No, you aren't seeing things. This is actually Part 6, which was one of many chapters that were lost years ago when I stopped updating due to the computer breakdown. I started to write from the scratch again because I really would like to finish the story and give some sort of resolution to this little Terminator saga, on which I have invested a lot of my affection.

If you actually have been keeping taps on the story, hoping for any update, I really do apologize - and thank you for sticking with me for this long.

6.

The air of the indoor shooting range is rather cold, but armed by the fact that her dad is behind her, watching, she holds her arms steady and triggers.

The sound is louder, a lot louder than she remembers.

When the paper target comes back, there are no holes where they are supposed to be, and only one somewhere high in the white space, just above the black figure's shoulder.

And before she can stop herself, she is turning around and asking the question, "Is this what you do, Dad? But shoot people instead of papers?"

She feels his hands freeze on her shoulder. Then Dad is staring into her face. "Katie, people can be good, but they can just as easily become evil when they're scared or ignorant. And I want you to be able to protect yourself from them when that happens."

She doesn't understand - how can good people be evil? - but she nods anyway. She is already quite happy that she'll never have to shoot anyone in her lifetime.

The outside world is warm, and it gets even warmer when her dad looks down at her and smiles.

"Next stop. Flying lesson."

She squeals and hugs him tightly. She has the best dad in the world.

John Connor let go a handful of sand and watched it scatter against the wind dancing along the horizon. The world, even out this far, was still depressingly grey, the sky and the earth alike. The sun, the unforgiving and severe desert sun, was nowhere to be seen.

"Starbucks." Ralph sighed as he stirred his alleged stew in the portable stove. "I miss Starbucks."

John turned to his friend, half a smile on his face. "You don't drink coffee."

"That didn't stop me from eating away all those muffin thingies they made. Speaking of, one or two Krispy Kreme donuts wouldn't go amiss either." Ralph suddenly looked up, eyes full of curiosity. "What do you miss, John?"

Ralph's offhand question took him off-guard, and instead of answering, John picked up a small, battered tree branch from underneath his feet. With a tree branch in his hand, John almost said, Christmas tree. Christmas tree. The common sense dictated it was one of those things normal people would miss, but John Connor couldn't remember if he had ever built one before. You couldn't miss something you never had. Then what was he allowed to miss?

His bike. Hot shower. Hot shower, though, was purely in theory. It was another thing he'd rarely had a chance to get anyway, even in his previous existence before the Judgment Day. What he used to have was the cacophony of the traffic on Friday nights. Cobwebs of lights from the interstates seen from a hill. The blue sky. The sun.

There was no shadow on the ground now, with the sun stubbornly remaining invisible, and he didn't remember what they had been like. What any of them had been like. Had there been a life for him before this? If he couldn't remember, then what was the use?

He dropped the tree branch and brushed off the dust from his palms.

"John?"

Ralph was staring at him, the large metal scoop in his hand. John forced a smile on his face. "Kraft Dinner. No offense to your stew."

"None at all taken," Ralph said. "Hell, at this point, I wouldn't even mind that Lean Cuisine thing Marybeth used to feed me."

"I know. You miss Marybeth."

Ralph laughed out loud, like it was coming from the heart. John thought perhaps he had never met anyone who could laugh like this, like life still had a room for happiness. "Busted, huh? Well, I can't help it, John. It's like a tooth missing or something, not listening to her whine every day," Ralph admitted, half in embarrassment. "Oh hell, I know they're doing fine. Keith's taking good care of his mother, I'm sure."

John, too, thought that Keith was capable, more than capable if he wanted to be. Keith was a whiz kid, especially when it came to computer, knowledgeable enough to operate the old route system of the Crystal Peak Base without John's supervision, and sharp enough to recognize John's program codes as the one that had been used a long ago to break into the Pentagon. It had taken a little bit of time for John to deny Keith's (correct) accusation that John was the hacker who had caused all manners of trouble for the Pentagon back in 2001.

Keith and Marybeth were fine in Crystal Peak, holding the port. John knew they were as safe as they could possibly be. It was this excursion, however, that longer felt safe.

They were at the outskirts of another dead town scarred with the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse. This place reminded him of the towns that he had wandered in with his mother as a kid before she'd been forced into the asylum. Sporadic remains of towns, even more sporadic presence of nature except dusty sand. They were far enough from major blast sites, yet there was no sign of life. No hint for the current status of its previous residents revealed itself, and the fate of survivors remained a mystery.

Still, this outing was necessary. John couldn't simply wander about and round up the survivors here and there. They needed systematic set-up to begin mapping the surviving population and overall damage, and for that, they needed military contacts. Which meant he needed intelligence, at least somewhat reliable, tangible information outside the radio communication, and it wouldn't be found in the Crystal Peak control room by listening to occasional radio transmissions and trying to break Skynet's firewalls that even he and Keith couldn't penetrate without being detected.

Apparently John's absent silence and pauses were becoming too long, too significant. Ralph glanced at him a couple of times before clearing his throat. "Have you been sleeping at all lately? Something's been bothering you, isn't it? I know you're a quiet kid by default, but lately, well, you don't look so good, John."

John picked up the dead tree branch again. It snapped it into little pieces and fell away as easily as dust. Useless. John looked up, decided. "Ralph, maybe you should take Jeff and go back to Crystal Peak. If this turns out to be legit, Kate and I can finish scouting and contact-"

"No."

"Ralph."

"I don't feel right about Jeff being here either, but it's just obvious he would've snuck into the truck to follow us anyhow, so it's a moot point." Ralph gave John a quick grin that was probably meant to be reassuring but turned out to look more resigned than anything else. "We had to come out at some point, John. Can't be holed up in the shelter forever, can we?"

If only. If only that was ever an option, John would've welcomed it with open arms, holding the Carsons, Jeff and Kate in Crystal Peak and hiding them forever. It never was.

"I know you can handle things without us," Ralph said, his solemn voice bellying his easy-going nature. "You're something different, hell, even I can see that, but still, it ain't gonna feel right leaving you two alone. You're just barely older than my Keith, and--" he took a long breath. "Look, John, let's just drop this talk. You're not gonna change my mind."

Here was Ralph, trying to be a father to him. There was no persuading him now, John knew, not when he was in this mode. "Two more days, then," John compromised, finally. "If nothing turns up, we're heading back."

"No complaint from me," Ralph said, dropping the stern father mode and becoming good-humored again. "But, if this outing's about spending some time alone with your lady, I'm completely willing to go right back and drag Jeff with me. That's no problem."

It took a second longer than necessary for John to figure out what Ralph meant. "No," John frowned. "No, it's not…" It took several more seconds to realize that he didn't know how to continue. It wasn't something they talked about - not something he even thought about.

"I'm a lousy matchmaker, aren't I?" Ralph, apparently taking a pity on John, opted for a way out for both of them. He continued sheepishly, "Marybeth tells me often enough."

John, oddly relieved, decided to play along. "Marybeth is never wrong, you know that."

Ralph grunted. "My life would've been easier if I got that advice twenty years ago."

Ralph, in all his half-hearted complaints and grunts, was a wonderful husband and a wonderful father. A father, and not just to Keith. It was an odd and alien feeling, this warmth, to be on receiving end of paternal instinct. There was no reason to dislike it, but it was too comfortable, too easy, and nothing about John Connor's life was supposed to be easy.

Nothing, not even this wasted moment of sentimentality.

John covered this sudden pang of vulnerability quickly. "The stew looks about done," John stood up, looking for an excuse. "I'll get the others."

"Sure, you go do that."

John headed toward to their truck parked just outside the ruins. Jeff was standing on a pile of ruins and absently throwing pebbles around, probably still miffed that John didn't let him carry a sidearm. John considered telling him to come down from the unstable mound but decided against it--it was likely to turn into a negotiation, in which case John might have to give into the handgun issue in exchange, and he wasn't ready for that, not yet. Kate, on the other hand, was sitting in the back of their truck, reading out from a small wrinkled book of Shakespearean plays. A luxury she couldn't afford, she often said, but he was still glad that she had brought the book with her. Sitting down and reading a book would become impossibility soon, maybe a lot sooner than he'd like.

Sensing his approach, she looked up from the book and smiled. "Hey."

He watched her put away her book and noticed, suddenly, that her hair had grown out quite a bit. It was loosely tied, but still generous streaks of her auburn hair framed her face, softening her look. He liked it this way, and he wondered why it should matter to him. "How's Romeo doing?" he asked, leaning against the truck.

"How's your arm doing?" Kate asked, subtly turning his words around.

"Better than Romeo, I'm guessing." He knew she was going to ask eventually, but he consciously tugged at his left sleeve, covering it from her view. He'd almost broken his left arm from trying to hold back a heavy crate that was about to cave in on Jeff a week ago back at the shelter. He wasn't bothered by pain. Pain, when controlled, could be ignored.

Pain could be ignored, his pain could be ignored, but if he was reading her expression correctly, Kate wasn't about to be. He suddenly wished for a body of steel, not for his sake but hers. A futile wish. "It's fine," he lied. "Really, Kate."

She didn't press the point right then, but he could already see another check-up coming by the end of the day. Most likely he wasn't going to find a way to avoid it this time, so he went for a pre-emptive strike. "A full check-up as soon as we return to the base, and I won't say a word of complaint."

She appeared to consider the offer. "Not a word," she emphasized.

"Not a single word."

"Deal."

Her smile was bright and cheerful, like it was the only thing she had left to give. He smiled in return, because he, too, had nothing else.

"John! John!"

Their smiles abruptly came to an end and they whirled around, catching the panic in Jeff's voice. Jeff was pointing at somewhere beyond the town. "Look!"

In a few leaping steps, John rushed up to Jeff, Kate shortly behind him. At first, John didn't know what Jeff was looking at, but then he saw a jeep making its way south toward them to the town across the barren field. John gauged the distance and figured it would take the jeep less than ten minutes to reach them. He didn't stop for a second to think. "Let's get back," he said, ushering them down the path.

"You think they're the soldiers?" Jeff asked as they broke into a run, his youthful face thinly guising his interest.

"Maybe." Or maybe not. There was a floating rumor that some remnants of the United States Military were apparently going around picking up people in this area, which was why they were here. The rumor could be true, or this could be something else entirely. John didn't think he would find either possibility pleasant.

"Maybe they will let me carry a gun, since you're never going to." Jeff pulled a part of a sullen teenager all too well, letting John know just how his poster parents would've felt all so long ago.

"John will give you a gun when he thinks you're ready," Kate easily fell into the maternal role she had been assuming ever since they had met him.

"And when will I ever be ready?" Jeff asked.

"Now," John said, stopping on the track. He quickly took out his handgun and checked the clip. "You remember how to use it?" Jeff, taken off-guard, paused, but then quickly nodded. John handed Jeff his gun. "Remember the lessons. Don't forget about cocking the pistol before shooting, but never, ever, take off the safety before then. I'm trusting you with this."

And there was an enormous amount of trust involved in this, and from the look on her face, Kate's uncertainty as well. They still hadn't decided whether to be relieved that Jeff had recovered enough to be interested in guns or to be worried, but now, there wasn't much of a choice left.

Ralph had noticed the jeep too and was waiting for them. He was still holding his scoop, looking uncomfortable. "What do we do now?"

"We'll see," John answered, taking another gun out of their trunk and loading it. It naturally fell into his grip, and he tucked it inside his jacket before turning to Ralph with a grin. "Maybe they smelled your stew and thought to join us for dinner."

"Hope not." Ralph glanced at the stew still simmering in the pot. "We only have enough for four."

It would've been impossible for the passengers of the beat-up jeep not to have noticed their truck, but it didn't approach them in a straight line. Rather, it almost seemed like it'd go around them before it changed its route at the last minute and came toward them.

They weren't soldiers, John noticed first through his binoculars. He could see two people in the jeep, both plainly civilians. Other than the Carsons and Jeff, this was the first face-to-face meeting with the survivors. Too early to be hopeful or nervous, but he felt tight knots across his chest, which he pointedly ignored. The jeep stopped several dozen feet away from them, but no one inside made a move.

John waited, but the passengers of the jeep didn't seem to want to come out, and they stayed at an odd holding pattern. This reminded him of the Hollywood Western movies where two parties, one bad and one good, had their face-off in a ridiculously long-drawn fashion, except this situation was even more ridiculous. Someone had to make the first move.

John stepped out slowly, giving a quick glance at Kate. She nodded at him slightly and took her position in front of Ralph and Jeff. John knew she would back him up, if it came to that.

John proceeded forward until he was close enough to read their expressions. The older, white-haired woman who stayed in the jeep had only one note of emotion: fear. The driver, on the other hand, slowly came out of the jeep by herself and had something else in her look that had John think maybe, maybe that people weren't entirely made of distrust and fear.

"Hey, how's it going?" he began casually, knowing there just was no way of coming out of this potential conversation or potential monologue without sounding ridiculous.

The woman, in her mid-30s with a strong sense of strength all about her features, didn't look like she had been having much luck lately and didn't hesitate to show it. "Pretty craptastic, all things considered. You?"

Openly hostile but with a sense of sarcasm. John figured it was better than outright fear. "Not too bad." He shrugged. "We were looking forward to meeting other survivors, and we did, so I'll say--not too bad."

The woman took it all in with her dark eyes: John, Ralph, their truck, Kate, and then Jeff. Her eyes stayed longer on Jeff, and then they turned to John again. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you be looking forward to meeting others?"

And here he had been thinking people, being social creatures, would want to group themselves at the first opportunity. John didn't like putting up with paranoia, but there seemed like a good reason for this group to act this way, so he bore it patiently. "Do I need a reason not to?"

"Yes, because that's definitely a gun under your jacket," the woman said, her voice harsh.

"It is," John easily admitted, which surprised the woman. "But I'm not planning to use it. Or, more specifically, I don't want to use it. You're the first people we've seen ever since we came out from our shelter. We don't want to hurt anyone, but we definitely don't want to get hurt."

She looked downright tired now. "How can we trust you?"

John spread his arms. "You don't have to, but then you'll probably miss out Ralph's fabulous stew." He paused. "Actually, maybe you should count yourself lucky for that."

"Hey now," Ralph complained somewhere behind him, followed by Jeff's chuckle.

Kate stepped in front and slowly came to John's side. "Maybe you can join us for dinner while I take a look at your friend." Kate was nodding toward the old lady in the jeep's backseat, and John noticed, too, that she looked too pale to be fine. "She doesn't look well. Is she hurt?"

The woman in front of them glanced back, then turned to Kate, her look much thawed. "You a doctor?"

"Veterinarian," Kate answered.

That seemed to clinch the deal. The woman moved aside to let Kate pass. "Please do what you can for her. She's not seriously hurt, but I think she might have sprained her ankle."

After watching Kate grab her med kit and breach the gap, John introduced himself to the woman. "I'm John. She," he nodded toward Kate who rushed to tend to her new patient, "is Kate."

"I'm Jeff," said the boy, who had by now come to John's side. "And this is Ralph. And that's his famous stew."

The woman seemed completely disarmed by Jeff's grin. "Siobhan," she said, shaking John's offered hand and looking sufficiently apologetic now. "Thanks. And sorry for the greeting. The first survivors we met, well, they were less than friendly. We didn't want to take a chance with you either, but Sally needed help, and I didn't have any to give."

Ralph was already sitting her down, looking sympathetic. "What happened?"

"We – me, Sally and her husband Thomas -- were heading south, after hearing in the radio the bits about how soldiers were gathering up people around here. Then at one town we met some guys. Of course, at first we were ecstatic, but not so much after they turned out to be pure thugs. They robbed us of our food, pushed us around. Thomas was knocked out in one of the struggles, and the concussion…" Siobhan stopped short there and glanced back at Sally, who was now being examined by Kate. Her expression was neutral, but her voice was strained, "It took me three days to convince her to bury him. A week to convince her to leave him and come with me."

John felt Ralph wince beside him. Ralph was a jovial person by default, but even he strained to hang onto this reality. It was a continuous and unrelenting struggle because whenever a rare, deceptive sense of peace numbed their perceptions, despair crept into their hearts so easily and quickly at a second's notice. Even Jeff, barely a teenager, understood what Siobhan meant, what this meant. The boy remained pointedly blank, the youthful mischief he'd lately recovered now drained out from him.

There were no condolences that would be given and felt right, so no one offered any.

Siobhan rubbed her eyes, tension draining away from her shoulder. "I don't want to say this, but it's unfortunate that such bastards didn't just get blown up with the rest of the world."

Maybe it was, John thought. It was ironic, how they really didn't need Skynet to do its job. They were already doing so fine getting rid of each other by themselves.

It turned out that Sally's ankle was only mildly sprained, and after Kate assured them it was nothing to worry about, their new guests gratefully took seats with them as Ralph offered his stew. While Sally ate without a word, Siobhan recounted her experience over their dinner, how she used to be a cop, NYPD, and how she had been lucky enough to be vacationing on the Day -- otherwise, she would've been incinerated like the rest of New York. Siobhan had met Sally and Thomas on some mountains she was hiking when the bombs hit.

"And you?" Siobhan asked John after Ralph shared his extremely lucky experience. "What's your story?"

His story? Would CliffNote version suffice? The unintended absurdity of the question took him tore him in odd places, and he hesitated.

Thankfully, Kate didn't. "My father was an army general in charge of the computer system that maintained the military weapons control," she began calmly and effectively, drawing everyone's attention to herself and away from John. "When the systems became disruptive, he sent us to a bomb shelter and left John in charge. We rode through most of the blasts there."

This was their official version. Not a lie, but a conveniently formulated to avoid less-than-convincing materials. It sounded convincing coming out from Kate; John didn't feel half the confidence.

Kate reiterated the cover they had been using on the radio all along. Siobhan seemed to soak it all in, but Sally didn't seem to have enough strength to care either way. John suspected that would probably be how most of people would take it.

After dinner, while the rest of them set up for the night, Kate administered a shot of painkillers for Sally and set her into a comfortable position and Siobhan cleaned the dishes with Jeff. Siobhan seemed especially fond of Jeff, and John briefly wondered if she had had any kid, back in New York. But there was no point in asking. He could already see the grief etching in her every gesture.

John and Ralph set up the night camp with experienced ease, turning the back of the truck into a sleeping area and setting up gas lamps around the perimeter, all the while consciously using his injured left arm to accomplish the task. The back of the truck had a room enough for Sally, Kate and Jeff; Siobhan should be fine in the jeep. John took out his backpack and a blanket from the truck and turned to Ralph. "I'll take the first watch."

"Again?" Ralph frowned but couldn't resist a yawn himself. "Don't you ever sleep?"

John smiled faintly. "I will later. Go get some rest, Ralph."

Ralph gingerly gave in and slipped into the passenger seat of the truck. Jeff eventually settled into the back of the truck with Sally and Kate.

He made sure everyone was set and asleep before he settled around a small fire he built. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and he wondered why it should be. The fire was not nearly warm enough, and the setting sun was distant and grey behind the threatening clouds of ash and dust, bestowing no warmth on the earth. Sleep, as always, did not come.

John reached for his backpack to grab a bottle of water with his left hand. His left arm, still stiff from the pain, pushed over the bag and spilled its content onto the ground. To his surprise, he found Kate's book among the content – the pack had been Kate's, the same generic, unmarked bag they had grabbed from the Crystal Peak reserve. He picked it up and fingered the old paper, its alien texture, its resilience. Out of curiosity he couldn't explain, he flipped the book open and read lines she had underlined. One of them stood out: it had an odd sense of desperation in it, willing to be said out loud.

"Then I defy you, stars.'

The syllables turned into ashes in his mouth.

"Then I defy you, stars."

Romeo thought he was defying destiny. But that defiance only led to his death, and, in turn, Juliet's. It was, John decided, hitting too close to home.

Fate, for John Connor, was a mercurial factor, an ever-changing elusive equation that he wasn't equipped to understand. He didn't know how much information he had learned from his mother and Uncle Bob about the future war would still apply to his own, didn't know if he was doing things right, if he was doing anything right. The future had been changed once. There was no guarantee it wouldn't change itself again, no guarantee that the humankind was going to win the war against the machines in the end, no guarantee he'd succeed. The fact that the Judgment Day had been delayed suggested that Skynet was either creating several different timelines, hence multiple universes, every time a terminator traveled to the past, or the future was continuously changing as the past continued to change. Or, he was only experiencing a slice of the timeline and things were morphing into another shape at this exact nanosecond. Or--

Or, maybe he was still thirteen, having a delirious episode in the middle of a hot summer afternoon after drinking one bottle too many and in result making up a grandiose tale of his mother being a legend and himself being the savior of the world. Maybe he was in a white room right next to his mother's.

But when he opened his eyes, he was still here, in his greyland. Of course. He could never be that lucky.

And in this greyland was also Kate, who had climbed out from the truck. Slowly, she made her way toward him.

He closed the book quickly. "Did I wake you?"

"You didn't," she said, quietly taking a seat beside him in front of the fire. He couldn't remember when they had begun replacing words with compatible silence, but it had happened, gradually and inevitably, and between them questions were almost unnecessary. She read his expressions like she read this little book of hers, which made her far more dangerous to him than anything that Skynet could do against him.

And he, likewise, knew what she was worried about, and he didn't need her to worry. He returned the book back to her. "I wish I could understand more of this. Maybe I should've actually listened in English class." He then added with a lopsided grin, "Or maybe I shouldn't have cut English classes."

She didn't fall for his strained effort at easy humor. She stared at his hands and the book they were holding, then looked up at him. "You're already doing everything you can, John."

There was a devastating amount of conviction in her words, and he could almost believe it -- only if he could let himself, which he couldn't. "Not good enough. Not fast enough."

"It never is for you."

Her sigh was felt, rather than heard, and he stared into the distance beyond the fire that burned quietly in front of them. The world was crumbling, every color drained out of existence. He should be used to this familiar sight of grey, both in reality and in nightmares, yet it still left him in small, brittle pieces.

He picked up a few more branches and threw them into the fire. Even this dried tree branch was supposed to be a blessing; it was firm when he touched it, almost proud and astonishingly real. Just the fact that they could walk on the earth was supposed to be a blessing, a blessing he knew wouldn't last. How long would it take for the effect of the radiation to wear off and things would begin to grow again? And if they ever did, how much of it would survive the war that was coming? How would they ever be able to recreate this? This beauty.

When Kate spoke again, her voice was just above the sound of the crackling fire. "Did you find the answer?"

"To what?"

"To the question you've been asking yourself for the last few days instead of sleeping." Her eyes didn't waver from his. "Is there a way to shut down Skynet before it mobilizes?"

He almost smiled. Of course she knew. He could only hope that he wasn't this transparent to anyone else other than Kate Brewster.

"You and your mother tried to change the future once," she reminded him, and he heard what was unsaid -- yet the Judgment Day still happened. Fate was inevitable.

Give in. Give into it. It would be so much easier, if he could only give into the fate. He fought a bitter smile. "Maybe I never learn from my past." Ah, but John Connor was nothing if not pointlessly persistent.

Past, present, future. There was no safe refuge for him. Wherever he went, there was Skynet.

Skynet, the enemy of mankind, his nemesis. What was it doing now?

He had no idea. That was the problem.

John remembered the prototypes that had attacked him and Kate back in the Edwards Air Force Base. If those were at work, it would only be a matter of time before Skynet was fully equipped for slaughter, but they had only been prototypes, and they had to be designed and produced. How long would it take before they were mass produced? Was Skynet able to come up with production lines? No, it couldn't. It couldn't move this fast, not even Skynet. Had it even decided its next step for human annihilation? If it hadn't, could he destroy it before it began? There was no core for Skynet, so no bomb would do the job. He couldn't just cut off all the connections to cyberspace controlled by Skynet, no virus that could completely destroy Skynet's sphere of domain.

How did one kill an AI? How would he kill Skynet?

John never thought of himself as a sadist, but he must be, or would surely become one. Why else had his future-self let him go through this? If there had been some way to save these people -- the great military dickhead he'd become had to have known. His future-self had to have known -- would come to know, dammit -- a way to destroy Skynet before it could mobilize its machine armies and save millions. Sure, it'd screw up timelines, but what was little more damage to the already screwed-up scenario? If Skynet could cheat time, why couldn't he? If there was truly no fate but what we made, why the hell not?

He thought about Siobhan's tale, Sally's husband, Thomas, and his senseless death. Maybe all these deaths that were to come couldn't be avoided. All this was unavoidable. Something the humanity had to pay for its hubris.

Then why the hell was he even bothering?

"Stop thinking."

Her voice was a command that snapped him into the reality. Then, it was her hand that was lightly on his chest, almost pleading. "Just for a moment, stop. Just…for a little while."

He stared at Kate's hand. He didn't have to look up at her face to know that her eyes were pale and her skin drained of colour. He did this to her. Always. He always wrecked her with worry. But then, someday, he was supposed to ask her to marry him. Someday, she was supposed to say yes. All because it was how things were supposed to be. Never by choice.

John Connor, what is it that you fear, really?

She was studying his face seriously, and it took some effort on his part to meet her eyes and raise his eyebrow playfully. "Are you accusing me of thinking too much? What happened to my disturbing habit of leaping into the path of danger without a second thought?"

He thought she might have said something then, but she visibly swallowed it. Her hand was dropped. "Don't worry. I'm working quite hard to fix it," she said instead, her equally playful tone marred only by a trace of unswerving grief behind her eyes.

Bundled in blankets, they stared at the fire in the silence that once again settled between them. The ashy twilight tided in and disappeared, and the fire eventually crackled and died. The world was dark again except for the gas lamps flickering and making shadows of nothing on the ground.

This reality, the one he was supposed to save, faded into darkness.

TBC. (Seriously.)