I do not own Terminator: Rise of the Machines.

I am not in a machine apocalypse. From a certain point of view. ;)

Not A Church Youth Group Sleepover

*Trigger Warning For Disturbing Content*

Flood

They wrap them up, Bella and her dead baby in her arms.

They wrap them up in a sheet and take them . . .

Are we really doing this? Is this what we've come to?

. . . to the incinerator.

And it is what they've come to.

They cannot keep moldering corpses in the compound.

Just as they had told Bella, begged her, pleaded with her when she wouldn't let the child go in the first place.

Corpses spread death, disease.

They smell.

They decay.

It would be absurd and beyond disrespectful to dump their bodies on the surface like so much refuse.

And it would leave a trail of evidence that humans were, or had been, nearby.

There will be no cannibalism in the machine apocalypse.

Not yet.

And so, . . .

"Would, uh, anybody like to say anything?"

. . . they take them to the incinerator.

John has spoken, voice carefully neutral and just this side of hopeless.

What is there to say?

A woman is dead. Murdered by her own grief and despair.

Her newborn baby is dead, the first they have known in the apocalypse.

They are dead and it's all the machines' . . .

No. Mine, it's mine.

I didn't give her hope.

. . . fault.

If the machines hadn't taken over, if humans hadn't created them for their protection against one another, given them power, the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, this woman would be home.

Painting the nursery, picking out baby names, complaining about her cankles.

Instead of dying in a hole in the ground like an animal.

All too much, this is all too much, Kate doesn't want to look at the people around her, doesn't want to see them or see them seeing her because they could die too.

She just wants it to be her and John again, just the two of them without others to worry about protecting, there's even a kid here and what will happen to him, will they lose him too, will everyone around them die and have to be replaced with more expendable people while the machines replicate and rebuild because they can't die like this and they don't have souls to hurt and feel-

She turns as the Barnes' brother, Jericho, insists on helping because he feels he needs to catch up with being a part of the cause, loads the bodies into the incinerator with as much dignity and compassion as possible, others turning away before the door is closed and the flames turned up-

She turns away, stumbling over her own feet.

Turns and blindly stumbles away, out of the room, down the hall, past the goddamn Presidential lecturn and flag and all the things that could not save this poor, dead woman and her baby-

She just makes it to the room she and John share, stark and cold underground, safe from the machines but not from pointless death and swallowing despair.

And she collapses to her knees, hands pressed to the cold concrete floor.

Folding up against the pain radiating out from the very core of her, forehead almost touching her knees.

Weeping uncontrollably, face pulled painfully into a grimace.

Tears leaking out of her eyes, snot just beginning to drip from her nose.

It's not pretty, it's not tough, it's not presentable.

Most things that involve excruciating agony are not.

"Kate? Kate?"

It's John's voice, of course it is, he would have noticed, would have followed her because he's in love with her because the Terminator told him they were going to be together.

And at that moment, she irrationally hates him too, John, the Terminator, even Scott for fucking dying instead of being here and alive, everybody.

But she doesn't fight when his arms go around her, at least he's closed the door to give her some modicum of privacy.

No, she doesn't fight.

But she does jerk up with a primal 'hurg' that sounds absolutely animalistic.

Jerks up and buries her face in his shoulder, wraps her arms around him so tight he probably can't breathe very well.

"Oh god! Oh god!"

She's whimpering and blubbering and John's arms around her, tight enough to keep her from shattering apart into a million pieces, one arm angling across her shoulders, palm pressed against her C7 vertebrae, fingers just curled gently over the side of her neck.

And she cannot stop her anguish, the flow of her tears.

"It's my fault, it's my fault!"

The flow of her tears.

"I should have given her hope, she didn't have to die!"

Her ranting.

"I should have told her! About what the Terminator said, about our children!"

Impossible to stop once dam has broken.

"That there's hope! That there will be more children! That she could have more children! That might live and not be dead!"

Impossible to hold inside because . . .

"Oh god, John, she's dead because of me!"

. . . this is all her fault.

He doesn't speak or at least she doesn't think he does, she wouldn't be able to hear him over the sound of her own hysterical despair anyway.

But finally when she's emptied herself of tears, worn herself out, and is laying limp in his arms, she hears him.

"It's not your fault, Kate. It's nobody's fault. You didn't make the machines nuke the planet. You didn't cause the baby to absorb all the poison."

Soft. Gentle.

"It's not your fault. It's not yours and it's not Bella's."

Low.

"She killed herself because she couldn't handle losing her baby like this, here, now."

"You couldn't have stopped that."

And she can't stand his kindness, his love, his acceptance.

"I could have told her! I could have told her what the Terminator said! That I would have babies, that it wasn't the end, that she could have more too!"

There's an almost imperceptible huff.

"Kate, that sounds crazy. That a machine from the future could tell you that you had babies."

"That's what he said, you were there, we argued . . ."

"What?"

"You're a mess."

"Hey, you're not exactly my type either."

". . . over it."

"Yeah. I remember."

She feels him take a breath, like he knows he may piss her off and she may go in search of a paintball gun with which to finally end him once and for all.

"But it sounds crazy. You know that. It sounds made up."

She doesn't argue this, she can't.

And John keeps talking.

"It's not your fault, Kate. It's not your fault that she killed herself."

"Yeah."

But she doesn't move from the comfort of his embrace.

"I know."

Not for a long while.

One more to go if you're still there.

I understand if you're not.