21 April 2011. Time: Unknown.
"You don't have to do this, Stephen!" The screams of a terrified young man tore through his head. He closed his eyes and sighed painfully. He squeezed his hands together until the knuckles went white, unable to ease the ripping sensation in his chest. "You don't want to do this!"
"Stephen, please don't! You can beat this, there's another way! Don;t give in, please!" A woman's voice invading his mind. He whimpered painfully and buried his weeping face into his hands. Every breath was labored and his eyes burned while the water freely flowed outwards.
"Stop this, now!" A young girl's cries echoed in his mind. "You know this isn't you, this isn't want you were meant to do!"
The voices would yell at him in a nonstop cycle, each taking their turn to plead to him to no avail. The fear, the pain, the torment in their voices was accentuated by his own pained weeping. Then, as quickly as they started, they stopped. He lifted his head and looked around, greeted only by an endless black abyss. Even in this void he could make out his own features and appearance with no present source of light.
"Is this hell?" He questioned internally. "Purgatory? Surely this isn't heaven. I have to be dead, there's no other way to explain it."
He slowly lifted his gloved hands and placed them onto his chest. He could feel his heart beating beneath the surface and he still felt warm to the touch. If this was death, it certainly didn't meet expectations. He shook his head and began to walk into the distance with no objective in mind. The metallic taste of blood seeped across his tongue and the burning sensation of bullets piercing the flesh of his torso greeted his mind but, alas, the sensations were phantoms of what brought him here. Hell, it would appear, was nothing more than his sins looping through his solitary mind in darkness. Or so he thought.
"Come here often, sailor?" He stopped in his tracks, his eyes closing as soon as he heard the voice belonging to a small child.
Stephen turned around and hesitantly opened his eyes to confirm his suspicions. Once they were, he truly wished that he was alone.
"This is Hell. There's no other way to explain it." He muttered.
Four people of differing ages, genders, and ethnicity stood before him. A bald, giant, and muscular black male with luminescent blue eyes, an older and svelte white male with glowing purple eyes, a lean, short, and teenage Asian male with red eyes, and an adolescent white female with blond pigtails from left to right looked back to him. The older man smiled and crossed his arms with no verbal reaction. In silence, they stood and gazed at the sullen man. His eyes danced between the four of them. He shook his head and walked off into the abyss for what felt like hours. His mind continued to swirl with the events of the recent years, the voices that awoke him with their screams played on an intensifying loop, and he felt every single wound as if they were fresh.
Stephen couldn't take it anymore, he collapsed to his knees and then the floor before his pained wails echoed in the endless void. His arms curled around his chest, his legs tucked into a fetal position, and shook with sorrow. He had forced himself to stand strong for his entire life and, after the most recent series of unfortunate events, he couldn't take it anymore.
He would stay on the nonexistent ground until a small hand rested on his shoulder, snapping him from his agony with a startled jump. The little girl from before, eyes glowing green, gazed at him with compassion before she touched his face gently. She said nothing, she would lower herself onto him and wrap her tiny arms around her in an effort to comfort him. He wouldn't resist her comfort, he would turn into her and pull the child close to him and release a horrid mixture of angry screams and pained cries into her white dress.
Gently, she shushed him and ran her fingers through his long black hair. A powerfully built man, olive skin and raven hair, clutched the girl small enough to be his young daughter with incoherent ramblings. She would silently listen and nod, knowing she had nothing to offer this broken warrior. A knife wrenched in her chest at the sight of him slipping farther and farther into a twitching mess. She sighed softly when he finally managed to quiet himself, save for the occasional sniffle and whimper. When she could sense his leveling out, she would begin to speak.
"I know you're hurting, Stephen. It's okay, it wasn't you." She whispered.
"Lilith, it doesn't help and you know that." He softly replied.
"I know, sweetie. I know."
The snapping of bones, the tearing of flesh, the spilling of blood, the terrible screams...all form those who put their lives in his hands. They trusted him, depending on him, and cared for them. How did he repay them? He killed them and, less than five minutes, doomed humanity to nuclear devastation. He did not stop Judgment Day and he did not save the messiah or anyone else.
"What is your mission?!" The woman's voice from earlier yelled in his head.
"My missions...ensure the survival of John..and Sarah Connor. Protect Cam-Cam-Cam-Cameron..." His own voice would flicker and jerk with electric static. Stephen could see it now, her terrified green eyes yet still burning with purpose glared at him behind her black hair. Blood on her face, a hand held to her chest like a wounded dog, and the other up in a futile attempt to halt his advance.
"You are about to FAIL that mission!" She screamed.
Despite his best efforts, fail is exactly what he did.