Thanks for the amazing feedback, every single one of them.
This is where the tide turns. Hope this (longer and definitely more headache-inducing) part can actually meet the expectations. ;)
5.
The sunrays blaze down at the construction site, where flying dust and sand occupy the air instead of oxygen. He's carried about a thousand bricks this morning, and by the lunch hour, he's broken into utter exhaustion. His body is used to intense labors, yet the sun seems particularly unbearable today, wearing him down just by quietly burning up the earth.
He sinks down on one of the steel parts strewn on the site, and another worker -- Joe? Jack? -- drifts to his side. The man, middle-aged with the skin as dark as his black eyes, sits beside him without asking for permission and offers a smoke without a word. John declines. The only vice John Connor lets himself enjoy is speed. He thinks of speed as an essential item for survival and lets himself get away from the scrutiny of his overseeing superego that always keeps its reins tightly with responsibility, fate, and duty.
But hell with them. Hell with them all. It's gone, anyway. His supposed destiny, gone with a dunk of Uncle Bob into the boiling metal. All gone. Nothing to stop him from becoming nothing.
"What's your story?" Joe-Jack asks while taking in the smoke like it was sustaining his very life.
"What?" John has been to too many construction sites actually tocount, but has never come across an extended conversation with anyone. No one wants to talk to one another when all they share in life is bone-grinding misery.
"No drifter in his right mind says no to a cigarette," Joe-Jack observes and turns to him indifferently, "What's your story?"
John almost smiles. As far as he can see, he has two options. I saved the world at thirteen and everything went downhill from there. Or, I'm a schizophrenic with a bad dose of Cassandra Syndrome.
Or there is the third. Which might as well be the truth now.
"No story," he opts for the third. He blows away the dust from his hand. "I'm nothing."
She wasn't sure exactly when, but at one point Kate began to sort the elements of her new life into categories. Just like computers, a human brain seemed unable to process everything unless things were categorized into groups, processed into routines. Things that do, things that don't. Things that she could bear, things that she couldn't. She was now trying to categorize things such as love and hope, desperation and despair. She had had them once, all nicely shaped and tucked away, yet just as she had gotten used to the idea, the seemingly unbreakable routine of life changed, turned upside down. She had figured things out soon after, though, found a little peace of mind. With John.
But that all seemed to change once again as she watched the arrival of the Carson family.
The Carson family, the first people they'd talked through the radio, and the first who'd come to Crystal Peak in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe, the very first addition to the Resistance.
"It was a pure luck," Ralph Carson's voice shook badly as he explained his family's extremely fortunate survival. "I mean, when we bought that house, we just thought it was neat that the house built in 60s included a bomb shelter basement, never once thought to use it. Even when we heard those...deafening bangs, we didn't even think... I mean, what were we supposed to think? We thought, maybe an earthquake somewhere far away or somethin'. We were just standing there, then Keith -- he was always hanging about in the basement -- shouted at me and Marybeth to come downstairs. We did, close the steel door, and a second later the world came tumbling down. We stayed there until we realized it was either dying by dehydration and starvation, or withering in radiation sickness, or whatever we could catch. So we took our chance, came out, it was all okay, but no one in our town was alive. No one. We checked every place. Everything seemed to be in cinder. Think we were about 15 miles away from the direct blast, and everything was sinking in cinder. Does that make sense? How does that make sense?"
John quietly listened while she tended to Marybeth, Ralph's wife, and Keith, their surviving teenage son. It seemed rather miraculous that their most serious injuries were hydration and malnutrition.
"We wouldn't have known what to do if we didn't hear your voice on the radio," Ralph thanked them over the prompt dinner that took place. "I mean, stupid of us, but at first we were thinking maybe we were the only ones. And that wouldn't have been pretty. Just us and Keith, left to populate Earth like Noah and damn Ark. 'cept we had no ark, and that'd been just damn inconvenient."
Ralph was too good-humored for a man who'd lived through Judgment Day. Marybeth was the exact opposite, frazzled beyond descriptions, speaking barely a few words at once. For Keith, numbness seemed to be the most direct effect of the trauma.
She watched with an odd feeling as the Carson family began to occupy the shelter, her shelter, her and John's. It was good and bad and indescribable altogether, seeing the actual, living and breathing people. She treated their various little injuries, set them to their quarters, watched them eat, listened to their talk. But the meaning of the word 'hope' lessened gradually as she watched Keith, Ralph and Marybeth and began to wonder who, if any, would survive through the war.
The war would be long. People would die. Many of them would die. And if she was already seeing some of them as dead, how could she go through this? It was already wearying her down. She thought about Sarah Connor, how she'd lived with the knowledge of the imminent deaths of the billions. She didn't have the half of the strength.
And John.
John. He was already transforming, the edges around his face and soul sharpening, the playful smiles now seldom seen. The great leader with the burden of the world. It was sadly appropriate, somehow.
"We have a problem." After the few days spent for the Carsons to settle in, John came to her to discuss the situation.
"The people," she said, having already expected it and admonishing herself for not wishing to talk about it.
"Yes. People are coming out from the hidings now, and they'll all try to go where other people are," he said. "They'll try to build the world again, and Skynet knows that. It will send machines after the large groups, and they'll die, just like that. They need to be told about Skynet as soon as possible."
She agreed with the basics of his plan, but not details. She was by now used to countering John's points. Skynet might not know about John and what he'd do in the future right now, and might not even care about some people talking on the radio wavelength, but the moment John spoke the word Skynet in wideband, it was going to be paying him a lot of attention. It'd track down the source of the broadcast and come after him.
When she told him that, his answer was simply, "We have to take that risk."
Will he always be this reckless? She wasn't looking forward to her role in the future, if or when she would come to act the second-in-command. "We're not taking that risk."
"I--"
"We're not, and you know it."
John didn't argue that point. Instead, he raked his hair with his fingers in one gesture full of frustration. "Okay, then we scramble the signal. Kate, if we don't do something to at least warn these people, they're all going to be heading for the slaughterhouse. We can't just do nothing."
She repressed the urge to sigh. She had known this was coming, even though the very idea gave her some serious headache to contend with. The real trouble, however, was convincing the Carsons.
"You mean, some damn machine did this? Some machine sent those bombs?" Ralph was, if not dumbfounded, outrageous by the idea. Marybeth, just recovering from dehydration, had an expression on her face that matched her husband's.
"An AI," John explained, undaunted by their reaction. "A very intelligent AI."
"But that's impossible."
John exchanged a look with Kate. If they couldn't convince the family who seemed to trust them with their lives, they'd never convince the world until it would be too late.
"It's not impossible, Dad," Keith, who had so far just been listening with a blank look, suddenly came alive. He leaned over the desk on the control room with a look of sparked interest. "A computer system becoming sentient to this extreme degree seems a little out there, but not at all impossible. It's just that... I mean, okay, so let's assume it's all true. Then once you set up a Net system to scramble the signal from this base, how would you stop this Skynet from hacking back into your system?"
John actually smiled a little. It was as if they spoke the same language. "I know a way," he said, then turned to Ralph and Marybeth, who were staring at their son with a look of pure surprise. "And I think I could use your son's help on this. Keith, you ever used a trap door to hack into another system?"
"Of course, but... Oh, I see where you're getting at," Keith suddenly beamed. "You're talking about isolated cyberspace, not controlled by this Skynet?"
"Keith," Marybeth now stood beside her son, snapping his shoulder, "Don't tell me in all the time you spent at the basement with those friends you've been...hacking! Doing illegal things!"
"Mum, it wasn't illegal!"
"Oh, for Pete's sake, of course it was illegal!"
"...so what? You gonna ground me? Another time-out? I'm sixteen!"
Kate stood beside John, not sure if it was appropriate to chuckle. She noted there was a faint smile on John's face, and, maybe even a slight envy at the rather off-the-chart display of maternal instinct. John turned to Ralph, who refused to get involved in this bickering. "Always like this?"
"You have no idea," Ralph said, masking the apparent embarrassment. "Well, at least Marybeth seems less frazzled."
"Marybeth," John interrupted before Keith and Marybeth fully broke into the tuck-of-war, "Before grounding anyone, just think for a second that your son might be able to save some serious lives. And Keith, since it's unlikely you'll ever be grounded in the future, will you help me to set up the system?"
Marybeth stopped midway from slapping Keith's shoulder again. Keith seemed to suddenly shrink at the idea. "Uh, there has to be...I don't know, this would be like creating a whole new isolated cyberspace, and I don't even..."
John took a step closer, his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Keith, I know you can. You know you can."
One brief look at John's face, and the panic in Keith seemed to recede. He believed John. Even Ralph and Marybeth seemed to believe in him. Kate watched with something close to amazement. John probably wasn't even aware of his own gift that seemed to be slowly returning to him, his magical gift that got everyone else to follow him, trust him.
"Wait, the computers under the fallout radius wouldn't be working at all," Keith said with sudden realization. "EM waves alone would've destroyed everything."
John had thought of this already. "We have to go outside the blast area and find a cable that isn't destroyed. It's a matter of connecting it."
"You mean someone has to go out there again," Ralph surmised, his expression darkening. Marybeth held her son's arm even tighter.
"I'll go," Kate said, almost without thinking. There was a brief silence. The Carsons weren't actually looking at her. Rather, they were looking at John, who, in turn, was watching her with an inscrutable expression. She added hastily, "And before you say anything, John, you're certainly not going anywhere."
John crossed his arms. "And why not?"
"You have to stay here with Keith to get the system running. And as their doctor, I can tell you that Marybeth and Ralph need to stay put for a while." She didn't need to explain all this to John. He knew this better than she did. She suddenly realized he must be feeling exactly what she'd felt when he had gone up to the ground level to fix the surveillance. "So, I'll go. Tell me what to do."
He might know all this, but he sighed and ran a hand down his face, a sign of reined weakness that he was showing less and less. She felt his weariness down to his bone, yet he said nothing.
In an impulse, she took off the engagement ring from her finger and handed it to John.
He felt it on his palm for a second. The alarm in his eyes was mild, yet still present. "Why?"
"Keep it safe," she said. It was only a half of an answer.
She watched him put her ring into his pocket and came up with another definition of the word 'hope.' The hope for the mankind was John Connor.
He'd told her once he didn't want her to be strong for him, but he was already doing his best to be strong for everyone. She wanted to be the one he didn't have to be strong for.
But how?
Three days later, she still didn't find any answers.
And she was standing outside.
Two days away in distance and eternity away in time from Crystal Peak, she was only stopping her truck to check the overheated engine on her way back, trapped in the red and grey twilight that wasn't really a twilight, in a setting that would've put Mad Max scenery to shame, when she heard the sound.
At first, she thought she'd imagined it. It was faint, fading, and almost inaudible, but at the second time around, she recognized it as from another human being, not from the dust wind shattering across the remains of a small town's main streets. She tensed, her hand automatically reaching for her gun.
She hadn't expected to actually meet anyone on her very first post-Judgment Day excursion to outside. This area was outside the fallout radius but still an unlikely setting for anyone to have survived or have stayed or even pass through.
Then again, if there was indeed a survivor, this person would her help. Desperately.
That settled it. The fallout hadn't reached this far, at least not in its entirety, but she moved out after checking that the residual radioactivity was minimal. She carefully stepped over the building debris and the dust that plagued everywhere to trace the voice. She could make out the name of the building ("Chris Bak Loan & Trust") as she walked over a broken marble frontpiece. Beyond the labyrinth of broken steelframes and concrete walls of once-a-bank building, she heard a faint yell. That yell soon turned into a long, loud scream, and Kate was startled into hurrying her steps.
"...Hello?" her voice came out croaked, her word alien to her own ears that hadn't heard any voices, not even her own, for three days. Her 'hello' echoed back in emptiness unanswered. The scream was still ringing in the background.
Experimentally, she stepped closer. The scream got louder.
She maneuvered her way into the large clearing that was surrounded in by the collapsed walls. There was an enormous steel gate silently dusting in the corner against the only wall that was miraculously left standing. She assumed it must've been the basement vault of the bank. At the far side of the corner, she counted oddly out of place masses of rubbles that were set apart from the collapsed walls. The four of them were in the shape of small mounds. Just when she was attempting to figure out their purpose, the scream got louder.
It was, she realized, was coming from underneath the vault. She saw a smudge of a black hair edging just behind the steel.
"Are you hurt?" she shouted, rushing across the distance with her weapon secured around her waist. "Are you all right?"
The scream didn't stop.
She paused in front of the vault and kneeled to look into the small opening. She was almost afraid to look inside, but more afraid not to. She looked into the small space that the steel and the wall was creating.
The scream was coming from a little black-haired boy. Ten? Eleven? She couldn't even clearly see his face that was smudged with dirt and hints of blood, and he was paying no attention to her as he continued to scream his heart out.
Unsure of what to do, she lifted her hand to hold his small shoulder. She shook it gently. "It's all right, it's all right... Shhh, it's all right."
He jumped so hard when her hand reached his hand that she was suddenly fearful that he'd break the still momentum between the standing wall and the vault gate. His eyes were wild and haunted, and he didn't seem to really see her. But, at last, he stopped screaming.
"Can you move?" she asked softly, her hand still on his and her heart already breaking all over for him.
Nothing. He tried move his lips but nothing came out.
"Let's get you out of there," she decided and tried to smile at the boy. In the most gentle manner she could manage, she pulled him out, grabbing his too-thin body. The boy struggled, but he didn't seem repelled to the idea of leaving the dark and dingy hole.
When he safely made out, he was still only staring at an unseen point, his mouth agape. In her short years as a veterinarian, she'd never treated any animal with radiation sickness, but still she could still tell the symptoms when she saw one, and she detected no signs of serious radiation exposure from the boy. No blood on his body except on his face, and she was certain the dried blood wasn't his. There were scratches all over him, but none of them left a serious gash.
"It's okay," she said, although nothing could possibly be okay. "You're okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
A full minute of staring later, his eyes suddenly snapped into focus. Then, he began screaming. Again.
And Kate suddenly felt lost. For a short second, her heart wished someone were with her. Someone. Not just anyone. John. And for that second of wandering she immediately admonished herself. Weak. How weak she was, even now.
She put her hands on the boy's each shoulder, knowing her attempts to calm him down was failing in every way. "What's wrong?" God, what was she asking? Everything was wrong. "Where does it hurt? Tell me, you have to tell me--"
"They're all dead!" the boy shrieked, "They're all dead!"
They were significant and painfully appropriate as the first words. Kate consoled herself that at least the boy hadn't been rendered mute from the shock.
"But you're not," she said finally.
"What does it matter? They're dead!"
She didn't ask who 'they' were. She could already very well guess. "And you're alive."
The boy stopped. His eyes were little more focused now as they found her face. "What does it mean? They're dead, and I'm...what does it mean?"
The boy's voice was anguished, desperate and incredibly destroyed. Hope, hope. What was the use of hope when you couldn't find it? "It means a lot of things," she lied. "It means...are you hungry?"
Despite the bull-headedness the boy had demonstrated in finding out the answer, the very mention of food understandably seemed to appeal to him.
She led him to the safety inside her truck while the boy followed her in a haze. She wondered just how he'd survived, but first things were always first. She checked him for any visible injuries, under his squirming and protesting, and sat him in the passenger seat before giving him a packed meal and water.
"I'm Kate," she offered when the boy slowed down after gulping down everything at once.
The boy looked up, his brown eyes reflecting curiosity and suspicion now that his stomach was at relative ease. "Jeffie. No, Jeff."
Underneath all the filth, there was a face of a young, oh so very young boy that must have been graced with many mischievous grins not so long ago. For no reason at all, she wondered how his last Christmas must been like among his family and friends, before all this. She tried to smile. "Hi, Jeff."
Merely stating his name had an effect on him. He dropped his food pouch and looked away. If there were tears in his eyes, he didn't show them.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" she asked despite her own thought that told her it was too premature to question.
Jeff kept his silence, looking out the window, to beyond the field of ruins.
So that was a 'no' to talking. All right, so they still had some time to talk things over, although not here. She had done what she'd come to do, and she had to go now or others would be even more worried. John would be worried. She wouldn't have that.
"I'm heading back to where I came from," she said, handing Jeff another bottle of lukewarm water. "Do you want to come with me?"
The boy turned to her sharply. "Where did you come from?"
"A shelter. About two days away."
Jeff stared back at the ruins, his eyes unfathomable.
"Will you come?" Whatever his answer might be, she wasn't about to leave him here. But Jeff saved her the trouble of the potential struggle by nodding almost imperceptibly a few minutes of silence later.
They drove in silence. Jeff stared at the ruined bank until it became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared from the sight. Soon later, he uneasily fell asleep in the passenger seat, and she drove through the evening twilight, and eventually to the darkness of the unlit road. Of the many things that reminded her of this surreal reality, it was this complete lack of light she'd had trouble getting used to. Before, when the world hadn't been dead, there were always lights, somewhere, anywhere. Now, there was no light anywhere that she could see. Not even the moonlight. Only the headlight of the truck guided her path back to Crystal Peak.
The highway, or the thing that had been a highway in its previous existence, was far from a smooth path. The truck creaked and thudded against the rough asphalt, violently shaking whenever it hit debris. The boy, amazing enough, slept through every bump. Briefly glancing at the boy's infinitely tired face, she was glad to have provided him a little bit of safety. That small bit of happiness lasted only for a moment, though, because she then had to wonder if she could continue to do just that, keep him safe.
She stopped the truck when she reached the next town. She decided to go around the area next morning and parked near a stripped chunk of stones that used to be a house.
The absence of the engine's hum woke up Jeff, and he stirred and turned to her. "We have to stop to rest a little before going into this area," she explained. Jeff nodded without real effort of understanding and slipped back into sleep. She tucked him under her blanket.
Kids adapted strangely fast. Regrettably, she wasn't one. She knew she needed to get a little sleep before the dawn came, even when she hadn't been able to for the last few days outside Crystal Peak. She tried again, leaning against the seat and wrestling with a thin blanket to keep herself warm.
The sky. Whenever she opened her eyes after futile attempts at inviting the sleep that refused to come, there was always the night sky that quietly glowered in complete silence. It was grey-black, not dark indigo, and the thick blanket of grey dust covered the most space, no star to be found between. She imagined looking down Earth from the space, Earth where machines would be the only things crawling on it. Here be monsters. In this battered aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, she was seeing a vision even more tragic, even more fearful, even more apocalyptic.
Sleep. She had to sleep.
The driver seat squeaked in protest as she tried to find another comfortable position. Her jacket definitely didn't make a very good pillow. She tried using the back of her hand instead and acutely felt the absence of the ring on her finger. The ring, the last connection she'd had with the world.
But the world was dead. She knew it now. There was no her world to go back to. It was one thing to understand with her head before coming out here, and something else to witness it, like this, now.
The shelter was no longer keeping her safe, keeping her and John safe. They had to be out here from now on. This outside. The outside was where the battles had to be held.
The battles of which John would have to be in the middle.
She looked at Jeff. Would this boy survive to see the end if there was one? And John? Just because John was supposed to save the world, it didn't mean he would live to see the end. What of that T-850 had said? John was going to be killed by him. By it. But if John would die to save the mankind, was the sacrifice worth it? How did one measure a life? His life?
John, she knew, was certainly ready to make every kind of sacrifice necessary.
She'd known the day was coming since the radio had come alive with the voices, the voices that had reached out for other survivors, a leader, that John would be in it. John, a great leader and a boy in still many ways. John Connor had to be in the war for all the mankind, yet she didn't want him to be.
But it had never been up to her. Keeping him from it all had never been up to her. And she never felt it as acutely as now, when she looked at the future battlefield.
The very idea of hope was drifting away. It was now foreign and alien, defying any category that she could create.
"Kate?" a small voice stirred her back to reality, and she saw the boy staring at her, now awake and curious.
She sat up straight, blinking away what might have been tears on her face. "What is it, Jeff?"
"Who else is in that shelter that we're going to?" he asked, uncertain.
As brave as he was, Jeff was still afraid. She tried to smile. "For a while, there were only me and my friend John. Then some time ago a family joined us. Ralph, Marybeth, and Keith. Keith's probably five, six years older than you. So that makes five."
The idea of meeting four new people didn't seem to scare him as much. Jeff thought it over. "'kay, then why did you come to my town? Nobody came. I mean, no one."
This was harder to explain. "Well, we needed to connect the computers from outside to the ones inside our shelter, so I came out and installed connectors. I was on the way back when I heard you."
There was a thoughtful frown on Jeff's face. "Aren't all computers dead?"
Oh, how she wished they were. "Not all of them." And the biggest and the meanest one was still out there, just waiting for them to emerge from the hidings.
God. How she wanted to just take John and run away from it all. That'd be the end of the world, but she scared herself by thinking that she wouldn't much care as long as he would be all right.
No, it wasn't the truth. She would let John fight and die to see Jeff, Keith, Marybeth, Ralph, and so many of them alive, to see the mankind alive and well. That'd be what she would do, wouldn't it? When she'd reprogram the assassin who'd killed her supposed husband and commander and send it back to the past, to now?
Too many thoughts. Too many glimpses into the future that defied categories. She wanted a good cry, but even that was no longer allowed on her self-imposed role in John's future.
Then, for the second time that day, she heard another sound that snapped her into attention.
"Kate?" Jeff asked, his eyes suddenly wide.
"Listen," she whispered to Jeff, turning around anxiously to locate the source of that mechanical sound. The sound of a moving vehicle.
"Something's coming," Jeff said, his hand nervously tugging at her jacket.
The sound stopped a little farther out. Kate frantically turned on the ignition. The flashlight showed there was nothing in front of them except the ruins of a house that hid too many shadows. Her hand went for the gun. It couldn't be HKs already. Skynet couldn't have mobilized its army this fast. It should've--
Footsteps. There were definitely footsteps against the rubbles, coming from the back.
She took a gamble and opened the window of the truck. "Who's there? Show yourself!"
"Kate?"
Once her breathing returned to the semi-normal speed, she put down her gun. "God, John. You frightened me."
John emerged from the darkness like a mirage. He, too, put down his weapon and approached the truck in careful, slow steps. Once he saw her clearly, he rushed to her in a few leaps instead of steps. "Are you all right?"
"Now I am," she said, opening the door and letting herself out. "What are you doing here? The system--"
There was a small, relieved smile on his face, and she realized she had missed it. Too much. "It's working greatly, of course," he said, leaning against the truck and just watching her. "Keith's on it since you connected the relay yesterday. How was your excursion? No unexpected surprises?"
Before she could reply, Jeff's head edged out of the door. "Who is he?" he asked, pointing at John.
"So, this is a 'yes' to the unexpected surprise." John exchanged a look with Kate, then turned to Jeff. "I'm John."
"This is Jeff," Kate offered when it seemed like Jeff was going to eye John suspiciously forever if she didn't. "We sort of found each other at my last stop. He was the only survivor of that town." She added the last part quietly.
John watched him, taking in the boy's condition. John's expression would've come across as indifference to anyone other than Kate, but she knew he was hiding the pain behind it. Jeff, even without knowing John, saw it, too.
"I wasn't the only survivor," Jeff suddenly said. "At least, not from those bombs."
She might've stopped breathing again. "What do you-- Jeff, were there others in your town?"
Jeff didn't seem to be listening. He murmured to himself, "They survived the bombs, but they died anyway. They covered me with their bodies, you know, and they were okay, but then they died."
"Jeff--" she tried to approach the boy, but John stopped her and subtly shook his head.
"We were at the bank where Dad worked when it happened. Everyone except Lisa, 'cause she was buying some cheese. When we heard the sound, Dad looked outside the bank. He looked kinda crazy, and then he just pulled us into the vault. Then my sister just covered me, held me in place. I couldn't breathe, 'cause they were all on top of me, even Mom and Dad."
Kate remembered the emergency contingency films they used to watch at school, teaching them the things to do at times of earthquake, fire, or even nuclear explosion. Anything between the fallout debris and the person could diminish the radiation exposure, so one was to use human bodies if necessary. In this case, Jeff's father decided to follow the procedure to the nick.
"It took like forever, and when I woke up, it was really weird. Dad was weird. And he was very sick. Mom was like, crying all over, and then the building just broke down. At least I think it did, 'cause when I woke up again, everything was flat, and they were all dead. Except my sister Iris. She died a few days later. Don't know what happened to Lisa, but I made a grave for her anyway."
The four small mounds she had seen. They were graves. This boy had buried his family, alone.
She didn't know when she'd begun trembling, but she was, and a hand -- John's -- held hers tightly. It seemed to absorb the trembles, and she gathered enough of her will to tuck Jeff under the blanket again and held his cold hand. Jeff blankly stared at the window until he fell asleep again.
When she came out of the truck, thinking of the four small graves, John was leaning against the truck, looking at the starless sky.
For a second, he looked infinitely far away. She had barely stopped herself from reaching to him in fear when he saw her and his faraway expression turned into the one of worry.
"Is he going to be...?" he trailed off.
"He'll be fine. He's not showing any symptoms of radiation poisoning. He should be if he's been exposed to a lethal dose."
The relief on his face was stark. "Good."
"Though I can't really say how this would affect his mind," she said, sounding rueful without even trying to.
He waited until she stood beside him, just an arm's length away, before he told her, "You saved one life today."
And she couldn't be proud. "A couple of millions more to go." The very idea smoldered her, wearying her down. She couldn't even venture to imagine how John must feel.
She could feel his searching gaze upon her face. "Here," he said suddenly. He took out a bright little thing from his jacket pocket, where she knew he was keeping his mother's photo. "Yours."
She received the ring, contemplating its brilliance and luster with clinical detachment. One brilliant diamond couldn't be as valuable as a loaf of bread now, and it no longer connected her to the world. She would never get that back, with or without the ring. She put it into her inner jacket pocket.
"Not going to wear it?" John asked, concern concealed behind his eyes.
"The world I was trying to hold onto no long exists." And the wedding was already off. Scott. Scott. Poor Scott. But she had to let things go. Now more than ever.
"We will have it all back, Kate. The world."
John Connor still surprised her, even now. "You really believe that?"
He considered his answer, taking his time. "I believe," he began with crystal certainty, "that you saved two lives today."
"Two?"
He didn't elaborate further. He didn't have to. She knew.
She looked away. "You shouldn't have come."
John shrugged. "I must've been fretting too much. Marybeth kicked me out."
"You didn't have to worry."
"I know," he said. "But I would be lying if I say I didn't."
Yet. There was always 'yet'. He wasn't supposed to be here, yet he was. He was too valuable to risk himself for such little things, yet he did. She swore she'd never be his weakness, yet she was. She was afraid if he'd die in their intangible future because he cared too much.
She couldn't have both, could she? She couldn't just be the one he could confide in without becoming his weakness. If she were the one he didn't have to be strong for, she would also be his weakness.
Yet he'd said she saved him.
Who was trying to be strong for whom?
"Cold?" he asked.
There was no use denying it. "A little," she admitted.
Wordlessly he came closer to her side, wrapping both of them with his jacket. The warmth spread and brimmed over her.
"You could almost see the stars," he remarked.
There was nothing out there. No stars. No light. Nothing.
"We could," she agreed.
Hope. Oh, the elusive hope that wasn't allowed for her.
But with him, below the unseen stars, she thought she might have glimpsed it like a shooting star arching across the night sky.