Fic: Dazed and Confused (Sarah/Cameron, Sarah Connor Chronicles)

[fembuck]

 

Title: Dazed and Confused
Author: Janine
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: Sarah/Cameron
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don’t own them.
Summary: The fourth installment of the, “A Helping Hand” series.

Previous Chapters
1. a helping hand
2. just this once
3. the humpty dumpty conundrum

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Sarah tensed, her back straightening almost painfully as she felt Cameron’s delicate hand settle on her hip, the warmth of the terminator’s body enveloping her a moment later as Cameron embraced her from behind.

It had become a night ritual of sorts for them, the simultaneously chaste and intimate embraces, Sarah leaning back into the solidness of Cameron’s body, their chests rising and falling together as they stared out of the window or at the television set. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they didn’t, but once the lights in the house had been turned out and John’s bedroom door had closed for the night they always gravitated towards each other, somehow finding themselves touching until Sarah retreated to her room for the night.

That night however, Sarah’s body wouldn’t relax into Cameron’s. Her mind was too busy racing, Derek’s words spinning around in her head. ‘Don’t let that thing touch me’, ‘Get it away from me,’ cycling around in her brain over and over again, haunting her.

Derek was disgusted by Cameron. He was disturbed by her and her presence in Sarah and John’s lives. He looked at Cameron like she was a thing. He looked at her like Sarah had the first time they encountered each other. He looked at her in a way Sarah knew she no longer did … or could.

“You’re more conflicted than usual.”

Sarah blinked, her body shaking in Cameron’s arms a second later as she chuckled despite herself.

“Yeah, well today sucked more than usual,” Sarah commented lightly sighing deeply a second later as her body finally relaxed a little against Cameron’s.

“Yes. Many unpleasant things happened,” Cameron agreed her head lowering until her chin was resting on Sarah’s shoulder.

“Such as?” Sarah asked curiously.

There was something different about Cameron’s voice just then, something far away in it that Sarah hadn’t heard before. It was almost as if Cameron was thinking about something else as she was speaking. She had never done that before. Cameron was always in the moment. Only maybe she wasn’t.

“Do you miss him?” Cameron asked her voice low, no more than a whisper.

If her lips hadn’t been so close to Sarah’s ear Sarah doubted that she would have been able to hear the question.

“Who?” Sarah asked, a tremor running through her body as the sensation of Cameron’s breath on the sensitive skin of her neck rippled through her.

“Charley Dixon,” Cameron clarified mechanically her voice devoid of the minute inflections that could usually be found in her speech.

“Oh,” Sarah responded Cameron’s response and her tone throwing her momentarily off balance.

If she was talking to anybody but Cameron she knew how she would have interpreted the change in Cameron’s voice. But even as she stood in the circle of the terminator’s arms her brain balked at the idea that Cameron could have been trying to guard her feelings.

“Do you miss him?” Cameron repeated, drawing Sarah’s attention back to her.

Sarah was silent for a long moment as she considered Cameron’s question, her mind drifting back to early that evening trying to sort out the emotions she had felt when she had seen Charley.

It had shocked her to see him standing in her doorway and when their eyes first met her heart had jumped in her chest. But the emotion had been fleeting, quickly fading leaving awkwardness and unease in its wake.

After that first moment of surprise, Charley had seemed jarringly out of place, unreal, her mind unable to accept him there in her world of robots and guns and bullet removal on the kitchen table. Charley belonged to another life. He was from another reality that she could now barely remember.

“In a way,” Sarah responded finally her brows scrunching together as she spoke.

“In what way?” Cameron asked her voice soft, yet oddly insistent.

Her thumb was moving rhythmically against Sarah’s stomach as they spoke.

“I miss what he represented,” Sarah began drawing in a deep breath, the slow, steady movement of Cameron’s thumb making her mind heavy, and lazy.

“The life we could have had,” she continued a touch of wistfulness in her voice that she never would have allowed to show through if Cameron’s finger hadn’t been lulling her into a state of restfulness.

“A normal life,” she went on, “a safe life.”

Cameron was silent for a long moment, her thumb continuing to move gently against Sarah as the silence settled around them, until suddenly it stilled against Sarah’s stomach, the absence of the soothing touch stirring Sarah out of the mindless fog she had fallen into.

“What?” Sarah asked quietly, curious as to why Cameron had stopped.

“If you were safe you would not need me,” Cameron stated slowly.

“I suppose not,” Sarah agreed.

There would have been no need for Cameron in their lives if she had succeeded in destroying Skynet. In fact, there would have been no Cameron if she had succeeded in destroying Skynet.

“My mission is to help you destroy Skynet so that the world will be safe. So that you and John will be safe,” Cameron stated her arms twitching, momentarily holding Sarah more tightly against her before her muscles loosened the embrace becoming relaxed once more.

“I know,” Sarah replied simply wondering where Cameron was going with all of this.

She didn’t always understand the way Cameron’s mind worked, but she had realized that Cameron usually was going somewhere with her questions and comments. Everything she said had a point.

“If I succeed in my mission I will cease to be needed,” Cameron said, her voice changing again, something that sounded almost like consternation registering in her tone.

“I suppose so,” Sarah repeated more slowly, a touch of hesitance in her voice as she spoke, Cameron’s tone making her more cautious.

“Then it is my mission to make myself obsolete,” Cameron concluded sadly.

Sarah was silent because she supposed so but felt it would be unnecessarily cruel to say it.

“Will you miss me?” Cameron asked long minutes later.

Sarah stared at the faint image of Cameron reflected back at her in the window.

Would she miss her?

She shouldn’t. Not anymore than she would miss a toaster or a burnt out phone. Cameron was a machine, a tool, a weapon sent back in time for her to use and control to complete a task. Cameron was really no more than a highly advanced snow blower or personal heater.

One didn’t miss machines. They were inconvenienced by the malfunctioning or disappearance of one, but they didn’t miss them. Then again, one didn’t usually share ones fears with a coffee maker. Or get advice about grieving from one’s hair dyer. People didn’t usually collapse tiredly against their CPUs at the end of a long day, or worry about whether or not to leave a stapler behind when the going got rough.

Machines were just things.

The problem was that she could tell herself Cameron was just a machine all she wanted; she could know that under Cameron’s soft skin and gamine features lay circuitry and metal, but she just couldn’t make herself believe that that was all Cameron was.

No matter how hard she tried she could no longer convince herself that Cameron was a thing.

“I think I would,” Sarah breathed out shakily after a long pause, plagued and relieved by her words at the same time.

It meant something that when they were on missions together she looked over at Cameron to get her opinion about what they should do. It meant something that she thought of Cameron as a part of her team and was unwilling to leave her behind. It meant something that in the night exhausted and overwhelmed she awaited Cameron’s touch and was comforted by the sound of her voice.

It meant that Cameron was real to her, even if she didn’t want her to be.

It meant that even if everything inside of her screamed that it was wrong and idiotic and dangerous that Cameron was more than just a machine to her.

It meant that Cameron had a value to her that went beyond her usefulness as a tool.

It meant that she felt something for Cameron. She has feelings for her.

Sarah closed her eyes.

Somewhere inside she realized that she had known that already, that she had been aware that she was not responding to Cameron like a machine from the night she had allowed the girl to shave her legs for her but she had repressed, and denied and ignored the knowledge because she couldn’t face even hypothetically, thinking about possibly, maybe contemplating what having feelings for Cameron could possibly entail.

“Sarah …”

“What?” Sarah asked softly, her voice rough with strain. She was done for the day. That was it. She couldn’t take anymore. She’d been awake for far too long to be concerning herself with the nature of being. All she wanted to do was cover herself with a blanket, curl up into the fetal position and forget that there was a world beyond the warm cocoon of her bed until morning.

“I would miss you too,” Cameron said loosening her arms from around Sarah’s waist, stepping back from the older woman’s body a second later.

Sarah turned around despite herself at Cameron’s words, an electric thrill pulsing through her as she looked at the girl. Something that she didn’t want to happen but couldn’t stop from happening was coming. She was sure of it. She could feel it. She sensed the oncoming danger the same way she just knew to dodge right or to duck during a scrap. She could feel a metaphorical fist flying towards her face at that moment.

“I didn’t understand why you grieved for Andy when you knew the world was safer with him gone,” Cameron began thoughtfully when Sarah’s eyes met hers. “I watched you when Derek was bleeding. I saw your fear … your sadness. He was still alive, but you grieved because he may have died,” Cameron continued her eyes looking past Sarah her iris’s shifting as her features became serious. “I thought about how I would feel if you were gone and … it hurt,” she went on sounding surprised, and Sarah supposed that she was. As far as she knew Cameron had never felt pain before. “I understood then,” Cameron said softly pausing for a second as her gaze sharpened and her eyes focused on Sarah once more. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Sarah released a shuddering breath.

“I wrote …”

Sarah lifted her hand resting it on Cameron’s cheek and the girl’s words trailed off, her head tilting to the side curiously, pressing into Sarah’s palm as she watched the older woman’s head drop down, Sarah’s eyes focused on her feet as she breathed in and exhaled deeply.

“Sarah?”

“Go to your room,” Sarah said looking up, her voice rough and her eyes burning with intensity as she stared at Cameron.

It was too much. She was too tired, too rundown, too overwhelmed, too raw, too everything to handle Cameron anymore. She thought she knew but what she knew didn’t make any sense, and she wanted things but what she wanted couldn’t be had, and really her bed cocoon had never seemed more appealing than it did right then because she … she needed very desperately not to be thinking anymore.

Cameron remained still, her eyes searching Sarah’s face as the warmth from her cheek seemed to sear Sarah’s palm.

“Go to …” Sarah began.

However, before she could say anything else Cameron surged forward closing the distance between them and pressed her lips against Sarah’s, Cameron’s hand moving to Sarah’s face cupping her jaw as she kissed the older woman firmly.

Sarah shuddered, her free hand moving to Cameron’s waist and snaking around behind her back, tugging the girl closer to her as she opened her mouth to Cameron, sighing as the girl’s tongue entered her eagerly deepening the kiss.

Sarah didn’t how long they stood in the middle of living room kissing. It could have been hours, or minutes, or seconds. All that she knew when she started to come back to herself was that her heart was pounding alarmingly quickly, her legs felt like jelly, her mind was pleasantly fuzzy and her hand had slipped beneath the waistband of Cameron’s jeans so that her nails where digging into the top of Cameron’s ass.

Sarah took a step back, blinking as she tried to focus her vision and clear her head.

Cameron was staring at her wide-eyed, her lips slightly parted.

Cameron stepped towards her and Sarah stepped back.

“Go to your room,” Sarah said softly, her voice gentle as she looked at Cameron.

“We were kissing,” Cameron said in response. Sarah nodded her head. “I want to do that again.”

Sarah smiled at that holding her ground when Cameron stepped towards her again.

“I know,” Sarah said placing her hand on Cameron’s cheek once more, watching with fascination as Cameron’s eyelids fluttered and she tilted her cheek into the warmth of her hand.

The movement was different this time and she realized that Cameron was enjoying the feeling of her hand instead of processing her biochemical signals.

“I just can’t. Not now,” Sarah continued as a wave of exhaustion washed over her causing her shoulders to slump and her eyes to dull.

“You’re tired,” Cameron said noting the change as it came over Sarah.

“You have no idea,” Sarah muttered feeling as if she was on the brink of collapse.

“Will we kiss again?” Cameron asked watching Sarah very carefully as if she expected the other woman to lie and was prepared to catch her if she did.

“Probably,” Sarah responded having very little confidence in her willpower and self-control at the moment.

Cameron was silent for a few seconds, considering Sarah’s words, and then nodded. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Sarah replied lowering her hand, her eyes lingering on Cameron’s face for a second longer before she stepped back on tired unsteady legs and began to walk towards her room.

The End