I'm back people. I am determined to finish it. Sorry to have left it hanging for so long. John refused to cooperate and Derek had a fight with Cameron and then Charlie got involved...it was a mess.
Enjoy!
"But I'm John Connor."
"Yes, you are but you aren't my John."
"Your? but you're a machine, you can't be…he cant...I can't. He didn't-" he stopped abruptly.
"Yes I can." She saw how he tried to push her legs away from him awkwardly. A quick scan showed her that he was more fragile than he let on. "You need to lie down, John."
"Don't. I can do it myself."
"We all need a little help." Cameron replied.
"Not me, not from you." He pushed from the table careful not to touch the legs surrounding him. "My wife died along with my child. I have no other." John was now sweating profusely in an effort to get around her. "I will never have another, she was everything."
"I'm truly sorry for your loss." Cameron replied and hopped off the table. "Katherine was always good to me." She lifted up the protesting man and laid him gently on the bed. "And she would not have wanted me to stand by and watch you hurt yourself."
She moved her arm around but she could still feel stiffness. Still she was glad that Sarah and Derek had seen fit to fix her. Even the bullet holes had been patched up nicely. She would thank them.
"What happened to you?" John asked pointing at her twitching arm.
"I was in an explosion," she saw his questioning look, "it was meant for you. It was set by somebody we we're chasing-"
"Who is we?"
"Sarah, Derek, John and myself."
"How old was I?" John asked.
"You were fifteen. We were chasing a man named Sarkissian. He was rumored to possess the Turk. He planted a bomb and I was caught in the blast on your sixteenth birthday."
"Was anybody hurt?"
The way he said it made her look at him. He was so different from her John. To him she really was a machine. "I was hurt."
John blinked at her, "but you're repairable."
"I am but it was still painful. I can feel just like you." She said quietly.
"You can't feel like me."
"Do I need to show you that I can?" she trailed her hand on the edge of the frame and onto his calf. He watched as it climbed up and over his knee. "Doesn't my hand feel warm? Don't I feel like real skin?"
He pushed her hand off him, "doesn't make you human. I don't have time for these games, you said if I helped you, that you would tell me who you are and why my mother talked about you."
"Have you eaten?" she asked.
"No, are you gonna tell me what I want to know?"
Cameron looked at John Henry and made a shooing motion.
"You have 36.28 minutes."
Once John Henry left Cameron turned to the remaining John. "Are you going to kill me?"
"Would you like me to? Are you ordering me to, John?"
The man ran a heavy hand over his face, "tell me about this Turk."
"The Turk is the earliest version of Skynet but some of its components also make up the TDE machine." Cameron paused, "you know about the TDE machine?"
"I wasn't involved with the making of it. It was already in place when I used it the first time, but I am aware of its function. Get on with it."
Cameron sat on the bed careful to stay on the corner and at a safe distance. "The Turk was the early brain of the Skynet Defense System. It started out as Chess playing computer and it was invented by a man named Andy Goode."
"Never heard of him, either."
"You wouldn't have. He changed his name out of guilt."
"So what happened?"
"A resistance soldier and your uncle, Derek Reese, went back in time, found him and killed him before he could finish building it."
"Uncle?"
"He is the last of your family. He died in the raid at Catherine Weaver's house. I'm sorry for that as well."
"Just like that?"
"Yes but it changed nothing. Judgment Day-"
"Cannot be stopped." The both said at the same time.
She smiled and he turned away feeling that he shouldn't want to smile back with Kate less than a week in the ground.
She saw his downcast expression and kept going. Talking about something else always helped when John was sad. "After that we lost the Turk. It was stolen from Andy prior to his death and sold. We chased down several leads but they were false. Eventually we stumbled on to it in Catherine Weaver's office, she was a T-1000 that was asked to join the resistance in my original timeline."
John leaned forward, "tell me about you. What are you? Why were you made?"
"I was born in 2033. I infiltrated and met you in 2034, you didn't trust me then either. In 2030 there was information leaked that you had found a way to disrupt the time stream. Your father is younger than you due to this technology."
"I know this already."
"Be patient. This is important. Skynet realized that sending terminators after you before you were Connor wasn't feasible. You had protection placed for that scenario. Skynet concluded that John Connor could only be beaten by John Connor."
"What does that mean?"
"You have a great weakness for the well being of others." Cameron put her hand on his chest right above the scar. "You did not have this in my time past or future."
"A friend gave his life for me. Caring about people," he enunciated the word, "is strength not a weakness. If you were human, you would know that."
"The greatest betrayers of my time were human. That is why I was modeled after one." He didn't push her hand away and she removed it slowly. "That is your weakness as well. You are a lonely individual."
"I had my wife."
"I am your wife, when she is away. And she is away most of the time."
"Why?"
Cameron looked away for a moment and he thought about whether or not his words had the power to hurt her even though he wasn't her John. 'Would she still take offense? Could she?'
He had no idea that at the same moment that he was pondering that, she was wondering how to spare him the pain that his marriage to Kate was rarely real and that was the main reason she had moved into his bed. 'How much would it hurt him if I told that his Kate was unfaithful and that he didn't care at all?'
Judging from his haggard and morose disposition, she could assume that in this time, their marriage had been real. It would hurt him and her by proxy. His pain had always been hers and his well being was still her job.
"But she was with me. You yourself mentioned knowing her."
Cameron didn't want to dwell on that, she couldn't really be jealous if he wasn't her John."Yes, I did know her. I have met her and befriended her and watched her die over a dozen times."
"Did you ever kill her?" Moving faster than she could have predicted his hand reached his gun and pressed it to her forehead.
If she squinted she could see the barrel that was flat against it. Instead she looked at him steadily until the gun shook a little.
She wanted to remove it and comfort him but he was too far gone from her. He would not appreciate her touch or soft words. "I have never had to. She is just a way to make you more vulnerable but she is not your downfall."
John put the gun down but kept it trained on her, though he knew that if she wanted to kill him, she would. He could tell that much. It…she apparently cared enough about who he was to not injure him further.
"You said you know my mother."
"I knew that she loved you."
"Why did she mention you?" John clicked on the safety.
"Your mother spoke about me because my existence makes or breaks the resistance. I have become the reason you have succeeded and failed. I have become your weakness and strength."
"What are you to me?"
"To you, nothing. To the Johns before you, I have been many things; slave, servant, weapon, confidant, escape, sacrifice."
"What will you be to me?"
"Peace."
"How?"
"That depends on whether you decide to trust me."
He looked at her then he looked at his gun and finally around the room. He couldn't do this alone and he found that he didn't want to. He didn't want the machines to win. He didn't want Kate's and his unborn child's death to have been in vain. He wanted payback.
"I'll try."
"That's all you can do." She stood and removed her dirt and traveled caked clothes. "I am here for you. I will always be here for you," she said and climbed into the bed with him.
"Why now, why not before?"
"This was the time, I was told to be in."
"Am I ever happy with her?" he asked lying down so she could crawl over him.
"You were happy with Kate, she gave you children, three boys."
"Thank you, Cameron."
"I will always do what you need John. I love you."
Twenty minutes later, Cameron came out of the bunker armed and fully dressed.
"You have terminated him."
"Yes, John Connor had to be put to rest so that John Connor may live."
"Was it difficult?" John Henry asked.
"No, he was already dead." Cameron replied.
Cameron and John Henry placed explosives inside the tunnel and all down the length of it. She took the remainder and placed them right on the door where this timeline's John now rested. "You were happy with me too, I gave you a daughter."
"Three minutes and we jump back." John Henry replied ignorant of Cameron's turmoil.
"Yes, I got what I needed. We can go home."
The two terminators stepped out into the night air. The sky was dark but the sky was always dark in this time. "Set it."
However before John Henry could set the timer, they both felt a change. Cameron and John Henry could sense the charge in the air. John Henry was scanning for the source but she had experienced it too many times not to know exactly what it was.
She raced through the tunnel and moved the charges from the door. She knocked down the door and came face to face with what was now an empty cot. John Henry came up behind her.
Cameron turned, "he is here. John is here."
