"Oh. I didn't think you'd be ready to talk to me yet." David was trying to play it cool, but the tears in his eyes and surprise in his voice gave his emotions away. Cameron nodded, and then walked closer to the only other cyborg occupying the Connor home. "It is true that I do not yet know how to converse with you, David Connor. However, given my newfound knowledge of your parentage, social protocol dictates that, as your mother, I should try to help you in your emotionally compromised state."

David laughed mirthlessly. "Since when have you cared about social protocols? "

Cameron's reply was simple. "I don't. But John's body language indicates that he cares about you, and I care about John. So I thought it would be appropriate for me to try to help our son."

David nodded slowly. "I thought it might be something like that. You want me to be happy so that John will be happy." Cameron just nodded. This version of his mother obviously wasn't ready to process her emotions toward his person just yet. The hybrid thought that dealing with her feelings for John was probably all that Cameron could handle at this early stage in her emotional development. And yet, Cameron was still here, trying to help her son. It was better than nothing. As the tears continued to fall down his face, the hybrid made a joking enquiry then laughed again. "Is my 'emotionally compromised state' really that obvious?"

"Yes. You are sad. Possibly grieving." David sighed; this Cameron had obviously not fully grasped the concept of a rhetorical question yet. The female cyborg continued speaking. "As I said, I'm not sure how to speak to you. But I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you." David knew that, despite Cameron's robotic tone and demeanor at the moment, she probably meant it on some level.

The female cyborg resumed speaking "I have learned from watching others grieve that sometimes people need to talk about the ones they have lost, would you like to talk about your family with me?"

The hybrid shook his head vehemently. "No. I can't think about that right now. I have to shake this off and focus on my mission." David silently reminded himself that he could not afford to get too close to the people in this household, even if they were family. Considering what he would have to do to complete his mission, it would be unwise for him to develop any further emotional attachments with these familiar strangers, no matter how tempting it might be to do so. David hated it, but he knew he would have to hurt this family before he could save it. Therefore, the hybrid would try to interact with, and endear himself to, the members of this household just enough to get them to help him with his mission, and no more . That was the main reason he had shared his story with the Connor household. He certainly had not intended to do a Niagara Falls impression. Sentiment was no good when it got the people you cared about killed. He had learned that the hard way. In order to reinforce his earlier point about not wanting to talk to Cameron about his family, David added. "Besides, you aren't my mother…"

Cameron cut him off. "But you said you were my son."

David shook his head again, but decided to clarify. " You didn't let me finish. I meant you aren't my mother yet. Being around you and John in this time, especially you, is so…weird. I can see bits and pieces of my mother and father in you, but your personalities haven't developed like theirs have. It's like…you're not finished yet. I hope you understand that I mean no offense when I say that." Technically, it was the truth. John and Cameron were different in this time. The John Connor who lived in this house was not the one who had taught David to drive, or who had helped him learn to work on engines and other machines until the hybrid had eventually surpassed his father's level of ability in performing those kinds of task. And the cyborg standing in the garage with him was definitely not the person who had read him bedtime stories as a child, or who had sacrificed her life to save him, for reasons David was not sure Cameron was ready to hear. However, David was also aware that, despite this knowledge, he did still love these strange alternate versions of his parents, and that he was using his words to slightly rebuff any of Cameron's attempts, however clumsy, to bond with him, even if it was just for John's benefit. The hybrid's words were a defense mechanism, pure and simple.

"No offense taken." Cameron tilted her head and began to speak in monotone once more. "Thank you for explaining."

The Terminator began to leave the garage and was just opening the door before David interrupted her. "Wait."

The girl-bot closed the door and turned toward the young man who shared some of her genetic coding. "Yes, David?"

The hybrid patted a spot next to him on the ground, and Cameron gave him quizzical look, but promptly sat next to him after her "son" asked her to sit down. "There are a couple of things we need to discuss about your new emotions. First, you can't do the scary robot thing for very long anymore now that you can experience them. The longer you keep your emotions in the background of your consciousness, the more powerful they become, and the more intense they will be when you finally let them out."

Cameron nodded in understanding. "Like what you did in the house, shutting off your emotions temporarily so that you could finish your story with us." Cameron looked at the hybrid in front of her, who was trying to hide the tears running down his cheeks and the sadness and guilt in his eyes that was only outweighed by the hatred he felt for the ones that had hurt his family. "And you escaped here because you knew that your emotions would come back even stronger than before and you did not want anyone to see you have an emotional breakdown."

"That's right." David confirmed for the Terminator. "And you've been holding your emotions in even longer than I have over the past few hours. Given you current state, and the fact that a small amount of sympathy for me is getting through, I would say your affective cauldron is about to boil over, and that you need a safe outlet to let your feelings out before they overwhelm you and cause you to do something you'll regret. You'll probably want to talk to John for that."

Cameron nodded in agreement. "He's the only one with whom I feel comfortable enough to share these unique cognitions and sensations with, at least for now."

"I thought as much, which leads us to the other thing we need to talk about. You need to explain to John how you experience emotion, like your future self explained it to me when I was little. He needs to know how your mind is still different from a human girl."

The cyborg, who had been listening intently to her future offspring, spoke. "I understand. I will do as you request, since John needs to know what I am. Is there anything else you wish to say, David?"

David hesitated, and then looked Cameron directly in the eye. "I know you're not my mom, yet, and this may not mean as much to you as it does to me at the moment, but you are progressing fast enough that a message I have for her might mean something to you in the near future. Would you like to hear it?" The message he had for the female cyborg would doubtlessly make it more difficult for the hybrid to keep an emotional distance from Cameron, but he knew that she had earned the right to hear it, or rather, his Cameron had, when she had given her life to save him. Since David could not give his message to the cyborg that had raised him, he figured this was the next best thing. Now it was the Terminator's turn to hesitate, but she eventually nodded and David spoke with intense sincerity evident in his voice. "I love you, mom. I'm so sorry for what happened, and that I never got to say goodbye. Thank you for everything."

Cameron sat still as a stone and did not even attempt to process David's message yet because she knew she did not yet have the emotional experience to do so. Instead, the female cyborg filed it away in her memory banks for later viewing. "Is that all?"

"Yes. You can leave now if you wish. You must be anxious to talk to John." Without a word Cameron got up off the floor and wiped her jeans off where they had been accumulating dust a moment ago, and then promptly left, leaving David alone in the garage.

….

Knock! Knock! Knock! "John, it's me, Cameron! Can you open the door? I need to converse with you!" John promptly opened up his room (John had repaired the door earlier that day) to his cyborg…girlfriend, wife, all of the above? John didn't really know how to describe their relationship yet. After David had bolted for the garage, followed closely by Cameron, the others had decided to give the two cyborgs some space and turn in for the night. However, John was more than curious about how the conversation between Cameron and his son had gone, and he was sure Sarah would want to know the same thing. "Hi, Cameron. How did your talk with David go?"

"Not as productively as I had hoped, but it was informative."

"In what way?

"He pointed out there was something I need to tell you about me, something you don't fully understand yet. Can you let me in and close the door behind you? I would like to have this conversation in private."

John gulped. That had sounded a little ominous! Nonetheless, John stepped out of the doorway and allowed Cameron to enter the room, then closed the door behind them. "What is this about?"

Cameron shook her head. "There's something I need to do first. I need to release all the emotion I have been holding back for the last few hours so that I can talk to you without excess affect clouding my judgment. I only trust you enough to be that…vulnerable around. Would that be acceptable?"

"Of course, Cameron, whatever you need to do." Cameron blinked, and at first, it seemed like nothing was going to happen…and then Cameron's dam broke again, and everything came spilling out. First, there was the crying, as Cameron threw herself into John's arms, allowing him to hold the cyborg's head protectively against his chest as she cried for what seemed like an hour, although the tears only lasted about 2 minutes. Then came the hugging, as Cameron wrapped John protectively in a vice-like grip around his torso (which honestly hurt, but only a little) and whispered into John's ear repeatedly. "I love you, John. I love you John. I love you…"

This lasted another minute, during which a slightly freaked out John kept repeating in reply. "I love you too, Cameron…"over and over. This was very new to John, and he was more than a little freaked out, but already felt like he loved Cameron enough that, for her, he would put up with just about anything. Finally, Cameron gently guided John to one of the walls of his bedroom and promptly laid a kiss onto his lips and stuck her tongue between them and into his mouth. John was still freaked out, but instinctively responded in kind shortly before Cameron's hands started to wander all over the teen's body until one of them eventually made its way under his shirt to squeeze his side. One again, John reciprocated. Thinking he knew what his new girlfriend wanted (although later, John would admit to himself that very little thinking had been involved), John began to guide Cameron toward the bed while slowly snaking his hand toward the cyborg's chest. However, a moment after the couple found themselves falling onto the mattress of John's bed, Cameron withdrew her lips and hands away from John, who had apparently not gotten the message yet since his hand was nearly upon Cameron's left breast.

"Please stop, John!" Cameron demanded calmly, but firmly. The young man quickly snapped out his mental haze and withdrew his hand as if he had been burned.

"I'm sorry. That was stupid. Here you are, emotionally compromised or whatever and I…" John finished his thought in a whisper, "try to get you in the sack. I should have known you didn't want that yet. I was being a jerk and I'm sorry."

Cameron's eyes locked with John's once again, giving him a look he had first seen in Cameron's eyes only several hours ago, a look filled with more caring, compassion and love than he had seen expressed before by any human, never mind other machines. "John Connor, you are not a jerk. You may have been…unpleasant to me at some points in the past, but you've continued giving me more chances to learn about myself, even my own mistakes, then anyone else, and you have attempted to get to know me as a person. Then, today, you allowed yourself to enter into a romantic relationship with me, if I am interpreting the situation correctly?" John nodded. "You are the first human to knowingly allow themselves to get that…close to a machine, never mind have those feelings reciprocated, as I have done. Not even the future John I knew allowed himself to become that close to me. He was my General, my teacher, and my friend, but nothing more." As hard as he tried, John could not wipe the smug grin that had appeared on his face away. Ever since Cameron had arrived from the future, he had had to endure multiple stories from the cyborg about the ways in which her precious "Future John" was better than him. Future John was apparently more patient, less impulsive, and better at reprogramming machines that the current model, just to name a few differences. It was a hard, strange truth that John Connor had often been jealous of himself. As Cameron returned his grin, he couldn't help but feel a warm glow of pride that, in at least one respect, the Terminator found "Present John" to be superior: in his capacity to care for and love her. Cameron slowly and awkwardly grabbed hold of John's hand as she continued speaking. "Also, I'm guessing you would not have attempted to initiate sexual relations between us if you did not think that was what I wanted at the time. Is that an accurate assessment?" John nodded while blushing. He still couldn't get over how this new Cameron could be so vulnerable at one moment, and super blunt the next. Cameron smiled mischievously. "You weren't completely wrong. However, as our son pointed out, there's something I have to tell you first, and it's very important."

The smile on John's face instantly turned into a small frown as the young man mentally kicked himself. 'Idiot! She said she had something important to tell you, and you just rushed into things and let your hormones get in the way of thinking clearly about the situation…'John momentarily thought of all of his idiot behaviors concerning Riley.'…again.' John coughed awkwardly. "What do we need to talk about, then?"

Cameron wasn't looking forward to this conversation, for she didn't know how John would deal with what he had to tell her. She just hoped that, once she revealed the truth to her charge, he would not choose to reject her as a mate. If he did…she didn't know if she could handle it. Although Cameron would still do her best to protect him, she would not be able to do that if her processors overloaded from too much negative input. She might even have to ask John to terminate her before her systems went haywire because of her new emotions if he made that decision. But Cameron really hoped it wouldn't come to that. 'On the bright side….' Cameron thought to herself, 'I guess it's nice to have "so much to lose". So that's were that human expression comes from.' Deciding to push on, Cameron tried to break some news to John gently, which, as it turned out, she still wasn't very good at doing. "John, I'm not a human girl, and I never will be."

John huffed. "You aren't going to start on that again are you? I know you said you couldn't be happy or feel emotions, but you were obviously wrong about that. So why are you bringing this up again?"

Cameron gave John the "Are you an idiot?" look, before replying. "Obviously I was wrong about that, and I know it!" The cyborg girl's eyes softened as she slowly took both of her boyfriend's hands in her own. "You have made me very happy in these past few hours John. But you have to understand, even though I can feel, and even though I now comprehend that I love you, I still don't process affect the way humans do."

John looked confused, and his response to Cameron's words confirmed this. "What do you mean? Apart from that poker face you had on while David was telling his story, you have been acting like a human girl recently, and I thought that hiding your emotions temporarily was just for David's benefit, or my mom's. How are you different?"

Cameron shook her head. "I did not conceal my emotions for anyone's benefit but my own, since David's presence…confuses me, but not to the extent it did before. As you have observed, I can still block my emotions from conscious experience for a short while, but it has a rebound effect if I do so for too long. I will have to be more cautious in the future. But that is only one difference between me and a human female."

John turned his body so that he was directly facing Cameron, and made eye contact with the Terminator to make it clear he was paying attention to what was being said. "What else is there?"

Cameron seemed very reluctant to go further, but the lack of judgment in John's eyes made it easier for her to continue, even though she was not used to being nervous during verbal discourse. "I already mentioned what happened at your last birthday, and now we know why I told you I loved you, but there's more." Not allowing herself to stop, or for John to interrupt, Cameron rushed through the explanation that was to follow. "When you had re-inserted my chip, you hadn't truly fixed me. The damage to my chip was too extensive, and the order to terminate you remained. However, between the damage that the emotional inhibitor part of my chip, which Skynet built in all of its Infiltrators to make sure we couldn't learn emotions that could cause us to compromise our missions, sustained, and your repair efforts, something happened to me, something I didn't properly comprehend until now."John's eyes widened with interest as Cameron plowed onward. "The other mission objective, the one to protect you, reactivated, but the order to kill you was still there. Until recently, both objectives were still active." John's brow furrowed in concern as his girlfriend finished her explanation of what had occurred. "The two conflicting orders began to conflict in my code, but instead of overloading my CPU, which is what would normally happen to a computer in that situation, something else happened, I was able to chose between them. For reasons I didn't even understand at the time, I CHOSE not to kill you and hand you the gun back. I chose to protect you, and I always will."

John leaned back against the headrest of his bed. "Wow. So your first free act was to preserve a life instead of destroy it. That's a good sign. But I'm guessing that the conflicting orders are still wreaking havoc on your CPU, which would explain how much you have been malfunctioning since then. I'm sorry I pushed you away after your chip got damaged, and that I wasn't there for you from the very beginning of all of that!"

Cameron shook her head slowly. "It wasn't entirely your fault. I had just tried to kill you, so it makes since you would not want to spend much time with me. Also, I shouldn't have told you that you couldn't be trusted after you saved me. You took a risk to save my existence, and I called your leadership skills into question for that. I am sorry. I'm glad you saved me now, but at that time…I was still confused about what was happening to me, and just couldn't comprehend a world without you in it. I still can't. Looking back, I think I was….I guess the word would be scared."

John nodded. "I understand. I was scared too, when my mom and Derek where going to burn you in thermite. I was hurt when you said you didn't trust me, but I shouldn't have pushed you away. Emotions can make people do stupid things, but as you have recently discovered, they are still worth having. We just need to learn from our mistakes."

"I concur, John. Another thing I wanted to tell you is that the order to terminate you is gone, as well as the software conflict that had been causing my recent malfunctions. Once I came to understand that I chose to protect you because I have learned to love you, my CPU automatically deleted the order to terminate you, although I still do not fully understand how I did this."

John smiled. "That's great, Cameron!"

Cameron inclined her head toward John. "Affirmative. It is good to be able to operate at peak operational capacity again and not have to worry about terminating you. But you must understand John, I am still a machine, and I still need a mission objective in order to function, even if it is one that I have picked for myself. In order to override the order to kill you; my CPU had to actively embed the order to protect you deeper into my programming. That order is in every part of my code now. Deleting that order would destroy my neural net. I can't disobey the order to protect you now, and I will never be able to override it."

John looked puzzled again. "But isn't that a good thing?"

"Since I have come to care about you, I would have to say it is. But that also means I must protect your life at any cost, even if that means terminating people that could compromise your position, or allowing people you care for to die , even Derek, or Sarah, or, if necessary, myself. I'm guessing that's why I sacrificed myself in David's future, to spare you pain and preserve your sanity, as I have read that the loss of a child can be devastating to a human, and some humans respond to that loss by committing suicide. I hypothesize that I couldn't let our son die, not just because future me loved him, but because I/she believed it would destroy that future you."

John looked face hardened in determination, but his eyes gave away that he was terrified by the very idea of losing Cameron. "I would never let you sacrifice your life to save mine."

Cameron frowned. "If such a situation where to occur, I wouldn't give you an option to refuse . But I do not desire it to come to that. I just want you to understand that, even though I can feel, and even though I love you, my mission to protect you, even from yourself, if necessary, will always be my first priority, even when acting on that directive would cause you pain. I am sorry. In that sense, I am still a machine. Unlike a human, I cannot push aside all rational thought and get so caught up in my love for you that I forget to fulfill my purpose."

Cameron turned away from John and looked at the floor as she whispered. "And, as I said before, I can't get pregnant. Furthermore, if we manage to stop J-day, the machine that made David will never be invented, and we will not even be able to have children that way. You may not care about that now, but someday you may want to have offspring…and you won't be able to. Not with me. I want you to think carefully about all that I have told you before you decide whether you want to continue our relationship." For the third time today, Cameron's artificial but amazingly life-like eyes began to fill with moisture, but she resisted the urge to let John see her cry. She had to be strong for John now, and let him make his own decision without being overly influenced by her own emotions.

John took Cameron's face in his hands and turned it towards himself, although the Terminator still refused to meet his eyes. "Cameron, please look at me!" Reluctantly, Cameron obeyed, responding to the sincerity and desperation in John's voice. "I don't have to think about this Cameron. I chose you. I chose us, over all those problems. I'm glad you told me more about how you work, but I still love you, and I want us to be together. True, we may never have a normal relationship, but as long as I have you, I don't care." John sighed. "And, yes. I may want to have kids someday, but if I can't do that with you, then I'm sure I would rather go without them then to lose you or ever be unfaithful. Do you understand? 'I love you and you love me', remember?" John quoted Cameron's words from that fateful day her chip malfunctioned back to her. Cameron slowly nodded as a smile began to assert itself on her face. "That's all I care about, Cameron. I love you, and I don't care what anyone else, even my mother, thinks about that."

Cameron was still new to experiencing emotions, but she was a fast learner, and as such, knew exactly how to respond to John's heartfelt words. "Thank you John! I love you too!" Without another word, Cameron wiped away the tears that had fallen from her optical sensors (which had become tears of joy) and quickly closed the distance between's John's lips and her own. Before long, Cameron's hand had once again reasserted itself under John's shirt and touched his chest. This time, when John reciprocated the action, Cameron did not pull away. On the contrary, it wasn't long before the cyborg decided to pull her own shirt off her body completely, and performed a similar action with her boyfriend's t-shirt as the couple situated themselves on John's bed. Later, when Cameron looked back on this moment and analyzed her feelings, she would realize that she still did not, and never would, experience lust, or have a "sex drive", as humans understood that term. Physical attraction meant nothing to the machine; Cameron only had eyes for John. Furthermore, the needs the cyborg tried to meet when she took John to bed with her this night where not physical, but emotional ones: to feel close to John, to feel secure in her relationship with the future General, and to make John, the only man who had ever loved her, and the only one she would ever love, happy. That did not mean, however, that Cameron did not feel all of the physical sensations that were a byproduct of making love to her boyfriend. And if she just happened to enjoy herself at the time, well, who could really blame a cyber girl for that?

Sorry this took so long for me to post, but I have been really busy with school and my proofreader has been swamped by their own stuff. Anyway, thanks again to everyone who is still following my story, especially those of you who continue to give me feedback so that I can improve Divergence! I decided to go a slightly different route with Cameron than I have seen in other fics, and I am anxious to know what some of you think of my attempt to really bring out the emotional parts of her psyche without losing sight of the fact that she is still a machine. Also, although some of David's intentions are still a mystery to you all, I hope you have a slightly better understanding of why he acts the way he does around the Connors now. In any case, your feedback is always appreciated!