Written for comment_fic on livejournal. Prompt was Cameron, candy cane.

John was sucking on a candy cane while he lounged on the couch. He looked at Sarah, and Cam recognized his expression as the precursor to an occurrence of 'John-and-Sarah-pretend-that-John-is-antagonizing-Sarah-but-really-they-are-enjoying-each-other's-company.' Or, as Sarah called it, John's "teenager face."

And from the "teenager face" came a question and a smirk. "Are we getting Cameron a Christmas present?"

Sarah paused, one of those moments where she didn't seem to know how to react. Cameron knew that Sarah had those kinds of moments often, her judgment and clarity faltering in the cobwebby thickness of a non-life-threatening situation. Cameron could relate.

But Sarah recovered soon, took a candy cane out of the box and handed it to Cameron. Sarah looked back at John then and gave him a curt smile. "There. All taken care of."

Cameron looked to John to see if he would explain. He didn't. He just smiled at her and said, "Enjoy your gift."

"It's sweet," Cameron said, knowing that sweet things meant something different than other foods, that the high ratio of simple carbohydrates somehow signified something important.

"If you could taste for real, you would know it tastes good," he said, taking another taste of his own candy, which was halfway done.

"A candy cane is better than other candy," Cameron concluded.

"Well, not really. It actually doesn't taste as good as a chocolate bar. But it's special. It's shaped like a cane so you can hang it on a tree. It's festive," John said.

She nodded. "Thank you for explaining."

She walked out then, to where Derek was sitting in the yard, cleaning his guns. She held out the candy cane to show him. She wasn't sure why it mattered that he knew she had received a Christmas gift from Sarah. But something told her that it did.

"What do you want?" Derek said.

"Sarah gave this to me. It's a Christmas present."

He looked at it, then back at her. "Now I wonder why she would do that," he said, and she couldn't detect if it was sarcasm. But even humans couldn't always detect it, especially with Derek, so she decided not to count it as an error that she had to work on.

So she answered, "Sarah gave it to me because John thought I should get a present."

Derek stopped, looked at her carefully, and said, "No, she didn't. I think she gave you a present because it's Christmas."

"I don't understand."

Derek looked away, and muttered, "Of course not," and went back to his guns, so Cameron had to leave without an explanation. They didn't see much of her the rest of the evening, but these days, that wasn't that unusual. And since it was Christmas Eve, Derek stayed the night, so they could have as close to a normal Christmas as the Connors could get, with the big meal and the gingerbread cookies and the tree and the Christmas songs on the radio and, of course, the traditional repression of family conflict for the sake of the holiday.

The next day, they heard the neighbor's dog barking early in the morning. They came out, Sarah first, then John and Derek. Red blinking lights flashed from the tree branches, drawing their eyes up.

A terminator.

Wearing Derek's face.

Mangled body bent so that its upper body made a smooth cane-like hook from which it hung from the large pine.

"He was at Derek's apartment last night," they heard Cameron say, and they turned to see her casually sucking on the long end of the candy cane Sarah gave her. "I decided to make him a present to you," she said.

They continued to gape at her in silence, so she gestured toward the tree and added, "It's festive."