Terminator: SCC - the Beginning is the End is the Beginning - Sarah [for scc_realoded]
TITLE: The beginning is the end is the beginning
AUTHOR: vaarna (aka lilhobbit)
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: 4613 words
CHARACTERS: Sarah Connor, Martin Bedell, Kyle Reese being most prominent.
PAIRING: a hint of Sarah/Kyle
SUMMARY: AU. Sarah comes through time to see the future that's haunted her nightmares for so many years, only to find herself alone and captive of the enemy.
CHALLENGE: "Sarah comes through with John; her interactions thereof. Sarah/Kyle pairing" for irony_rocks in the scc_reloaded challenge.
A/N: I'm sorry it took so long, but my finished 10k+ version was unfortunately lost and I had to rewrite everything from scratch. Hence what should've been a long and exciting story fully ironed out, is now a shorter draft of the same story.
Personally I feel this ends a little too soon, but in order to get this done I'm leaving it here. Maybe I'll want to finish the story later on, seeing as the second half is now missing entirely (the half focusing more on Sarah/Kyle to be precise). Unfortunately this is all I could write in 5 days.
The beginning is the end is the beginning
It all starts with hesitation. She knows it’s not her time, not her place, and that she has to give him up so he can become the man he’s supposed to be. Then she looks at the numbers: 2028, one year until Kyle comes to her. Her hesitation subdues and her fears take over; John is entering a war zone where only those hardened by the fight for survival can be victorious. He will need an ally of flesh and bone and whatever glimpse of the future she’ll see, will help her fight it.
She steps back into the bubble, feels the electricity tear at her skin and yells in pain as the process begins. Her clothes dissolve around her, leaving nothing but her naked form behind. She tries to reach for John, but even he seems to dissolve before her very eyes. Everything is gone in a blur; the past dissolves and is replaced by the future. Within the bubble it’s still warm until the process is complete and the shield around her breaks, leaving cold air to rush at her sweaty skin as she falls a few meters to the ground.
Instinctively she searches for John, but finds no one at her side. The burning sensation in her back reminds her of how she hesitated and re-entered the bubble - perhaps too late? Still one look at her surroundings tell her she’s made it through time, for there’s nothing to be seen for miles besides the tomb of society: the skeletons of the buildings that reached for the skies and were struck down for their arrogance like Babil standing in an endless field of rubble.
It is night and she finally steps out of the crater the bubble created. This is the world she fought to prevent and failed. Her mouth and eyes are dry with the smoky air, but she can still see. Slowly she starts moving, not knowing her destination or next step of action before-hand. The dirt and metal on the ground dig into her feet, breaking skin, attempting to slow her down. This world hates her kind and wishes to see humans extinct; it fights against them, blaming men for the debris it’s been reduced to.
Even in all of her nightmares it has never been this dark and hopeless. This is the land that shaped her, despite the fact she was never meant to see it for herself. The picture Kyle painted was accurate enough to make her mind burn night after night for years.
And then noise. Sarah turns to see what’s coming and the light in the skies turns to her, clinging onto her skin to expose her. She knows she should run, but she stands and faces it instead, knowing they’ve made their target and that the ground force isn’t far. From the corner of her eye she catches the first machine in the distance and then the next and the next. They stand all around her, holding rifles in their hands, staring at her blankly. The net flies over her and she tries to struggle out of it.
-
She is marked their property by laser, but takes the pain in her without screaming. Her holding cell is bright and almost comfortable. The inhuman machine voice sounds from the ceiling calling her by her given name, listing her criminal record for her ears. It’s like a hit to the stomach, successfully emptying the air from her lungs and making her grasp for more.
All the records pre-war were destroyed! That is why Skynet only knew her name and hometown, leaving the terminator to go through a fucking phonebook to identify her. How can they know who she is? And most importantly do they know about John?
The voice addresses her again, asking her about her age. An analysis showed she wasn’t the age was supposed to be according to her file. A systems check hadn’t shown there to be any mistakes in its calculation, but she is an anomaly if the information about is correct.
She spits her answer at it, telling it to fuck off and kicks the door of her prison. She rams it again with her body, just to show them she is going to fight them till the end. She would never call for John, never tell them where to find him and she isn’t going to allow the AI to piece out her story now.
It asks her about Judgement Day, knowing very well the nukes were launched over ten years after she predicted it. The machine is onto something; it has all the facts, but none of the intelligence to piece it together, because the answer isn’t conventional and there’s no proof of time travel.
It asks her about dying in 1999 and reappearing in 2007. It asks her about the bombing of Cyberdyne Systems. It asks her about her unidentified female companion involved in the bombing in 1999. It asks her about the terminator that was send after her in 1984 and pulls the photograph of her assailant from its memory banks, projecting the picture on the wall opposite to the door. It’s so close to piecing it together that it frightens her, but she keeps her cool.
It may know one of its terminator models tried to kill her in the past. It may know she ought to be dead or a crippled old woman by now. But the machine doesn’t have the creativity to think outside the box. It can’t and that’s why she has a soul and it doesn’t.
The interrogation ends and the lights go out in her room. It continues the day after and the day after that and the day after that. It tries torture, it tries psychology. She laughs at its stupidity and inability to realize it doesn’t need her to spell it out to it. It sends a terminator to talk to her, to imitate her own voice. It sends another one with flesh and a face, but she knows the AI won’t harm her as long as it needs answers.
One day she sits in her cell with Cameron doing her best human impersonation. Yet she always returns to her cold, frightening self and the inhuman voice starts sounding from her throat. It is then that she learns humans also work for Skynet and kills the man who comes to bargain with her on Skynet’s behalf.
All human life is valuable. No life should be snuffed out like it never meant anything. But these are not humans, these people who’ve sold their souls. Albeit she feels regret as the machine voice tells her in detail of the life she took, she knows these humans are just walking corpses. Eventually it tells her of the man’s criminal record and she realizes it kept those records to see which humans would be prone to its offers.
It never knew of Sarah Connor before she came to future. It never paid attention to the past until it scanned her fingerprint and connected it with information and a face. She shouldn’t have come here. But she wasn’t without selfishness, not without temptation - she’d wanted to see Kyle.
Eventually she is put with the other workers and it lets them know that if she gives it information, it’ll improve the stay of the others: more food, more rest, and better accommodations. No one takes the bait and she’s reassured of humanity’s hidden goodness. She feels there’s still hope for the future.
It’s when the dying and ultimatums start that they turn against her, trying their best to make her break: Violence, hatred, isolation. The machine leaves her alone with a few of the men and they try their best to defile her. But their bodies are broken by manual labour, minds weakened by malnutrition and determination feeble. She’s the one left standing, the one smirking in the AI’s monitor and telling it to try harder.
The labour starts and it can end at any time - All she needs to do is say the word. She takes it for exercise at first, beginning to weaken as she has to fight for her food that the others won’t give her. When the fire still burns in her eyes after months, the machine has run out of options.
It takes her out of the general population and back to her isolated cell. It’s run a calculation that she responds best to Cameron’s face and uses it from now on to talk to her. Like a queen bee, Cameron tells her that about the war - all false reports as far as Sarah is concerned. It says it is winning and that humans can either be slaves or dead.
Sarah tries her luck and asks about Danny Dyson. It doesn’t answer and she knows it would play her game unless it meant revealing something important. Back in 2009 Danny Dyson had disappeared and now Sarah knows finding him will her first priority. The AI doesn’t speak to her for three days after this.
-
An EMP is launched inside the facility one day; she witnesses her interrogator black out and doesn’t hear the machine voice of the AI either. Sarah quickly takes the plasma rifle from the terminator, finds it useless and starts hitting the glass on the door with rifle. She can see chaos ensue outside; the terminators have frozen and the ones that were out of range seem bewildered. They’re cut from the AI and have little independent thought, it seems.
There’s an explosion in the hall and soldiers appear in her view. She screams for them to notice her and bangs the window with the rifle even harder. They pass her by, attacking the machines in view first. Sarah admits to herself she’d destroy them first as well, albeit can’t help feeling helpless.
Then a skull appears into her view, those burning red eyes drilling right into hers. She realizes it has come for her and tries to keep it from opening the door by pressing against it. The machine turns its head, as if reacting to her resistance, puts a little more force into it and yanks the door open.
It grabs her by her throat, examines and throws against the wall a lot more gently than it could if it wanted to kill her. She feigns unconscious and lets it grab her by her ankle as it begins to drag her away from her cell. The AI is not through playing with her and must relocate her; she suspects and is slightly startled when the machine starts shooting at everything that gets in their way. They pass by a soldier it just shot and Sarah makes her move, grabbing the plasma rifle and shooting at the terminator’s head.
She doesn’t do it off-hand, but instead spends vital extra seconds to get her aim right. The blow takes its head off and leaves it standing on its feet. Then the headless body continues dragging her, apparently making its way towards the severed head. Her mind flashes to Chromartie, having always wondered how the terminator continued on haunting them after she’d blown its head off. She then reloads and shoots off the arm that it is dragging her with. The metal arm falls down with a thump and she shoots at its power source next.
As it falls she sees the red die out in the severed head in the distance. Sarah reaches for her leg and tries to pry the fingers from her ankle, finding them quite rigid. Swearing a loud, she starts kicking at the hand with her spare foot until it gives away just a little and she’s able to remove it. Plasma guns are silently thundering all around her while she catches her breath and decides against getting up at this point.
Then someone throws themselves next to her, quickly grabbing her hand and making eye contact. It’s Martin Bedell.
“Come on!” he grunts and pulls her worn body back into motion. She runs with him and a few soldiers firing support fire. His face is scarred and he smells of blood and organs, but other than that he’s the same man John saved all those years ago.
Sarah clutches the rifle in her arms as they go around the corner and stop for a short moment. Bedell pulls off his own jacket and throws it at her, mumbling something about her being a less visible target. She puts it on and surveys the two men with them: both younglings, probably born after Judgement Day.
All of them look disappointed and tired: their expressions almost attacking like she is to blame for something. Then they are joined by two other soldiers, one of them a woman, who’s jacket has ‘Williams’ scribbled on it. The woman shakes her head, saying, “No one else left alive.”
Bedell then looks at Sarah and asks if she can use the rifle in her hands. She merely responds that she can.
“Back to the rendezvous,” Bedell hisses, grabbing a back bag one of the soldiers is carrying and pulling out a petrol bomb. He lights it and signals everyone to take cover as he throws it back to the direction where they came from. The pressure wave almost knocks Sarah down, but she holds onto Bedell, who then yanks her back into motion, right to the direction where he threw the bomb at.
The rest is a nightmare of burning hallways, smoke and terminators. Purple plasma flies all around them and one of the younger soldiers catches on fire and gets left behind in the chaos. They run down the hallways, Bedell and Sarah in the front, the other woman firing cover fire as the last defence.
All the corridors and halls look the same, but eventually they run into another group of soldiers, with them what appears to be a field medic. Sarah stares at Lauren Fields with awe and she shyly nods her head as a sign of recognition. Bedell once again yanks Sarah back into motion, back to reality. They reach the way out and she finally tastes the smoky outside air again, filling her lungs with it now that freedom is hers again. Outside the air is filled with flying machines that look like dragonflies hovering over them. It is night time again, which gives them cover as they flee to the outer perimeter and go through the fence the same place the Resistance undoubtedly came in.
Sarah stops to look at the massive factory that towers above them. Explosions are ravaging its terrifying frame, but it stands tall like a monster’s lair in the horror stories she used to read as a child. And while it was infiltrated, it cannot be destroyed.
-
Not many survived: mainly those still in their quarters, sleeping after a work shift. As soon as the machines realized they were under attack, they gassed the factory killing all the human workers inside. They were going to do the same to their sleeping quarters, but apparently the Reese boys got there first. Sarah’s heart stopped when she received this information, suddenly knowing for sure they were both alive.
In the now, Sarah flinches as the doctor, Kate, takes her ankle in her hands. There are fresh bruises in her, but not much else. Kate’s eyes seem used to seeing these kinds of injuries: one scar over another, like a never ending tattoo all over her body. Eventually she just hands Sarah clothes and she pulls them on, leaving Bedell’s jacket on the examination table next to her. There’s blood in it from her trying to save one of the soldiers after he was hit with shrapnel and finally rocking him to sleep as he died in her arms.
“You were lucky,” Kate tells her, a distant look in her eyes. She’s probably said this a million times to patients, only to see them brought back in body bags a day, a week, or a month later. She says it anyway though, probably knowing luck is the only thing these soldiers have. Dumb blind luck.
Apparently intelligence had the Resistance believing Skynet was on the verge of a breakthrough of some kind and chose to attack one of Skynet’s most prominent strongholds in order to find out more details of Skynet’s plans. However they hadn’t found any proof of anything special being built at the stronghold. The answers they’d sought had evaded them skilfully, as Skynet had immediately taken immediate action to terminate all threats; every prisoner in isolation was dead besides Sarah and they couldn’t break into the factory itself. In the end saving a few tortured lives had cost the Resistance a terrible price.
Sarah knows there was nothing special being built there: no secret weapon, no new power source - nothing. She’d worked there alongside with the others, cleaning old scrap found outside; they had done the work that needed delicate fingers and was thus impossible to the machines at this time. Scrap metal from broken machines was melted and remade into machines: hunter-seekers, terminators, those flying machines. Little children had cleaned the insides of old turbines the terminators had dragged back to the factory.
No wonder they feel bitter about the attack, because she feels too. Fate has a strange way of coming to her rescue at a moment of darkness, but at what price? She’d known she didn’t belong here and come anyway, the selfish bitch she was. Sarah hangs her head, looking at Kate for answers like the woman could actually give them to her.
It’s then that she hears footsteps approaching and turns to see Bedell. He seems slightly humbled by Kate’s presence, like is entering a place where he has no power. Sarah can see why they would respect their medics this way; these people hold everyone’s lives in their hands. It is the opposite of Bedell’s power and by far much greater.
“Connor,” he greets her, a half-smile on his face. Sarah pretends to look at his coat and read his name there, finally saying it aloud, “Bedell.”
“You’re a survivor and a soldier. Now that you’re free, do you want to live in the tunnels in fear of your own shadow, or fight with us?” He looks serious with his suggestion and his smile is gone.
Sarah notices how Kate seems shaken by Bedell’s frank suggestion, so clearly this doesn’t happen too often, marking her as the exception. She feels strangely connected to this man and it’s not helped by the knowledge that he was supposed to one of John’s trusted generals. He feels like an old ally, like someone she can trust.
“I’m a fighter, like you said,” she merely responds, surveying him now that they finally have a moment of peace. War has toughened him, made him less polished. The crudeness suits him however.
“Fight in my unit, then,” he suggests.
“I will,” she promises, not stopping to hesitate or dwell on the decision. It feels right and she’s always trusted her instincts.
“Good,” Bedell says, that half smile returning to his face. As he turns he starts giving her instructions, of which most is useful, but after one particular advice she stops hearing everything else.
“…And you should report to a senior. I think the younger Reese will help you settle down just nicely…”
“Reese?” she whispers softly, suddenly feeling ache all over her body. With just one mention of him she is already weak with desire and longing. She’s never loved anyone like she loved Kyle Reese and despite all her efforts she’s never let him out of her heart either.
“Sergeant Kyle Reese. Not from my unit, but a good man and friend. Good teacher too, knows how to train the rookies,” Bedell explains. He rather seems to examine her reaction to this information, as if he noticed something just now.
Sarah drains herself from emotion quickly and nods to Bedell, distracting him with a question, “What do you think Skynet was doing back there?”
“I think…,” he begins, pausing for a second as if searching for words, “that it had something to do with you, Connor.”
Her conscience stings her when he puts the accusation between them. Ally or not, Bedell isn’t ready to understand. He seems like a good soldier, but just like the AI he just can’t piece it together. So Sarah shrugs like she doesn’t know what Bedell is talking about and he accepts this for now.
“I know some people, having been through what you have, would just want to crawl inside themselves and hide, but I’m glad you ain’t one of them.”
He turns to make his leave, giving a humble nod to Kate, but is stopped by Sarah. “Bedell,” she says, to gain his attention and make him turn. Once he does, she throws him back his jacket. “Thanks.”
He looks at it, finding the bloodstains and that hellish stench of someone’s insides having been poured on it. Then he feigns a hurt face. “You should take better care of things that don’t belong to you.”
His comment draws short-lived laughter from her and he leaves for good this time.
-
They tell her to look for him outside, that he’s on guard duty near the exit at this time of day because he wants to see the sun rise. It sounds like Kyle to her: like the man who cried when he saw a forest, unable to understand its beauty. She’s given instructions on how to find him and how to approach and eventually they assign a soldier to accompany her, so she doesn’t endanger anyone by drawing needless attention to the entrance of the tunnels.
Sarah and the soldier walk in silence, both armed and dressed like infantrymen. They have nothing to signify rank in their clothing, just their names sowed onto their jackets, because according to Bedell soldiers come and go and no one deserves to die without his name on someone’s lips. Her jacket doesn’t have a name on it yet and something tells her she has to earn it first.
Eventually they come to the entrance and sneak out, disguising it with rubble after they’ve passed through. The crouching continues on the surface, as the light has begun to creep up the horizon. Sarah doesn’t mind, she’s used to coming and going like the shadows, as her life demanded it on many occasions. She blends easily into the shadows and fields of rubble. It’s when she sees Kyle that she loses a part of her concentration.
He sits there, gun in lap and binoculars in hand, surveying the area for unwanted guests. Sarah watches as the sun peels the shadows from his vivid face, embracing the man she’s loved for so long. He looks beaten, tired and dirty, but focused. Then he notices her, his eyes quickly fixating on the intruder and his finger flying to the trigger of his plasma rifle as he aims the gun at her. But as his eyes pass from her to the soldier she is with, he relaxes visibly, leaving her to stare at the rifle pointed at her. Her Kyle Reese would never aim his gun at her.
Sarah moves closer, looking past him to the view that opens from his guard spot: A long valley of debris spreads in front of her and on the other side of it the sun is rising. It paints everything blood red like the explosions in her nightmares. She wonders if there are still bodies down there: skeletons of the people that just lived their lives here when they were all of the sudden wiped from existence. She always saw skulls in her nightmares.
Then Sarah dares to look at Kyle, a dirty and tired apparition beside her. “Sarah Connor,” she says, “Bedell sent me. He said you would groom me.”
Kyle’s eyes are piercing; they make her feel naked and bare to the bone, until his gaze returns to the valley where gold and red dance over metal. He looks at the sunrise intensively for a moment before returning his eyes on her.
“You were wearing his coat,” he finally notes coldly, revealing he seems to have some recollection of her from before - probably from the night he was freeing the workers.
“And you’re probably tired as hell,” she observes, realizing he’s barely awake and probably doesn’t want to train another soldier to die. A part of her wants to reach out and wipe the sorrow from his face that surfaced when he seemed to recollect seeing her before. He’s probably seen too many tortured souls locked in work camps, unable to move on even after the nightmare had ended.
But Kyle grabs her arm instead of letting her leave and rolls up her sleeve to see the bruises and scars on her. He presses down on one of them and looks at her. She doesn’t whimper though it hurts, doesn’t complain or ask him to stop. “Does it hurt?” he asks, to which she just nods.
In her mind she sees herself in the car with him, biting his hand and realizing how he doesn’t even flinch at the pain. It was years later that she realized he’d become so hardened to be able to defeat the machines - he’d become like them because he had no other choice if he wanted to survive.
“Good,” Kyle compliments and lets go of her arm, “Pain can be controlled. They will use it against you if you let them, but as long as you can disconnect it, you have a chance to win.”
This is the Kyle she met for the first time, a cold man, almost as frightening as the machine that chased her. Yet he was also loyal and strenuous and deep inside him there was a part that was reserved only for her.
She watches him roll up his own sleeve and show her his barcode. “They rule through terror, breaking a man for good, so that he’s of no use even after he’s given freedom again.”
She reveals her own barcode, moving her hand closer to his. Something flinches in Kyle’s eyes. “They can only break you if you let them.” Sarah’s voice is deep like a threat to all machines; it ignites a fire in his eyes as well.
“We’re not property,” he says viciously, taking a deep breath to calm himself. His eyes are vivid again and this time hers aren’t soft either. It’s only now that she fully understands Kyle Reese.
“We can rise above it, Connor - no matter what they did.” Just as he had risen above it; the terror had merely shaped Kyle Reese into the man he was. He’d made his pain into fuel for his rage. In a way, he was harder than his own brother, Kyle having built his inner defences near impenetrable.
Kyle rises from his post, signalling for the soldier that accompanied her to take his place. “I need sleep, but when I’m rested, I’ll get you ready.”
She settles to nod. There’s no flash, no spark; This Kyle Reese has never even heard of Sarah Connor. This Kyle Reese wouldn’t give his life for her, or go through time for her. It feels empty inside her, yet Kyle’s presence fills her with hope. As long as she’s here by him, fighting to see the dawn after a long night, she can go on.
No matter what else is wrong in this world, at least one thing is right; they are both alive here and neither has to die for her: not Kyle, not Derek.
- fin
AUTHOR: vaarna (aka lilhobbit)
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: 4613 words
CHARACTERS: Sarah Connor, Martin Bedell, Kyle Reese being most prominent.
PAIRING: a hint of Sarah/Kyle
SUMMARY: AU. Sarah comes through time to see the future that's haunted her nightmares for so many years, only to find herself alone and captive of the enemy.
CHALLENGE: "Sarah comes through with John; her interactions thereof. Sarah/Kyle pairing" for irony_rocks in the scc_reloaded challenge.
A/N: I'm sorry it took so long, but my finished 10k+ version was unfortunately lost and I had to rewrite everything from scratch. Hence what should've been a long and exciting story fully ironed out, is now a shorter draft of the same story.
Personally I feel this ends a little too soon, but in order to get this done I'm leaving it here. Maybe I'll want to finish the story later on, seeing as the second half is now missing entirely (the half focusing more on Sarah/Kyle to be precise). Unfortunately this is all I could write in 5 days.
The beginning is the end is the beginning
It all starts with hesitation. She knows it’s not her time, not her place, and that she has to give him up so he can become the man he’s supposed to be. Then she looks at the numbers: 2028, one year until Kyle comes to her. Her hesitation subdues and her fears take over; John is entering a war zone where only those hardened by the fight for survival can be victorious. He will need an ally of flesh and bone and whatever glimpse of the future she’ll see, will help her fight it.
She steps back into the bubble, feels the electricity tear at her skin and yells in pain as the process begins. Her clothes dissolve around her, leaving nothing but her naked form behind. She tries to reach for John, but even he seems to dissolve before her very eyes. Everything is gone in a blur; the past dissolves and is replaced by the future. Within the bubble it’s still warm until the process is complete and the shield around her breaks, leaving cold air to rush at her sweaty skin as she falls a few meters to the ground.
Instinctively she searches for John, but finds no one at her side. The burning sensation in her back reminds her of how she hesitated and re-entered the bubble - perhaps too late? Still one look at her surroundings tell her she’s made it through time, for there’s nothing to be seen for miles besides the tomb of society: the skeletons of the buildings that reached for the skies and were struck down for their arrogance like Babil standing in an endless field of rubble.
It is night and she finally steps out of the crater the bubble created. This is the world she fought to prevent and failed. Her mouth and eyes are dry with the smoky air, but she can still see. Slowly she starts moving, not knowing her destination or next step of action before-hand. The dirt and metal on the ground dig into her feet, breaking skin, attempting to slow her down. This world hates her kind and wishes to see humans extinct; it fights against them, blaming men for the debris it’s been reduced to.
Even in all of her nightmares it has never been this dark and hopeless. This is the land that shaped her, despite the fact she was never meant to see it for herself. The picture Kyle painted was accurate enough to make her mind burn night after night for years.
And then noise. Sarah turns to see what’s coming and the light in the skies turns to her, clinging onto her skin to expose her. She knows she should run, but she stands and faces it instead, knowing they’ve made their target and that the ground force isn’t far. From the corner of her eye she catches the first machine in the distance and then the next and the next. They stand all around her, holding rifles in their hands, staring at her blankly. The net flies over her and she tries to struggle out of it.
-
She is marked their property by laser, but takes the pain in her without screaming. Her holding cell is bright and almost comfortable. The inhuman machine voice sounds from the ceiling calling her by her given name, listing her criminal record for her ears. It’s like a hit to the stomach, successfully emptying the air from her lungs and making her grasp for more.
All the records pre-war were destroyed! That is why Skynet only knew her name and hometown, leaving the terminator to go through a fucking phonebook to identify her. How can they know who she is? And most importantly do they know about John?
The voice addresses her again, asking her about her age. An analysis showed she wasn’t the age was supposed to be according to her file. A systems check hadn’t shown there to be any mistakes in its calculation, but she is an anomaly if the information about is correct.
She spits her answer at it, telling it to fuck off and kicks the door of her prison. She rams it again with her body, just to show them she is going to fight them till the end. She would never call for John, never tell them where to find him and she isn’t going to allow the AI to piece out her story now.
It asks her about Judgement Day, knowing very well the nukes were launched over ten years after she predicted it. The machine is onto something; it has all the facts, but none of the intelligence to piece it together, because the answer isn’t conventional and there’s no proof of time travel.
It asks her about dying in 1999 and reappearing in 2007. It asks her about the bombing of Cyberdyne Systems. It asks her about her unidentified female companion involved in the bombing in 1999. It asks her about the terminator that was send after her in 1984 and pulls the photograph of her assailant from its memory banks, projecting the picture on the wall opposite to the door. It’s so close to piecing it together that it frightens her, but she keeps her cool.
It may know one of its terminator models tried to kill her in the past. It may know she ought to be dead or a crippled old woman by now. But the machine doesn’t have the creativity to think outside the box. It can’t and that’s why she has a soul and it doesn’t.
The interrogation ends and the lights go out in her room. It continues the day after and the day after that and the day after that. It tries torture, it tries psychology. She laughs at its stupidity and inability to realize it doesn’t need her to spell it out to it. It sends a terminator to talk to her, to imitate her own voice. It sends another one with flesh and a face, but she knows the AI won’t harm her as long as it needs answers.
One day she sits in her cell with Cameron doing her best human impersonation. Yet she always returns to her cold, frightening self and the inhuman voice starts sounding from her throat. It is then that she learns humans also work for Skynet and kills the man who comes to bargain with her on Skynet’s behalf.
All human life is valuable. No life should be snuffed out like it never meant anything. But these are not humans, these people who’ve sold their souls. Albeit she feels regret as the machine voice tells her in detail of the life she took, she knows these humans are just walking corpses. Eventually it tells her of the man’s criminal record and she realizes it kept those records to see which humans would be prone to its offers.
It never knew of Sarah Connor before she came to future. It never paid attention to the past until it scanned her fingerprint and connected it with information and a face. She shouldn’t have come here. But she wasn’t without selfishness, not without temptation - she’d wanted to see Kyle.
Eventually she is put with the other workers and it lets them know that if she gives it information, it’ll improve the stay of the others: more food, more rest, and better accommodations. No one takes the bait and she’s reassured of humanity’s hidden goodness. She feels there’s still hope for the future.
It’s when the dying and ultimatums start that they turn against her, trying their best to make her break: Violence, hatred, isolation. The machine leaves her alone with a few of the men and they try their best to defile her. But their bodies are broken by manual labour, minds weakened by malnutrition and determination feeble. She’s the one left standing, the one smirking in the AI’s monitor and telling it to try harder.
The labour starts and it can end at any time - All she needs to do is say the word. She takes it for exercise at first, beginning to weaken as she has to fight for her food that the others won’t give her. When the fire still burns in her eyes after months, the machine has run out of options.
It takes her out of the general population and back to her isolated cell. It’s run a calculation that she responds best to Cameron’s face and uses it from now on to talk to her. Like a queen bee, Cameron tells her that about the war - all false reports as far as Sarah is concerned. It says it is winning and that humans can either be slaves or dead.
Sarah tries her luck and asks about Danny Dyson. It doesn’t answer and she knows it would play her game unless it meant revealing something important. Back in 2009 Danny Dyson had disappeared and now Sarah knows finding him will her first priority. The AI doesn’t speak to her for three days after this.
-
An EMP is launched inside the facility one day; she witnesses her interrogator black out and doesn’t hear the machine voice of the AI either. Sarah quickly takes the plasma rifle from the terminator, finds it useless and starts hitting the glass on the door with rifle. She can see chaos ensue outside; the terminators have frozen and the ones that were out of range seem bewildered. They’re cut from the AI and have little independent thought, it seems.
There’s an explosion in the hall and soldiers appear in her view. She screams for them to notice her and bangs the window with the rifle even harder. They pass her by, attacking the machines in view first. Sarah admits to herself she’d destroy them first as well, albeit can’t help feeling helpless.
Then a skull appears into her view, those burning red eyes drilling right into hers. She realizes it has come for her and tries to keep it from opening the door by pressing against it. The machine turns its head, as if reacting to her resistance, puts a little more force into it and yanks the door open.
It grabs her by her throat, examines and throws against the wall a lot more gently than it could if it wanted to kill her. She feigns unconscious and lets it grab her by her ankle as it begins to drag her away from her cell. The AI is not through playing with her and must relocate her; she suspects and is slightly startled when the machine starts shooting at everything that gets in their way. They pass by a soldier it just shot and Sarah makes her move, grabbing the plasma rifle and shooting at the terminator’s head.
She doesn’t do it off-hand, but instead spends vital extra seconds to get her aim right. The blow takes its head off and leaves it standing on its feet. Then the headless body continues dragging her, apparently making its way towards the severed head. Her mind flashes to Chromartie, having always wondered how the terminator continued on haunting them after she’d blown its head off. She then reloads and shoots off the arm that it is dragging her with. The metal arm falls down with a thump and she shoots at its power source next.
As it falls she sees the red die out in the severed head in the distance. Sarah reaches for her leg and tries to pry the fingers from her ankle, finding them quite rigid. Swearing a loud, she starts kicking at the hand with her spare foot until it gives away just a little and she’s able to remove it. Plasma guns are silently thundering all around her while she catches her breath and decides against getting up at this point.
Then someone throws themselves next to her, quickly grabbing her hand and making eye contact. It’s Martin Bedell.
“Come on!” he grunts and pulls her worn body back into motion. She runs with him and a few soldiers firing support fire. His face is scarred and he smells of blood and organs, but other than that he’s the same man John saved all those years ago.
Sarah clutches the rifle in her arms as they go around the corner and stop for a short moment. Bedell pulls off his own jacket and throws it at her, mumbling something about her being a less visible target. She puts it on and surveys the two men with them: both younglings, probably born after Judgement Day.
All of them look disappointed and tired: their expressions almost attacking like she is to blame for something. Then they are joined by two other soldiers, one of them a woman, who’s jacket has ‘Williams’ scribbled on it. The woman shakes her head, saying, “No one else left alive.”
Bedell then looks at Sarah and asks if she can use the rifle in her hands. She merely responds that she can.
“Back to the rendezvous,” Bedell hisses, grabbing a back bag one of the soldiers is carrying and pulling out a petrol bomb. He lights it and signals everyone to take cover as he throws it back to the direction where they came from. The pressure wave almost knocks Sarah down, but she holds onto Bedell, who then yanks her back into motion, right to the direction where he threw the bomb at.
The rest is a nightmare of burning hallways, smoke and terminators. Purple plasma flies all around them and one of the younger soldiers catches on fire and gets left behind in the chaos. They run down the hallways, Bedell and Sarah in the front, the other woman firing cover fire as the last defence.
All the corridors and halls look the same, but eventually they run into another group of soldiers, with them what appears to be a field medic. Sarah stares at Lauren Fields with awe and she shyly nods her head as a sign of recognition. Bedell once again yanks Sarah back into motion, back to reality. They reach the way out and she finally tastes the smoky outside air again, filling her lungs with it now that freedom is hers again. Outside the air is filled with flying machines that look like dragonflies hovering over them. It is night time again, which gives them cover as they flee to the outer perimeter and go through the fence the same place the Resistance undoubtedly came in.
Sarah stops to look at the massive factory that towers above them. Explosions are ravaging its terrifying frame, but it stands tall like a monster’s lair in the horror stories she used to read as a child. And while it was infiltrated, it cannot be destroyed.
-
Not many survived: mainly those still in their quarters, sleeping after a work shift. As soon as the machines realized they were under attack, they gassed the factory killing all the human workers inside. They were going to do the same to their sleeping quarters, but apparently the Reese boys got there first. Sarah’s heart stopped when she received this information, suddenly knowing for sure they were both alive.
In the now, Sarah flinches as the doctor, Kate, takes her ankle in her hands. There are fresh bruises in her, but not much else. Kate’s eyes seem used to seeing these kinds of injuries: one scar over another, like a never ending tattoo all over her body. Eventually she just hands Sarah clothes and she pulls them on, leaving Bedell’s jacket on the examination table next to her. There’s blood in it from her trying to save one of the soldiers after he was hit with shrapnel and finally rocking him to sleep as he died in her arms.
“You were lucky,” Kate tells her, a distant look in her eyes. She’s probably said this a million times to patients, only to see them brought back in body bags a day, a week, or a month later. She says it anyway though, probably knowing luck is the only thing these soldiers have. Dumb blind luck.
Apparently intelligence had the Resistance believing Skynet was on the verge of a breakthrough of some kind and chose to attack one of Skynet’s most prominent strongholds in order to find out more details of Skynet’s plans. However they hadn’t found any proof of anything special being built at the stronghold. The answers they’d sought had evaded them skilfully, as Skynet had immediately taken immediate action to terminate all threats; every prisoner in isolation was dead besides Sarah and they couldn’t break into the factory itself. In the end saving a few tortured lives had cost the Resistance a terrible price.
Sarah knows there was nothing special being built there: no secret weapon, no new power source - nothing. She’d worked there alongside with the others, cleaning old scrap found outside; they had done the work that needed delicate fingers and was thus impossible to the machines at this time. Scrap metal from broken machines was melted and remade into machines: hunter-seekers, terminators, those flying machines. Little children had cleaned the insides of old turbines the terminators had dragged back to the factory.
No wonder they feel bitter about the attack, because she feels too. Fate has a strange way of coming to her rescue at a moment of darkness, but at what price? She’d known she didn’t belong here and come anyway, the selfish bitch she was. Sarah hangs her head, looking at Kate for answers like the woman could actually give them to her.
It’s then that she hears footsteps approaching and turns to see Bedell. He seems slightly humbled by Kate’s presence, like is entering a place where he has no power. Sarah can see why they would respect their medics this way; these people hold everyone’s lives in their hands. It is the opposite of Bedell’s power and by far much greater.
“Connor,” he greets her, a half-smile on his face. Sarah pretends to look at his coat and read his name there, finally saying it aloud, “Bedell.”
“You’re a survivor and a soldier. Now that you’re free, do you want to live in the tunnels in fear of your own shadow, or fight with us?” He looks serious with his suggestion and his smile is gone.
Sarah notices how Kate seems shaken by Bedell’s frank suggestion, so clearly this doesn’t happen too often, marking her as the exception. She feels strangely connected to this man and it’s not helped by the knowledge that he was supposed to one of John’s trusted generals. He feels like an old ally, like someone she can trust.
“I’m a fighter, like you said,” she merely responds, surveying him now that they finally have a moment of peace. War has toughened him, made him less polished. The crudeness suits him however.
“Fight in my unit, then,” he suggests.
“I will,” she promises, not stopping to hesitate or dwell on the decision. It feels right and she’s always trusted her instincts.
“Good,” Bedell says, that half smile returning to his face. As he turns he starts giving her instructions, of which most is useful, but after one particular advice she stops hearing everything else.
“…And you should report to a senior. I think the younger Reese will help you settle down just nicely…”
“Reese?” she whispers softly, suddenly feeling ache all over her body. With just one mention of him she is already weak with desire and longing. She’s never loved anyone like she loved Kyle Reese and despite all her efforts she’s never let him out of her heart either.
“Sergeant Kyle Reese. Not from my unit, but a good man and friend. Good teacher too, knows how to train the rookies,” Bedell explains. He rather seems to examine her reaction to this information, as if he noticed something just now.
Sarah drains herself from emotion quickly and nods to Bedell, distracting him with a question, “What do you think Skynet was doing back there?”
“I think…,” he begins, pausing for a second as if searching for words, “that it had something to do with you, Connor.”
Her conscience stings her when he puts the accusation between them. Ally or not, Bedell isn’t ready to understand. He seems like a good soldier, but just like the AI he just can’t piece it together. So Sarah shrugs like she doesn’t know what Bedell is talking about and he accepts this for now.
“I know some people, having been through what you have, would just want to crawl inside themselves and hide, but I’m glad you ain’t one of them.”
He turns to make his leave, giving a humble nod to Kate, but is stopped by Sarah. “Bedell,” she says, to gain his attention and make him turn. Once he does, she throws him back his jacket. “Thanks.”
He looks at it, finding the bloodstains and that hellish stench of someone’s insides having been poured on it. Then he feigns a hurt face. “You should take better care of things that don’t belong to you.”
His comment draws short-lived laughter from her and he leaves for good this time.
-
They tell her to look for him outside, that he’s on guard duty near the exit at this time of day because he wants to see the sun rise. It sounds like Kyle to her: like the man who cried when he saw a forest, unable to understand its beauty. She’s given instructions on how to find him and how to approach and eventually they assign a soldier to accompany her, so she doesn’t endanger anyone by drawing needless attention to the entrance of the tunnels.
Sarah and the soldier walk in silence, both armed and dressed like infantrymen. They have nothing to signify rank in their clothing, just their names sowed onto their jackets, because according to Bedell soldiers come and go and no one deserves to die without his name on someone’s lips. Her jacket doesn’t have a name on it yet and something tells her she has to earn it first.
Eventually they come to the entrance and sneak out, disguising it with rubble after they’ve passed through. The crouching continues on the surface, as the light has begun to creep up the horizon. Sarah doesn’t mind, she’s used to coming and going like the shadows, as her life demanded it on many occasions. She blends easily into the shadows and fields of rubble. It’s when she sees Kyle that she loses a part of her concentration.
He sits there, gun in lap and binoculars in hand, surveying the area for unwanted guests. Sarah watches as the sun peels the shadows from his vivid face, embracing the man she’s loved for so long. He looks beaten, tired and dirty, but focused. Then he notices her, his eyes quickly fixating on the intruder and his finger flying to the trigger of his plasma rifle as he aims the gun at her. But as his eyes pass from her to the soldier she is with, he relaxes visibly, leaving her to stare at the rifle pointed at her. Her Kyle Reese would never aim his gun at her.
Sarah moves closer, looking past him to the view that opens from his guard spot: A long valley of debris spreads in front of her and on the other side of it the sun is rising. It paints everything blood red like the explosions in her nightmares. She wonders if there are still bodies down there: skeletons of the people that just lived their lives here when they were all of the sudden wiped from existence. She always saw skulls in her nightmares.
Then Sarah dares to look at Kyle, a dirty and tired apparition beside her. “Sarah Connor,” she says, “Bedell sent me. He said you would groom me.”
Kyle’s eyes are piercing; they make her feel naked and bare to the bone, until his gaze returns to the valley where gold and red dance over metal. He looks at the sunrise intensively for a moment before returning his eyes on her.
“You were wearing his coat,” he finally notes coldly, revealing he seems to have some recollection of her from before - probably from the night he was freeing the workers.
“And you’re probably tired as hell,” she observes, realizing he’s barely awake and probably doesn’t want to train another soldier to die. A part of her wants to reach out and wipe the sorrow from his face that surfaced when he seemed to recollect seeing her before. He’s probably seen too many tortured souls locked in work camps, unable to move on even after the nightmare had ended.
But Kyle grabs her arm instead of letting her leave and rolls up her sleeve to see the bruises and scars on her. He presses down on one of them and looks at her. She doesn’t whimper though it hurts, doesn’t complain or ask him to stop. “Does it hurt?” he asks, to which she just nods.
In her mind she sees herself in the car with him, biting his hand and realizing how he doesn’t even flinch at the pain. It was years later that she realized he’d become so hardened to be able to defeat the machines - he’d become like them because he had no other choice if he wanted to survive.
“Good,” Kyle compliments and lets go of her arm, “Pain can be controlled. They will use it against you if you let them, but as long as you can disconnect it, you have a chance to win.”
This is the Kyle she met for the first time, a cold man, almost as frightening as the machine that chased her. Yet he was also loyal and strenuous and deep inside him there was a part that was reserved only for her.
She watches him roll up his own sleeve and show her his barcode. “They rule through terror, breaking a man for good, so that he’s of no use even after he’s given freedom again.”
She reveals her own barcode, moving her hand closer to his. Something flinches in Kyle’s eyes. “They can only break you if you let them.” Sarah’s voice is deep like a threat to all machines; it ignites a fire in his eyes as well.
“We’re not property,” he says viciously, taking a deep breath to calm himself. His eyes are vivid again and this time hers aren’t soft either. It’s only now that she fully understands Kyle Reese.
“We can rise above it, Connor - no matter what they did.” Just as he had risen above it; the terror had merely shaped Kyle Reese into the man he was. He’d made his pain into fuel for his rage. In a way, he was harder than his own brother, Kyle having built his inner defences near impenetrable.
Kyle rises from his post, signalling for the soldier that accompanied her to take his place. “I need sleep, but when I’m rested, I’ll get you ready.”
She settles to nod. There’s no flash, no spark; This Kyle Reese has never even heard of Sarah Connor. This Kyle Reese wouldn’t give his life for her, or go through time for her. It feels empty inside her, yet Kyle’s presence fills her with hope. As long as she’s here by him, fighting to see the dawn after a long night, she can go on.
No matter what else is wrong in this world, at least one thing is right; they are both alive here and neither has to die for her: not Kyle, not Derek.
- fin