Disclaimer: I do not own Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. Seriously.

A/N: So, this is the Prologue to the T:SCC future!fic I might have hinted was in the works when I posted 'Fear of Tomorrow' (and if you haven't read it, it'd help if you read it because this series sort of follows the established relationship in that drabble). I figured it was about time I post something relating to this new series of mine, otherwise it would seem like I was just pulling your legs. Obviously I wasn't – pulling your legs, that is. Though I'd be open to pulling – Uh, *cough* that was naughty not nice of me. Anyway, my only excuse was that my muse was being tugged in many different directions, for many different fandoms – Well, the main thing is that it's here. Finally.

A/N2: So, if you like this, if you'd like to see more of it, if you'd like to tell my muse off, if you'd like to tell me off for making the lot of you put up with lengthy A/N's (and honestly, just skip it if you don't want to read it), please do whichever (or all four, if you'd like) by reviewing! Seriously, review! The muse is the sort of being that thrives on reviews. I suppose, to an extent, so do I.

A/N3: I must say thanks to demoka for beta-ing and for putting up with my muse and me. I know it can be hard, horribly bothersome, bordering on torturous – uh, why did you offer to beta for me again? LOL.


Sarah has had dreams or nightmares (and in the end, what difference would it make – dreams, nightmares, they both hurt just as much) of how the end might have come about. There was a recurring one in particular that had her running and running – in no direction, in all directions. All she knew was that she needed to run or else she would be swallowed up. She could remember the way the fire had leaped and tried to eat at her heels, could remember the sound of metal (so, so many of them) as they crunched the earth beneath their unimaginable weight and gained on her shadow steadily. She could not breathe, could not scream – Sarah felt like she simply could not. This time proved to be the real one. The end did come and she had survived – more intact than even the best-case scenario she had ever dared to imagine.

The end came quickly, more quickly than she had ever expected it to. It was a series of bang and whams and then silence. The sort of silence that choked, that strangled; the sort of silence that somehow was still loud, that was the din that reigned after chaos had settled; the sort of silence that lingered and made everything fade to black – like almost fainting or, worse, falling into an eternal sleep (whichever came first).

"Cameron?" Sarah whispered and the smoke made it hard to see, made it even harder to speak. She knew that she should not be calling, she knew that Cameron was probably gone and, and if Cameron did not answer to her calls, what would she do and how would she survive? But Sarah needed to know, needed to make sure (even if knowing was really the last thing she wanted). "Cameron," she croaked again and she felt her eyes starting to burn up. It's the smoke, she told herself. Just the smoke.

"Cameron," Sarah murmured, her voice torn between sobbing and maybe shouting and her knees felt so heavy that she finally gave in to the temptation of falling down. When she did, she sort of folded in half (broken – in more ways than one) and the ground felt sharper than it ever should to her hands, felt grainy to her fingers and something felt wet and warm and –

"Cameron," she hissed, scratching at the unidentifiable mess the floor of the warehouse had become. This was where they had set up the trap for Skynet and this was where Cameron had stood when the explosion began. Sarah just knew that she had begun to bleed – her fingers, her knees, her legs (her heart). A nagging voice kept telling her, kept reminding her that the blood on the floor could not be just hers, had to be someone else's.

She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream (and maybe, just maybe she wanted to die). "Cameron." Her throat seemed to constrict, seemed to expand – all at the same time – as she began to sob, began to pour forth all this pain building, growing inside of her and her eyes hurt, hurt, hurt (but it was the sound of her heart shattering that hurt the most, that sounded the loudest).

No one needed to know that the day Skynet ended was the day that Sarah Connor grieved for a terminator's termination.