To Put Away Childish Things

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Act one

Jesse turned her car into the alley that ran behind the Connor's house. Immediately she slowed to a crawl an effort to muffle the sound of gravel crunching under her tires. As the car crept forward, she silently cursed Riley.

The stupid weak little bitch. Jesse had hoped that the slap she had administered earlier would restore a little backbone to Riley but it had the opposite effect. When she called the hotel room she had been sobbing incoherently. Something about hurting herself, being in the hospital and begging Jesse to come. Jesse had gritted her teeth in disgust before she realized that there had been a useful piece of information contained in Riley's infantile pleading. John Connor had gone to the hospital with her. He was there now. He was going to stay with her.

Jesse knew that Sarah had gone off on some kind of trip. Now with John miles away holding poor dumb Riley's hand, the metal was alone in the house. This wasn't the plan but the voice that had been pounding in her brain since her arrival from the future had incessantly ordered her to be flexible. "Adapt , improvise, carry out the mission." All right then, it had to be this way.

As the car reached the point directly behind the Connor house, Derek stepped out from behind a shed. Jesse could see doubt and uncertainty in his expression but that did not concern her. She was confident that she would be able to overcome any hesitation on his part. Derek's love for her could always be used as the ultimate means of control.

Getting out of the car and carefully closing the door, Jesse motioned silently to Derek. "Hey baby", she whispered before she kissed him passionately. Much of Derek's initial doubt was quickly displaced by his obvious desire to hold her, to caress her long dark hair.

"Are you sure about this Jesse?"

"Yes, Derek, yes. The metal bitch nearly killed the girl Connor is dating. The poor kid is in the hospital."

"Why would she do that?" Derek asked immediately. "When she wants to kill she does it. She doesn't just try."

"I don't know, maybe she's glitching again, maybe she just wanted to scare the girl off before Connor started to care too much about her. Whatever reason she had, she did it and we have to take her out. We've got to do something before it gets worse. You know metal can never be trusted."

The last words reached Derek just as Jesse knew they would. Derek's hatred of all metal burned so deeply that all it needed was a little stirring. "All right, all right. But how are the two of us going to do it? She's not just going to lie down and quit."

"Don't worry", Jesse said with a smile. "I have just the thing." Opening the trunk of the car Jesse gestured again to Derek. "Take a look at this."

"Jesse, those are Cozaar pulse rifles." Derek's tone registered utter disbelief. The Cozaar's were the resistance's latest weapon development – a huge rifle powerful enough to bring down the biggest Terminator.

"Not exactly. They are an adaption of the original design. I had them made here. They don't hit as hard as the Cozaars but they'll fire a force eight explosive shell. With two of these we can finish the bitch."

"But how…?" Derek started to ask before Jesse cut him off. Picking up one of the fearsome looking guns she handed it to him struggling slightly with the weight. "Baby I'll explain it all later. Right now we've got to go. Were never going to get a better chance."

Derek made his decision. It was Jesse. He had to trust her. "All right, let's go. I'll take point." They were soldiers again as they crept toward the back door of the house. First Derek and then Jesse silently reached their objective. "I hope Sarah hasn't changed the alarm code," Derek whispered as he typed the numbers on the touchpad.

She hadn't. The panel light went green and Derek slowly pushed the back door open. From inside the house he could hear soft music rhythmically playing.

As Derek and Jesse were preparing their assault, Cameron stood staring blankly out the front window of the living room. She had become a protector with nothing to protect. Sarah had left for the UFO convention yesterday. And then Riley….Cameron was still trying to analyze John's response to Riley's attempt to kill herself. He had held Riley staring up at her as if he blamed her somehow. She could not understand. She had done nothing to hurt Riley but the look into John's eyes had still seemed to accuse her.

When the ambulance arrived he had left with Riley without another word. Shortly thereafter she had found his cell phone lying on the table. She could not reach him. She could not trace him. She was alone. In the solitude Cameron tried to analyze her situation. "I'm a machine. I can't be happy." She had once made that statement to John. That was wrong. She could feel happy and to her dismay she realized she could also feel sadness – a sadness that seemed to deepen every day.

John had moved from a renewed suspicion of her after the, "Allison" incident to what increasingly resembled active dislike. Cameron was becoming convinced that he no longer wanted her around. That realization was painful to her, unbearably painful. Perhaps she should leave. Watch over John from a distance and try to protect him when possible. Then there was an even darker thought. If John really did not want her near him, Cameron questioned whether she wanted to go on at all. Sarah had never fully trusted her and Derek could barely suppress his obvious hatred. Either of them would be happy to remove her chip if she asked.

Cameron shook her head. No.

She could not choose nonexistence. She had a mission – to protect John. She would try to carry it out no matter what else happened. In the midst of her turmoil she suddenly realized that she wanted to dance. It was irrational. It had no logic. She had discovered, however, that in the elegant movements of ballet she could find a form of inner peace. At this moment she desired that peace.

She switched on the radio and found a classical music station. A piano concerto was playing. It was not the single piano work of Chopin that she liked but it would do. Pulling off her shoes and tying her hair back with a rubber band, she began to move slowly and deliberately. One by one she performed a different refined and sophisticated ballet motion. With each position her body achieved a graceful unity with the music. Raising her arms above her head she spun in a perfect pirouette before ending the movement in an curving arabesque penchée à la hauteur. Poised en pointe, she looked like a glass figurine. Entire body balanced on the toes of one foot.

It was in that most vulnerable of positions that Cameron saw Derek and a dark-haired woman surge into the room. They quickly positioned themselves at least 10 feet apart, pointing their guns directly at her.

"You have come to destroy me." Cameron said flatly as she gently uncoiled from the arabesque into battlement tendu.

"Damn right you metal bitch!" Jesse spat out the words. "Your hold on John Connor is over."

Cameron looked at Derek. He appeared conflicted. As once before, the sight of Cameron dancing into that weird ballet position, entire body balanced precariously on the toes of one foot now standing calmly like a little girl with her feet crossed shook his assumptions about the essential nature of metal.

"John won't like this Derek." Cameron spoke without emphasis. She was not pleading. She was simply stating the truth.

The woman responded. "John's not going to know. When he gets home you're just going to be gone."

Cameron weighed her alternatives and found that there were no good ones. Derek and the woman had entered the room from the back of the house and now blocked her from that exit. The door to the other part of the house was open but she was at least 15 feet away. She recognized the type of guns they explosive shells they fired were strong enough to knock her down and if she fell they would be on her. She would not rise.

As she studied her two assailants Cameron sensed a malevolence, a deep hatred in the woman that Derek did not possess. Somehow the woman posed a threat not just to her but to John that Derek did not. Cameron felt a brief sense of despair as she realized that she would never see John again. There was a final gift she could give him. If she could just get to the woman she could kill her. That threat would end.

If she rolled sharply to her right she might make Derek miss. Even if the woman hit her she might still be able to retain enough momentum to reach her. Cameron thought of John and prepared to leap.

Jesse smiled triumphantly. The nagging voice in her head was quiet for a moment. " Okay Derek let's get it done. High low." She raised her rifle toward Cameron's head while Derek aimed at her body. The music on the radio came to an end as a blanket of silence settled on the room. Then the quiet was shattered – not by gunfire but by a fierce and clear voice.

"Stop!"

Three heads turned simultaneously toward the door to the front of the house. Standing in the doorway with a Glock pistol in his hand pointed directly at Jesse was John Connor.