She looked at the man sitting across the table from her. He seemed so lost in thoughts and yet he was totally aware of his surroundings. A skill acquired during years and years of battle against the machines, against the tiranny of Skynet. Two big scars and numerous little ones told the story of war.
He was on edge and ate in silence. Her eyes were drawn to Derek who sat pushing his food back and forth across his plate with his fork. There was something on his mind, and she was worried that he might speak his thoughts as he sat staring at Tyler.
"So," Derek began. "Who are you gonna try to kill next? Sarah or John?"
Tyler glanced up for a second and then returned his attention to his meal.
"You could go for John's throat again?" Derek suggested. "Wouldn't be the first time."
Her heart skipped a beat and she became ultra-alert instantly. Her hand automatically reached for the cold grip of her Glock, tucked safely in the waistband of her jeans. Had they taken in the enemy?
She observed the man while he gratefully took her son's plate and emptied it on his own plate.
"You've got to be kidding me, right?" Tyler asked sharply.
"First you tried to kill my little brother. Then an attempt on the General's life," Derek said smugly.
"I wasn't in my right mind." Tyler stated coolly.
"A very good excuse for a traitor," Derek taunted.
"I am a lotta things, Reese, but I am no traitor," Tyler seethed, dropping his knife and fork, looking darkly at Derek.
"You're a fucking half-breed... Sound like a goddamn traitor to me."
"C's choice. Not mine," Tyler growled while he slammed his right fist on the table. "I would've gladly died, but C wouldn't let me."
"Yeah, yeah, poor devil," Derek grinned maliciously.
"Derek! That's enough," she finally intervened when she caught the darkening expression on Tyler's face.
Tyler rose to his feet, glared at Derek and stalked out of the house.
"Nice going, Derek," she grumbled angrily. "Who knows when or if we will see him again."
"Good riddance," Derek smiled victoriously. "Who needs a traitor?"

He opened his eyes slowly and smiled warmly when he saw her head rest on his chest. She had worn herself out a few hours ago. He brought his left hand up and tenderly played with the wild locks of her hair. When it was just the two of them, the outside world did not exist. There was no war. There was no Skynet. His mind wandered, like it always did.
If he were to exist in a world without Judgement Day, without Skynet, without the war against the machines, would he have known her? Could there ever have been a chance for them without the war pushing them together? He had known her since he was sixteen, and he had loved her since he was sixteen. But he wasn't supposed to be in a world without the future. He was part of John Connor's pet project: his mother would be from the future. Without her going back in time to fins his father, he would never be.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to clear his thoughts: there was no other world, no other future than this.
She stirred a little and a shiver of disappointment ran through his body when she raised her head. The evening was coming. Another night of heavy battles and big losses. He didn't want to get up. He didn't want to leave the safe haven that was her room. He squeezed his eyes closed and pretended to still be asleep. Maybe he would fall asleep again? And be lost in a world that wasn't his, but would grant him peace?
He could feel her disentangle herself from the sheets that had bound her close to him. In a few seconds the warmth of her body pressed against his would leave him entirely as he noticed the weight shifts next to him.
A low groan almost escaped him when she straddled his lap suddenly, her strong thighs pressing softly against his hips.
"I'm happy that at least a part of you is awake," she whispered with a sultry voice.
He looked at her through narrow slits and fought to keep a smile from his face. If Sarah Connor wanted something, she would get it, one way or another. Patiently he waited for her to make the next move, but she didn't talk or move. Confused he opened his eyes and looked at her: she was a take charge woman and it surprised him that she didn't continue with her little setup.
She was looking at him, absentmindedly playing with the dog tags around her neck. She had started to wear them shortly after they had become lovers.
"Are you okay, Connor?" He asked concerned.
She nodded and sent him a faint smile: "I'm okay... Just thinking."
"'Bout what?"
He waited patiently while she took a deep breath and was obvious searching for the right words: "Maybe this isn't the right time," she mumbled, looking away from him.
"The right time for what?"
His heart start to beat frantically and he now started to really worry. It wasn't like her to clam up like that: she always spoke her mind like no one else he had ever known.
"I should've waited for a better time," she muttered.
He sighed: "Better times? They're non-existent in this world, Connor. Carpe diem. Don't postpone till tomorrow what you can do today."
"These seven years," she paused and he could see the wheels turning in her mind. "I never thought I would ever find shelter from this world. When Reese came across time for me, it felt like I had crossed some invisible line. Like I had entered into his world, that it was him, me and the machine."
He tried not to feel jealous but every time she mentioned Reese it sent a dagger through his heart. The only consolation he had was that the kid was alive and that she was here with him and not the kid.
"When Reese died to protect me, I died. My heart was shattered into a billion pieces. He gave me John but at a cost. I was a dreamer, naive, thinking that when the machine was destroyed Reese and I could lead a normal life. That we could go to Disney World and eat hotdogs until we puked. Fortuna had other plans and I spent most part of my life on the run, trying to stop Skynet. The other Devlin, I didn't want to see what was so obvious. But he was you and you are him."
He wondered if there was a point to her words, since she did not make it easy on him in this position. It was hard to focus on what she was saying: she had aroused him and now she was stalling. It would be so easy to pin her down and take what she had offered him a few moments ago but he could tell that what she wanted to say was important. If he were to interrupt her, she might never ever say it.
"People wear masks to cover up what they are thinking or feeling," she said while she looked him in the eye. "The only person you can truly know is yourself. I've had a dozen aliases, numerous jobs but the only times I get to be me is when I'm alone or when I'm around you. Even though you don't really know me, you know me in ways I never thought someone else would know me. You know secrets I thought I would take into my grave without others knowing."
Slowly he nodded and focused on keeping his hands to his sides again. She needed to get this out of her system and it wouldn't help her if he would play the lover-card. He watched as she reached for the chain around her neck and took it off.
She took a deep breath before saying: "I never got married because I was a threat to others. I left Charlie Dixon at the altar because he didn't know my world or my future. People died because they loved me."
Blood was roaring in his veins and made it hard for him to hear her since with each word she lowered the volume of her voice, but now he understood what she had been aiming at. It wasn't that it had never crossed his mind, because it had, but he had never asked her for it. She took his right hand with the palm turned upwards, carefully placed the chain with the dog tags in it and gently pushed it closed: "I want you to wear this."
He was stunned beyond words. After opening and closing his mouth to speak, in vain, he looked at her. She was a closed book and yet her feelings could not have been more clear than now. Exchanging dog tags equalled the old tradition of marriage. It was a sign of commitment, of true commitment.
A long moment of silence followed. Seconds seemed to last minutes and he could see her doubt return. His heart was beating at a frightening speed and his thoughts were swimming in a whirlpool of emotions, disabling his speech. He felt as if he couldn’t move and his throat went dry. Her timing had been awkward: she had seduced him, causing his body to harden and strain, leaving it shouting at him to take what she so willingly offered, and then she had asked him to wear her chain and dog tags.
“It obviously was a mistake,” she muttered upset while she reached for his right hand again.
He shook his head and mumbled: “No. No, it wasn’t… You… You just caught me by surprise.”
She looked him in the eye and he could see that she wasn’t buying it. His silence has caused her determination to crumble and his heart ached for her: “Are you sure that this is what you want, Connor?”
“I thought long and hard about it, if that’s what you meant,” she grumbled, unable to hide the annoyance from her voice.
Slowly he sat up, limiting the friction between their bodies to a minimum: “I love you, Connor. I’ve always loved you. You were my favorite heroine. You are the woman my mother told me about in bedtime stories. I know them by heart,” he said while he looked her in the eye.
He could see that she didn’t follow, but it didn’t matter. Maybe he was conditioned to love her, just like Kyle Reese had been, but he didn’t care. No matter the input of others like his mother or John Connor, this love was real. They had only helped them to find their way to each other, but love could never be forced.

He sighed and looked at the house across the street. Light was streaming from the windows into the darkened street. It was so easy to forget that she wasn’t her yet.
The morning IntelliTech Base had fallen, he had died, just like he had died four years before that after helping John Connor escape from Century. However this time he had stayed dead. Emotions were useless and only weakened the possessor. He had dreamt of her, he had called for her but she had never returned.
He had become he who walks the day, the demon who killed tin cans for the sport, the devil who could turn on his own. Nano-man, half-breed, tin arm, he had heard all the bad names before. He had heard it all before, but it had never bothered him again.
Nevertheless seeing her alive, it had a caused a spark in his heart. She made him feel again. It wasn’t his mind or his physical condition that kept the nano’s in check. It was her all along.
It was true what Derek had said. He had tried to kill Kyle Reese, and he had tried to kill John Connor, but it hadn’t been him. Once the nanoattrioids would kick in, there was no more control, no more channelling, no more him.
He had died so many times already but it had never been the end for him. Wounds that would have killed any mortal man, he survived. It had not been MedCom that had kept him alive after that fateful morning, it had been Skynet tech. The nanoattrioids, making sure their host would live to see another day to go on a rampage, had.
A grin spread across his face: “What do you want, Connor?”
“You know it was me?” A woman’s voice behind him asked surprised.
“I know you. I know your walk,” he answered. “Even when you’re trying to sneak.”
Slowly he turned around and grinned at her. It did surprise him that she had found him but she had a tin can at her disposal. A quick thermal proximity scan, and she would know where he was.
“Couldn’t you have found an easier spot to observe us from?”
“So Cameron could shake me from another tree? No, thanks, once is enough,” he answered wryly.
She smiled faintly: “Cameron is just Cameron.”
“No shit,” he growled, rubbing his sore shoulder.
“Well, I wanted you to know that I’m sorry about it.”
“And you climbed all the way up here to tell me that?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Don’t worry about it,” he added in palliation. “I’ve been through a lot worse. Especially with rubber balls and tin cans on my tail.”
“Rubber balls?”
“T-6double0’s. Rubber-skinned infiltration units. Skynet’s first attempt to fool us,” he explained while he turned back to watch the house again.
He could hear her come closer: “Cameron said that you know everything there is to know about them.”
“Not everything,” he stated.
“Awesome,” she grumbled. “How to crush someone’s hope in just one sentence.”
“It’s the truth,” he defended. “Liquid metal boy.”
“The T-one-thousand?” She asked, her voice a mere whisper.
Absently he touched his left shoulder: “No, the T-one-thousand-and-one”
“And one?” She countered with a question of her own. “Did Skynet built another one, an improved version?”
“The T-one-thousand was a prototype. A high efficiency rate, developed by Skynet for interrogation and termination purposes. Its construction and development program was discontinued when it failed its mission in the past,” he replied. “Instead Skynet decided continuation of the 800 series was the best option but in the meantime it improved the T-one-thousand, making it a T-one-thousand-and-one,” he paused. “Liquid metal boy?”
“Took a hot bath at a steel mill before deciding it really didn’t like it,” she told him as she came to stand next to him. He looked at her from the corner of his eye and smiled. He know that she hadn’t looked him up for idle chat, but to get answers one way or another.
“Extreme cold. Extreme heat,” he nodded. “It’s the only things we know of as how to get rid of it.”

'Tis better to have loved and lost; Than never to have loved at all. It came from the poem LXXXV of In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Tennyson.
Words that appeared hollow to him. He had watched his friend die and die again. His friend, still among the living, seemed a ghost and nothing like the legendary fighter he had once been. Many heroes had fought and died an honorable death in the present, but his friend’s fate lay in a past long gone.
He looked at the young woman sleeping soundly next to him. Soon she would die too and be replaced by an immediate replacement infiltrator. A deep sigh escaped his lungs and she stirred a little. For a moment he feared that he had woken her up but the steady breathing told him that he hadn’t. He smiled with relief.
The fall of the Resistance’s most secret base had underlined one thing again: no one was ever safe. Not from the war, not from the machines, not from love.

Chapter 6: Out Of Time, Out Of Place

Chapter 8: The Lost City