A Fic I'm Working On, with Flailing

[alixtii]

So I'm working on a John Connor/Savannah Weaver fic set in the "Born to Run" future, and I'm trying to design the header in a way that won't spoiler people crazy.

Title: Though I Walk through the Shadow
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: John Connor/Savannah Weaver
Timeline/Spoilers: "Born to Run."
Summary: Only two people in all the world know what it is like to live in the shadow of John Connor.

 Do you think a person who hasn't seen "Born to Run" could read this heading and not instantly know what happens in that ep? And still have the information they need to decide whether they want to read the fic. (I'm afraid a more explicit summary like "In a future where Savannah leads the Resistance. . . " might be too spoilery, even though just because it happens in my fic doesn't automatically imply anything about the ep.)

Is there a way I can, without spoilering "Born to Run," indicate that John is not having a relationship with an eight-year-old girl? Or will people who've seen "Born to Run" understand what I'm doing without needing to be told?

Alternately, is there a way to signal within the fic itself (which is to say, below the cut where I don't have to worry about spoilering people) that this is taking place in the "Born to Run" timeline? Obviously there are clues in the text itself, in that "Savannah Weaver is running the Resistance instead of John Connor" should make it pretty clear for people who've seen the episode. But do I need to orient people from the beginning, or trust in their ability to figure out fairly quickly?

Year: A.D. 2024
Eight Years After Judgment Day

But that doesn't tell the reader which version of the future they're in.

Even though John is not getting it on with eight-year-old Savannah, the age difference is somewhat significant in the other direction. If we accept Derek's tombstone as putting the second half of season 2 in 2009 (in contradiction of half a dozen reasons why it should still be 2007 like it is in my "Some Thing to Watch Over Me," but 2009 works better for this story), then John is, what? Eighteen? Seventeen? I'm getting the "eight-year-old" figure for Savannah from the age of her actress--that's not something I typically do, given the standard convention of having twenty-somethings play teens on American television (for this show, see: Dekker, Thomas and Glau, Summer), but I figure at the younger ages the age of the actor should more closely correlate with the age of the character. And making Savannah much younger than eight doesn't really seem to fit what we know about her in canon.

So setting the fic in 2024, which would make Savannah 22 or 23, rather than 2027 is part of a self-conscious effort to decrease the age difference between Savannah and John, because Savannah's going to be the sexual aggressor, and dirtybadwrong isn't really what I'm going for in this fic, so I don't want her going after someone too much younger than herself. I mean, if John were a little bit older then she could be sixty and I wouldn't care, but he's still young and impressionable--although he might not seem that way to Savannah, given that she would have been only sixteen when the machines came. 2009 to 2024 gives us a difference of four to six years; I'm afraid even that is too much (18 and 22 just barely falls within the bounds of the half-plus-seven rule, 17 and 23 does not, and 16 and 28--their ages if John jumps from 2007 to 2027--clearly doesn't even come close) but I don't really know that I can set the fic any earlier without causing problems either. Any thoughts?

Which also brings up power imbalance issues because she's the leader of the Resistance, but I think the fact that he's John Connor balances that out in their minds: even though she'll have more power in the there and then, they see each other as equals. I do think that being a female commander in a post-apocalyptic society might constrain her ability to be a sexual being in a way that it wouldn't with the male John Connor (due to sexism, not to any innate difference between men and women), but that's not a storytelling problem: that's a storytelling opportunity. (Derek and Kyle would be so ready to castrate John if he so much as makes a wrong move.)