Part Three
Cameron had a decidedly strong sense of déjà vu as she found herself standing outside Sarah's bedroom door once more; this time however it wasn't the middle of the night and she was carrying a tray of food. Knocking gently, Cameron reached for the door knob and entered the bedroom; noticing the pale morning light eking its way in through the partly closed curtains. Placing the tray carefully on the nightstand, Cameron paused in her actions and looked down inquisitively at a still sleeping Sarah.
Sarah asleep was a new revelation to the machine. She had never had the opportunity to study the woman this close and this new facet of her discovery about Sarah fascinated her. Asleep, Sarah looked less formidable, less fierce and less guarded than she usually was. For a woman of her age, Cameron was aware that Sarah was aesthetically pleasing to the eye and that she kept her body in great shape. But she never really gave it any conscious thought. Watching Sarah now however, that was the only thought she had.
"Shit! Stop doing that!" Sarah yelped as her eyes flew open in surprise at seeing Cameron towering over her, her hand reaching for the gun under her pillow automatically.
"Doing what?" Cameron stood perfectly still, head tilted to the side.
"Sneaking up on me!"
Sarah released the grip on the butt of her gun and sat up, struggling to unravel the twisted blankets around her body at the same time. Cameron looked on in silence, finally leaning in to help as Sarah tried vainly to stack her pillows behind her back. Cameron didn't think this was a good time to correct Sarah and let her know that this could hardly be called sneaking if she was still asleep at the time.
Taking note of the wound on her side, Sarah was pleased to discover that the pain wasn't as mind numbing as yesterday. It was still tender and she could definitely use some more pain meds but all in all, it wasn't too bad and she could manage. Now leaning comfortably against the piled pillows Sarah proffered a scowl to the machine standing silently watching her.
"Why are you in my room anyway?"
"I brought you breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day is it not?" Cameron enquired in confusion.
"Um yes but..." Sighing plaintively Sarah gave in and rolled her eyes at Cameron's expression. Making the girl understand something as basic as social conventions and personal boundaries was something that Sarah did not feel like tackling first thing this morning.
"I have also brought bandages and your pills." Cameron picked up the discarded tray on the nightstand and placed it firmly but gently onto Sarah's lap.
Sarah looked down at the tray in surprise, finally smelling the enticing aroma of coffee and food. Glancing at the plate of scrambled eggs and toast, Sarah looked up towards the machine again this time with an expression of amazement.
"You can cook?"
"I am capable of making rudimentary meals for survival. I am a cybernetic organism designed..."
"...to infiltrate the human race...yada, yada, yada. I know Cameron." Sarah interrupted in an aggrieved tone before the machine could finish. "Why didn't you tell me you could cook? I would've had you on cooking duty by now."
Catching the amused smirk on Sarah's face Cameron felt herself relaxing slightly, glad that Sarah was not going to cause her harm. Cameron didn't want Sarah to do more damage to herself in her current state.
"When you have finished I will help you with your dressing, it needs changing."
"Why are you doing this Cameron?" Sarah enquired softly as she took a sip of her coffee, pushing away the uncomfortable thought that she should be more upset at finding the machine watching her in her sleep than she actually was.
"I...you are hurt and require help. It...is better for the mission if you are healed quickly, " Cameron replied hesitantly, confused by her own actions and Sarah's direct questioning of her motives.
"But John can do that."
"John cannot cook."
Sarah gave a bark of laughter at Cameron's obvious displeasure at her words and suggestion that John could take better care of her than she could. It was almost...cute.
"No, I suppose he can't at that," Sarah finally quipped as her laughter subsided, shoving away the feeling of unease again as it registered that she had just labelled a terminator with the word cute.
Sarah picked up her fork and proceeded to eat, an almost comfortable silence falling in the bedroom as Cameron stood waiting patiently by the side of the bed watching. Sarah felt that she should be more wigged out that Cameron was staring at her so resolutely, but for some surprising reason, she wasn't. It felt...comfortable, familiar, like something that the both of them had been doing for a while now.
"Ok, so what now girlie since you seem to be running the show this morning?" Sarah placed her fork down on the plate and raised an expectant brow at the machine. Sarah didn't know why she was humouring Cameron like this but it felt...not too terrible, besides she was amused in a morbid sort of way to see how far the machine was going to go with this.
"You have not taken your pain medication. Charlie said that you were supposed to take them every 4 hours. It has now been 9.5 hours and 53 seconds since you had some last night," Cameron returned seriously, as she looked expectantly towards the pills in question.
"I don't want to take them. They make me feel woozy and sleepy," Sarah whined softly.
"It will make you feel better and aid in the healing process." Cameron's expression hardened, readying as if to do battle with another terminator in her midst.
Sarah sighed and reluctantly picked up the pills and placed them in her mouth knowing that arguing with Cameron would be pointless, it was far better to pick her battles anyway. Sarah swallowed the pills in an overly exaggerated manner for effect and then opened her mouth for the machine to inspect. She knew she was being childish but she really did hate the damn pills and Cameron being all...Cameron was now starting to grate on her nerves. Screwing up her nose Sarah leaned back against the pillows again, arms folded across her chest defensively.
"We need to change your dressing." Cameron ignored the defiant woman in front of her and moved closer to remove the tray from Sarah's lap. "It would probably be best that you stand up as I will need full access to your body."
Sarah shivered slightly at Cameron's innocent words as she got up from the bed to stand beside it. Full access to her body was something that Sarah really did not want to think about right now, especially in the confines of her bedroom.
"You will need to remove your shirt Sarah, I cannot access the dressing properly otherwise. I will help."
"Whoa there girlie, I can do it myself," Sarah retorted sharply as the machine moved closer, her arms outstretched to the front of Sarah's pyjama top as if to remove it.
Cameron remained silent but stepped back and waited patiently for the article of clothing to be removed. Sarah cursed herself inwardly as she suddenly found herself in a very awkward situation, hyper aware of Cameron standing far too close for her own comfort. Taking in a deep breath to steady her frayed nerves, Sarah dropped the pyjama top onto her bed to finally stand in front of the machine with only her bra and pyjama pants on; a white bandage wrapped tightly around her torso.
"Are you in pain Sarah?" Cameron observed as she bent towards the bandage and started unwrapping it, noticing Sarah's raised flesh where her hands made contact.
"Just get this over with," Sarah replied through clenched teeth as she tried to ignore the sensations of Cameron's warm hands touching her body.
"The scar will heal well," Cameron murmured softly as she traced her fingers delicately over the unwrapped wound, staring in fascination at the reaction that that caused on Sarah's body.
"Cameron..." Sarah ground out warningly clasping the machines hand tightly to stop her wandering fingers.
Cameron looked up at Sarah's warning tone, her other hand now absently stroking Sarah's right side - to suddenly find herself mesmerised by intense green staring back at her.
"Sarah...I..." Suddenly at a loss for words the machine fell silent, uncertainty and something else marring her delicate features.
Sarah froze as she stood staring into Cameron's golden brown eyes lost in the child like wonder staring back at her. She felt a sudden rush of adrenaline course through her veins making her blood boil with liquid fire as her breathing caught in her throat.
Cameron straightened without realising placing both hands around Sarah's waist lightly to stand an inch apart from the other woman, still locked in Sarah's gaze. Time stopped and the tension in the room became an almost physical touch, wrapping itself around the both of them like a fine layer of mist.
Lost in the moment and responding to a pull that she was entirely unaware of, Sarah closed the distance between them, leaning her head forward...
"Mom? You up yet?"
John's soft voice filtered through the haze clouding Sarah's foggy mind with a sudden illuminating clarity which shocked her into awareness. Wrenching herself away from Cameron forcefully Sarah stood staring at the girl in consternation as she wove a shaky hand through her hair.
"Mom?" A persistent knocking followed the word this time.
"I'm...I'm up. Be out in a sec," Sarah shouted out croakily as she continued to stare at the machine in front of her, horrified for a minute that John was going to enter her room.
A silent pause; then the fading sound of footsteps moving down the hall signalled John's retreat. Sarah breathed out a sigh of relief as she stepped away slightly from the bed, wrapping her arms tightly against her torso as if to ward off a nasty chill.
"I've got this," Sarah ground out, looking everywhere but at Cameron.
"But I still have to wrap your wound," Cameron protested hesitantly, moving as if to step forward.
"Get out Cameron, I mean it. Tell John to come and help me," Sarah returned harshly warning the machine to not come any closer with a single glare.
Whatever this was, whatever emotions were running havoc through her body Sarah desperately needed space. The overwhelming need to reach out for the girl, to touch her and to hold her tightly was warring with the feelings of anxiety coursing through her body. It was too warm in the room, too suffocating, too everything with Cameron standing there in close proximity.
Cameron hesitated, her indecision showing plainly on her face watching Sarah with an incomprehensible stare. Finally, after a tense filled heartbeat Cameron turned and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her with a resounding click.
At the sound of the door closing, Sarah finally gave in to her overwhelming emotions and walked over to the bed to drop in a crumpled heap. Oh God, what was happening to her?
…
Cameron was lost in a world of confused sensations. She had no prior experience to what she was feeling, no programming she could recall to tell her what to do. All she knew at the moment was that she had wanted Sarah earlier. Had wanted to feel the length of Sarah pressed intimately against her own, had wanted to feel and taste Sarah's warm lips on hers.
Cameron paused in her thinking and froze as the thought finally registered. But she should not want that. Wanting Sarah had nothing to do with her mission and yet, denying all logic it had everything to do with it. For some unfathomable reason, having Sarah want her, need her was of paramount importance to her.
Before future-John had sent her back to the past to protect him he had alluded to the fact that she was not just a product of her programming directives, that she could be more than what she was. At the time Cameron had looked at him in uncertainty and confusion, not understanding what he was saying. How could she, a machine, be more than the sum of her parts? She was built, she was programmed and she did as her programming wanted. Free will and growth was a human trait, not something that Skynet would program into a terminator. But John had persisted gently, only stating that she had to trust him, that he had seen her code and her past and what was in both made him certain of what he was saying. So she had let it go, marked it down to John being human and making no sense as all humans were prone to.
What she had found interesting however was the stories John used to tell her about his mother; about the woman who had fought on a daily basis to change his destiny, to change the fate of mankind and their own destruction. But Cameron had found it hard to reconcile his stories with the picture of the woman he had shown her. No fragile human could be everything that he was telling her, it was impossible. So when she was sent back, Cameron was more than eager to meet the woman behind the legend, eager to see if the Sarah Connor of John's stories fit the image of the Sarah Connor she had carried around in her head.
And now that Cameron had met the real Sarah Connor, she was coming to realise that Sarah was all that and more. Sarah was real, she was hard, she was driven, and she was the greatest warrior to ever live but ultimately Sarah was also love. Her love for her son, her love for humanity, all of what made Sarah Sarah was more than anything John could retell or Cameron could imagine. Like a proverbial light bulb going off in her head, Cameron finally had an inkling as to why she had always been so captured with John's stories. Sarah was the woman that she had always wanted, even before she knew what want was.
Was this what future-John had meant when he had said she was more than her programming directives? Sarah had once said there was no fate but what we make, so if that was true, could Cameron really choose her own fate? Glancing through the kitchen window Cameron caught Sarah's brief stare, an uneasiness settling on her shoulders as the woman turned away.
…
"What are you doing?" Sarah enquired as she stepped into the kitchen slowly, walking carefully so she would not jar the wound on her side too much.
"Watching Cameron." John turned around from staring out the kitchen window and gave his mother a suspicious look.
"What did you do to her?"
Sarah stiffened slightly at the accusation in John's voice but remained silent waiting for him to continue.
"I mean, she's just standing there on the porch staring into nothing." John sighed wearily and sat down at the kitchen table. He knew something was going on between his mother and Cameron but he didn't know what. When Cameron had come to tell him that his mother needed his help this morning he had been disturbed at the tone of her voice. Although her features had remained in its passive blandness he knew that there was something going on with her.
"Did you yell at her again?"
Sarah stifled hysterical laughter at the question. What could she say that wouldn't make John run screaming out of the house and to the nearest psychiatrist? How could she tell her son that she had wanted a machine and if truth be told, still wanted? He would get her committed back into the loony bin faster than she could say judgement day and this time she would happily stay there too.
"Why do you always assume that it's my fault?" Sarah quipped lightly, hiding her face from his scrutiny. "I mean, she is a machine John, it's not like we know what's going through her head."
But as soon as the words came out of her mouth, Sarah frowned in slight annoyance. The words had felt wrong, false somehow. Shrugging off her discomfort, Sarah turned to face John, masking her face into a blankness that her insides were not feeling.
"No Mom, she's not. She's evolving, growing. She's becoming more than just her programming. I...think...she's becoming sentient," John replied firmly, upset at her simple characterisation of Cameron.
Startled at the confession Sarah didn't know what to say. Cameron...sentient was something that she did not want to think about. Not now, not yet...if ever. It opened too many paths, raised too many questions that she didn't think her conscious could deal with right now.
"I don't know what's going on with you and Cameron and quite honestly I really don't want to know but you've got to figure it out mom. You've got to make things right," John continued relentlessly unaware of his mother's inner turmoil.
Startled once again at John's words, a quick denial forming on her lips, Sarah opened her mouth then closed it again as she gazed out the window to fix her eyes on the still and silent form outside.
"Fine, I'll play nicely with her, ok?" Sarah rolled her eyes at John in an attempt to lighten the mood. He didn't need to know what was going on with her, it wasn't like their lives weren't complicated enough as it was.
"Now, since you're not going to school today why don't you make yourself useful and see if you can find anything with that laptop of yours. We still don't know what that terminator's doing here and where he's hiding."
Satisfied that John was willing to drop the touchy subject of her and Cameron for the time being, Sarah made her way to the coffee machine, giving Cameron another troubled glance out of the corner of her eyes. Whatever had...nearly...happened in her room with Cameron this morning, Sarah was not yet ready to deal with...if ever. Rubbing her eyes wearily, Sarah was sure that the pounding in her temple was keeping in sync with the slight ache pulsing from her wound.
Feeling a sense of guilt at her actions towards Cameron, Sarah stifled another sigh. If Cameron was becoming...sentient, Sarah pushed that thought away, she didn't want to think what that would mean, could mean. She had other concerns to worry about at the moment; Cameron and her own confused emotions would just have to wait for later.
"What did you end up telling the school about our sudden departure yesterday anyway?" John looked at his mother briefly before grabbing the laptop from the other side of the kitchen table and booting it up.
"Oh, we had a tragic family accident, your grandmother passed away unexpectedly. That'll give us an indeterminate amount of time for you and Cameron to recover." Her fingers going into air quotes at the word recover.
Giving Cameron one last worried glance and catching the girls eyes in the process, Sarah hesitated briefly before hardening her expression and ruthlessly turning away. Going to sit next to John at the table Sarah cupped her coffee mug firmly in her grasp, trying to push away any thoughts in regards to Cameron. Terminators, judgement day, death; those were the things she should be concerned about, not the 'machine who could' standing outside and wrecking havoc on her emotional barriers.
…
"You have not taken your pills Sarah." The voice was firm, determined as Cameron stepped up behind Sarah's sitting form on the porch steps moving around to stand in front of the woman, arm outstretched with two white pills resting in her palm, a bottle of water in the other.
Sarah quirked an annoyed eyebrow at the girl as she took in her determined features, Cameron's bland expression contradictory to the stiffness in her form.
"How do you know? Have you been counting them?" Rolling her eyes at the girl, Sarah turned away to stare out into the backyard, hoping that Cameron would take the hint and leave.
Ignoring Sarah's sarcastic response, Cameron continued to remain still in her pose as she waited for Sarah to take the pills.
Feeling Cameron's determined gaze still on her, Sarah turned back around and sighed in resignation. "I guess you're just gonna stand there until I do huh?" Taking the pills and the water bottle reluctantly, Sarah avoided Cameron's vivid gaze as she was suddenly assaulted by the feelings from the incident in her bedroom yesterday morning.
Popping the pills into her mouth and then chasing it down with a gulp of water, Sarah stiffened as Cameron came to sit down next to her, the girls warm thigh brushing against her own intimately as Cameron settled herself primly, hands on her knees staring out in front of her blankly.
"Why are you doing this Cameron?" Sarah suddenly blurted, her confusion making her mouth open before her brain could warn her that she was delving into dangerous territory as she tried to ignore the warm tingling sensation from where Cameron's thigh touched hers. Placing the water bottle down beside her, Sarah clasped her knees to her chest placing her chin on top, as she willed her body to settle and tried to move away from Cameron as far as possible on the crowded step.
"I...I do not...know." The reply was hesitant, unsure.
Sarah stiffened again in alarm at the honesty, having expected Cameron to reply something along the vein of doing her mission. Turning her head slightly to catch Cameron's confused expression; Sarah could only feel the tension in her body rising. Not knowing what to say to the honest admittance, Sarah fell silent, turning away to watch the twinkling stars in the distance.
"Future-John told me stories about...Sarah Connor."
"Oh?" Startled at the softly spoken words, Sarah turned confusing eyes onto Cameron, watching silently as the girl's expression remained bland wondering where she was going to go with this conversation starter.
"I...did not believe his stories." Cameron's expression shifted, her eyes becoming intense as she turned a wondering gaze onto Sarah. "Until...I met you."
Feeling uncomfortable at the barely concealed awe in the girl's expression and the press of Cameron's warm body against her side as Cameron moved closer, Sarah shifted uncomfortably, the tension in her body rising again.
"Cameron..." Faltering slightly Sarah fell silent, not sure what the girl wanted her to say, "What are you trying to say? Why are you telling me this?"
"I..." Cameron fell silent, her confusion now clearly evident on her face as she placed a hand uncertainly on Sarah's thigh. "Sarah...yesterday..."
Sarah's body tensed in reaction to the touch and the words, the warmth of the hand spreading all over her body in alarming speed as tingling sensations travelled up and down her thigh. She could not do this, could not have this conversation with Cameron when she wasn't even sure what the hell kind of conversation she wanted to have.
"Okay...that's enough chit chat for one night. I'm going to bed." Standing up jerkily, Sarah ran a shaky hand through her hair wearily, cursing her body's reaction to the metal girl sitting beside her.
"Sarah..." Cameron's voice had a desperate tinge to it as she stood up as well, grabbing a hold of Sarah's arm to stop her from leaving.
Looking down at Cameron's hand on her arm from the top step, Sarah could only frown in consternation, her desire to leave warring with her desire to stay.
"Cameron...just...don't...okay?"
Loosening the hold on her arm, Sarah turned and walked back into the house feeling Cameron's silent stare as she forced her legs to listen to her brains command to keep on walking and not turn back.
TBC…