He was agitated. Sarah caught up to him before he got to his truck.

"What was that?" She demanded.

"I don't know if i can watch this again." He wasn't looking at her and he seemed to be talking more to himself than to her.

"Derek." She moved closer, forcing him to acknowledge her.

"You're his mother, you wouldn't understand. You love him like a son. He's John Connor. He saved me and everyone else I know, I love him like I love oxygen and water, food and shelter." He's vehement without being loud, the intensity carried in his fervent sincerity. "And I don't think I can watch it happen again." He points at the house.

"He's attracted to her, even I can see that. But John knows what she is, he..."

"In public maybe." Derek interrupted her. "Nobody actually saw anything. But we knew. John was married, you know..." he laughed shortly " will be married? would have been married? Whatever. She was beautiful... and tough. They'd been together for years when she showed up. One month later, his marriage was effectively over. Nothing was official, but anyone who knew either of them knew it." He didn't mention the day he'd been walking through a rarely used tunnel and he'd heard someone crying. And how that someone was Katherine, John's wife. And how he'd wanted to be able to hate John in that moment. 'Can you hate someone who keeps you alive?'

They both felt a need for silence. Taking in a beautiful morning of blue sky and warm sun, their feelings were similar.

The world as wrapping paper,

A thin, colourful, deceit.

The truth underneath might just eat,

your heart entire.

//--//--//

"Take off your clothes." Her fingers deftly worked her own buttons, but her eyes didn't leave him. He'd just finished his food, and his juice. 'In the Kitchen?' John thought, slightly disoriented.

"I didn't send you back here for this." John said, half to himself. "Did I?" She stopped what she was doing.

"No."

"Then why? I know, you have your own mission. But why did you do this. All of this. If it were really just to hunt down SkyNet, I would have just sent you to this time to find the me that was already here. At twenty four I'd be better able to help, wouldn't I?" His curiosity was genuine, desperate even, but his eyes still strayed to exposed, silky skin.

"SkyNet at this point in time is not just a military application. Since the interest was in creating a near-genuine intelligence, it's creator's exposed it to problems completely removed from strategic thinking. The aim was to develop creativity, a broader 'mind', since people often draw 'inspiration' from other sources, it was thought that SkyNet could do the same. One of the problems they tested it on was cancer. It developed a technique involving viral vectors and RNA resequencing that demonstrated a 95 percent cure-rate on a wide variety of advanced cancers."

"SkyNet cured cancer." John said dully, disbelieving.

"Yes, but the cure was lost during Judgment day. The Resistance found only references to it, in archives we captured from SkyNet. They contained no useful information directly relating to the cure itself, but there were dates and patient information for clinical trials."

"This is interresting... and bizarre, but it doesn't explain..."

"In the previous timeline Sarah Connor died, December 4th 2005. Cancer." There was a long silence.

"So, I wanted to save mom."

"John Connor doesn't do anything for only one reason."