Arriving back home, John led the way, followed by Riley, with Cameron shadowing closely behind her. Sarah saw the look of tension on John's face, the mission-focused look on Cameron's, and Riley's discomfort. "What's going on?" she asked, frowning.
"Riley knows what Cameron is," John explained.
Sarah's face hardened, and she looked at John pointedly.
He read her expression clearly, and waved her off, "Don't look at me. I didn't tell her."
"Riley is from the future," Cameron clarified.
Sarah looked Riley over speculatively. "She doesn't look like a soldier," Sarah noted dismissively.
"Skynet has human servants called 'Grays'. It may have sent some of them into the past...the present," Cameron corrected.
"I'm not a Gray," Riley said.
Both Sarah and John ignored her, "Why would a human work for Skynet?" Sarah asked.
"Power, material comforts, the hope that Skynet will spare them if it wins the war," Cameron offered.
John looked like he was becoming nauseous, "You think she might be a Gray?"
"She has lied to us and is clearly not a Resistance Fighter. All known Time Displacement Equipment except for Tech-Com's are controlled by machines. It is therefore the most likely explanation."
"I'm not a gray!" Riley said loudly enough to get their attention.
Cameron looked at her indifferently, "Prove it."
Riley searched her brain, before the obvious counter-argument occurred to her, "Skynet wouldn't send John a girlfriend!...at least not a human one," Riley muttered the insinuation, and John's face hardened when he realized what she meant, though Cameron looked as if she didn't care what Riley thought. "Anyone who worked for Skynet would try to kill John. I helped protect him from that Terminator that was hunting him," Riley asserted.
Cameron distastefully realized that Riley had a point, but was unwilling to let it go entirely, "You could be observing us and relaying information to an assassin or assassins, to increase the chance of success of a planned attack, or you could be insinuating yourself into his circle to strike at him at a critical time, or you could be a Gray who was sent back by Skynet, but is now operating on her own agenda, against Skynet's wishes."
"I guess you'd know about things like that- how to get close to someone and kill them," Riley retorted.
"Enough!" Sarah stopped their back and forth, "whatever she is, we need to know what she's doing here and if there's anyone else with her."
Riley slumped down on the couch with her arms crossed, her jaw set. Apparently in trading insults with Cameron she'd found some courage.
John sighed. He'd been hoping she'd be easier than this, "Cameron can act as a lie detector, but we have to get her to talk first."
"I can make her talk," Cameron suggested. She said it casually, but it sent a wave of discomfort up John's spine.
Sarah shook her head, "We're not beating it out of her."
Cameron turned to Sarah, "In the future, John often uses reprogrammed machines to perform interrogations on traitors."
"Why?" John asked with morbid curiosity.
"A human interrogator might sympathize with a human traitor, showing mercy or compassion," she explained.
Sarah looked disgusted, "And you wouldn't?"
John shook his head in a peculiar sort of self-loathing- didn't his future self see that that would just alienate his soldiers against their machine allies, or did he just not care?
"No, I wouldn't," Cameron answered Sarah's question, before looking sidelong at John, afraid of his reaction to her blunt response, but he was preoccupied with something else.
"You're not touching her until I say so, do you understand me?" Sarah asked Cameron.
Cameron seemed to stiffen, becoming more machine-like, "I don't take orders from you, I take orders from John."
John saw the tension in Cameron's stance, and her left hand starting to twitch, and he realized what he was seeing; rage. Cameron was pissed off. This wasn't just a problem to the mission to her, and to himself as well he realized. It was someone making a personal attack on the two of them and their relationship. And his mother was putting herself in the path of Hurricane Cameron. A tiny worried voice in the back of his head, that ironically sounded a lot like Sarah Connor, forced him to remember that no matter how they felt about each other, Cameron was still an incredibly dangerous war machine made to destroy humans. And his mom wasn't the type to back down from anyone...until Cameron makes her back down, unless he could get Cameron to back down first.
John put his hands on Cameron's shoulders, sliding them forward until he was hugging her from behind. He kissed her neck gently, and spoke quietly into her ear, "We'll do whatever we have to do to protect ourselves, right Sweetie? But we're not going to kill anyone just because we're mad, right? Just because they don't like us? We don't need to do that. They're not worth it, right?"
"But not this John?" Sarah repeated what Cameron had said over a year earlier about her allegiance, with a challenging sneer.
Without breaking eye contact with Sarah, Cameron moved her hands to thread her fingers with John's, before answering her, "No, this one now."
As the tension flowed out of the room, John had a look of surprise on his face, "When did that happen?"
Cameron turned to face him, keeping their hands together, for the first time noticing his elevated stress levels, and she looked contrite as she realized how her out of control anger had frightened him. "I thought about what you said the other night, about how Future John manipulated both of us, and I realized you are correct," she explained.
"Thought that didn't bother you?" he inquired.
She considered her reply, "It doesn't bother me, but I decided that since I have the ability to make my own decisions now, and that there are things that I want," she looked meaningfully at John, "then my loyalty should go to the one I trust. Future John has information you don't, which may give him an advantage in making the correct decision at times, but Future John is deceitful and manipulative, whereas you consider my well-being and that of those around you. It is most advantageous to us if I am loyal to the one most deserving of my loyalty in the present."
"So...," John considered what she'd said, "even though he may be smarter than me, I'm more trustworthy?"
"He's not smarter than you," Cameron corrected with a frown, "he just has more experience, and If I had meant that you are only 'more trustworthy', then I would have said that. What I said was 'most deserving'."
John grinned at her teasingly, "And here I thought it was just because you love me."
Cameron kissed him, and replied seriously, "I loved you long before I trusted you." She glanced at Riley pointedly.
"Point taken," John looked abashed, "Is Future John really that different from me?"
"Yes," Cameron answered, "In many ways, you will need to learn those things. Other things I don't want you to learn. It would...damage you."
"Give me an example," John asked of her.
Cameron tilted her head in confusion.
John elaborated, "Give me an example of a decision or an order that Future John would make that you don't think I would ever make. Well, never make as I am now, I mean."
He saw the hesitation in her eyes, and stroked the backs of her hands with his thumbs, "I promise I won't get upset at you, and I'll try not to blame myself. I'm expecting you to tell me something that will horrify me. That's part of the point, isn't it? So I learn from it and don't become that guy? Honesty, right?"
She paused for a second, and both of them noticed Sarah and Riley looking on with curiosity, "John gave me standing orders, under certain circumstances, I am to immediately terminate Sarah Connor."
John, Sarah, and even Riley looked shocked and horrified that John would, at some future point in his life, order her to kill his own mother.
John found his voice first, "w...Why?"
"He believed it was possible that, in certain situations, she could become a threat to your safety, in which case he wanted to insure that I would act to prevent that, regardless of whatever instructions you or her may give me," Cameron explained.
"Like what," John asked, sarcasm heavy in his voice, "he thought you needed to be ready just in case she lost her mind and started chasing me with a meat cleaver?"
"No," Cameron answered, "in that situation, I would act without the need for a special protocol."
Seeing John's puzzled look, Sarah explained it to him, with a cynical laugh, "She means that she doesn't need to be told to kill anyone who tries to hurt you, even me."
"Yes," Cameron confirmed.
John thought, still having trouble imagining that he could ever be that cold-blooded, trying to understand the reasoning, "What then?"
"If Sarah plans an operation that is likely to result in your being captured or killed, and I cannot dissuade her, or if Sarah is captured and attempting to rescue her is likely to result in your being captured or killed, and I cannot persuade you to abandon her, or if Sarah becomes disabled due to disease or injury," Cameron locked eyes with Sarah for a moment, and Sarah realized exactly what disease she was talking about, "and she becomes a liability to your safety, or if Sarah attempts to destroy me for any reason except my becoming a threat to you, and I cannot protect myself without killing her."
Sarah cut in, "So when we wanted to burn you in the junkyard, we get a free pass because you were a threat to John then?"
Cameron looked at her without emotion, "Yes."
"...but your orders are to put yourself ahead of me, in terms of importance?" Sarah couldn't help but feel a little hurt, despite John's feelings for Cameron.
"No," Cameron explained, "My orders are that John always comes first, then his most capable protector, which I am, then John's other protectors."
John considered this, "So, if another, more advanced Terminator arrives to protect me, your own orders demote you to 'other protector', and you'd be required to put that Terminator's safety ahead of your own?"
Cameron nodded, "Yes, although I would still be ahead of Sarah and Derek, as I'm more capable than they are."
Sarah gave a sarcastic 'thanks' through gritted teeth at that uncharitable analysis. Cameron ignored her.
John leaned back, taking all this in, and closed his eyes in thought, then asked Cameron, in a low voice, "Can you override these orders? The way you did the order to kill me in the junkyard?"
Cameron shrugged indifferently- John idly wondered where she'd picked that up from, "I don't know."
"No!" Sarah stated emphatically.
"Mom..."
"No John. I mean it. If I'm about to get you killed, to hell with me. I want her to do her damn job!"
Something occurred to John; he realized why Cameron had reacted so mulishly when he'd asked her if she could override her orders to kill his mother to protect him. He'd asked the wrong question.
"Would you try to override those orders?"
Cameron had been looking down since he'd asked the previous question. Now she looked directly into his eyes, apparently a little surprised that he'd caught on to her attempt to fool him so quickly. He could see on her face the calculations going on in her mind, as her eyes glanced briefly to Sarah before locking again with his. Slowly, deliberately, she answered, "No."
She seemed to flinch slightly, as John's face hardened. She explained her choice, "Only you matter."
He ran his hands through his hair, trying to keep his temper, "Dammit Cameron, I know I've got to become this great leader, and I know it's your job to keep me safe so I can do that, but how can I be any kind of leader if I can casually sacrifice the people I care the most about? I thought you didn't want me becoming that guy."
Cameron stared at him with wide eyes. "You don't understand," she practically snarled, and John realized she was right. There was something in her reaction that he was missing. He'd seen her annoyed with him lots of times, especially when he was dating Riley, but he'd never seen her overtly angry at him. His frustration with her attitude was replaced with confusion, which he saw mirrored on her face as she tried to put what she was saying into words. She instead repeated what she'd said before, "Only you matter," only this time she forcefully emphasized each word.
John was stunned as he made the connection between what she was saying now and what she'd said before about him being more deserving than Future John. She didn't care if Future John was a better leader than he was, because she didn't care about winning the war. She didn't want him to survive so he could lead humanity against Skynet, because she didn't fight for humanity. She fought for him because he was all she wanted, and she'd personally rip every human and machine apart, on both sides, with her bare hands to keep him.
"Oh Cameron," he said as he pulled her into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder, "I'm so sorry. I'm so stupid. I get it now."
