Derek Reese's eyelids were growing heavier by the minute as he sat on the living room sofa with Curtis' laptop, poring over the files on his hard drive, as well as his web history. Aside from the weird fetish video, he hadn't come across anything particularly interesting in the hour or so he'd spent searching so far. Finally succumbing to the lure of slumber, he was just about to doze off when he was aroused by some commotion just audible enough to gain his attention. Looking over his shoulder, he could make out Cameron's slender form in the darkness. He watched as she carefully closed Sarah's bedroom door behind her.
"What were you doing in Sarah's room?" he asked, half mumbling from just nearly having fallen asleep.
"None of your business," the cyborg replied as she resumed her nightly pacing.
"You two having some kind of slumber party or something?"
"No. I was just painting her toenails."
"What?!" Derek exclaimed, unable to completely process that answer.
"Keep your voice down," Cameron responded sternly. "She's asleep. If you wake her up I might throw you out the window."
"Go ahead, I dare you," the man taunted. "Why the hell would Sarah want you to paint her toenails?"
"She didn't ask me too. It's a surprise for when she wakes up."
Derek snorted. "Yeah? Well, she might throw you out the window when she finds out you painted her toes in her sleep."
"I bet she'll still like me better than you."
Irritated by her dig at him, Derek rose from the couch and stood over the terminator, staring her down as he spoke quietly but with more than a hint of anger in his tone, "You think kissing her ass is going to help your case? I told you before, you may have fooled them but not me. I'm on to your little schemes, and they're not going to work. Whatever you have planned, I will put a stop to it."
Cameron's eyes flashed blue, startling Derek for a second as she rigidly stood before him unintimidated.
"Stay away from my Sarah or you'll be sorry," she warned before she walked past the man and out the front door into the night.
"Your Sarah?!" Derek gasped, befuddled as Cameron shut the door behind her.
Derek turned to glance in the direction of Sarah's bedroom. He was definitely going to have a conversation with her about Cameron's bizarre behavior tomorrow.
...
Sarah stood in front of her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she attempted to process the thought patterns running through her brain. It was still difficult for her to accept that the events from the previous night had actually happened. As she splashed warm water on her face, she mentally prepared for the awkwardness of having to face Cameron again.
She cautiously made her way into the living room, a limp still lingering in her step. Derek was sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee, resuming his work on the laptop while the terminator sat on the floor, up close to the TV, with the volume barely audible to human ears.
"Morning," Sarah greeted John's uncle, hoping she could just ignore Tin Miss for now.
"Morning, you'll never guess what I found on this thing."
"Anything that looks like it has to do with Skynet?"
"Not exactly, why don't you have a cup of coffee? You'll want to be fully awake when I tell you what we're dealing with here."
"Great…" Sarah replied as she started to make her way into the kitchen.
"Nice toes by the way," Derek added just before Sarah had left the room.
Sarah stopped in her tracks and turned back around to face the man. Derek raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her feet. Turning her attention downward, Sarah was aghast to discover a fresh coat of hot pink nail polish had been applied to her toenails.
Cameron smiled to herself but kept her attention fixated on the television.
Sarah's mouth dropped open as she met eyes with Derek again.
"Cyborg did it," He stated with an air of satisfaction, assuming Sarah's response toward Cameron would be less than amicable.
As Sarah's attention immediately shifted to Cameron, she noticed the program on the TV screen behind her was some type of children's programming.
"What are you doing?" she growled.
"Watching a television show. It's called 'My Life as a Teenage Robot'." Cameron replied innocently, turning around to face the woman.
"I don't care, turn it off, and meet me outside, now!" Sarah demanded.
As Cameron followed Sarah onto the front porch, Derek kept his attention on the laptop, but smiled smugly to himself at the earful Cameron was about to get.
"Did you paint my toenails?!" Sarah asked desperately after closing the front door.
"Yes." Cameron simply replied.
"Why?!" Sarah hissed.
"To look pretty, something you wouldn't understand," she replied with a smirk, echoing Sarah's accusatory words to her from the other night.
"You think you've got this all figured out don't you?!" Sarah growled, grabbing Cameron by the shoulders and shaking her petite frame.
"I never said that. We still have much we can learn from each other," the terminator answered in a more serious tone.
Sarah shook her head as she pressed her lips together angrily. "No. You listen to me, and you listen good. Whatever you're trying to do to me, it has to stop!"
Cameron's eyes widened. "But don't you like me? Even just a little bit?"
"We are at war! Don't you understand that?!"
"But I'm different."
"No. You're not."
"But last night…"
"Was a mistake! And you will never touch me again," Sarah stated as she pointed her index finger in Cameron's face. "From now on, you so much as look at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable and I'll have you dismantled limb from limb, got that?"
The two women stood eye-to-eye for a few seconds before Cameron responded, "Is that really what you want?"
Sarah took a deep breath. "What I want, is for you to make yourself useful, the way you're supposed to. The way a machine is supposed to."
"I just thought…"
"You thought wrong."
"Fine, Sarah. I won't bother you anymore. I'm sorry," Cameron said ruefully as she turned and walked further down the driveway. Sarah watched her for another minute or two until Cameron had walked all the way down the street towards the exit of the neighborhood.
"You two have a nice little chat?" Derek asked sarcastically as Sarah re-entered the house.
"It doesn't concern you."
"Excuse me? I'm pretty sure it does. Don't you get it? It's trying to test you, and if you can't stay in control of that thing then maybe I'll..."
"Enough! I already have a lot on my mind right now, I don't need to deal anymore with your fucking attitude. Cameron's been dealt with. Let's get back to our lead."
"Alright, alright!" Derek responded, raising his hands in surrender.
"So what's on this laptop?" Sarah asked, stealing a sip from Derek's coffee and tying to quell her temper.
"Seems our friend Mr. Curtis is a little... shall we say, deviant."
"Morning," John interrupted, making his way down the stairs. "Oh man, did you see it yet, Mom?"
"See what?"
"You'd better behave yourself, slave!" came the woman's voice from the video, Derek having loaded it.
"What the hell is this?" Sarah asked.
"That... is Mr. Curtis getting smacked around by one of those dominatrix chicks," Derek replied matter-of-factly.
"That's enough. If your pulling my leg I'm going to kick your ass."
"How do you know I'm not into that?"
"You didn't seem too into it last time. Is there anything on here relevant to our mission or not?" Sarah asked as Derek turned to glare at her.
"There's a few contractual documents with reference to his research in cognitive neuroscience, but not detailing the nature of the work he's doing as far as I can tell. Something else about a proposed partnership with another company called... Eden Technologies, Inc."
"Eden Technologies? I'm not exactly liking the sound of that... John can you go online sometime today and see what you can dig up on whatever they are?"
"Sure," the boy replied, still trying to suppress a chuckle from his mother's reaction to the kinky video.
"Sarah..." Derek continued. "I have access to his personal email account. There's nothing in it business related but I did find this little gem."
Turning the screen around for Sarah to see, Derek waited patiently for a reaction.
"I'm not sure if I'm following," Sarah said as she gazed upon an electronic flyer for an event happening next weekend in downtown San Fancisco called the "Winter Wonderland Fetish Fest".
"He's already RSVPed, Sarah," Derek continued, "Could be an opportunity to go in undercover and..."
Sarah chuckled. "It says here there's a strict dress code. Guess you'd better go out and find a pair of spandex, and maybe one of those mask... things."
"I'm not talking about me!" Derek snapped. "This guy's obviously got a kink for being dominated by a woman. We might be able to use that to our advantage, I think we should send the metal in. If she can seduce him, it could help us find out what his company is working on."
"Cameron?!" John gasped.
"Yeah... Cameron." Derek confirmed. "Infiltration, it's what she does remember? Unless you wanna go in there dressed like one of those freaks..." he said, turning to Sarah.
"I'll do it," Sarah declared.
John's jaw dropped. "Oh God... Mom, you can't be serious..." he said, unsure whether to laugh or gag.
"It's either me or Cameron, John, and if there's a chance this guy is helping to build Skynet, we can't risk her being captured. Besides, I don't even know when she's coming back."
"What do you mean?"
"She left a couple minutes before you came downstairs. I don't know where she went."
"Really? That's weird..." John remarked, finding it odd that Cameron would simply leave early in the morning without explanation.
"Your mom chewed her out for painting her toenails," Derek interjected.
"Cameron painted your toenails?" John asked, snickering as he looked down and saw the pink polish on his mother's toes.
"She did it while I was asleep," Sarah clarified.
"Wow," John said, barely able to contain his laughter. "I guess she paid you back for making us clean the house."
"She did," Sarah replied. "And then I let her have it, which is probably why she left."
"Wait a minute... She left because you yelled at her?! And we don't even know where she is?"
While Sarah also found the idea of a missing terminator unsettling, she also couldn't deny the fact that having Cameron gone, at least for a little while, could help take her mind off of what had happened last night and make it easier to focus on the mission. "John I'm sure she's just..."
"She'll be back." Derek interjected nonchalantly.
John shook his head. While he had his own issues with his cybernetic protector, he nonetheless found it frustrating that his mother and uncle could act so infantile over wanting to get rid of her. Without saying anything else, John walked briskly to the front door, hand reaching in his pocket for his cell phone. He retrieved it from his pocket and slammed the door behind him.
"She'll be back, and so will he." Derek reiterated to Sarah, sounding less than concerned over the ordeal as he continued to poke around on the laptop.
Sarah sighed, but decided to change the subject back to Curtis. She needed to distract herself from the guilty feeling over the whole mess that was quickly sinking into her gut. "Anyway, if Curtis' security is as good as you say, this may be our best opportunity to get close to him. Only problem is, I'm not exactly an expert on this kinky fetish crap..."
"Don't look at me. At least you've got 5 days to get yourself caught up... Wanna see the rest of this video?"
"After I get my nail polish remover..." Sarah replied, heading back to her bedroom.
Derek smiled to himself again, hoping it would only be a matter of time before they could finally be rid of the troublesome metal bitch.
...
John didn't spot Cameron anywhere nearby as he took a quick look around the block from the end of the driveway. Holding his cell phone to his hear after dialing her number, he hoped she would at least pick up and explain where she was going.
"Hello?" the cyborg answered in her usual flat tone.
"Hey, uh... where are you?" John asked after exchanging security codes.
"I'm going for a walk... to try to clear my head."
"What?! Why?" John asked impatiently, not exactly used to Cameron acting temperamental.
"Your mother... she's being a bitch."
John hesitated for a moment, a bit taken aback by Cameron's remark and tried to decide how to respond. "Well... just... come back and we can talk about it, ok?"
As upset with Sarah as she was, she probably could've kept walking indefinitely, but Cameron knew she still had a mission, and couldn't leave John without protection for too long. "Ok." She simply replied just before hanging up.
John continued to wait outside the front of the house, and after a few minutes he spotted the cyborg coming around a row of houses on the corner. As Cameron approached the house, she stopped at the end of the driveway to stand in front of John for a moment, her expression blank.
"She yelled at you again, but she's done that before, why'd it make you... upset this time?" John asked. "I didn't know you could even get upset."
"I don't know," she replied flatly.
"Well you should probably just let it go, she's been kinda moody lately. It could just be... you know, that time of the month."
"It's not that time of the month," Cameron immediately responded as she resumed walking back to the house.
"How do you know?"
"I know."
John chuckled as he began to follow her. "Do you even know what I'm talking about?"
"Yes. Menstrual cycles."
John flinched as his attempt to inject a little humor into the conversation backfired.
"She does not like me," Cameron continued.
"Well who knows, she could come around eventually. I can think of a few things you two have in common," John said with a little bit of an edge to his voice, his mother and Cameron's feelings on his relationship with Riley coming to mind. "Maybe you two should go see another movie," he suggested with a grin, but Cameron wasn't having any of it.
"No. I've already made my attempts. My efforts have failed. It's something I no longer wish to persue." she replied as she stiffly walked back into the house.
A/N: Ok, so... yes, lots of angst this round, but hang in there, it's not over yet, and I assure you, this is still a love story. Just going to take awhile with these two. Until next time...