Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Terminator belongs to James Cameron and the Sarah Connor Chronicles to Josh Friedman.

This is loosely based off of a fanfiction I had planned for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which I'm still debating whether or not I should write.

She doesn't belong with me. She belongs with him. She belongs with John.

Destiny. Or Fate. Or whatever bullshit word you want to come up with that spells out that we could never be together.

It's a love story really. One that people would write down in books and speak of in longing as they recounted the events. The Boy and the Girl who met, fell in love and saved the world together.

They never seem to mention the broken man in the corner who wanted her to himself.

Wanted. Needed. Loved.

It was bad in the future, running through war torn land with machines and guns in constant fire and battle. Blood and fire, the stench of burned metal and flesh.

She was almost always beside him, skin dirtied and her face locked in deep seated hatred and determination, a gun pressed to her chest and her fingers always locked on the trigger.

It was like something of another world, another reality that couldn't exist watching her fight. Watching her fall and get back to her feet as if nothing had happened, as if her skin wasn't now not just dirtied but bloody as well.

Following her, fighting beside her was like some twisted dream handed to me and then withdrawn as I reached for more. Always ended and cut short when we found shelter and she would be at John's side again, his fingers dug into her hair and drawing her into a kiss that bordered and fell beyond desperate.

Our savior and his soul mate.

This was always the part where I excused myself to either retch or shoot something. Sometimes both. Sometimes if I had just enough self control neither but mentally beating him to death in my head.

Not the reaction you're supposed to have towards your Commander. Or your nephew.

When she became pregnant I was one of the first that she told, a breathless grin to her face and her fingers pressing my hand to her still flattened stomach to sense the baby that she carried.

His baby. Not mine.

I lied and said that I was happy for her, accepted her embrace and lingered in the feel and scent of her. I held on a moment longer then I should have, a few seconds longer then was acceptable.

I couldn't make myself let go.

I watched them at the meeting, John's arm around her and her fingers pressed to her swollen stomach in a protection and love that I would kill to gain a shred of.

It wasn't a healthy thought.

They wanted to send someone back to kill Skynet, someone to assist and protect the past versions of her and John.

I jumped at the chance and fervently volunteered.

It was selfish of me, the real reasons behind it. Why I wanted to go back. Thinking that if I met her in time, got to her before John did then I could make her fall in love with me and instead of him. Even if it meant the future destruction of the human race.

I was that selfishly in love.

She was there when the prepared to send me back, her fingers still on her stomach and her words professional as she advised me on my mission. John stood in the corner as we talked, his arms folded across his chest and his brow furrowed in thought.

Somehow deep down he knew. And somewhere deep down I didn't care.

It was chaos when I landed, dazed and naked with only the barest thought that I needed to find shelter. Needed to find her.

She was even more perfect when I finally did. Untouched by the wear and tear of battle, her hair long and curled and her eyes still sparked with something she had long ago lost.

Hope.

She was curious about me and where I came from, asking questions and twirling a knife between her fingers as I answered. The blade would catch off the light and for a brief moment blind me, shaking me to the core when I regained my sight and saw her again.

Like seeing her for the first time again over and over.

John was there too, scrawny and scared about the weight pressed to his shoulders and the notion of falling hopelessly in love with her.

He already was. And I was forced to watch it happen.

I thought it would be easier than watching them already in love. But it wasn't it was worst. The way they glanced at one another when they thought the other wasn't looking, the blush and the visible excitement.

But here I couldn't kill anything. At least not as easily.

I managed to steal moments with her. We jogged in the morning and I taught her how to shoot. Told her about the future in which she taught me how to shoot. She laughed at the irony.

I had never heard her laugh before.

She was curious about who she was in the future. What she looked liked, who she had become, who she had married and how bad ass she was.

Her words not mine.

I told her as much as I could, cutting out the details that included me which made her more curious. Were we friends, did we fight beside each other, did we care for each other.

If only she knew.

I walked in on her having a bath once, the water dripped down her arms and entwined through her hair. I left before she saw me and ran for hours until I couldn't breathe properly, bent over and gasping with the memory now seared into my mind.

I had a cold shower afterwards, the memory still teased through my thoughts.

We went undercover in an investigation with her posing as a boy to blend in. The leader asked her to take off her cap to which she agreed, revealing her shortened hair. She asked if he wanted to remove anything else and he made her do a hundred pushups.

It was the first time in my memory that I could remember laughing.

She walked in on me in the shower once, pulling back the curtain and yelling at me for something I couldn't quite understand, all blood processed in my brain directed to another purpose. I spoke as basic as I could manage in return and as she left I caught her gaze fall lower and then back up to my face.

I had to spend another thirty minutes in the shower.

She started to do things that sparked themselves like a thousand fires in my mind. Her gaze watching mine when she thought I wasn't looking, her fingers danced over mine as I instructed her further on how to shoot and defend herself, her eyes broken in some kind of taunted longing.

John didn't notice, caught up in his own personal angst and consuming love for her. It made me sickly smug to see him run his fingers through hers and her eyes meet mine over top of his head. It was jealousy in its rawest form broken with something else in its most desperate shape.

Something I thought I could never feel again.

Hope.