John Connor (johnbaum) wrote in omega_reality, @ 2011-04-21 08:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | *complete, 2011 04, character: brian kinney, character: john connor |
RP: John and Brian
Who: John Connor and Brian Kinney
Where: Director's house
When: Thursday, April 21, 2011
Summary: Judgement Day arrives
It was the morning sports report that did it. The news anchor starting discussing the Mets and the terrible start to the season they were having and there was a clip, a short, innocent clip, of teams on the field, playing ball in the sunshine. John didn't even know which teams and didn't care. As soon as it hit the screen, John was gone. It was his sixteenth birthday all over again and all John could see was the Reese boys playing ball, his dad, still five years old, chasing the ball as it got away from him. And, in his memory, he heard Derek's voice and he just knew he couldn't do it.
Not today.
He couldn't go to class and go to training and go to work and pretend everything was okay, pretend he wasn't John Fucking Connor anymore, that John Baum wasn't every bit a lie as Henry Gage and Frank Gale. Derek had been right to ask if he was talking to John Baum or John Connor. Only John hadn't realized it until it was too late.
Vance was given the truth. John didn't trust himself to be able to keep things secret. Not today. When John sent an email to Peter, Callen, and Hanna he just said he thought he'd eaten the wrong leftovers or something in the fridge and might have food poisoning. He didn't think it wise to be sick all over the training mats and there was little about a basic review of physics and chemistry he didn't already know. After that, he spent the rest of the morning in his room, no television, no radio, no computer. He didn't answer the phone, wouldn't answer the door.
He just...paced.
And thought.
Remembered.
Wondered.
Paced some more, while running his hands through his hair.
About noon, he opened the window, in complete disregard for safety, and leaned out just to stare up at the sky. The patchwork of clouds and blue made him think of the skies from 2027, always a shifting pattern of brown and grey and white with bare glimpses of blue. At that was when everything finally broke, everything he'd pushed aside the other night when he'd escaped his own head by going out with Brian, everything he'd tried to ignore for two months about how hopeless the situation was, everything about everyone he'd ever lost or would lose that day.
Judgement Day.
Somewhere in space, his father and uncle, still boys younger than John was now, were watching the first missles launch. Derek would grab Kyle and run, hide in the tunnels under Downtown L.A. until the bombs stopped falling, people stopped dying, and the machines came. John had seen the future, knew what the world would look like not long after this day. Watching the people moving around the base, his mind turned them into corpses walking over hills of concrete and steel, twisted trees, the rubble that would be all that remained of this entire base in another world. Fire and bleached skulls and machines that came in the night, the last remnants of humanity slowly picked off one by one.
Nothing left but graves. The entire world turned to one mass grave. Morris and the Youngs and the Dysons and Kacy and Cheri and Ellison and the priest and the girl from Carlos' gang. All lost and buried beneath the shattered remains of their world. Somewhere it was all happening and John could see them all, see them dying, see the dead come to life as machines to hunt and kill while they pointed accusing fingers at him and told him he could have stopped it.
If he'd only been there to do what he was supposed to do.
But, he wasn't and they were dead and dying.
Folding in upon himself, John slid down the wall by the window. The chill air and bird calls were lost to him in the face of overwhelming grief he hadn't allowed himself to feel for months. Talking with Brian that first night, after kicking the club, had helped put the walls back up. But, he hadn't truly grieved. Not then. Not before or after. There had never been time; there was always something to be done.
But, he grieved now. His body curled tightly into a ball as he lay on the floor, John finally broke as the first sob escaped him and he cried as he hadn't been able to do since Riley's death. He cried for his friends and his family. He cried for his world. Most of all, he cried for himself and his failure and the giant holes each loss had already left inside him. So many holes, he wasn't sure how he was supposed to survive the new ones being created that day.