Re: Derek/John
Derek shook his head. "No, John. I trusted him to be ruthless, but that doesn't mean that the ruthlessness didn't hurt. I trusted him to win the war as much as I trusted that he'd sent Kyle to his death. I was ready to die for him. I wasn't as willing to go along when it was people I cared about on the line." He sighed. "It doesn't really matter anymore. As you said, he's gone.'
He smiled a little. "You do understand that your war hasn't even started yet, right? You weren't a recognizable name until after the escape. No one expected you to be a leader now... well, maybe your mother, but she was still hoping to stop Judgment Day. She had never seen it. She might have known about it, might have dreamed about it, but she'd never seen it, not until after you left. She changed because of it. I changed because I was already and knew what to expect. You will adjust to whatever it's going on now, but you're the dreamer. If there is one of us who wants a peaceful co-existence is you." He squeezed John's hand. "You shouldn't have trusted his programming, because even with that, 'they just go bad'. It happened at the base, machines that he had programmed, machines that killed people, and even he didn't know why. I trusted him, but he wasn't perfect. You don't have to be perfect either."
Of course, they reached their biggest difference. "Caring makes us weak. I might not want you to be him, but I respected him for not letting emotions affect his decisions. Even when I hated him for those decisions, I still respected him." He sighed "Even if people here care, which... I'm pretty sure Vance can be as ruthless as him, but that's not the point. There's literally nothing that can be done, John, and not because I don't want to try. What do you expect me to do? Talk to some shrink about ... what exactly? Torturing a man who held me prisoner based on my girlfriend's word, because that hadn't happened to me but another version of me she knew? Going back in time to kill my best friend for something he hadn't yet done? Finding out that my girlfriend had a miscarriage, from the robot that tortured me, two decades before it happened? What the fuck do you expect me to say? Or should we try it your way? Going to a shrink and lie through my teeth, because that leads to such good results, doesn't it? I am surviving, and if I snap again, you take out that gun and shoot me, because that's what you're supposed to do, and then you move on, because this is our life. It might sucks, but this is the cards hand we've been dealt, and we don't get a do-over."