Title: Patchwork Girl
Author: Elessar-4-TnT
Disclaimer: I don't own Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Summary: I promise the chapters are going to get longer.
Chapter 2: Labor of Logic
After Cameron removed the bullet, John waited up for his mother for hours, finally succumbing to sleep as he reclined with his legs propped up on the table. Derek got Sarah drunk enough to dull the pain, finally pronouncing her asleep and out of any immediate danger around four-thirty in the morning. As Derek stepped outside to get some air, Cameron stood motionless in the corner, watching the front of the house through the smallest crack in the window shades. Her head turned to look at John, balled up into a near-fetal position in the chair nearest his mother's slumbering body. She predicted that he would awake with discomfort if he slept for an extended period of time in that position. She cocked her chin, eyes wide and doe-like. She moved across the room with characteristic silence and stealth, stopping as she came beside him. She looked on him, then at Sarah, then outside. Derek was nowhere to be seen.
Analyzing: Calculating… Probability actions will be observed: 16.3%. Conditional probability based on observed personality and disposition that observed actions will provoke hostile response from Derek Reese: 92.7%. From Sarah Connor: 98.9%.
Sixteen point three percent was an acceptable risk for Cameron's autonomously operating emotional subroutines. She leaned down, carefully placing one hand behind John Connor's back and under his armpit, the other under the crook of his knees, and effortlessly stood tall, pulling him out of the chair. Amazingly, the exhausted teenager remained asleep. Cameron again checked on Sarah Connor, and the back window. She didn't see Derek Reese. She stepped off toward John's bedroom. Standing before his door, Cameron's eyes danced from the opaque surface in front of her, to the dozing savior of humanity in her arms, and once again to the door, analyzing her current conundrum with more processing power than a corporate mainframe. Extending the arm that held John under the knees, she supported his weight with her forearm, reaching two fingers around the door knob and twisting it. Her balance began to falter and her eyes grew wide as she corrected…. And took a controlled two-inch step backwards. Turning him sideways, Cameron slid through the doorway. Leaning over his bed, she methodically deposited Connor onto the mattress, removing the arm from under his knees. But as she moved to pull out the arm now under his back, John turned and rolled in her direction, exerting tension on her arm and pulling her down closer to him. The arrangement caused them to accidentally embrace, though Cameron knelt beside the bed. She studied his movements like a newborn infant discovering the miracle of sight as his facial muscles twitched and tightened in his sleep.
Analyzing: Calculating probability that extraction will awake John Connor: 49.4%. Action: Extricate arm from John Connor.
Cameron knelt on both knees now, leaning beside his bed, her arm under both shoulders, John facing towards her. Her lips parted slightly as she watched him breathe, calculating the exact volume of oxygen entering and exiting his lungs per second. Why the idle calculation filled the millisecond void between analysis and action, she could not compute the answer to. Before she could perform the action dictated by her logic subroutines, her emotional simulator activated and autonomously rewrote her probabilistic algorithm.
Analyzing: Recalculating probability that extraction will awake John Connor: 49.5%. Action: Do not extricate arm from John Connor.