Fic: Right Here (Part 5/?)
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: Sarah/Cameron
Rating: M (Whole story rating)
Beta: My anonymous best friend
Disclaimer: Fox owns. I play.
Right Here: Chapter Five
John was quiet on the ride home. His silence continued when they arrived at the house. It was almost as if he was speechless. Cameron didn’t try to make conversation with him, fearing he would get angry at her attempts. It was obvious that John was trying to distract himself until he could see his mother again but was failing.
John had no idea how he was going to act around his mom when she got back. She’d definitely notice something had happened. Cameron had told him not to say anything about the mission.
He understood why it needed to happen. She understood that John had the hardest part of the entire operation.
Finally the events of the day took their toll on the young man; it was well into the night. He rose from the couch but left the TV on, Cameron was sitting on the other couch watching also. Or he thought she was.
“Uh, I’m gonna head to bed now. Mom said she’d probably be back in the morning but if I’m still asleep can you wake me up?” John was hoping Cameron wouldn’t ask why. Surely she understood his reason.
“Yes. Goodnight, John.” Cameron looked up at him from her seated position. He gave her a tired and small but thankful smile.
“Night.” John spoke but his mind was coming up with many questions. He decided that tonight wasn’t the night to ask.
--
Cameron had retreated to her room in the early hours of the morning but could easily hear Derek’s car coming up the drive way. She made her way to John’s room and knocked on the door before opening it. John was sleeping deeply and Cameron thought about letting him continue but he would most likely be mad at her for doing that. She walked further into the room and stopped at his bed.
“John? Your mother is home.” Cameron placed her hand on John’s shoulder and nudged him slightly. His eyes opened a little and squinted from the morning’s fresh light. Cameron stood up straight again and stepped back slightly.
“They’re back?” John sleepily inquired. At Cameron’s nod he sat up, “All right. Go downstairs and see how it went, I gotta get changed.”
Cameron exited his room and closed the door quietly behind her. Sarah was just coming up the stairs but hadn’t seen her yet. Cameron felt a force flow through her at the mere sight of Sarah but she looked exhausted and was pretty much dragging the bag filled with weaponry. Sarah looked up and they made eye contact. Cameron took the small steps over to the older woman and gently took the heavy luggage from her hands.
“Thanks.” Sarah softly spoke. Cameron didn’t need to hear it; she could see the appreciation in Sarah’s eyes but she decided she would respond. There wasn’t much space between them.
“Anytime.” Cameron smiled warmly at Sarah causing her to do the same. John opened his door in a hurry, not expecting the person he was seeking to be right in front of him.
“Mom, hi. How’d it go? Anything weird happen?” He was acting strange already. Cameron felt like stress had literally just smacked her in the face. She hadn’t anticipated Sarah noticing anything odd for at least a few days.
Sarah raised her eyebrows at her son’s strange interest. Usually he would wait until lunch time or ask Derek if he was still around. “Uh, no nothing weird. Nothing at all really.” All three of them had been so distracted by their own thoughts that no-one had observed the fact that Sarah and Cameron were standing extremely close.
John looked at Cameron briefly before returning his gaze back to his mother. Sarah realised the distance between her and Cameron was small and mistook John’s glance for him noticing. Cameron seemed to think so too because she abruptly turned and walked away towards Sarah’s room to return the various guns to their original home. Sarah tried her best to keep looking at John and not watch the terminator’s retreating form, no matter how tempting that may have been.
“We’ll just have to snoop into their business a different way then, I suppose.” John tried to act like he usually did after his mom did these surveillance missions with Derek or Cameron.
“What? Uh, yeah. I wanna know where on earth Derek got that information on them from in the first place.” Sarah told her son. “Hey, I got about five minutes sleep on the drive back, mind if I don’t make breakfast this morning? I’m thinking of sleeping all day.” She tried a joke out. John grinned back at her before starting his way downstairs.
“Sure, mom. Just make sure there’s dinner.” He quipped back and then he was gone.
Sarah slowly made her way into her room, her whole body felt drained of any energy. Cameron was still in her room when Sarah shut the door behind her. The girl looked up from where she was, putting Sarah’s glock back under her pillow. Sarah smiled at Cameron’s perfectionist nature.
“You wish to sleep?” Cameron inquired curiously.
“Yeah, in a sec. I was just wondering about something.” Sarah had her turn at being cryptic.
“Yes?”
“I know you don’t sleep and all but...you’ve usually changed into different clothes by now...” Cameron looked down at her clothes and back up to Sarah. The woman’s confused expression let Cameron know she wasn’t thinking there was some evil behind this mistake she’d made.
“I forgot. I was focused on other things.” Cameron said distantly. Sarah was thrown by the fact that Cameron had actually forgotten something.
“What other things?” Sarah curiously asked her. Cameron stepped closer but seemed hesitant.
“Mostly...you.” Cameron left out the part where she was calculating the right way to tell Sarah everything.
“Oh. I see.” Sarah replied as she looked away, feeling Derek’s words of the terminator from last night ring in her mind. His hatred and intolerance made very clear over the hours they sat in the stuffy car. She didn’t know why it was bothering her so much. Maybe it was the fact that she still wished she didn’t feel this way about Cameron, a terminator.
But Sarah had to admit it; she’d missed Cameron last night. Being stuck in a car with only Derek for company was really not something she’d volunteer for anytime soon.
“Is something wrong?” Cameron’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Sarah wore a bitter smile and looked down briefly before returning her gaze to the girl standing so very close.
“Derek kept telling me that the best thing to do is...destroy you.” Sarah told Cameron and the terminator averted her eyes downward. She looked hopeless, like she wouldn’t even try to persuade Sarah otherwise. What Sarah didn’t know was that Cameron couldn’t look at Sarah when she was keeping such an enormous secret from her. There were too many emotions that were so new flowing through her fiercely.
Cameron decided then and there, she would tell Sarah on this night. She would tell her everything about why she was sent back through time. At her new resolution, Cameron lifted her eyes back to Sarah. Her gaze was strong and held all the emotion she felt.
Sarah had been waiting for Cameron to respond and was about to speak again when the girl looked at her once more. The intensity throwing her off and causing her heart to beat faster. She felt she needed to reassure Cameron that she didn’t mean for her to think she agreed with Derek.
“Cameron...I could never do that. Not anymore. It’s not the best thing. Not for John and not...for me.” Sarah had stepped closer to the terminator. Their eyes never strayed. Sarah slowly snaked her arms around Cameron’s waist. The girl responded by leaning even closer into Sarah’s body and bringing her own arms up and around the woman. Cameron wished Sarah knew about her mission as she felt her hands absently caressing her back.
“I’m glad you feel that way.” Was Cameron’s only way to answer. She had a hand threaded through the back of Sarah’s hair. This moment was too good to end but Cameron heard John’s slightly muffled conversation downstairs. He was asking Derek if she had come downstairs yet.
“I’ll let you rest now, Sarah.” Cameron spoke softly as she pulled away from Sarah. Their contact was broken but they still stood close. Sarah lifted her hand and lightly traced Cameron’s jaw line.
“See you later on.” Sarah smiled warmly at the girl before leaning in closer and kissing her lips softly. She pulled away before it got too hard. Cameron had a small and bittersweet smile as she retreated from Sarah’s room.
--
When Cameron had come downstairs, Derek had made some sort of disgusted noise and stalked out of the room, leaving Cameron and John in the lounge. John had told Cameron that he wasn’t going to school today but was going out with Riley. He wouldn’t say where. Cameron suspected he thought she would follow them. She might have if she wasn’t waiting for Sarah to wake up to talk to her. Cameron then realised she also didn’t want Sarah to wake up and have no one here.
Since John left, Cameron had been trying to fill in her time. She was restless knowing what she had to do when the time came. Sarah had been sleeping longer than she usually does, the night out had really taken it’s toll on the woman. It had been so long that John had come home and gone out again but with Derek this time.
How would she start the conversation that would eventually lead to lost trust? Cameron was sitting at the dining room table with a stack of papers absently sifting through them. To anyone else who knew her, this would look like she was finding leads on Skynet. Sure, that’s why those documents are in the house. But that’s not why she’d started going through them.
Cameron’s ponderings were cut short by the sound of Sarah’s door opening. She stood up swiftly and put away the files. As Sarah came down the stairs, Cameron was putting the chair back in it’s place. She knew she would have a suspicious look about her but it didn’t matter anymore. It was going to happen. Sarah would ask.
“Where’s John?” Sarah asked wearily after eyeing Cameron and the chair. Cameron stepped away from the table and faced Sarah.
“Out with Derek.” Cameron’s old monotone creeping back into play as her stress level rose. Sarah’s expression changed briefly but rested on confusion. It seemed to be her default around the terminator recently.
“Did he say when he’d be home?” She inquired further, feeling something inevitable was about to happen as she made her way to the kitchen for a glass of water.
“No.” Cameron dropped her gaze to the floor and slowly followed the woman. Sarah briefly wondered where the two had gone as she lifted the glass and drank the liquid before focusing her attention on Cameron’s odd behaviour.
“Are you okay?” Sarah asked the question Cameron had been dreading but needing in order to continue. She put the glass in the sink and faced the terminator.
“No, I need to talk to you about something.” She answered quietly; Sarah almost didn’t hear her speak.
“Okay, sure.” Sarah responded and tried to give an encouraging smile even though she was getting anxious from Cameron’s behaviour. She leaned back against the bench as she waited for the girl to continue.
“Do you trust me?” Cameron inquired carefully. She tried not to revert to a blank face and monotone. It was hard not to when she was so afraid.
“I...Yes. I thought you wanted to talk? Not ask me questions?” Sarah’s eyebrows raised in question. Cameron wanted to look away but refused to let the emotion control her this time.
“It’s about...I need to tell you...the reason I was sent back.” It was even harder than she had predicted.
“You have? Protect John, right?” Sarah was really starting to stress now.
“Yes. Protecting John overrides all other missions. But there is one mission that future John sent me back for.” Cameron knew she was stalling.
“And that is...?” Sarah let her lack of patience leak into her words and tone.
“There were others sent back to assist me and there are a series of steps I need to take. Some, I have done already. It was important that neither John nor you found out about this mission until everything was in place. When Derek became a part of things, it was even harder to maintain the secrecy.”
“Cameron, you’re speaking in riddles.” The woman sighed with her growing impatience and folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m to bring you back with me, Sarah.” Cameron spoke out in her monotone. Just to get it out.
“What?” Sarah hastily questioned though she’d heard perfectly well what Cameron had just said.
“My mission is to take you to the future. 2028.” The terminator clarified, the mechanical demeanour slipping away slightly.
Sarah stared at Cameron in complete shock as her world spun and she stood still.
tbc...