I don't own the show, obviously it's the property of someone far richer and luckier than I am...
Cameron could not dream, this though did not stop her from trying.
Sometimes late at night, when John slept peacefully and Sarah tossed and turned in the grips of whatever nightmare plagued her, she would lay down on the couch and close her eyes. Some nights she'd last a few minutes, others a few hours, but in the end she would always be disappointed by the lack of sleep, the lack of dreams, and find herself roaming the house like the unwanted shadow she was.
She knew that logically she was incapable of sleep and therefore dreams, but she was programmed to learn and adapt, to become as close to human as she could, so she tried almost every night. It was a frustration of sorts, this one human experience that she was so very much incapable of undergoing. Sometimes she would simply end up lying there, listening as John sighed, even moaned, in his sleep, probably dreaming of his friend Riley, or listening as Sarah's bed creaked, as her breathing picked up and soft, broken sobs escaped the unconscious woman.
Cameron was envious of those sounds, of both mother and son's ability to actually dream things, whether it be pleasant or not. Cameron had at first thought them weaknesses, their dreams, when she'd just arrived. People were vulnerable, open when they slept and not just physically. Their sounds, their sighs and tears at night, were all indicative of what they were thinking, feeling, during the day when their barriers were up.
It was strategically unwise to dream.
Yet, now, Cameron longed to do just that. She understood a lot more about human interaction, understood most emotions and how they came about, but she could not fathom what it must be like to dream.
'The thoughts, or series of thoughts, or imaginary transactions, which occupy the mind during sleep; a sleeping vision.'
That was the definition of the word dream that Cameron had embedded in her program, but she found this explanation rather unsatisfactory. She had done much research on the subject, had fastidiously read everything available to her in books and articles in the last few weeks and still the whole idea of it seemed to escape her. She knew the mechanics of it, but until she could experience the act of dreaming she would never be able to fully analyze, process, assimilate and then successfully file it away as she had done with almost every other human emotion and behavior.
Cameron understood anger, understood frustration, understood things like familial love and loyalty, and though she did not always show it, she could as much feel these things as any human could. She knew what motivated a feeling, knew what reactions certain situations would produce and her programming was as such that once that knowledge was processed and integrated, it became an automatic response for her.
So when John was in danger, she felt fear. When John got hurt, she felt guilt at not being fast enough, strong enough, to stop it from happening. She knew that John, the one from the future that had given her this mission to begin with, had probably deliberately programmed her like this. She did not know why, because Cameron knew it could be dangerous in the end. Emotion clouded judgement, made a clean, clinical decision hard sometimes and most worrisome of all, made her doubt some of her own actions.
She had wanted to talk about it, but she knew that from both Sarah and John's uncle she would receive nothing but derision and John had been less then approachable of late. So Cameron continued on as she did from the beginning, face stoic and voice even, no emotion ever leaking out.
Only at night she let herself be, proof of this her illogical desire to dream. She wondered what she would dream if she was capable of it. Would she dream of saving John? Of a victory over Skynet? Would she dream of being human, of being flesh and blood?
Or would she dream of death, of destruction. Would her dreams be anything other than another battle strategy?
Cameron did not know and this uncertainty, this lack of information, bothered her greatly. Which would probably explain why she was standing beside Sarah's bed, watching as the woman twitched and frowned in her sleep.
A part of her had told her to go to John, to wake him from his sleep to answer her questions, but the part of her that felt, the part that was more than just machine, had told her to wake the woman who barely tolerated her existence, because it worried her to see Sarah in such turmoil in her unconscious state.
It seemed more efficient to wake Sarah, doing so alleviating Cameron's worry and the woman's own obvious distress, while also making someone available to finally answer some of her questions.
A hand was firmly placed on a shoulder, tense muscle jumping at the contact even in sleep, and Cameron shook Sarah twice. It surprised Cameron somewhat when a gun wasn't immediately pointed towards her face, just Sarah's pale green eyes blinking up at her blearily.
The woman, so strong and unmovable during the day, seemed somehow small and weak as she blinked her eyes in the darkness, as she shook her head in an effort for clarity.
"What's wrong? Is John okay?"
Sarah's voice was quiet, but urgent, and Cameron was quick to nod her head.
"Yes, John is fine. You had a bad dream, so I woke you. Also, I have a question."
The dark haired woman seemed to sag, her back sinking down into the mattress and she ran a hand over her face in relief. She did not seem irritated with Cameron, so the girl sat down on the edge of the bed and stared out at the darkness past the window. Sarah did not say anything to that, but Cameron knew that she was cautiously watching her as she always did.
"What is a dream?"
Her voice was a whisper, a soft rasp in the dark room and for a moment there was only stillness as an answer.
"A dream?"
Sarah's voice shattered the stillness, her confusion obvious as she pushed herself halfway into a sitting position, arms being slung over her knees as she looked at Cameron.
"Yes, a dream."
Maybe it was Sarah's confusion that stopped her from simply throwing, or more accurately ordering, Cameron out of the room, she wasn't sure, but Cameron still found herself seated on the bed a few seconds later.
"A dream...a dream is all the possible outcomes your mind is too afraid to imagine when you're awake. It's death, it's failure...it's...it's the end of the human race. That's what a dream is to me, Cameron."
The tone was bitter, accusing and Cameron understood that at least. She understood that Sarah looked at her, but saw something else entirely. She saw the threat that loomed over her son, saw the destruction that awaited the world. In Sarah's eyes, Cameron was Skynet.
It hurt, as much as Cameron's understanding of hurt went, that the woman she would protect, had protected, couldn't comprehend that she was different, that she was good. It made her back straighten and her shoulders even out, her face go impossibly more stoic than usual, because she knew that if Sarah knew that she felt, that she reacted and hurt like any human would, the woman would only fear her more.
"And before? Before John and the first Terminator? What was a dream then?"
The question seemed to stun Sarah somewhat, made her blink rapidly and finally made her shift back down, her head finding her pillow and turning away from Cameron.
"Before? Before a dream was...hope." Sarah turned onto her side, her slender back the only view now available to Cameron. "You should go."
She had somehow made Sarah hurt with her question, Cameron realized. She could hear it in the rough, strained tone of her voice, could tell because of the strained, straightened line of Sarah's back.
She wondered if laying her hand on Sarah's back would give the woman any comfort, if the impulse to gently run her fingers over the tense muscles would be seen as the act of kindness it would surely be. In the end she knew it would never be seen as such, so she turned back towards Sarah's window and stared at the darkness that seemed to press further into the room.
For a minute that was all Cameron did, until she turned and did what she'd read about a thousand times in books, that she'd seen a million times on television.
She leaned over and kissed Sarah's temple, much like a mother would a sleeping child, and let her fingers rest for just a second against warm, fragile skin.
"You have hope. John, the one from the future, he made sure of that the day he sent me to you."
Then Cameron rose and left the room, finally settling back down on her couch and stretching out. She closed her eyes then, thinking that maybe she finally knew what she would dream of if she could. When she closed her eyes she remembered the feel of smooth, warm skin, the muted scent of fresh citrus in hair and the peppermint on Sarah's breath.
'The thoughts, or series of thoughts, or imaginary transactions, which occupy the mind during sleep; a sleeping vision.'
Cameron smiled as she recalled this definition, because maybe she could never dream, could never have her 'sleeping vision', but she did have the very real memory of tonight, of Sarah's soft sigh as she had touched lips to her skin.
And she didn't need programmed logic to tell her that sometimes, just fleetingly, reality far outweighed a dream anyway.
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This was my first attempt at TSCC fic, so let me know what you though, yeah?