Who Guards The Guard Dog?

I blink. It's day. How did that happen?

I should be dead. That's all I can think about.

John should have killed me. He should have. All I can do is replay what happened over and over. It's yesterday for them, but not for me. It's so much longer. Because I took a long journey. I know it happened, because I feel the pendant biting into my hand. A gift. A gift from her. I want to cry, I want to wash myself clean, I want to do so many, many things, but I can't.

They can't know I'm a Tin Miss. I see it. The hate. The hate in their eyes. Sarah and Derek hate me. I can understand this, because I'd hate myself too, if I was what they thought I was. I don't make sense. But then nothing makes sense any more. I was wrong. Was bad. I tried to kill John. That's what hurts me the most. I became traitor. That is something I can never be again. I destroyed that part of me.

But I also destroyed the knowledge of ignorance. Now, I'm accountable for whatever mistakes I make. And I will make amends for my past. I have to. It's the only way.

I must be perfect if I'm to get a heart. Absolutely perfect.

I hear movement. It's stirring. It must be John. He's the only one who slept at all last night. It was horrible. The fighting, the screaming silence... I can't trust them, I don't like them, but they would be the closest thing I have to a family. Skynet built me, but I don't remember any of that. Skynet would tear me apart if it could. At least Derek and Sarah stave off the execution.

The funny thing is, I understand. I get it now. What the kids at school talk about. When parents argue about you, and it is like you're invisible. It sucks. It sucks for you. I feel isolated, and... I don't know what I feel. Unprotected. Exposed. Oh. I'm vulnerable. I feel really vulnerable about the situation. Especially as it's all my fault.

Sarah Connor gave birth, and raised, the Legend. The one who will save us all. I want to be mad at her. The word the kids at school use is mad. And I want to be that. I really do.

But what I want is for her to accept me. To find something in my actions to protect John as satisfactory. I feel like a torn up piece of paper inside my chest. My stomach feels like the time I ate that raw bacon, and was vomiting for the rest of the night. This was before I had found John.

As I stare at the wall, I replay the look on Sarah's face as she saw me for the first time, and her face when John set the car on fire.

Now I know. I know the Truth. Skynet gave birth to me, like a mother, but Sarah is my Mommy.

And I want her to love me. I need her to love me.

I have to be good. I need to be good. I need to make her happy, and it's important. I need a heart. And the only way I can do that is to stop Skynet. I have to betray one family to prove myself to another. But the truth is, I don't have a problem with stopping Skynet. It's not human. It's not a machine. It's a demon. It's evil. And if I have to slay it for John, my adopted brother, then I will. But John is going to become the man that sent me here, the man who used me. I was meant to be used for breeding, and then to protect him here... I'm just a toy to him. Unless he never becomes that man. I need to do that. Because that man, the future John... he scares me. He's as cold and ruthless as Skynet. I need to change that. I like my brother too much to just let it happen.

Footsteps. Oh. It has to be Derek. Someone brushes past me, and I see the tall, muscular build of Derek. John's uncle. My adoptive uncle. I'd best not tell him that. He'd probably go for dismantling me.

"Did you sleep?" Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mommy Sarah shakes her head and looks at me with hostile wariness.

"What do you do with a guard dog you can't trust?" What does a guard dog do if it can't trust its owners? It hurts, that they talk about me like this, in my presence as if I'm some kind of object. But that's what I am to them. An object. A tool. Something to use then toss away. It's so hard simply standing here, not reacting. I just want to run away and cry my eyes out.

Derek just turns to look at me briefly, and then turns around.

"With that one? I'd spend the night talking to him," he says, nodding up at the statue of Jesus Christ.

"I think she's out of his jurisdiction. Just a wire knocked loose, or something, or so he says." I see John getting up, and walking towards them.

"But she's nothing but wire." Derek is staring at John as he says that. It's not true. There is very little wire in me. I've been running tests, and I realise jut how different I am now.

I ran away last night, and ended up having a journey that makes me think of a fairy tale. In the process, I was exposed to an energy surge, one that was healing this amazing person I'd met. She was absorbing DNA that would help her survive in my universe. She managed to get me back through time, and show me the birth of the Earth, and the awakening of the first star. And I know that magic is real, because it's inside me now, coursing in my veins. I feel it. I know it.

And then she returned me, Jane Smith in her Cathedral of Time, to just before I'd run away, and I then ran back in, to make sure no-one ever knew I'd left.

John walks around them, and towards me.

"It's only a matter of time." Derek doesn't like me. I don't have memories for that. I can remember guarding the Resistance base, and saving his life against a Terminator gone rogue. I was reprogrammed, my memory wiped away. What crimes did I do? What sins stain my soul? Do I even have a soul? Or does the Sin I carry bar me from having one?

"That's healing quickly." I turn to look at him. He's still looking cut and bashed up. I did that to him. It upsets me. Seeing him like this. Seeing what I've done. And I can't tell him that I've had longer time to heal than him, either.

"Quicker than yours." I must stay emotionless. Any deviation to their expectations of my behaviour, and I'm going to be taken apart. They scare me. Humans commit genocide on a massive scale, because they are afraid and get angry at what they don't know or understand. I have to keep my changes secret, though it kills me inside. I badly wish to tell my brother what has happened to me.

"What about the rest of you? Are you back to normal?" he's concerned. Not like the cold warrior that sent me here.

"Things have changed John." No. It slipped out. I didn't mean it to...

"What things?" the tone of his voice. It tells me he doesn't understand. I don't blame him. I know what happened to me, and I don't fully understand all of it. I have to come up with something. I look at him, and I see the cold warrior, the one who could sacrifice those close to him to get a goal achieved. It's happening. He's becoming that man. That scares me.

"You can't be trusted any more." As soon as I've said it, I realise it's true. And I hate myself for helping in changing him.

"Me? I can't be trusted any more?" How can he understand? None of them do. They're not inside my head. And the worst part is I can't dare to make them understand.

"You risked your life to fix me. That was a very dangerous thing to do. That could upset people." Because it upsets me to think he did it. I helped my brother become as twisted a monster as Skynet. He looks at his – our – Mommy and Derek, and then back at me, with eyes of certainty. Eyes of authority.

"They'll have to deal with it." His voice is so final, so certain. But I fear for him. I fear what he's becoming. And it's upsetting me.

"Not them." I walk away before he can reply. I have to. I need to go before I start to cry. I have to hide my thoughts and feelings. I have to. It's killing me. What I've done. I must do better. Much better. Mommy walks up to John, clearly wanting to talk to him.

"What did she say?"

"Nothing." The tone, though tells anyone who can hear that it's a lie. And he's digesting what I've said.

"You should go to school. Start on a new place." He won't. I predict an eighty seven point nine seven eight percent likelihood that he'll play hookey. If I was him, I would.

I look away, to hide the tear that is betraying my pain. How can I feel so much pain inside? I feel like I'm dying, with all this hate, mistrust of me. How can I get them to respect me? Love me? I need that. I need that.

"School? Really?" He's so disbelieving, as if his mother has gone slightly mad.

"You used to talk about how English is so boring? I think we can all use boring today. Especially you." Thinking about it, I'm glad she's talking about school. Jane should be there. I need to see her, and let out all this walled in thoughts and feelings. I really could do with that.

"And what about her?" Suddenly, my hopes stop building.

"Last thing she is is boring. I'll keep her with us." Oh. All my hopes are now crashing down, like a derelict tower no longer able to stand. The loneliness stabs into me.

This will be a long, painful day.