It had not been Kyle she had been thinking about while she had prepared breakfast. It had been the nightly visitor who had been on her mind ever she had gotten up at the crack of dawn. First she had tried to get rid of the tension in her body by doing her morning exercise, even doubling the amount had not helped.
So many questions, so very few answers. It could all have been a dream if not for the bloodstained long-sleeved T-shirt lying on the bed only a few inches away from her. It had all been too real; he had come to her house and had kissed her like there would be no tomorrow. She hated these conflicting feelings. On the one hand she felt some sort of hate for him. He had tried to kill Kyle, and the other hand she felt a deep sorrow that future John had sent back yet another tormented soul who loved her.
He had shown no fear at gunpoint. In fact she wondered if it had just driven him more. Although his moves had been rough, they had possessed some kind of tenderness as well. She closed her eyes and remembered his face. The scar that ran down from his eyebrow to his cheekbone, the scar across his left cheek, kind eyes that held so much hurt.
Before she realized she was doing it she brought her left index and middle finger up to her mouth and ran them over her lips. She could feel his lips pressed against hers in a kiss that spoke of despair and passion.
Her eyes snapped open and she shook her head. Now was not the time to lose herself in silly non-sense like that. She was a soldier, not some naïve college student. She had devoted her life to keeping her son safe and alive so he would lead the Human Resistance into battle against Skynet. Sacrifices had to be made.
Why hadn’t Cameron come to see what was going on when she had accidentally fired her gun? Why had Cameron tilted her head and looked at her as if she were crazy when she had asked her about it? It could have been Cromartie or any other terminator sent back to kill her son or her. Suddenly she remembered Cameron saying “He reprogrammed me together with John”. Was this all part of the bigger plan?
The future, dark and looming, was always there. If not for the machines sent back to kill whoever needed to be killed, then for the Resistance fighters sent back to protect the targeted. Why was she the target again? The same questions she had had last night after he had left re-entered her thoughts: Why was he here? Did he love her just like Kyle had? Was he here to father another child with her? Was she destined to be the mother of the future again?
It felt like history was repeating itself, and just like last night thinking about it gave her a headache. At one time in her life she had tried to figure it all out. Time lines, time shifts, time loops, and it had almost driven her crazy.
Her memory drifted back to those two days with Kyle. She had been naïve and ignorant. Coming from poverty, trying to work her way through college, and then it had turned out that she had been destined for greater things. That she was going to be the mother of the future. She could still see the admiration in Kyle’s eyes when he had sat against the wall of the tunnel while she had tried to deny her destiny. She had been a nothing, a nobody. She had been Sarah Jeanette Connor.
Now she choose to be a nothing, a nobody because it would keep her son safe. She had learned so much the past seventeen years of her life and yet it felt like she hadn’t learned enough. She had changed so much and yet it felt like she hadn’t changed enough.
From the moment John had been born she had been preparing him for the future, but what if the future shifted and changed? How could she ever prepare him well enough for that?
She sighed and picked up the T-shirt. He had let out an eerie howl like a wounded beast after she shot him, but it hadn’t kept him back. She looked at the bloodstains. He had liked it rough as if he needed to feed of the pain to feel alive. Slowly she got to her feet and went to throw the T-shirt in the trash.

He ran a hand through his tousled hair in frustration. What the fuck had he been thinking? It could be considered a miracle that she didn’t take his head off.
“Talk about surprise,” he grumbled to himself while he looked at his bandaged left forearm.
Yet after he had woken up from his dreams of the past, he had felt this incredible urge to see her. It should have stayed with staying at a safe distance and just watching her. But at one point he could not stand it any longer, so he had left the rooftop and had knocked on the backdoor.
What the fuck had he been thinking? She didn’t know him, even if he knew her. What the fuck had he been thinking? It was not her who had loved him, whom he had loved.
But she would be, and it wouldn’t be him.
He thought about himself in this time, about how he had argued with his father, about how one night had changed everything. Never had he forgotten that the machine had come that night. TJ Devlin, only a few days away from discovering that all the wonderful, fantastic tales his mother had told him held a bitter truth.
The other Tyler, he had confronted him even more with the terrible future ahead. Now it was his turn to become the other Tyler, and as much as he hated to admit it, he had become more like the other Tyler than he had ever wanted. Maybe he was even worse? He had defeated death, lived twice after dying. The Devil incarnate, he was no hero but a monster, forged in the heat of battle, formed and defined by war, death and destruction.
Slowly he scratched his chin, the two-day stubble itching and annoying. But he wasn’t here to shave his stubble beard, he was here to keep an eye on the Connors. The 24-hours-zone was approaching fast.
He wondered, now that the increasing warmth of the day made him drowsy, if this was a repetition of history or if this was a new timeline. He hadn’t known much about the other Tyler when he had been just TJ and yet now he was the other Tyler. He should know him by now and yet he didn’t know the first thing about him. Only that he had been tormented by an unrequited love.
At least in that way the future had differed for him. He had known his love and he had gotten the experience it, unlike the other Tyler.
He crossed his arms and made himself comfortable against the makeshift pillow he had made out of his pea coat. The shades of the leaves should give him shelter from the warmth of the day. In his own time, back home, the weather system was very different. After the nuclear winter, it had changed dramatically. Winters were extremely cold and summers were moderate.
It couldn’t hurt to close his eyes for a few seconds.

The room was only lit by the light coming from three small computer screens, but she could still make out his hulking form bent over the desk. A faint smile graced her lips and yet she felt no happiness. It was close to eleven in the morning, three hours after his shift had officially ended, and he was still working. She knew it to be as the telltale sign of a bad night.
He would bury himself in work, in studying after particularly bad nights. There was nothing he didn’t know about Skynet’s creations, from s.d.[1]’s to a.r.u.[2]’s, from i.u.[3]’s to g.a.u.[4]’s, no machine held a secret from him. She didn’t like this ‘hobby’ of dissecting h.c.c.u.[5]’s and i.u.’s, but knew that it was a necessity. He wanted to know everything about the enemy so he could destroy it, so he could teach others how to destroy it.
“What is it, Connor?” He asked, letting out a deep breath.
The faint smile grew into a smirk: as always he knew that it was her. She knew how much she had taught him, how much he had taught himself. He heard learned to listen to the footsteps, to distinguish who was coming. Fresh blood was made to walk back and forth past his room so he would remember. And he always remembered.
The only person she knew who would sit with his back towards the door, as if to tempt fate. There had been attempts on his life, out on the battlefield, here on base, and yet he sat with his back towards the door, making him an easy target for someone to exact revenge for losing a friend, a family member, a loved one.
“Nothing, just coming to see what’s keeping you,” she answered as she came closer so she could glance over his shoulder.
“Just this piece of tech,” he said slowly, pointing at the chip lodged into the ‘reader’.
“Anything useful?”
“No,” he shook his head. “Not yet. Skynet must know we’re reading the chips. It designed an entirely new language.”
“Fuck,” she remarked with a hint of disappointment in her voice that she could not hide while she placed her hands on his shoulders.
She could feel his tense muscles roll under her touch: “You work too hard, Ty,” she whispered, gently kneading the strained knots in his shoulders. “The war will still be here in a couple of hours.”
“The war will always be here. Only when we die, we will see the end of the war,” he grumbled.
Only the dead have seen the end of the war. It was a quote attributed to Plato. A quote that could not be closer to the truth; once you had seen, had been in the war, it would never leave you again. No return to innocence, only when you had died, it would stop.
She let her hands slide to the center of his chest and rested her chin on top of his head before closing her eyes for a moment. His hands came to rest on top of hers. It was a stolen moment in a world that was not theirs, only to be brutally interrupted when the earth started shaking.

He fell and fell until he hit the floor, landing less than softly on his back, the wind getting knocked out of him completely.
“Are you okay?” Her voice sounded so distant.
Slowly he opened his eyes and looked straight into hers. She had knelt next to him and was looking him over for possible injuries: “Are you okay?” She asked again.
“What the fuck happened?” Tyler hissed through gritted teeth, turning his head to break eyecontact.
“You fell out of the tree,” John chuckled. “Like a huge acorn.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t helped,” he glared at Cameron who was watching him intently. “What? I was ripe for the plucking and you shook the tree, right?”
“I don’t understand, sir,” Cameron answered while she tilted her head a little.
“Never expected you to understand, tin can,” he snorted with contempt while he struggled to sit up and save some of his dignity.
“Easy, you took quite a dive,” Sarah said with some concern while she reached out to help him.
“No shit... Get off,” he barked, pushing her helping hands away.
“I would let her help you if I were you,” John said good-naturedly. “Or prepare yourself for a tirade twice the size of the Titanic.”
“John,” Sarah warned her son with a touch of amusement to her voice.
He rolled his eyes in annoyance: “Like I need reminding,” he muttered in a mere whisper.
“What?” Sarah frowned confused.
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “Couldn’t you have at least cushioned the fall?” He asked while he glared at Cameron again. “Pavement versus human… I lost… Again.”
“Too bad, sir. I was most sure you would win,” Cameron stated with a faked crooked smile.
“John didn’t forget to program you with his sense of humor,” he remarked with a wry smile.
“You have the same sense of humor, sir,” Cameron said, tilting her head a little again.
He could feel their eyes rest on him like they were expecting something from him, like he would have the answers to all their questions. Biting his tongue to keep him from howling in pain, he was once again reminded of the infernal pain in his shoulders as he tried to get to his feet.
“Cameron, bring him inside,” Sarah ordered determined.