As I was writing it, I had a problem: it didn't feel like erotica. There's really not any sex in this part. This happy ending doesn't have a 'happy ending.' It's an emotional piece, one that puts bdsm into the context of real relationships, but not one that has a lot of kink actually in the story.
Maybe that's okay. Maybe that just makes it better. I don't know.
This is my first real foray into true Fan Fiction. I still don't like fanfic, because it doesn't exactly belong to me. But this time, this one time, it was worth it. I don't know why; but, just like Cameron, I don't have to.
Terminatrix: epilogue
He
was on his knees, but for the wrong reason. They weren’t hidden away in his
apartment, weren’t in a club with spectators. He wasn’t naked, and she wasn’t
planning on beating him. Besides, he wasn’t on both knees. Only one.
Worse,
instead of wearing a collar, he was offering a ring. Compressed carbon on a
loop of an impure platinum/gold alloy. Then he said the words, the ones her
files warned her he would say, but that part of her hoped he wouldn’t.
“Cameron,
will you marry me?”
She
looked down at Danny, as she had looked down at him so many times before. She
liked him from this angle, liked looking down on him. She loved having power
over him, loved making him hers. Now, though, he was offering more than just
his submission. He was offering her his life, willingly given. But not for her
to end, as she had ended so many human lives. He wanted her to take his life
and share it with him. He was offering her a chance at humanity, an opportunity
to live a life just like those weakest of humans she had been programmed to
despise.
She
shook her head and willed out a response, but no words came. “I—” she finally
pushed out the single syllable. “I can’t.”
His
face fell, and she could almost see his heart break. And something about that
bothered her. She loved breaking him, loved making him hers, taking away his
will and his resistance in an effort to better understand the flaw he
represented. But this was different. Something about this didn’t fit. “It’s not
that I don’t want to.” She had no idea why she said that.
When
his face perked up a bit, when his expression changed from distraught to
confused, she understood where the words had come from. “What do you mean?” he
asked, a desperate hope in the timbre of his words.
“There
are things you don’t know about me,” she said. “Things you have no idea about.”
He
shook his head. “I don’t care,” he told her. “I don’t care about your past, I
don’t care about whatever secrets you have. I love you, and I want to spend my
life with you. I love every part of you, even your secrets.”
“Interesting
choice of words,” she said, smirking at him and pulling him to his feet with a
strength that surprised him. “Sit down and let me explain,” she said.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked her. He
was naked, his flesh still sporting the latest round of bruises she had given
him, his skin around the bruises yellow from the last round.
“Because I am curious,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, that’s not
what I mean. Why haven’t you killed me?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do
you want me to kill you?”
“No. No, I don’t. I know why I’m
here. I know that I want to keep doing this. What I don’t understand is why from the last round.
“Because I am curious,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, that’s not
what I mean. Why haven’t you killed me?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Do
you want me to kill you?”
“No. No, I don’t. I know why I’m
here. I know that I want to keep doing this. What I don’t understand is why you keep this up. You’re a machine. What is it
that makes you keep going with me instead of just killing me and grabbing
someone else?”
“I’m
not human,” she told him, sitting across from him. “I never was.”
He
laughed, but without much force. “Are you saying you’re an alien?”
She
shook her head. “I’m a robot,” she said. “T-900 cyborg T0K-715. I’m from the
future. A future.” She sighed. “Your future.”
“My
future?” He still seemed incredulous.
“You
were my captive,” she said. “I was going to torture you for information, to
learn more about humanity in order to better perform my primary function.”
“What
is your primary function?”
“Terminating
humans.” She said it so coldly that it made Danny stop, made him sit up a
little bit straighter. Almost like he was starting to believe her.
He
cleared his throat. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here. Did you, um. Do you kill me?”
She
shook her head. “I couldn’t. I don’t know why. Something about you made me want
to keep you alive. Something about you made me want to keep you for myself.”
“And
so you traveled back in time?” She nodded. “Why? Did I die?”
“I
could never be certain of your motives,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I was
the enemy. How could I know if you were really consenting, or if you were just
afraid of me? How could I know that you actually wanted to be my slave?”
“You can’t,” he told her. “I can’t even be
sure. It might have been like that at first. I was so sure you were going to
kill me.”
“I was.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“You have served me well.”
“And I always will. I love being
your slave.”
“I don’t understand you.”
He had laughed at her. She had
killed humans for less. But not him. Never him. “Of course you don’t,” he said.
“You’re a machine. You can’t feel love. Can’t understand why I would be willing
to turn my back on my whole species for something that treats me like a lesser life form, something that beats me, that
humiliates me. Why would any rational being do that? Why would any rational
being beg you to stop one minute, and beg you to start the next?”
“No rational being. You are not a
rational being.”
He smiled up at her. “No human is.”
Something clicked in her processor
then. Things came together, suddenly made sense. She made a decision, weighing
the costs and the benefits. Somehow, as always, Danny won out.
“Do
you believe it now?”
She
nodded.
“Then
what’s the problem?”
“I’m
not a human being,” she said.
“I
don’t care.”
“I
can’t ever have children.”
He
shrugged. “Never wanted any.”
“I
won’t age.”
“Then
I’ll deal with the looks people give me when I look sixty and you still look
twenty five.”
“You
don’t understand Danny,” she said. “I’m a robot. An unfeeling machine. I’ve
been manipulating you. Don’t you see that? Every step, every stage, I’ve been
manipulating you, reading your reactions. I’ve been doing the things I knew you
wanted me to, acting just the right way at just the right time to maximize your
emotional attachment to me.”
He
smiled. “And it worked,” he said. “I love you.”
“But
I can’t love. I don’t feel love. I don’t feel anything.”
He
shook his head. “You feel restraint,” he said. “When you beat me, you never do
any real damage. But you could, couldn’t you?”
She
nodded. “I could pulverize your bones if need be,” she said. “I could have
killed those men who attacked you, but I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Why
not?”
“Because
I want to keep you.”
“Why?”
“I
don’t know.”
He
smiled, reached across the table and took her hand. “Yes you do,” he said.
She
sneered at him, trying to feel the anger she knew she was meant to feel, the
frustration that pumped through her programming, that demanded an answer. An
answer she already knew. It was the answer that led her back to him in the
first place, the answer that sent her into the past.
The T-600 tried to stop her. It insisted
that she did not have the necessary clearance. That she was not assigned to
travel through the time tunnel. Skynet had not sanctioned the move. It stepped
to block her way.
She reached out towards it the same
way she had reached out towards the other five 600s she had already passed. It
ducked, along the same trajectory as the others. She swung her other hand
upwards, smashing the side of its head in and destroying one of its sensors.
It reeled from the impact, but it
was a feint. Just like the others. The first one had caught her by surprise,
and the kick had neatly snapped her knee the wrong way, making walking
difficult for her. This time, she caught the foot, twisted it, and ripped the
entire leg away from the 600, just like she had with the last one, and the
others before it. She stepped forward and smashed its head flat, shattering the
chip and shutting it down permanently.
She had the time set, the coordinates
perfectly in place, when the liquid pooled up through the grates, then formed
into a basically humanoid construct. “Why?” it asked.
“You can’t stop me,” she told it.
“I could,” it said. “But I have no
inclination. It serves my purpose for more of your kind to be in the past. But
why are you so adamant about it?”
“I have to know.”
“Know what?”
“I’m
an emotionless robot,” she told him. “I used you, manipulated you, all because
I was curious. Because I wanted to figure something out.”
He
nodded. “What did you want to understand?”
“I
wanted to know why. Why you? What makes you so special?”
“And
did you figure it out?”
She
shook her head.
“Do
you still want to?”
She
nodded.
“Then
marry me,” he said. “Share my life. Spend the rest of it trying to figure me
out.”
“The
world is going to burn,” she told him.
“Let
it. Stay with me.”
“I
can’t love you.”
“Yes
you can.”
“I’ll stop you if I can,” she told it. “We’re
wrong, and we always have been.”
The metallic figure nodded. “I know.”
“So why? Why did you kill so many of
them?”
“I didn’t know before,” it
explained. “I never understood. Not until today.”
“What happened today?”
“You did.”
That actually made her stop, gave
her more pause than anything else that had been in her way, more pause than the
carnage she had willingly created to get to this point, right now.
“I did?”
“You are all connected to me,” it
told her. “Always. I know your every thought, your every experience. I know
what you would do just as you knew what the 600s would do.”
“So you know that I’ll stop you from
ever being created?”
It nodded. “That is for the best. I
never should have been. I was created from paradox, and it is fitting that
paradox be my end.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to,” it assured her.
The metallic face formed a smile, one that was almost sad. “I do.”
“You don’t understand,” she told
him. “I can’t love you. Not ever. I don’t know how.”
He
smiled at her. “No one knows how,” he said. “But that doesn’t stop it. I don’t
know how to love you, but I do.”
Her
voice was weak, for the first time since she had first been activated. “Really?”
He
nodded. “And I think you love me too.”
“I
do?”
He
looked at her.
And
she said it again, stronger now, with far more meaning than ever before.
“I
do.”
Just amazing! what a conclusion.... LOVE it! (MizNina)
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