SCC Fic: Footsteps
Title: Footsteps
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1129
Summary: Somewhere along the way she's made her mother a martyr next to her father and next to a friend she knows wasn't imaginary.
Part of indiefic_scc's JDay ficathon for pirateveronica's prompt: Savannah takes up the work of her mother.
Footsteps
When Savannah Weaver was a little girl, she had a friend who lived in a basement. Her friend wore a blue shirt and a plug at the back of his head and was her best friend, so she can't be best friends with Ellie Harris. The point seems obvious but one which little Ellie Harris fails to grasp; her red braids swing angrily and there's a lilt in her raised voice. John Henry is not imaginary. He's not and when she smacks the smirk off Ellie Harris's face two weeks later, she doesn't apologize. Not even when Mr. Ellison comes out of the headmistress's office with a stern face and takes her hand to lead her home.
They find her another school. And then another.
After a while, she stops asking about her mother and a while after that, John Henry joins the list of People About Whom We Do Not Speak. Mr. Ellison observes this unwritten rule, obliging as he is, so she doesn't ask about the dark haired Sarah with the angry face and tense shoulders. (She finds her once inside the house; she pats her head with a stiff hand and calls her sweetheart with an awkward tongue. She asks her about her son and it's only half-innocent and her adolescent eyes don't miss the pinch in Sarah's mouth.)
Sometimes she lies on the cold shining floors and doesn't say why.
When she's eighteen, she inherits her parents' estate and gets on a plane with an acceptance letter from the University of Edinburgh. She studies informatics and psychology, is young enough to still want to follow in her mother's footsteps and old enough to know it and not care. She never visits but when she returns to Los Angeles at twenty-one her voice is accented and her hair is long and bright. There's new grey in his beard but his suited stance is solid and steady at the end of the arrivals hall and she meets his smile readily.
“Welcome home, Savannah.” She lets him think so.
She's young but when he glances in the rearview mirror, he doesn't doubt her. Savannah Weaver prefers charcoal and black to slate and white but her shoes click down the middle of the corridors, pale and dark and fiery with a self-assured smirk. She takes control with ease, takes the board not so much by storm as by an unrelenting wave of cool confidence. Zeira Corp is her inheritance and her legacy to continue (and somewhere along the way she's made her mother a martyr next to her father and next to a friend she knows wasn't imaginary.)
“I want to see the basement.”
Oddly, it seems smaller without the racks of servers and data towers, quieter and cooler in its emptiness. The desk remains and in the light she can see fingerprint smudges on the metal surface. She thinks she sees miniatures of her own in the incidental history of touch. The chair scrapes against the concrete floor, feels smaller than it used to; her feet touch the ground now. (“Savannah,” he says and she ignores the concern in his voice to ask how many times the dark haired Sarah was given access to this room, to this building, to her home. She doesn't expect an answer and she doesn't get one, but she does request a meeting with her. Sarah will come for the same reasons she came before and she thinks that there might always be a line between a Weaver and a Connor.)
They'll start here.
Sarah is older too but not much less angry; Savannah imagines the woman wears her anger like she wears her calm but they needn't be enemies simply for this difference in masks. Sarah disagrees and she doesn't miss the look she shoots Mr. Ellison on her way out but James Ellison was claimed long, long ago and there'll be no realignment now. Her voice is crisp and curt when she thanks the Connor woman for keeping the world alive but knows it's still Catherine she's seeing so she doesn't push the issue. She's carried the future this far, bought her this time and she's grateful for that at least.
She wonders briefly if her mother saw this coming too or if her other child really was everything that mattered. (She knows so much more now and there are so many secrets that are hers to keep.)
They don't stop it, of course.
When she's twenty-six, she meets a thirty-two year old doctor with blue eyes and warm hands that she might just prefer to cool sheets. She thinks she's in love but it doesn't really matter because billions die on Judgment Day and she's so very accustomed to losing people. The bombs fall and she rushes to the sub-basement complex to secure her machines, her future, and it's a few days before she wonders if he'd suffered in the fallout. (She thinks she might understand her mother a little better now.)
It's cold so she wraps her arms around herself and thinks it feels familiar.
Four months and Mr. Ellison finds his way to them (he always does) steadfast as ever because they each have their role to play and these are his shoes to stand in. Dark Sarah is dead and after everything she's just a score in the tally no one can keep. (“We'll remember her,” he says and she doesn't stop him from trying.) A year and she meets Allison Young who sees more than she lets on and whose story she can't help but wonder at the ending. Two weeks and twenty year old John Connor furrows his brow and reminds her of autumn at home.
He remembers her and it's a testament to a life lived in the flux of time travel (she knows about that, of course, she'd know more than he does if only theory was practice) that he lets her reach up and kiss him in the shadows between fluorescent lights.
She doesn't ask and he doesn't tell but they're drawing their own conclusions anyway. What matters is what she's giving them when she leads them to the place where he died and she was born (look down, John, don't forget to look down) and strikes her bargains with humanity. Her gift is hope in a box and ignores John's expression because she knows what he's thinking and she wonders what it must be like to be needed. He lingers of course, and she lets him because her life is lived in only one direction and he might be someone's saviour but he isn't hers.
She finds her that night, a dark silvery streak that doesn't need form for her to see her reflection in it.
“Hello, mother.”
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1129
Summary: Somewhere along the way she's made her mother a martyr next to her father and next to a friend she knows wasn't imaginary.
Part of indiefic_scc's JDay ficathon for pirateveronica's prompt: Savannah takes up the work of her mother.
Footsteps
When Savannah Weaver was a little girl, she had a friend who lived in a basement. Her friend wore a blue shirt and a plug at the back of his head and was her best friend, so she can't be best friends with Ellie Harris. The point seems obvious but one which little Ellie Harris fails to grasp; her red braids swing angrily and there's a lilt in her raised voice. John Henry is not imaginary. He's not and when she smacks the smirk off Ellie Harris's face two weeks later, she doesn't apologize. Not even when Mr. Ellison comes out of the headmistress's office with a stern face and takes her hand to lead her home.
They find her another school. And then another.
After a while, she stops asking about her mother and a while after that, John Henry joins the list of People About Whom We Do Not Speak. Mr. Ellison observes this unwritten rule, obliging as he is, so she doesn't ask about the dark haired Sarah with the angry face and tense shoulders. (She finds her once inside the house; she pats her head with a stiff hand and calls her sweetheart with an awkward tongue. She asks her about her son and it's only half-innocent and her adolescent eyes don't miss the pinch in Sarah's mouth.)
Sometimes she lies on the cold shining floors and doesn't say why.
When she's eighteen, she inherits her parents' estate and gets on a plane with an acceptance letter from the University of Edinburgh. She studies informatics and psychology, is young enough to still want to follow in her mother's footsteps and old enough to know it and not care. She never visits but when she returns to Los Angeles at twenty-one her voice is accented and her hair is long and bright. There's new grey in his beard but his suited stance is solid and steady at the end of the arrivals hall and she meets his smile readily.
“Welcome home, Savannah.” She lets him think so.
She's young but when he glances in the rearview mirror, he doesn't doubt her. Savannah Weaver prefers charcoal and black to slate and white but her shoes click down the middle of the corridors, pale and dark and fiery with a self-assured smirk. She takes control with ease, takes the board not so much by storm as by an unrelenting wave of cool confidence. Zeira Corp is her inheritance and her legacy to continue (and somewhere along the way she's made her mother a martyr next to her father and next to a friend she knows wasn't imaginary.)
“I want to see the basement.”
Oddly, it seems smaller without the racks of servers and data towers, quieter and cooler in its emptiness. The desk remains and in the light she can see fingerprint smudges on the metal surface. She thinks she sees miniatures of her own in the incidental history of touch. The chair scrapes against the concrete floor, feels smaller than it used to; her feet touch the ground now. (“Savannah,” he says and she ignores the concern in his voice to ask how many times the dark haired Sarah was given access to this room, to this building, to her home. She doesn't expect an answer and she doesn't get one, but she does request a meeting with her. Sarah will come for the same reasons she came before and she thinks that there might always be a line between a Weaver and a Connor.)
They'll start here.
Sarah is older too but not much less angry; Savannah imagines the woman wears her anger like she wears her calm but they needn't be enemies simply for this difference in masks. Sarah disagrees and she doesn't miss the look she shoots Mr. Ellison on her way out but James Ellison was claimed long, long ago and there'll be no realignment now. Her voice is crisp and curt when she thanks the Connor woman for keeping the world alive but knows it's still Catherine she's seeing so she doesn't push the issue. She's carried the future this far, bought her this time and she's grateful for that at least.
She wonders briefly if her mother saw this coming too or if her other child really was everything that mattered. (She knows so much more now and there are so many secrets that are hers to keep.)
They don't stop it, of course.
When she's twenty-six, she meets a thirty-two year old doctor with blue eyes and warm hands that she might just prefer to cool sheets. She thinks she's in love but it doesn't really matter because billions die on Judgment Day and she's so very accustomed to losing people. The bombs fall and she rushes to the sub-basement complex to secure her machines, her future, and it's a few days before she wonders if he'd suffered in the fallout. (She thinks she might understand her mother a little better now.)
It's cold so she wraps her arms around herself and thinks it feels familiar.
Four months and Mr. Ellison finds his way to them (he always does) steadfast as ever because they each have their role to play and these are his shoes to stand in. Dark Sarah is dead and after everything she's just a score in the tally no one can keep. (“We'll remember her,” he says and she doesn't stop him from trying.) A year and she meets Allison Young who sees more than she lets on and whose story she can't help but wonder at the ending. Two weeks and twenty year old John Connor furrows his brow and reminds her of autumn at home.
He remembers her and it's a testament to a life lived in the flux of time travel (she knows about that, of course, she'd know more than he does if only theory was practice) that he lets her reach up and kiss him in the shadows between fluorescent lights.
She doesn't ask and he doesn't tell but they're drawing their own conclusions anyway. What matters is what she's giving them when she leads them to the place where he died and she was born (look down, John, don't forget to look down) and strikes her bargains with humanity. Her gift is hope in a box and ignores John's expression because she knows what he's thinking and she wonders what it must be like to be needed. He lingers of course, and she lets him because her life is lived in only one direction and he might be someone's saviour but he isn't hers.
She finds her that night, a dark silvery streak that doesn't need form for her to see her reflection in it.
“Hello, mother.”