Disclaimer: like many others, I was disappointed that TSCC ended so abruptly, and was motivated to write a fanfic taking place in this universe (yes, 13 years after the release, ha-ha). I was especially interested in how the show portrayed the future, and there were very few stories here which showed that setting, so I decided to make one.

This is not exactly a finished story, more like a first attempt at showing the atmosphere and feel of the future from which Jesse and Cameron hail out in the show, the one in which John Connor is widely perceived as a distant leader who trusts machines more than humans, with Cameron his closest confidant. It also shows my attempt at figuring out how Cameron's mind might work. Oh yeah, and a chance to parade a dashing Cameron with general's stars. If I ever finish at least one complete story, it will deal with questions like if John's "distant leadership" really worked out in the end in that war, what he and Cameron thought about it, what their relationship was and why he ultimately sent her back to young John in the show (remember Sarah asking about it in S2?). Feedback welcome!

Warning: some mildly graphic descriptions of injuries and such in the text, and in general this is a story with a darker feel than most. This is deliberate, and for two reasons: one, post-Judgement day future is not a nice one; and two, I believe most writers here miss the horror integral to all terminators, even the best-behaved ones, which always was an integral part of original Terminator films. These things are not human and never will be, this is not good or bad, this is just how they are, and even if Cameron experienced something that we may call love, it was different for her and she processed it differently than we would do. Trying to tone it all down and turning her into another happy-go girlfriend with no hidden levers, no weirdness and no scariness undermines the whole point of TSCC and makes it boring, IMO.

Now, onto the text:

A cyborg's memory works differently from human one. Human memory is a fuzzy, blurry, unstable thing, with alcohol, drugs and sleep destroying parts of it unpredictably, new memories overshadowing old ones, old memories fading away into inexistence or morphing when we recall them. On the other hand, cyborg memory is clear, precise and unchanging, old memories coexisting with new, every single detail, every gesture and every smell remaining as sharp as ever until the manual overwrite by the CPU.

Cameron, walking across the bunker hallway with general stars on her shoulders, could remember every single detail of her relationship with John as if it happened just now. Her first clear memory was of his face, looking down on her, saying "Well, what are we gonna call you, then?". She was not always his silent shadow, his protector – first, like all reprogrammed terminators, she underwent a barrage of grueling tests, served on the frontline, felt his silent stare a thousand times before He, for some unknowable reason, chose her to be a part of his entourage. With nothing to compare to it then, she was content – she could finally execute her mission to protect him, to watch him eat, walk, talk, to fight by his side, to watch him sleep as she guarded the perimeter. With time, they grew ever closer, and she realized just how much he could give her, especially when he finally proved it to her one night that she was a woman on some level beyond the exterior flesh. Cyborg's memory is precise, and she could recall with perfect clarity lying in bed next to him, feeling his heartbeat, his breath, his touch, his pulse, checking his vitals and their cycles with accuracy that she could never hope for before. She was as content (people might say "happy") as she was never before, feeling him, smelling him, touching him, putting it all in her memory banks. She could hardly go back now to be just a guard, a protector, someone watching from afar, having experienced all that, and the next night they shared a bed again – and then the night after that, and the ones after. Her major fear was that she would break one of the innumerable stupid rules and taboos that figured prominently in human relationships and would then be banished, but John was very patient. He explained things to her, he showed her how to be better in her mission, and she did everything to keep up. This was a wondrous time, but cyborg's memory is precise, and she remembered what happened after that, too.

A big tent, flapping in the wind in the cold wasteland of the former United States. John stood on a raised part, making a speech before a combined force of several field commands that would soon drive to the frontlines. It would be a big combined push against the machines, after the speech and the feast and the drinking which accompanied a big mass of unfamiliar people now crowded together. John insisted that she would stay aside, in the distance, not behind or side to side to him like usual, to appease those human purists who disagreed with reprogs ("reprogrammed terminators") being given any prominent role (or existing at all), and she agreed, something which she could never forgive herself for now. One man somehow sneaked a plasma pistol and shot at John Connor right in the middle of the speech, almost at pointblank range. They never did figure out if would-be assassin was a Skynet spy, a disgruntled Resistance member or simply a madman. It didn't matter now. At that range he couldn't miss, and he didn't. Cameron could see it clearly: John's right eye bursting like an egg yolk, his flesh sizzling, his mouth screaming, his body falling down. Every other concern pushed aside, she went into overdrive then, dropping her weapon, launching from her spot at the very limit of her speed, pushing aside people who were in the way so violently that three of them later had to be treated for injuries. As she knelt down before a choking, sizzling remnant of a man with whom she shared a bed the night before and who was her reason for existence, her eyes were hard and unblinking, no hint of tears that would only hinder eye sensors, her hands firm and steady, voice loud and clear as she asked for paramedics, first aid and painkillers; but inside her everything was shattering apart. A terminator without a mission does not exist and should not exist; and while one part of her checked John's vitals and made orders, other part was already calculating how it would be better for her to go out (being publicly shot down by Resistance officers after a trial was the most promising idea at that time: the troops would see what awaited whose who fail their orders, like she did, and it might even heal a rift that began forming between factions within Resistance that opposed working with machines and those that supported them). John's survival was unlikely, and she worked out of desperation – one of the few feelings shared by humans, Skynet and cyborgs alike. With violent screaming around her (some arguing that she was in league with assassin and is going to kill John and so should be put down, others shouting that she was his only hope), she crouched to him, checking his vitals, shouting orders and desperately hoping that he would survive. The Resistance nearly fell that day, yet in the end sanity prevailed and order was restored. Somehow John survived, and in the bunker hospital they managed to stabilize him.

Cameron never left his side for a moment, and never would for months of torturously slow recovery that followed. Skynet tried to attack then, sensing a weakness, but human commanders once again proved themselves capable and drove all major attacks back, even launching a few of their own. The Resistance hold on without John Connor in an active role, at least for a while. Cameron didn't really care about any of that – she stayed with immobile John, never letting anyone else get close, listening to doctors through loudspeaker and executing their commands with surgical precision, feeding him, cleaning his toilet, washing him, wiping out his vomit and cleaning his clothes when his stomach violently disagreed with food yet again. Machines can't really feel disgust or nausea, and body fluids hold no special significance for them, so Cameron never felt any aversion towards what she was doing. On the contrary – being so close to John, being directly responsible for his wellbeing instead of unpredictable, unstable humans that tried to shoot him and were the alternative made her deeply content. She was completely focused on making John better, and yet that didn't mean she ignored the war – Skynet was a direct and serious threat to them, especially when John couldn't command, and so she made humans bring her a laptop in the room with access to Resistance internal network, being able to now to monitor a course of war and issue orders in John's name without ever leaving his side. There were a lot of disagreements with her orders at first, but many people sensed reason, and slowly most groups accepted her lead to some degree, at least for a while.

When John, against all odds, got better and could be moved, she personally moved him to a secure room in a bunker which she ordered to be made exactly to her specifications, a heavy double door with an array of electronic and magnet locks clicking shut behind them, for the first time in two months getting the Resistance leader out of sight of any human. No one dared to object openly to that move, after all that she did for him in these months, and yet she knew it was in this moment the whispers started that John was dead or replaced by a cyborg, that Cameron herself allied with Skynet to betray human race to the machines. Aided by Greys and Skynet spies in Resistance network, these rumors would only grow in the months to follow, as John slowly recovered in his isolation while Cameron commanded in his name. Cameron knew about the rumors, and knew that they would become a problem, but she also knew one thing – John was a priority. With her relentless help, he recovered, and she was determined not to let anything like this happen to him ever again. When John regained enough control to give orders, his first order was to make Cameron a General and his personal representative with all the rights that this entailed. She was now basically a second-in-command of the Resistance, serving as its first-in-command until John recovered, and able to control the war until he was well enough to return to active duty.

A cyborg's memory is not like the one in humans; it is clear, precise and unchanging, old memories coexisting with new, every single detail, every gesture and every smell remaining as sharp as they were the moment they were experienced. And now, walking down the bunker hallway with five silver stars of a General shining on shoulder straps of a jacket thrown over her form, surrounded by messengers, giving orders, writing what she has heard from messengers on a tablet so John can review it later, calculating the threat level of everyone who passed by, listening to a headset with broadcast from internal Resistance network with one ear and listening devices from John's room with another simultaneously, she could at the same time remember every single detail of the lowest point of her existence. The flesh sizzling… the smell of a burning meat, rapidly cauterizing… the unsteady, faltering breathing …

NO! No. She would never let that happen again. Never again. If she had to slaughter every single living inhabitant of this bunker, metal, man, woman and child, and carry John away from both machines and humans to avoid something like that, she would do it. She would not fail him again. She would not lose him again.

Never again.

Walking down the hallway, surrounded by a flurry of activity, General Cameron (also variously referred to as "Miss Connor", "the Iron Lily", "that little metal bitch", "Connor's pet metal", and Cam – but only by Him) continued along her busy day, never once ceasing to remember – because a cyborg's memory is different, and a cyborg can never fail to remember.