Disclaimer: I don't own, might wish I did, but I don't.
Author's Note: Enjoy, though please read and review to tell me what you think. Thank you.
"Sarah?" Her voice was almost as soft as the silence, but still it managed to ring out loudly piercing through the almost palatable quiet.
"What?" The woman replied, turning her back on the girl and hunching over the desk as she cleaned off her gun.
"Am I evil?" From most mothers to their daughters the obvious reply to that sentence would be no. From Sarah Connor, mother of John Connor one day saviour of the world, to Cameron Phillips the Terminator sent back to save her son it was a little more complicated than normal.
"Why?" The raven haired woman replied, taking a moment to stare at the other girl over her shoulder before she returned to the task she had previously been concentrating on. She wondered for a moment whether or not she should have been loading the gun and firing the clip of bullets at the brunette, but she didn't. Sometimes afterwards she still questioned herself over why she didn't.
"Am I evil because of what I am?" Cameron replied, moving forward so that she was stood leaning back against the wall next to Sarah, looking down at what she was doing. "I'm a Terminator. Aren't we trying to kill the Terminators and SkyNet because of what they are doing, the evil that they are doing. Doesn't that therefore mean I myself am evil? Even if I help the good does being a Terminator mean that I am evil?"
Sarah's dark green eyes looked up into Cameron's deep chocolate brown pair. She concentrated on the look that she saw. The intensity of feeling she saw there surprised her, but what surprised her more was which feeling she was seeing. It wasn't just a blank stare; she saw hope, maybe that she would tell her that she wasn't evil. She saw doubt; doubt in herself that she was actually the nightmare that plagued Derek, John and Sarah herself.
"You are not evil Cameron." Sarah said gently, thinking for a moment and then reaching out to take the girl's hand within her own to pull it closer to her. With her other hand she grasped the barrel of the gun and lifted it pressing it into the Terminator's grasp and closing the girl's fingers around it. "Do you feel tempted to use it? To kill me?"
"No!" The Terminator replied indignantly thrusting the gun back into Sarah's hands and moving, no stumbling, away so that she was not in range of grasping the gun again.
Sarah reached a hand forward and wrapped it around the girl's wrist to pull her closer again, "Then how can you be evil? Humans are the Terminators enemies. If you were evil you would have seen that and killed me. Numerous times you've had a gun and the opportunity to kill me, John or even Derek and you haven't."
"My mission is to protect John Connor." Cameron replied keeping her eyes trained on the gun in Sarah's free hand.
The raven haired woman stared at it for a moment before she placed it down on the table and raised both hands so that they were level with her head, palms out open showing that there was nothing inside them; nothing for the girl to fear. "I am not John Connor, neither is Derek Reese John Connor."
Cameron cocked her head to the side as if she was confused before she shook her head and replied with the same, "My mission is to protect John Connor."
"Your mission is not to protect Sarah Connor or Derek Reese though, and yet you have multiple times while putting your own continued function on the line. That was your choice; it didn't need to be made to protect John Connor."
"Your logic… must be flawed. I am a Terminator." The young girl stubbornly replied shaking her head from side to side.
Sarah groaned a little before she replied, "Haven't you been programmed with free will though? Isn't this your choice?"
"Yes." Was the brunette Terminator's short reply.
"Cameron, you are no more evil than a little girl who is the daughter of a murderer." Sarah spoke gently, reaching out with her hand to hold the other girl's hand within her own.
"I have killed though…" Cameron said in return, turning her head so that she was not facing Sarah, not having to look into her eyes any longer.
"You have killed to protect the people you love-" Sarah had to pause for a moment when she spoke those words. Since when had she thought that the Terminator had any feelings? When had she come to believe her to be a person and not just a machine? Sarah didn't know, but she did know that she believed it to be true.
"But I am a machine, a robot, doesn't that mean that I don't have feelings?"
Sarah sighed in frustration and decided to play the argument a slightly different way. She pulled the girl closer by her hand, then used the other to turn the girl's head towards her holding her gently against her body. "Do you feel anything now?"
"Sarah?" The words escaped Cameron's mouth as nothing more than a strangled gasp as she stood rigid in the older woman's embrace.
The raven haired woman shook her head and determinedly pressed her lips to the brunette's. Their lips pressed together slickly, moving over one another sending sparks down each of the womens spines from where their lips touched. "Sarah." The name was only a breathless moan.
"Do you feel it?"
"Yes."