedative, he knows that he can never escape being who he is. True wisdom lies in knowing oneself is the one piece of Confucian advice he always remembers word for word.
John sleeps.
John opens his eyes. This time, his hospital room is blindingly bright, all white sunlight and white linens and white walls. He closes his eyes again.
“Hey. You’re awake.” It’s his mom’s voice. Even through the fog clouding his brain, John can recognize her voice.
“It was a stupid thing to do, getting shot,” he mumbles. He sounds delirious, even to himself. He feels the drip in his arm and thinks: Oh yeah, the IV. They must be really good drugs.
“I don’t think it’s ever a smart thing to get shot,” his mom says softly. She brushes his hair off his forehead, just like she did when he was little, and John leans his forehead into her hand. He remembers wanting her to be with him right before he passed out completely. He remembers thinking that if only she were there, she would be able to make his hurt go away. He missed her then more than he can ever tell her.
“Hey, sleepy head,” she says gently. “Are you just going to sleep the day away?”
John smiles drowsily. “Maybe. Would that be bad?”
“No.” He feels his mom’s warm lips on his forehead. “It might be a good thing.”
John nods and starts to drift off again, but then a thought occurs to him. He opens his eyes. Squinting against the intense brightness, he looks at his mother, then at Derek who is leaning against the wall of the hospital room, then at Cameron who is standing sentry in the hallway. He turns his head back to look at his mother. “Will you be here?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” his mother promises. Derek gives him a half-smile that John recognizes is his own promise. Cameron nods.
John closes his eyes again and goes to sleep.
John is dreaming. His dream is absolutely real, the edges of everything sharp and precise, the way dreams can be sometimes. He isn’t dreaming about fortune cookies or being shot or Judgment Day. He is dreaming about the old oak tree in their front yard. He is dreaming that he sees them standing under the tree, Derek and his mother - Sarah - standing so close that they don’t look like two people but like some new creature that he’s never seen before. They stand there in the shadowed grass as the light fades from the sky, and they don’t see him, or anything else.
John doesn’t make a sound, just watches them. He doesn’t tell them goodbye. He turns away and leaves them there.
END
Acknowledgements: This story reflects numerous web articles about gunshot wounds and hypovolemic shock. It was inspired by a Cate Kennedy short story (which is a million times better than this) called "The Correct Names of Things." The "greasy wreckage" of Chinese food containers, the idea of "owning # pieces of Confucian advice," and some of the fortunes quoted in the fic are direct allusions to Kennedy's story. Heartfelt thanks to Ms Kennedy for her inspiration, and for the various medical experts' reports on the web.
Author’s Note 1: As noted above, this fic is an entry in the Sarah Connor Chronicles Flash Fiction and Art Challenge (SCCFF), organized by svmadelyn. See the Master List here.
These were my prompts:
My recipient: wildtiger7
Pairing Request No. 1 and prompts/comment: John and Derek, friends. Derek and John go on a mission, not informing Sarah, and John gets hurt defending Derek. They then have to face an angry Sarah, and John defends Derek again, stating that everyone's life matters.
Pairing Request No. 2 and prompts/comment: John/Cameron, what happens after Cameron gets blown up at the end of the first season
I chose Request No. 1. Some elements of the request I managed better than others. Hope this isn't too disappointing!
Author’s Note 2: The title comes from an exchange between Derek and John in Episode 1.07 (The Demon Hand):
John: "Some people never give up. Some people always fight."
Derek: "Fewer than you think."