Measure of a Life
by vega
Spoiler: All three movies. Takes place before and after T3.
Summary: How does one measure the worth of a life? John Connor and Kate Brewster come to find out.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
-T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
He draws the line right here, where he will disappear. Where he has to disappear.
He sees his mother one last time, taking her hand that still feels warm. This isn't her anymore, only a shell left of Sarah Connor, the legend-to-be, yet it is difficult to believe that she is no longer here with him. He kisses her forehead for the last time, refuses to shed any tears. She wouldn't want his tears. In fact, she would want him to go on and live. Except, he no longer knows what living is. What it is supposed to mean.
But he will not stop. There is no home to return to, no place for him to go. With his mother gone, there's nothing to lose, no vows to keep.
That night, he rides on.
The world died above them.
What was she supposed to do?
Seconds and minutes and hours. In silence, they listened. To the catatonic booms from the outside world that shook the shelter, to the radio that had once fervently asked for the man in charge and now only spat out low static with no evidence of human voice. Only two of them were safe here from the nuclear attacks, while the world inexplicably died above them. If there was God, she would like to protest the unfairness of it all, sobbing and screaming, but she didn't dare. At this moment, no one was listening.
She watched the profile of the man beside her, how the echoes of confusion, loss, determination, and anger wrapped him, suffocating him. She stared at their hands that were clasped together. The frightening numbness she felt eventually dissipated into oblivion, and it became clear what she was supposed to do.
"Let me take a look," she offered, wiping off the trace of tears from her face.
It was the first thing Kate could say since the end of the world had begun, the first few words she was able to utter since the only world that she knew died above them. Simplicity in her request obviously took John off guard. He blinked, his hand still entwined with hers. "What?"
"Your ankle."
John looked down at his torn and bloody foot with a frown. The pain T-X had inflicted upon him for the last time had to be excruciating, but he seemed to have forgotten it.
"And leg," she added, remembering him limp from the very first moment she'd met him. Correction, the very first moment she'd reacquainted him. That fateful night, less than a day ago. His reappearance in her life had, literally, changed everything.
She couldn't dwell on the impossibility of all this. Not right now.
For a second, he seemed ready to decline her offer, but at her stern look, he closed his mouth obediently.
"Sit," she ordered, leading him into the impersonal and cold hallway outside the control room to a thirty-year-old sofa nearby. He complied, almost in a daze. "I'll go find a First Aid kit."
And she did find one inside a cabinet of the control room. There had be other medical equipment here somewhere, but she thought this had to do, for now. They'd have time to look into the stock later. Plenty of time.
When she came back to him in hurried steps, he was leaning against the sofa, his eyes heavy with strain and ache. But he smiled faintly at her when he saw her. "You're a vet," he stated in a half-question, as if the irony of it had just occurred to him. "It suits you, somehow."
The automatic reply she'd given whenever her occupation was a topic of discussion came out from her lips, "Animals are much easier to deal with than people. They're much less pesky, for one thing." In the back of her mind, she understood that she'd never be able to return to that life again. In the back of her mind, she understood this whole thing was just... absurd. But in reality, she wasn't sure just how much she understood. It was just instinct, telling her to do the first things first.
She kneeled beside him and checked his wounds. The ankle needed a splint. The leg injury was infected and swollen. She hoped like hell that the thirty-year-old medical reserve would have some good antibiotics. "You were already hurt when you broke into my hospital," she said, trying to distract him from the pain as she gently strapped his ankle. "What happened?" she asked, looking up for a moment.
He hissed slightly at her touch, but he clenched his jaw and bore it, like he was used to pain. "A deer happened," he answered neutrally.
The unexpected answer and the absurdity of all caused her to break into sudden laughter. She stopped a second later, horrified.
"It's not wrong to laugh," John said quietly, watching her. Understanding.
So it wasn't, but what was one supposed to do with the knowledge that billions of people were dying at that very moment and there was nothing they could do? She was letting it go, she really was, yet the grief, like a dull knife, raked and twisted in her chest, unearthing and making it raw. So raw. "And it's not wrong to be glad," she said. "To be alive."
"And it's not wrong to cry over them," he said, his fingers brushing against her cheek, on the dried trails of tears.
His simple gesture almost left her without breath. Slowly she tore off her eyes from him. She couldn't cry any more over her father and Scott. "I'm just one of the millions who lost their father and fianc? today."
His eyes held too much painful understanding. "What difference does that make in how you feel?"
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She didn't answer.
"Kate," he began softly.
"We'll talk later. But not now, John. Not now."
He nodded slowly, respecting her wish.
She finished bandaging and found a pill for him to take. When she was satisfied enough and made sure he hadn't sustained any other injury, she asked simply, "What do we do?"
And he understood. "We wait for the radiation to cool off. Locate the survivors. Get ready to fight."
There it was again, John as the future leader that would save the world. Determination and burden were all he was made of, all that he felt. She stopped him from trying to get up. "For now, you need to rest."
He shook his head. "I need to prepare. I need to check the inventories, the weapons--"
"No, you don't," she cut him off sharply. "You're barely standing now as it is. There isn't anything we can do for a while, and you need to get some sleep before you dead faint on your feet."
"I think I'd know when I need to rest and when I can still stand."
The stubborn streak in him was more than evident, but did he really think that would work on her? She crossed her arms, her chin up. "Look, Mr. savior-of-the-world, you don't get to boss me around, not when you're sick like a puppy and in no condition to do so. You're no good to the mankind like this. I can knock you out just to get you to rest, but it won't be pleasant, so let's not. Lie down."
He watched her, the same dumbstruck look he'd had when she'd pushed him into a cage back in the hospital on his face again. Suddenly, there was a faint smile tugging at his lips. "You really do remind me of my mother."
This seemed to be the best compliment he could bestow upon any woman. "I would love to have met her," Kate said, meaning it.
And he appreciated it. "Okay, I give," he said finally, sinking deeper into the sofa. His tense body seemed to relax gradually as the pill finally kicked in. "You should rest, too," he murmured, his eyelids slowly closing.
"I will," she promised, at the same time thinking: less than a day and I'm already acting like his wife.
The problem was, she was supposed to be his wife, at some time in the future. The idea might have been registered and even accepted, but it didn't mean she had digested in and understood fully just what had happened. And would happen.
For a long moment, she watched him sleep uneasily on the sofa. She tucked him under a blanket she found and tested his feverish forehead. It wouldn't make sense for the great John Connor to die of infection and fever. It wouldn't. And it was, ridiculously enough, up to her to take care of him.
The task seemed overwhelmingly impossible. She, a pet doctor, the second in command of the last hope for the mankind?
She watched John again. He looked so young, a hint of the mischief he had as a juvenile delinquent still there. Barely, but still there. She still remembered her first kiss, remembered the empty spot that hadn't been occupied for a long time since his disappearance. She wondered if she'd grow to love him, if that was the destiny. She wondered if she already did.
The booming had stopped. The world was silent. Dead. If she strained hard enough, she could almost hear the screams and the pains of the dying people above. But, nothing. She could hear nothing.
She was certain that she would, though. Soon.
For a long moment, all she heard was the sound of her own tears falling.