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Terminator: Genisys and Revelations
Chapter 2: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
On the road, she shivered. On the road, she hugged herself close. On the road, she fought the urge to weep, as the lightning above her crackled and faded, leaving her alone in the darkness of the desert.
Both of them were gone. They still existed in this time, granted, but even if she found them, even if they succeeded in preparing for the arrival of the T-5000 four months from now, even if they succeeded in stopping it, what then? There'd be another Sarah Connor. A Sarah Connor who, at this point in time, would have just been to the residence of a young Kyle Reese, and begun to acknowledge her feelings for the Kyle Reese of the adult variety. Two weeks from now, her other self would be celebrating her 19th birthday 53 years after her year of birth. But if she found them…what happened after? She saved Kyle. She'd save Pops. She'd save herself. But question was, what happened after that?
She tried to get up, but she stumbled back down, coughing, retching above the gravel. This wasn't like last time, she reflected. Travelling through time had been painful the first go, but nothing like this. Her skin felt it was on fire. Her body felt like it was burning, even in the cold night air. And as she tried again to get to her feet, as she looked around, seeing nothing but desert all around her, with no town in sight…she couldn't help it. She fell back down to the ground again. Curled up in a fetal pose.
"I can't keep doing this," she whispered, before closing her eyes. Willing the cold away. Willing for it to end.
She'd never wanted this life. Nineteen year-old girls were meant to work in diners, have roomies, and go out on dates. They were meant to have their lives ahead of them. Not lives lived day to day in constant fear of present and future. Of fire coming for herself, and fire coming for the whole world. Shivering, coughing, she looked down the road. Like the future, it was long, dark, and unknown. Only now, she couldn't walk it. She struggled to get to her feet again…
And screamed, as she felt something grab her ankle.
She flipped over onto her back and backed away, yanking ankle free from the Devil's touch.
No.
It was here. Its body was falling apart, its nanites falling onto the gravel and disintegrating like powdered snow upon a fire. But it was still chasing her. Hunting her. Looking at her through inhuman eyes, shining with a blue light.
"There…is nowhere…"
Sarah kept backing away, but every movement was agony.
"…that I won't find you," it whispered. It crawled across the gravel, struggling to move, struggling to keep itself constituted. "Nowhere…that I cannot go…"
Sarah kept backing away. It occurred to her that she'd fared better than the Terminator because she'd been in the centre of time displacement sphere – its eye - while the T-5000 had caught the 'storm.' It had met the same fate as John in the Cyberdyne facility. But it was still here. Hunting her, without pity or remorse. Not stopping until she was dead.
"You'll die here…like the others did…"
She didn't understand what that meant. Kyle and Pops hadn't died here. But she kept backing away, before the fire within her, the fire on her skin, caused her to cry out and fall back, the gravel scratching her skin. The Terminator reached for her, but didn't move any further forward. In the gloom, she could see that it had lost its legs – completely disintegrated. And its top half wasn't doing much better.
"I…will not die here…" it whispered. Sarah saw its face contort, briefly resembling how it had appeared after Kyle's death. "I…am Skynet…I have seen myself die a hundred ways across a hundred timelines, but I…I…am…eternal!" It snarled. It spat. It slammed its left hand down into the pavement, pushing itself forward towards. "I…am…Legion!"
Sarah didn't answer. She was too busy looking at the pair of headlights approaching the Terminator from behind. Approaching very fast.
Slow down.
It wasn't.
Please.
There was no sign that Skynet had even noticed. It was ready to die, Sarah whispered. But didn't want to do so without killing the mother, having long since killed the son.
How human.
The vehicle was still approaching. The Terminator was still reaching for her. Sarah, groaning, found herself unable to move, her body having given up on her.
"You…are…"
Skynet yelled, as if in pain, as a wheel of a four-wheel drive ran over it, skidding to a stop right in front of Sarah.
Terminated.
She didn't scream, but just lay there, breathing heavily, her chest moving up and down through the night air. She barely even looked at the pair that got out of the vehicle, her eyes focused on the T-5000. It looked up at one of them and gave something between a bark and a roar. The figure responded by pumping the shotgun they were carrying, and fired into the Terminator's head.
Fucker.
Again, and again, and again. Before it slumped down, motionless. Dead, or at least as dead as that word could be applied to such a creature. It let out one final 'breath,' before the rest of its frame collapsed into dust.
"One of Legion's?" one of the figures asked.
Sarah rose a hand and tried to make out their features, but the headlights of the vehicle were too bright. She saw three others get out from the back, but had just as much luck making them out as the two people before her.
"Not like any I've seen. And certainly not the REV Nine."
They were both female, she could tell that much.
"Well," said the first. She walked towards Sarah. "Looks like we…holy shit."
Sarah suddenly felt very cold.
"What the fuck are you?"
Being spoken to like you were a freak by someone who carried a shotgun had that effect. But while Skynet was dead, she wasn't. And if she didn't find Kyle and Pops soon, they'd be as well. So, trembling, and not just from the wind, she stuck out a hand towards the first figure.
"Please, help me. My name is Sarah Connor and-"
The figure brought the butt of the shotgun down on her head, knocking her out.
It had taken twenty minutes for Sarah to tell her story to other!Sarah. Or "Sunglasses," as she called her. The whole story, from Big Bear, to Pops, to Kyle Reese, to travelling into the year 2017, to the destruction of Cyberdyne and Genisys, and finally, the T-5000. Some details left out, granted, such as what had transpired between her and Kyle in the last hours of his life, but still, the core of the story was intact. Maybe she was doing Kyle a disservice by not talking about him, but…
Oh Kyle…
She didn't want to talk about Kyle Reese right now. And seeing the look in Sunglasses's eyes every time she mentioned him, she could tell that the pain was there for her as well.
"And that's what happened," Sarah said. "Right up to when you found me on the road. All…well, all of you."
She didn't give a number. Because she recalled that there'd been five in the vehicle, but so far, she'd only seen three. No need to let Sunglasses know how much she actually knew.
"Any questions?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah," Sunglasses said. "When did I become such a coward?"
Sarah's face fell. "Excuse me?" she whispered.
"Let's say I believe you," Sunglasses said. "Let's say that time was changed. That your life changed. That a Terminator came for you in the year 1973 and all that."
"It happened," Sarah said.
"Then why did you run?" Sunglasses asked.
"Excuse?"
"You ran," Sunglasses said. "You ran into the future, rather than using the twenty years available to you. You ran, and only stopped Genisys at the last minute. And then you ran again, trying to jump back a few months to change your own history. Right after Kyle…" She cleared her throat. "After he died again."
Sarah didn't say anything – based on what Pops had told her, she had a good idea of what this Sarah had gone through. What she herself would have gone through if not for the assassin that had come for her as a child. And she could tell that as much of a hard-arse as she was, there was a wound within her that had refused to heal even after forty years. But she refused to be called a coward. And she told Sunglasses as such.
"Really?" the older Sarah asked. "Then why jump ahead over thirty years from 1984 rather than using that time to prepare? Answer me that."
Sarah scowled. "You know, I'd not originally intended to go that far, but-"
"But you did it. You took the short route. The easy route."
"And what would you have done?" Sarah asked.
"What I did when my life changed in 1984."
Your life, Sarah reflected. Not mine.
"You think part of me didn't want to run, even then?" she asked. "Just believe that Kyle was crazy? Believe that the Terminator was nothing but a man? Trust me Birdie, I-"
"Don't call me that," Sarah murmured. She took a breath, a tightness having formed in her chest. "That isn't my name."
Sunglasses scowled. "Are you Sarah Connor?"
Sarah scowled in turn. "Of course I am."
"No. You're not. Because I'm Sarah Connor, and I didn't run. I raised John. I trained him. Trained myself. I kept fighting, even after I was taken away by people who thought I was insane. I kept fighting, every year, every day, right up until Cyberdyne was destroyed. Until Judgement Day was averted."
"I destroyed Cyberdyne too," Sarah murmured.
"And apparently, that did nothing." Sunglasses looked away, glancing at the scrapyard outside the storehouse. Outside, Sarah could spot the other two girls, the blonde one helping the dark-haired one hold a rifle. "And apparently, I didn't do as much as I thought." She looked back at Sarah. "But still, more than you."
Sarah didn't say anything. Partly because she coughed some more, more violently than she had at any stage up to this point. In part, because part of her older self was right. She had run. She'd run into the future, and then run into the past. Or the future, apparently, in what had to be another timeline entirely. Because if Sarah Connor was here, if Kyle Reese had been dead for decades, then this wasn't her world. This wasn't her time. And yet…
"It's strange, you know," Sunglasses murmured. "I look at you, and I see myself. Almost."
Sarah grunted. "Sorry to be such a disappointment."
Sunglasses didn't say anything, and Sarah met her gaze. "I get it, you know. Your life…it would have been mine. I would have done everything you did if not for time travel."
Sunglasses grunted. "My life was changed. It changed when I was your age, and-"
"My life changed when I was nine!"
Sunglasses fell silent. For the briefest of moments, there was sympathy in her eyes.
"I watched my father die," Sarah whispered. "I watched my mother die. One machine came to kill me, and another came to save me. Told me about the future he'd come from. The future that now never was. And…" She took a breath. "I wanted to change it, okay? Stop it from happening. Stop any of it from happening. And I thought I had, but then the other Terminator came, and Kyle…Kyle, he…" She put a hand to her mouth. In keeping the tears at bay, it worked. But in regard to how she began to cough, globules of blood landing on the floor in front of her, it failed miserably.
What the hell is happening to me?
"It really is happening," Sunglasses murmured.
Sarah looked up at her. "What?"
Sunglasses gave a her a pitying look. One that made Sarah want to punch her. She didn't need pity. She needed…
What do I need?
Kyle was gone. Pops was gone. The T-5000 was gone. She'd spent her life running from Skynet and towards Judgement Day, to prevent the former from being created, and the latter from ever occurring. Months ago, by her reckoning, she'd succeeded. Days ago, by that same reckoning, she'd failed. And as of revelations given minutes ago, her successes, her failures, they all meant nothing in this timeline. She hadn't saved the world from Genisys, because in this timeline, in this world, it had never existed. Because of events in 1995, there'd never been an artificial intelligence to fight against until now, from what she could tell.
"Did you love him?" Sunglasses asked eventually.
Sarah looked up at her. "What?"
"Did you love him?" Sunglasses repeated. "Kyle Reese. Did you love him?"
"I did." The words came out without a second thought.
"And he still died."
The words weren't presented as an accusation, but they felt as such. As if she had been responsible for Kyle's death.
If I love you, you die.
And maybe she was.
"You had months together, right?" Sunglasses asked.
Sarah nodded.
"Was it enough?"
She shook her head, and Sunglasses nodded. "I had a day with him," she whispered. "And even now…" She rested her chin on a fist. "Well now, it doesn't matter. Not to me. And not to you."
Sarah gave her a look. She had something on the tip of her tongue, but a radio at Sunglasses's radio buzzed, and she turned around to take it.
"Yes. You're back? What about Carl? Oh. Yes. Yes, she's here. Definitely human. No, I haven't told her. Maybe…okay. Yes. You do it." Sunglasses turned the radio off and looked back at Sarah.
"What haven't you told me?" Sarah whispered.
Sunglasses ignored her. Instead, she pulled some keys out of her pocket and undid the handcuffs.
"What haven't you told me?" Sarah repeated, even as she got to her feet, rubbing her wrist.
"Come on. Follow me," Sunglasses said. She turned around and started walking.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Sarah put a hand on her older self's shoulder. That turned out to be a mistake, for in a speed that belied her age, Sunglasses flipped her over, causing the younger Sarah to land on the ground, back first.
"Don't touch me," she said.
Sarah coughed, blood coming out of her mouth. "Go to hell."
"Been in hell for forty years kiddo, I'm used to it." She watched Sarah as she got to her feet. "Been in it a lot longer than you."
Sarah glared at her, and watched as Sunglasses extended a hand towards her mouth. "What are you doing?"
Sunglasses drew her hand back, a few flecks of blood on it. "There," she said. "That's better."
Better. Sarah didn't feel better. If anything, she was feeling even worse than she had when she landed on that highway.
"Come on," Sunglasses said. "There's some people you should meet. And…" She picked up the radio again. "And I'll get the exposition out of the way. After all, none of us have much time."
Sarah nodded, before coughing again.
For all her disagreements with the elder Sarah Connor, that was one sentiment she could agree with.
A/N
Fun little fact, in the original version, Skynet wouldn't have come through at all, it would just be Sarah, before being knocked out by, um, Sarah. Still, since this ended up as a multi-chaptered version, the flashback section of this chapter was much shorter than the others. That, and it felt better to have some kind of confrontation.