As soon as he grabbed it's hand and put the chip in is limp fingers I knew that I had lost him. My son was no longer my son. He had begun the transformation into The John Conner. From the moment that I knew I had conceived him, I have been preparing not only him, but myself for his transformation. Even when he was a small boy and we were both in the jungle training, I coveted the moments when he would act his age and get lost in his daydreams, his fantasies. I allowed him scant few seconds to indulge in his right for a childhood; then the training would begin again.

Now, as I watch him put the chip back into the machines head I know that he's become what I've forced him to become. He's become not just a warrior, but a leader. The look that he leveled on Derek as he held him at gun point was not one a 16 year old boy is capable of.

In spite of my protest, he put the chip in and I know, that when the machine sent back to protect my son comes back online, I will have lost him forever. Even if it still tried to kill him, I will have lost him, all due to my doubt and coldness over what he needed.

John needed something to believe in, and he had found that in the machine that he always called Cameron. He trusted her, depended on her, and I know, he befriended her. To him, she is the world. Why he fights. For the longest time, that was my place. I knew that he would fight for me, because he loved me. And now, that is her honor. Knowing that kills me inside just a bit.

I stare in fear and confusion as I watch my son ask the machine that had just spent the entire day trying to kill him if he promised that she wouldn't kill him. He asked her to promise. I almost scoff as he waits for the answer, but I just about weep when the machine does promise and I see the tension, the readiness for a fight leave his body. He trusts her that much, more than his uncle, more than Charlie, more than his Uncle Bob even, and I know at I watch him hand the Terminator the gun, more than he will ever trust me again. I watch with relief as she hands the gun back to him.

Now, as I watch my son, the one hope for the survival of humanity, take the machines hand and help her out of the body of the car that we were going to burn here in I know that he loves her. That realization hits me as he tosses me the gun, telling me that he feels safer with a machine that just tried to kill him multiple times than he does anytime else. I'm so lost in that pain, and realization that when he lights the flair and throws it in the car and ignites the thermite I flinch. So lost in the eyes that look so much like mine, knowing that a part of him has died tonight I find myself ready to cry, something that I have denied myself for years.

Part of him has died tonight. A different part of him has grown into what every human being will need when Judgment Day happens. But as I watch him stare at me with those eyes, eyes full of pain and grief, and anger, and righteousness I know that a bigger part of me has died as well. A part that started to die the moment that I knew that Kyle Reese gave me my greatest gift and the worst curse that he could: The knowledge that I was the mother of the future, and up unitl this moment, I never had less hope that my son would continue to love me like he did when he was just a small boy.