The next chapter will be the last of the cannon episodes. After that we go AU. I meant to that with this one but it got away from me.
Some minor language. Nothing too bad. (What can I say. I hate Jesse)
Enjoy...
**** will show transitions from now on. I'm sorry guys but Fanfiction is uploading funny. Thanks for the heads up.
John drove back to the house and quietly parked the truck. He could tell with absolute certainty that she had not returned.
He stood in the door of his soon to be former house. John didn't bother turning on lights. He knew the layout of it. Just like every other house he'd ever lived in, you never knew when the cops or terminators were gonna show.
He had wanted to be prepared to leave like a thief in the night; that had been his contribution to his training. One of the few times his mother had hugged and kissed him like a regular mother should have.
Reaching underneath the sink, he pressed a button that he and Derek had installed.
It popped open a section of paneling revealing a weapons stock that would have put them for sure on the FBI watchlist; that is if they hadn't already been on it for blowing up Cyberdyne.
****
Derek woke up once more with a hand covering his mouth. He was about to gripe to Cameron that this was no way to rouse a person but the words never made it past his lips once the feel of cold metal registered in his sleep addled brain.
It had to be one of Sarah's favorites pressed against his temple, it felt oddly familiar.
His sight shifted to the right side of the bed. Judging from the information that his eyes and arm, which was numb, were relaying, Sarah was indeed still asleep and not playing a gag on him.
"You wake her up and I will shoot you." The muzzle pressed a little closer, "I took the time to put on a silencer."
Derek's whole body was heavy with humiliating fear; looking down at him were the cold green eyes of the General he had known. They were made that much scarier by the fact that they were still in the face of his sixteen year old nephew.
"Get up. Get your stuff and meet me outside in five minutes." The muzzle left his temple and John vanished.
Derek got up and quietly threw up in the wastebasket by the door.
Four minutes later they were seated in the truck. "I'm really sorry, John."
John had been silent as the grave and only now that they'd arrived did the young Connor deign to look at his uncle.
"She was a good kid. She didn't deserve what happened to her."
Nothing but resignation graced John's face. "Few people do."
John was itching to blow a hole in Derek for a myriad of reasons. Three specifically came to mind;
1) Lying and covering for that woman. 2) Talking about loyalty and duty while he had the nerve to sleep with his mother under his nose and 3) the betrayal of lying to his mother. Sarah did not need that and if she even cared a tiny bit about Derek, this would be devastating.
That most of all made him want to kill the only other family he had left.
"How long do you think you could survive against Cameron?" This whole night had to do with Riley but John wanted to make his uncle sweat it out for messing around with his mother. "If she wanted to kill you, face to face."
Derek swallowed carefully wondering if John was going to have him killed for what he had seen tonight. "What kind of weapon do I have?"
John leaned back with a thoughtful sigh, "your fists and your elbows and your fingernails and your teeth."
Derek seemed sad by the choice of weapons. "Against her?" he shook his head, "those aren't weapons."
"No, they're not." He wanted Derek to say it. To believe it. To believe in Cameron like he believed in her. Like his future wife and future self believed.
"You already know the answer to that. If she wants me dead, I'm dead."
"She wants you dead, you're dead." John repeated looking towards the apartment complex of the woman who had truly murdered Riley.
Derek already had suspicions but it had been crucial to let John figure it out. "What are you getting at?"
"I want to talk about something." A light from a passing car threw John's face into sharp relief. A deeper darker face that burst forth from the boy beside him. One that was only missing a jagged scar.
"Alright." His uncle responded but his tone was subservient. A soldier following his commander to hell and back. Derek knew this one, he knew this John.
"I want to talk to you about the future."
"Yours?"
"Yours." Currents of darkness were unleashed by John's simple answer. They flowed all around the truck doubling the apprehension that gripped Derek nearly drowning him within it. He had just been abandoned by the last of his family.
****
Sarah slept long enough to miss Derek but a niggling feeling had not let her stay asleep. She was still in her clothes so she finished what she had started previous to Casey's visit. She was just emptying the last cabinets when heavy booted steps alerted her to John's presence.
He looked okay which by Connor standards meant he was holding in something horrific. "You saw the body." It was not a question. "You shouldn't have done that."
"It was a risk. I know." John incorrectly guessed.
Sarah sat down crossing her arms to keep from hugging him. "I don't mean the risks." She saw her little boy too soon becoming the man that everybody revered. "You shouldn't have to remember her like that."
His shoulders dropped a tiny bit and he held the hand she had laid out on the table. "There were things I had to see. I had to understand." It was taking all his efforts to keep from blubbering on the table and holding on to his mother.
Her fingers tightened on his, "you understand them now?"
A few rapid blinks, a straightening of his spine to show her that he was alright. "I think so." Sarah felt him extract his fingers and she looked at the bare cabinets. Not wanting to see as well as feel her son let go.
"I'm sorry I doubted you."
"John…" 'How I wish I could understand? You will always trust them more. If only I could protect you from her.'
John could read his mother anguish but the pain of finding out about Riley for sure and the constant ache created by the absence of Cameron gave him a cruel edge. "No…" he nailed Sarah quickly and decisively. "…not you. Her."
Sarah gripped her own hand tighter as her vision locked on John's and followed it where it was always concentrated. Where it was always going to land, as inevitable as Judgment Day, on Cameron.
John turned to leave but not before throwing the brunette behind his mother, a glance of such naked yearning and need that Sarah felt the compulsion to leave the house and never come back. It didn't last long but it was still too long in her opinion.
John finally exited and headed up the stairs. His each step was one more piece of evidence to confirm what she had suspected all along. Cameron had taken her son from her and placed herself as the most important female in his life.
She had finally completed her objective of being able to watch over him in every way.
Sarah was grudgingly grateful that the young terminator did not flaunt it but her mere act of following her teenage son to his room was enough of the whole rubbing salt in the wound concept.
Cameron had just seen the balance rupture and John's favor fully had fallen on her. She accepted and rejoiced in it. Glad to have no more distance between them but it was with an apologetic expression that she looked back at Sarah.
As much as Cameron and Sarah had been at odds, Sarah was still John's mother. Cameron did not want John to treat his mother so badly even if it was in defense of her. His ill treatment of her would later come to be something that Future John, would lament a lot in her future and she wanted to make his memories as guilt free as possible.
"Please, be careful John. Be so careful." Sarah whispered it and Cameron heard it.
****
John was not in his room as she had previously assumed. She proceeded to her own room and found him lying on her bed with his jacket and shoes on the floor. "Took your time."
"I was not aware you wanted me here at a designated hour." She responded turning to close the door behind her.
"Don't. Close. It." Before she could ask why not, John half rose off the bed so that he was resting on his elbows. "I don't care if she knows. I don't care if Derek knows." He sat up completely beckoning her over. "I don't want to hide you anymore Cam."
She sat beside him and she instantly experienced déjà vu. She laid her hand on his while soothing his back. "I don't mind if you hide me."
He laughed bitterly. "Well I do." He caressed her face with a forefinger, "I'm not ashamed of you. Having lost Riley made me see the truth."
She tensed at Riley's name and John tapped down on his enjoyment of her jealousy. "Riley was a nice girl who didn't deserve to die like she did."
Cameron was still not budging. "You will miss her. you're seeking comfort."
His hand had somehow managed to slither into her hair without her noticing. One second they were sitting side by side and next she was on her back with John above her. "No, Cam. I'm here because I want to be. I'm here because when I saw Riley all I could think of was you lying in that jeep."
He bent and kissed her. Desperation leaked into his kisses. They grew rougher and more demanding until he had pulled the shirt off her. She adored him all the more for trusting her finally with his jumbled feelings and responded in kind. "I couldn't handle that again." His sharp bursts of speech were accelerated by every inch of skin that was made available to his touch, "I told her I was sorry that I couldn't love her…"
He trailed off semi silenced by Cameron's very skillful maneuvering in getting him to match her undressed state, "but I do have to give her justice."
"I will help, John." Cameron breathed between kisses.
"Yes you could. But you won't. Derek will do it." He said letting his fingers move down from her hair and down her pretty doll face and directly to her side. "That's his punishment for lying to my mother."
"You know about that?" she asked a guilty look painted on her face.
John was finding that he really liked this expressive Cameron. Not that he didn't like the old Cameron, to him all forms of Cameron were wonderful. "Apparently you did too."
"I was told not to tell you. Derek said you didn't need the baggage." She looked puzzled, "were you going on a trip if you found out?"
"God, Cam. I missed you so much." He pressed a kiss to her exposed collarbone before resting his face on her chest. "I've been such an idiot." She ran her fingers thorough his hair. Sifting the dark strands over and over lulling him.
"John, you have to talk to Sarah."
He mumbled something unintelligible so she raised his face off her breast. "She is your mother. You will regret not being nicer." He moved up so he was face to face with her and she traced where there would one day be a famous battle scar. "You talk about it…a lot."
He made a sour expression that only ever popped up when talking about his Future Self. "Trust me."
He agreed but laid right back down on her chest. She resumed playing with his hair until she could hear a slight snore coming from him. "I will wake you."
Several hours later Sarah was ready to deal with their odd situation, she was going to drag out Cameron and have a deep cyborg to woman talk. She was going to find out exactly what had happened between Cameron and John. That need was curtailed as her son surprised her in the living room.
"You should throw a rug down, nobody will know the difference."
"Hey I'm sorry it's to come to this." She said getting the ball rolling.
"What the moving?" he asked.
"All of it."
"Well I broke the rules." Sarah knew from experience that this was the closest she was going to get to an actual apology.
She asked him if he remembered that town. He said he did. She said he was fitting in. He said he was getting into fights everyday. She said he was winning those fights. He said it was one way of looking at it. "I hated that town." was his parting remark.
Cancer seemed beatable, Skynet seemed like a distant nightmare and John seemed like her son.
****
Derek had been scooping out the place for two hours. "It's now or never, John."
John nodded and he picked the lock while Derek kept an eye out. He glanced around and ran into the room full of metal drawers. He went to the emergency exit and let in his uncle.
"I'm so sorry Riley." John took a breath and cleared his mind. He held onto the metal handle and pulled. She came out quietly and Derek wrapped the sheet tighter around her making sure to cover her face. No need to make his nephew suffer more.
"Ok. Let's go."
She was slipped into a body bag and taken to where they buried all the unknowns, which in L.A. was a large number. They selected one that was ready to be dropped in and fairly empty. Derek took the crowbar and pried the nails and he gently laid down the blonde that had been unjustly used.
They closed the box and put in fresh nails. Riley would rest in an unmarked grave just like his father. The irony did not escape him. Both these people had helped shape John's life in a sad way. Both had been forgotten but never by John.
One last prayer and the men left the grave site.
****
"You're not leaving this house."
The gun held in her right hand was promptly clicked and the safety was reengaged. "John needs me."
"If John needed you, he would have asked for you and he didn't." Sarah was not letting this opportunity pass. She needed to know what Cameron knew. 'How much of what Derek had told her was real? How much was hatred against the machines?' "You're not leaving this house."
"The police could identify Riley's body at any time." Sarah's steely gaze softened for a bit, Cameron appealed to the woman. "I need to be with him if they do."
Sarah hardened again. "If they do they'll probably come here."
Cameron maintained her usual blank expression but she saw Sarah's eyes dart down to her hand. 'Don't notice and don't tell John.'
Sarah filed away the question about her hand for later. "So we should be happy he's out." She had bigger issues. "Why are you here?"
Cameron when confused reverted to her standard robotic answers. "Protect John. Hunt Skynet. Stop Judgement Day."
"But why are you here?"
She blinked completely floundering as to Sarah's meaning.
"Right now with us? John sent you here from the future. He sent you away, away from him."
Cameron felt again that Déjà vu feeling. 'Had they not had this conversation before?' Back when she had discarded her pink top to better pull the bullets out of her skin while John was in the car pretending to sleep. While she had been stitching up Sarah.
"Maybe you should think about that. Maybe you should think about why he didn't want you around anymore." They had spoken about this before but never in detail. Sarah uncrossed her arms ready to take a live wire to Cameron and consequences be damned.
Standing uncertainly in the living room Cameron broke Sarah's violent thoughts with one phrase. "I know why he sent me away, I can show you."
"You'll show me? Is this a trick because if it is, I swear I'll dismantle you."
"I can and will but you cannot let John find out." Sarah's lips thinned in response but Cameron continued doggedly. "Is it a deal?"
Sarah took the out stretched hand. "Deal. Show me."
****
Jessie took her long swim, called Derek but left no answer. She was running low on food so she stopped at the market. She opened her apartment door and froze.
"If you pretend not to know me, I might just shoot you in the head."
The gun was beautiful. Shinny and dark and very still. It's owner did not make it waiver but then he'd been handling handguns since he was teething. So the legend said.
Seeing said legend a little younger but in her living room and sitting in her sofa with a gun pointed at her while telling her he would shoot her point blank gave her a new respect for Riley. To face that every day must have been daunting.
Jesse had obviously not given the girl credit.
"We owe Riley the truth, don't you think." Connor might have just asked her if he could have a glass of water as casual as he was. Nothing like the man that had beaten the crap out of her for daring to shoot his metal plaything.
He stood, face half in shadow but it was the lighted side that was most disconcerting. It was a young face, much younger than she had expected, but it had eyes that had seen things she didn't even want to think about. "We owe the dead that much."
"You're John Connor."
He nodded amused at her lack of reverence. "Yes, I am."
"Where is she? The metal." Jessie looked around expecting to see Connor's constant companion emerge from the same darkness that now oozed out of John.
"She were here you'd be dead. You know that."
She clenched her hand and he stepped forward. "Could you please give me your gun? You're not going to shoot me." She took it out of its holster and handed it over grip first. He tucked it in his pants and ignored her. "You know I've been running from the machines, my whole life."
She heard him. He told her first hand about his life. One had tried to kill him before he was born and then when he was twelve. It shocked her a bit to hear him say he was stupid. That he had no idea what it was all about. 'This is my General. He is more intimidating in his humanity.'
She tried not to show how terrified she was. She had stood up to Queeg and to Dietz and then to Derek himself and his stupid men because she was the only woman. She was not afraid of some angst ridden teenager no matter who he grew up to be.
'I'm not afraid.' But she knew she was lying to herself. She had been in her own nightmares and had missed a chunk of what he said but now she paid strict attention.
"The second time it was a machine. I used to wonder why I did that. Why I took that chance?"
Jesse didn't want to cry. She had said she was not afraid of death but then she had always thought it would be at the hands of the machines in a glorious battle. Not here alone in city where nobody knew she existed. Not by the hand of the man she had sworn to crawl over broken terminators for. Not by the teenager who was glaring at her with such intensity that made her want to put a bullet in her own head.
"Human beings cannot be replaced. They can't be rebuilt. They die." She was trying to escape his eyes but he was not going to let her. He was going to force the remorse to kill her. "They don't come back."
John had gained a new set of priorities. Before he would have never hurt someone intentionally but this woman had shown him a set of humans that could not and should not be trusted. "It wasn't Derek who told me if that's what you're wondering."
****
Outside Derek waited and reloaded.
His John would do it himself and this John had already killed but Derek had to take this one. He had to make amends and this was the only way. He already had lost Sarah because of this of that he was sure of. John was almost gone too.
"I'll take care of it. Like I should have."
John had never spoken this much to anybody not even Cameron but Jesse wouldn't be telling anybody anyway. She was going to be an ugly memory and nothing else.
"Riley made mistakes. Phrases, little things. She treated me like John Connor."
Jesse quietly asked, "When was that?"
"I don't remember. It was a bad day. A bad day." His lips curled, "Anyway I began to follow her."
"She wanted to tell you." Jesse interrupted.
"I know. She did that to you?" he chuckled and waved a finger at her. "She knew what you really had planned. Figured it out before I did." His gun was still pointed at her and she hadn't noticed until he brought up not more than a few inches from her face.
"I only understood until after I saw how you hurt her. That's when I knew what you tried to do."
She inwardly flinched as she caught sight of the place where the girl had fallen. "You saw her. I'm sorry."
"Everybody says that." He got a little closer and she could see the blinding whiteness of his teeth. She could see where the stubble hadn't grown yet. She could see how the machine had already marked him.
"I didn't help her. I knew what she was and maybe I just wanted to win."
"You didn't want to be John Baum. You wanted to be John Connor." She looked for an escape for a way out but John was not going to let her off the hook.
"The thing is, I am John Connor." He smiled again and threw the bag at her feet. "Go. If I have to live with it, so do you."
"Would it have worked?"
"What?"
"If the cyborg had murdered the girl." Jesse clarified, "or if I could have made you believe she had."
"Would I have sent Cameron away?" he glanced around her home. His charisma softening the tension around them. "Would I have killed her?"
He gazed at her again with a coldness that was charming. "No."
"Well it's a damm shame. A damm waste." Jesse turned the knob but the door was slammed shut behind her nearly taking off her fingers.
"A shame. That you killed her. Yes. A waste of a soldier like you? Yes."
"If you're gonna kill me than do it."
"I wouldn't use a bullet. That would be a shame and waste of one." He tucked the gun back into his waist. He braced his forearm against her throat cutting off her air supply.
"Metal loving fool… Just like your future…You're a waste… Connor. You're the shame." Jesse gasped out fighting the urge to fall at his feet.
His pitch changed and for the only time in her life, Jessie saw the full picture. "I thought it was best. You weren't Connor. You were a facsimile, an idea. You sent people to their death on her battle plans. She owned you." He felt the cuts and bruises on her face. He touched the scar at the base of her neck.
"I did that…" he pointed at her neck and she flinched. "I will meet you again and you will learn and I guarantee you that I will make that mark again." He removed his arm and she fell to the ground on all fours. Her body coughing as she attempted to drag air back into her lungs.
"Coward." She cried as the tears fell on his boots. "A bloody coward."
"I didn't kill an innocent girl. I didn't bring her specifically to die." He leaned down placing his knee on her hand. "If I was so important why didn't you offer yourself, huh?"
She shook her head and she screamed for Derek. She screamed for him to save her. John gripped her shoulder and placing his mouth very close to her ear uttered. "You are the coward. You couldn't bear to leave this place. You abandoned your own cause."
He left her on the floor bruised and bleeding. His hand had dug into her shoulder cruelly reopening the wound Riley had caused with the broken vase. The blood seeped through her shirt and she shuddered and hiccuped loudly as the sobs wracked her body. "The answer was no. You hear me, it was no."
****
Derek saw Jesse walking down the staircase. He had heard her scream but he had not dared interfere. At least she was alive. She walked to him but he was not her Derek. He had never been her Derek. Just like she had never been his Jesse.
"John Connor said to let you go…" the gun glinted in the light and she was once more in the sub. She was free of prejudice and was just doing her job. "…but I'm not John Connor."
She ran. 'They took our child. They took our future. They took our humanity.' "Damm you, Derek."
****
Cameron saw the truck arrive. She was down the stairs and out of the house before Sarah had even had a chance to get off the couch. John went straight to the shed as did Derek.
"John?"
"Not now." He said quietly. He emerged with two shovels. He handed one to Derek and turned to her. "Set up the pit, we're going to burn the remaining skeletons."
"Your mother has already done that." She tried to explain but he halted her.
"We buried the lot, remember. She doesn't know about those."
"John? Are you ok?" her fingers touched his cheek and he flung her hand away.
"Get the pit ready, now!" he shouted.
Derek came up behind John. "Where?" he asked.
"Below the retaining wall, we burn it all tonight."
Cameron did as she was told. John was digging at a calm pace but his actions seemed disjointed. Like his mind and body were separate. He would hand the bodies to Derek who would hand it to Sarah, who had come out to investigate the shouting, who then handed it to Cameron to burn.
Finally the earth was empty and the fire had consumed the last of the metal. "Bring it."
"John…please." Derek implored.
"Bring the fucking bag. I will not ask you again. Reese." John commanded.
Sarah went to her son but even she was hesitant to touch his ramrod straight body. Derek appeared with a bag and dropped it into the pit. "Open it."
"What's going on?" Sarah asked torn between the two men.
"Answer her." John glared at Derek but he said nothing. "Cameron open the bag."
Cameron had seen Future John do this and knew from experience how volatile he would become if not obeyed. She unzipped the bag and Jesse was revealed. "We buried Riley in an unmarked grave tonight. Now we do Jesse."
"John is this necessary?" Sarah was frightened. Maybe it was the red light of the fire reflecting off his face or maybe it was him but either way Sarah was scared of her son.
"He has been seeing her on the side. I knew about you two but I didn't know about them." John explained. "She is also the one responsible for bringing Riley here from the future and killing her. So I would say that this is necessary. Don't you agree, Derek."
"Yes, John. I do." Derek answered.
"Cameron. Light it and get rid of this lying bitch." His final order given, John stalked out of the shed.
"What's wrong with him? Why is he acting like this?" Sarah asked too shaken to understand that Derek had been lying to her all along and that somehow his lies had placed her son in danger.
"This is what John does to traitors. He burns them with the terminators we can't reprogram." Cameron answered dropping the flare in. "He says they have no soul either. John hates traitors."
All three stood there watching the woman's body burn surrounded by the metal she had fought so hard to destroy. The flames licked and crumbled the remains leaving nothing but traces of smoke.