4.

It's the anniversary, and, as always, she puts her mom's favorite daisies around the house. That night, she finds her father sitting in the silence of his office, the flower vase and its flowers his only company. His face is turned away from the door so she can't read it, but his posture is odd and strange, and completely unfamiliar.

He is crying.

She lingers at the doorway, her heart breaking as she watches his chest heave and his shoulders tremble. It's been two years, yet she's never seen him break down before, and this is a surprise that takes some moments to comprehend.

He notices her, his hardened face of a soldier rendered only by the tear stains. "I'm sorry, Katie," he says, his voice a little more than a sigh. "I'm so, sorry."

She goes to him, her steps light as feathers. "It's all right," she assures him as softly as possible, putting her arms around his wide shoulders. She pushes away her own tears and swallows the hot lump in her throat, knowing they would only hurt her dad even more.

She's thirteen, and she learns that sometimes you have to be brave for the ones you love, that something like grieving and throwing tantrums have to come second.

Next year, daisies don't make it to her house.

"The radiation level is still a little too high." Her concern was plain in the way her eyes reflected a dark, sinking shadow of the monitor screen.

"There are protective gears in the barrack," he suggested to her as a compromise, a way of persuasion. "I can suit up before going out."

"Would that provide enough protection? The nuclear fallout they imagined thirty years ago wasn't this."

The concern in her eyes didn't disappear, and John Connor thought about numbers. One might be the loneliest number but it also represented certain freedom. When it became two, little things changed so much that took some time for him to get used to. Any decision he made now had to be shared with and agreed by another person. When his mother had been around, there had been heated arguments, but she had been the militant one, he being the one to press the brake whenever necessary. After that, he hadn't even had anyone around to argue with, no need to share anything with anyone. Now, though, it was a different story. This girl who he had barely known was now here to argue with, to discuss the plans, to decide their future. Together. It made him feel awkward, more than a little lost, and at the same time, oddly comforted. Her steady presence.

Or enforced presence. After all, she didn't have any choice. Just like he didn't. He was perfectly aware that her presence was never a given, not something to be taken granted, just because it was supposedly written in the stars.

A healthy female of the breeding age, Uncle Bob had said.

Right. The very idea made his head spin, and it was getting harder to tighten his grip on that particular wheel.

He checked the monitor one more time, tapping at the screen. It only fizzled with snowcrash. "We have no defense mechanism except the surveillance, and this isn't going to cut it. The cameras outside have to be repaired. The radiation is low enough, and I won't stay outside for long."

Kate might be a lot like his mother, but she was a levelheaded one of the two. She held her voice powerfully and always dispensed her reason that allowed no objection. "Even if it is too soon for Skynet to have assembled and mobilized its army, you don't know what's out there. It's too early to take such an unnecessary risk."

"We have to be able to see what's going on outside, Kate," he said, unable to counter her points but still making his point. "Before the system is up. Now is better than later." And if they didn't do it now, they might never be able to. He didn't have to say the last part out loud -- she already knew.

"I know." A small frown was crowding her face. "It doesn't mean I have to like it."

He could read from her expression that she'd go out instead of him if only she knew how to fix the cameras. He was very much glad that she didn't. "I don't either," he agreed.

She let out an inaudible sigh. "All right, let's try. I'll keep on monitoring."

He packed the tools and the replacement parts, hoping they were enough. She helped him suit up in the yellow plastic gear that made him feel oddly vulnerable in spite of its purpose.

"I look like an astronaut," he commented a little sourly.

"What, you didn't dream of being one as a boy?" she teased, strapping him with the equipment and checking occasionally with the how-to booklet that seemed to come with everything here. They had long since decided that if they could ever come across whoever had designed this place, he or she would be receiving more than just a simple thank-you.

"I wanted to be an Olympic skater," he deadpanned.

She stopped, apparently considering whether to take him seriously or not. "You're kidding."

"I lived on a desert, the last thing I wanted to be was a military leader, and Alaska always seemed like a tempting option."

He achieved his mission of the moment when she grinned at his flippant remark, and he relaxed slightly as he stepped into the exit elevator.

"I'll be here when you come back, to decontaminate you," she said, her hand on the control pad. She opened her lips to add something, but whatever it had been, she swallowed it. She only murmured, "Be careful."

He saw her face through the transparent plastic and smiled a little, for her sake. He nodded.

The elevator closed with a whoosh, separating them with a thirty centimeter of metal. Her face disappeared, and he almost reached out his hand but stopped himself in time. It took forever to ascend to the ground level, each second widening the distance between them. He didn't like it.

And he also didn't like his sentimentality of the late. He had to focus on the task at hand. He checked the radiation meter and decided it wasn't high enough to be lethal. He prepared the equipment and got himself ready as much as the restricted movements of the protective gear allowed him.

But he had not been ready for the sight as he walked out the barricade door.

The scent of death was pervasive.

He couldn't smell anything like this, yet it was everywhere. Dust, dust, the dead dust. There were blurred outlines of everything, and nothing. The mountains that he knew to be there lost all the greens, and he saw nothing but the grey brown that covered the surface of the earth. There was no sound except his breathing that echoed around the helmet. The world he could see through the transparent plastic was dead.

He wondered if his mother had seen this in her nightmares. A tiny part of his mind was glad that she wasn't here to witness this as reality. Mostly, however, he felt her absence in his bones with every dust blowing against his protected body.

/John, can you hear me?/

He almost jumped at the sudden intrusion that broke the still silence. "Kate?" he tested his voice.

/Good, the microphone's still working,/ her voice, thick with static, hissed through the positively antique wire connected to the helmet. /Are you all right?/

"Yes," he said, collecting himself. "I'm fine." Her voice seemed to have saved him from the inconsolable anguish. Enforced or not, she was here.

And that had to be enough.

He located the camera panel exactly where the blueprint had indicated it would be. The outer sockets were completely fried, but the inner ones seemed intact. He exchanged the outlet, rewired the monitor camera with the spare. The old training given by his mother returned to him with ease and he operated the panel without much difficulty. His familiarity with antique machines was ironically what was helping them the most right now.

/I can see you on screen,/ Kate's voice fizzled back a moment later when he closed the panel and finished the rewiring.

"Great. Good to know that I actually know what I'm doing." He rushed to the next panel, only glancing at the surroundings and trying not to be drawn by the tragically mesmerizing dust wind hovering over the horizon.

/Slow down, John,/ her voice echoed back. /You're gonna sprain your ankle again that way./

So the monitor really was working. It was great news, but he suddenly wondered if it was going to be like this. Him going off to do something reckless yet necessary, her worrying over him all the time. Probably. It didn't seem like they would ever have a bright, fun future together. But no one on earth would have a bright future for a long, long time. Some of them had no future at all.

"Don't worry," he said, forcing cheer into his voice. "I have a good doctor taking care of me."

/Keep this up, and I'll have to let you suffer next time,/ her voice admonished with mock warning. Since they both knew it wasn't true, her threat had no effect.

He finished rewiring of three more cameras within an hour and came back safely. After being showered with decontaminating chemicals, he let himself slip into a luxury of hot shower. When he felt the scent of death had been properly washed away, he returned to the control room.

"They're all working perfectly," she reported, switching the feedback on the main screen from one camera to another. "Do you feel all right?"

Afraid that she would insist on another check-up, he answered quickly, "Never been better. That C2 camera works on all angles?"

"270 degree, but between four of them, they cover every ground of that entrance."

Not completely satisfactory, but it had to do for now. "What next?"

She checked the list of to-do's they'd gone over and marked one off. "Repairing the second entrance."

"I'll go pick up what we need."

Her eyes met his, and she nodded and turned to the station. He was half on his way when he felt compelled to turn around. Pulled by a strange premonition, and maybe the never-dying sentimentality, he lingered, watching her as she frowned at the nuclear fallout contingency plans and the radiation level. There was something about the look on her face that seemed so familiar. And aching.

The thought stopped him on track. He suddenly remembered where he had seen it. That sadness.

This was going to draw an endless circle, wasn't it? He really hadn't learned anything from his experience. The dark circles under her eyes were prominent, but he had easily taken those signs as the understandable and acceptable aftermath of grief and hadn't given a second thought.

Numbers. One and two. One was familiar to him, one was everything, yet after learning what it was like to be two, could he go back being one? Would he want to? The idea scared him more than he could ever admit.

But, what then? Let her wither away because he was too scared to reach out his hand?

This had to stop.

"Let's take a break," he said bluntly, and she whirled around to him, startled. "A proper break. From everything."

There was a quiet surprise on her face. "A break?"

"We've been working all the time. Thinking too much of...all of this. It's suffocating. We need a break." He didn't exactly say it was because they might not have any time at all in the upcoming future.

"What exactly would we do?" she asked, suddenly uncertain.

He had no idea. He shrugged. "Nothing. Anything. You choose."

As if there was anything to do in this place. But just as suddenly, something must have come to her mind. "There is one thing," she said, her thoughtful look only rendered by embarrassment that rarely came to her face. "It's...silly."

"Anything," he assured her.

Thus occurred their next mission, which entailed a pair of scissors, a shaving blade, a mirror, a towel and John sitting on a chair in front of her.

John, somehow roped into this project, mildly protested as he stared himself on the mirror and felt his chin, "I don't know about this."

"You said anything goes," she said. "I wanted to do this from the very moment I laid my eyes on your stubble."

Had he looked that bad? "Please tell me I don't look like a twelve-year-old now."

"But that'd be a lie." She was definitely, positively, suppressing a smile. A lovely and genuine grin, and he realized he never had any choice in the matter.

"Right," he sighed tragically, suppressing a smile. "This face would definitely strike inspiration on no one's heart. Isn't this supposed to be the face of the future resistance leader or something?"

"I wouldn't know. Couldn't see anything underneath the stubble," she replied sagely.

Upstaged, John kept his mouth shut while she adjusted the towel around his shoulder. Soon he felt her fingertips skating around his hair. With her every movement reflecting through the mirror, the entire moment was strangely surreal, but not necessarily unpleasant.

He watched her on the mirror, her eyes and her hands and the scissors, and thought about numbers.

A few minutes later she was finished. She took away the towel and brushed away the hair from his shoulders. "The verdict, your honor?"

John stood up from their provisional barber station, fingered a lock of his now shorter hair and inspected himself on the mirror. His clean-shaven youthful face did undeniably make him look about twelve. "Okay, so not as bad as I had feared," he admitted.

"Oh, you're welcome."

She looked like she could just bubble up with laughter, and he, too, had to smile. "You're pretty natural with scissors. Done this a lot for Scott?"

A second after the name escaped from his lips, he realized his mistake. She covered it quickly, but he saw her expression falter briefly and darkly. After a frozen moment, she said, "No."

He waited, but she offered no explanation except her silence. Too many resemblances, he thought. Way too many. But it didn't seem like now was the time. He wanted to rescue both of them, and he did. "What next?" he asked brightly.

She smiled a little. If this was a pretense, at least she seemed game to go along with him. "Your turn."

He considered the idea as if he was trying to figure out a battle scenario in his head. "I don't know. Eating?"

"Something other than the canned beans, you mean."

"That's the idea. Something different. Something extravagant, even."

"Cheesecake," she said, as if that word meant everything.

He blinked. "Cheesecake?"

"Cheesecake," she repeated.

"I never had it."

Kate's expression was carefully blank for a moment, as if she was digesting the new information slowly. As if she was telling herself repeatedly just to understand the mystery that John Connor had never had a piece of cheesecake in his life. "Let's go," she said with enough resolution that would teach a lesson or two to the T-X.

He let her drag him. "Where to?"

"We're going to find some preserved strawberries."

Which they did. They ended up in their designated cooking area with several cans and powder pouches, enfolded in the weird sense of domesticity that was new to him. New to her too, if the softly confused look on her face was any evidence. Guilt was familiar, but she didn't seem to let it bother her. For the moment, he, too, didn't let it get to him.

"I take it your mother wasn't overly occupied with cooking?" she asked as they both stared, awed, at the beige mixture baking in the makeshift oven that didn't look too different from the grey mixture they had handled to make pipe bombs.

He stopped stirring reddish jell-o that was supposed to be strawberry syrup. He almost chuckled. "She cooked nothing but bombs. She once told me she'd been a waitress when she met my father, but frankly? I've never been able to picture her like that."

"I don't think I'd be dazzling you with overly domestic talent any time soon, either," she said, carefully opening the oven. "I'm really not sure about the shape of the cake."

He peeked over her shoulder to glimpse at the result of their labor. It seemed to be a little on the octagonal side without any distinct edges with a layer of burned crust on top. They executed a clumsy rescue of the cake from the oven. He had to hide a grin as he helped her turn the cake into a plastic plate. Kate frowned at it as if she could change it just by staring.

"You know," he said innocently, "I think I might've had something like this. Once, at a homeless shelter. Tasted like rubber."

"Stop grinning," she chided him.

"Am not."

She shot him a glare.

He gave her an innocent look. "Honestly, not grinning. Must be something in the eye."

She ribbed him with her elbow playfully and proceeded to cut two pieces out of the steaming cake. "What was it like? Living on the street?" she asked, handing him one plate. Her question invited another revelation of his life. His life. Never hers.

Numbers. One and two.

No, he didn't want to be one again.

"I want to know more about yours," he said.

She didn't freeze this time, but her effort was apparent. "My life was the epitome of normalcy up until I met you."

She couldn't tell him. She wouldn't tell him all these things, even when she was still broken by grief.

There was only one thing left to do. He took out from his jacket pocket a photograph that meant the life to him and handed it to her. She slowly took it and looked up, a question in her eyes. "My mother," he offered simply.

Kate fingered the jaded and wrinkled photograph, her eyes on the strong, lost face of the woman in it. "She's beautiful," she breathed. 'Was' should have been the word, not 'is', but John took no notice. This was the only reminder left to him of his mother, something, if the future was really set, that would be handed down to Kyle Reese.

He sank on the floor, and a moment later, Kate did the same. They set the photograph in between. He could feel her gaze on his face.

"She was always this beautiful. Strong. But I rarely got to see her like this soft and gentle," he told Kate. "She had always been so hard outside, trying to be strong and unfeeling and trying to take over my burden for me whenever she could, to protect me. But see, she was already strong. She just was. She didn't have to be anything different from who she had always been. She would shoot unflinchingly and deal with despicable people, but she couldn't murder someone in cold blood, not even to stop Judgment Day, and so she broke down and told me she loved me. And I've never seen her stronger than in that moment. I've never loved her more."

He looked up. He saw in Kate what he saw in the photo. He didn't want anyone to wear that look again.

"Kate, you said I should be myself. You said that would just be enough. It has to go both ways. My mother, she was bottling it all up, all for me, all for my survival. I can't see that again."

Kate was watching him, her expression so fragile that he thought she'd break with a single touch.

"Tell me," he asked, just barely above a whisper.

He wanted to hear her story because her life had been the one of normalcy. He wanted to hear her story because he needed her to tell him. And because she needed him to hear it. She told him about high school, dating failures, college, why she became a veterinarian, how she met Scott, the white picket fences and the daisies. John held onto her every word, absorbed every syllable, with laughter and tears that came with funny anecdotes and mini tragedies that existed in everyone's life.

"You still remember," he told her. "You still have them."

With every tear fallen, the grief that swept her seemed to melt, little by little. There were always things to remember.

They sat all night, the space between them filled with a mingled cheesecake and a faded photograph.

And when the quiet static from the radio broke into a desperate voice, desperate and hurt and in need of guidance and a leader, when his destiny called for him, John Connor was no longer alone.

/Hello? Is anyone out there? ...Anyone?/

John Connor stood up. Instead the speaker button, he reached for her hand, and she took his.

It began.