Title: Some Thing to Watch Over Me
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairings: Riley/Cameron, John/Riley, John/Cameron, Riley/Jessie, Jessie/Derek, John/Riley/Cameron.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place during the first half of Season 2, after 2x08, "Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today" but before the half-season finale. Spoilers for the first half of Season 2. Also spoilers for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Becoming Jane.
Summary: Termination is not an option, so Cameron must rely on other tactics to neutralize the threat Riley poses.
Rating: NWS
A/N: Epigraph from Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Special thanks to my betas, anonymous_sibyl, present_pathos, and tacky_tramp. This was written before I saw any episodes of the second half of the Season 2; I don't know which I feared most, being jossed or kripked.

Some Thing to Watch Over Me

Then come what will of weal or woe
(Since all gold hath alloy),
Thou 'lt bloom unwithered in this heart,
My Rose of Joy!

--R.R.R.

IV.

So Riley finds herself at the mall, shopping for clothes with the machine. Trying on skirts with Cameron is a surreal experience, to say the least.

"How do I look?" Cameron asks, walking out of the fitting room in a black miniskirt and matching thigh-high leather boots. Riley has to admit the answer is pretty damn hot.

"Good," she says instead.

Cameron stares at Riley for a long moment. Riley involuntarily fidgets under the machine's penetrating gaze, wondering what exactly it's looking for, before Cameron nods. "I'll take them, then," she says, and returns to the fitting room, emerging moments later dressed in her original clothing and carrying the garments in question.

"What about you?" Cameron asks, ruffling through the clothes on one of the nearby racks.

"I don't know," Riley says. She still has the eighty dollars; its presence in her pocket there is an unfamiliar sensation.

"How about this?" Cameron suggests, taking a top off the rack.

It's a sleeveless dark purple thing, and Riley eyes it doubtfully. "It looks a bit small."

"It's your size," Cameron says, softly but in a way that permits no disagreement. Riley doesn't bother to question how Cameron knows what Riley's size is, and takes the top and enters the fitting room.

The top is a lot more tight-fitting than the sort of thing Riley usually wears, but it does fit her. Like a glove, even. She looks at herself in the mirror and, yes, she has to admit despite herself that she actually goods in it. Better than good, even. Hot.

Damn if the cyborg doesn't have good taste.

She frowns and turns, looking at herself from a different angle. Still hot.

For some reason she can't name, this discomforts her. She considers taking it off and and telling Cameron it doesn't fit, but she knows the machine will know she's lying. So she walks back into the store strangely self-conscious, aware of her bare shoulders and the way the shirt hugs her breasts.

It's an odd feeling; back in the future, she would try to stay hidden in order to forage for food and to avoid the machines, not because of what she was wearing. Clothing was a necessity for protection, not modesty. Being seen half- or even fully-naked wouldn't have embarrassed her then; after all, about half the people she ran into ended up fucking her anyway. It was one of the few things she had to barter with, in exchange for food or water or people just plain not killing her.

She ignores everyone else in the store--who aren't even watching her anyway--and focuses on Cameron, who is eying her up in the new top. "The dimensions of your garment are sufficient for its purpose," she notes. "Your sexual attractiveness has been improved."

There is something highly unsettling about having having her sexual attractiveness judged by a machine. Suddenly she feels used, dirty, contrite, in need of absolution.

She makes her way back into the fitting room and changes out of the purple top. As she passes the discard rack on her way out she almost drops it into the basket, but instead she walks to a cash register alongside Cameron and pays for the shirt.

"Do you want to get something to eat?" Cameron asks as they pass out of the Gap into the mall. Riley knows the machine doesn't even really need to eat, but she is hungry, and she hasn't figured out what Cameron wants yet (other than a tight skirt and a kick-ass pair of boots) so she says, "Okay," and walks with Cameron to the food court.

They both get bacon cheeseburgers with cheese fries, and Riley sips her Diet Pepsi and looks across the table at the machine. "Thanks for your help," Cameron says, and flashes what would be a winning smile if Riley didn't know it was fake.

"No prob," Riley answers guardedly. They're both playing their way through the script here, but Cameron has the advantage: they might both know the rules, but the machine knows why they are playing this game, and Riley doesn't. She tries to not let it bother her as she bites into her hamburger, delicious and juicy. "Mmm," she says, involuntarily. Of all the reasons why the past is better than the post-apocalyptic future which follows it, the food numbers fairly highly on the list.

Cameron smiles. "That good?"

Riley can't help but smile back and nods. She frowns as quickly as she can, reminding herself that Cameron is a machine. The smile is nothing more than an act, an artifice with no purpose other than to manipulate.

Cameron doesn't seem to notice the sudden shift in Riley's mood, which only means Cameron doesn't want to seem to notice. She takes a fry and looks at it, the semi-viscous pseudo-cheddar sliding off of it. "Who invented cheese fries?" she asks. If she were not a machine, the question would seem idle.

But she is, and it isn't, and Riley's beginning to have enough of being played around with. She takes a breath and stares Cameron down, which isn't the most effective line of attack against a machine. "Why are we here?" she asks.

Cameron's facsimile of confusion is fairly convincing. "What do you mean?"

"Look," says Riley, "we both know you have absolutely no real reason to want to look hot in new clothes, and we both know that I'd rather be doing pretty much anything than be here with you. So I have to wonder just what the hell are we doing here?" Her voice rises with pent-up anger as she says this, and the mother of two toddlers at the table next to theirs shoots her an angry look. Plus she's threatening her cover, but at this point she really doesn't care.

Cameron shrugs. "I thought you were enjoying yourself," she says, and the worst thing is, Riley can't exactly contradict her, so she just scowls and goes back to trying stare her down.

Naturally, Cameron doesn't blink. "Okay, whatever," Riley says, and takes another cheese fry. "We'll do this your way."

Cameron's face is the portrait of innocence. "I just thought, maybe we could get to know each other?"

What is there to get to know? Cameron is a machine from the future, programmed to kill and then to protect, and that's pretty much it. But she can't say any of that here, in public, so she just pushes her fries towards Cameron. "You can have the rest of these if you want."

The machine demurs and soon they make their way back through the mall in silence. They pass the Borders Express and Riley catches a glimpse of a book on the shelf. "Wait," she says to Cameron, wand enters the bookstore, picks up the book and feels it in her hands.

It's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

"I loved this book as a kid," she tells Cameron, who followed her into the bookstore, as she flips through the pages. She remembers hearing it read to her by her parents, before Judgment Day. She remembers carrying it around with her as she hid from the machines, wishing that Aunt Mirandy would protect her from them, or that Mr. Aladdin would give her one of his marvelous gifts, until the book became so dirty and worn it fell apart in her hands. If only she could escape that post-apocalyptic landscape the way Rebecca did Sunnybrook, she had told herself, then she, like Rebecca, would have been able to succeed through sheer virtue and willpower.

And then it happened, and she has escaped thanks to Jessie, but her will is in conflict and she doesn't feel very virtuous, and if there is anything she is most emphatically not doing, it is succeeding.

She takes the book up to the cashier and pays for it.

"Reading is a very important activity," Cameron announces, and Riley is unsure whether to flinch at the machine's, well, machine-ness, or to laugh. She settles for rolling her eyes as the two exit the mall bookstore.

They continue until Cameron grabs Riley's arm in front of Deb. Cameron stares long and hard at one of the mannequins in the prom dress display, and Riley tenses, wondering if maybe it is a T-1000 in disguise. "I was supposed to go to prom," Cameron states, in that flat tone of voice she uses when she isn't pretending to be normal. "But--"

"But then your mom pulled the two of you out of school," Riley says, finishing the thought. "Here, let's go in, just look around," she says.

"I don't see the usefulness of this activity," Cameron says, but Riley is already pulling her by the arm into the store.

"Hey, you drug me around this place all day for no reason I can see," Riley points out, as she drags the super-strong killing machine through the store. She stops in front of a lavender dress, taking it and holding it up to Cameron. The machine'd kill in it (well, other than literally), but still, something is off.

"You should go to the prom," Riley muses. "The boy still goes to the school, right?"

"Communication silence is necessary for our tactical situation," reminds Cameron. "Prom would be a distraction."

And this isn't? Riley wonders, but instead says. "Well, you're at least trying on a dress. Come on, you don't have to buy it."

They settle on a dress and Cameron enters the dressing room with it, and exits a moment later engowned in silver fabric, her shoulders and back bare, her thighs just visible through the skirt's translucence. "How do I look?" Cameron asks.

"Beautiful," answers Riley in a whisper, her reply much more sincere than she would have liked.

V.

"How did it go," John asks when they get back.

"We had fun," Cameron answers before Riley gets a chance. Then, of all things, she winks at Riley. "Didn't we?"

"Yeah, I guess," Riley admits as Cameron goes into her room. Riley leans across and kisses John, but as usual he seems distracted, and this time her heart's not quite in it either.

"I'm glad you and Cameron are getting along," John says, but the confused look on his face makes clear he's curious as to what Cameron is up to as well. This comes as something of a relief to Riley; at least she's not the only the one the metal bitch has kept out of the loop.

"Yeah," she says, because she isn't, but doesn't want to say so.

"So what did, you know, you two do?" he digs totally unsubtly. Not that her own intelligence could exactly be called subtle, and it feels strangely good for him to be burning with curiosity about something she's done.

Riley shrugs. "You know," she says. "Girl stuff."

VI.

"Nice top," Jessie's voice breaks through the crowd from behind Riley.

"Thanks," answers Riley, giving a quick glance behind her. "Cameron picked it out."

Jessie laughs dryly. ""So what did Miss Metal Teenage Princess want after all?"

Riley shrugs, disappointed not to be able to give Jessie anything juicy. "As far as I know, to go shopping. She bought a skirt and some boots and I made her try on a prom dress."

"A prom dress?" Jessie raises a skeptical eyebrow.

"Long story," Riley evades. "Point is, to anyone else we were just two girls hanging out at the mall. No one would have guessed we actually hate each other."

Jessie nods, lips pursed. "Did you have fun?"

This is the last question Riley had expected from Jessie. "I don't know," she says. "I guess."

Jessie puts a hand on Riley's shoulder. Ordinarily Riley would be grateful for the touch, even hungry for it, but right now it seems strangely controlling. "It's okay to enjoy yourself," Jessie reassures her, her voice warm. "Just as long as you don't lose track of the mission."

"Never," Riley promises.