Cameron waited.

As dusk began its descent into darkness, Cameron sat in the truck in a parking lot across the street from the Good Shepherd Shelter for battered women and children, feeling every second pass as if it was one more than Sarah had to spare. She felt like there was something she should be doing, somewhere else she should be, anywhere but here, wasting time Sarah didn’t have.

She dropped her hand from the steering wheel to the gun in her lap, wondering if the touch of cold steel against her skin would center her the way it always seemed to center Sarah, but it didn't work. Perhaps that comfort was a luxury reserved only for the wielder, rather than the weapon itself.

There were humans who said the purpose of a weapon was determined by the person holding it. Cameron's function had been as transmutable as the different hands she had been shaped by, commanded by. Skynet had created her to kill, John had commanded her to protect, and Sarah had asked her to fight, but she had always been bound to her purpose, a purpose determined by something outside of herself. Now that binding was fraying, threatening to leave her without anyone's guidance save her own, and for the first time in her existence, Cameron had to navigate the myriad conflicting interests and emotions alone. First, programming and then Sarah had grounded her through this journey and provided her a way home. Now, she just felt lost.

Fierce protectiveness, the strongest feeling she had ever known, urged her to lay waste to the building. With the gun in her hand, or even without it, Cameron could simply go in and take what she had come for hours ago. But there would be consequences, consequences she couldn’t afford to incur. Security was of utmost importance; Cameron had always made that very clear and followed the dictates of that simple rule, ruthlessly if need be. The mission superseded personal desires, always. She had never been able to grasp why that was so hard for humans to understand.

Until now.

Pros and cons, scales and balances, degrees of risk and possible gains, the stock and trade of terminators… it was all gone. Overshadowed by a pair of feverish green eyes and an unknown illness that was threatening to take away the first thing Cameron had ever wanted for herself.

The clock on the dashboard ticked over to 8: 17, and the last hazy pink and orange glimmers of sunset faded into nothingness as Cameron's target finally made an appearance.

The blonde woman left the shelter and trod wearily down the steps and across the street as if instead of merely leaving for the day, she had packed the entire building up and taken it with her. Even from a distance, Cameron could see that she was exhausted. The bright orange medical bag hanging from her shoulder looked like it was dragging her down, making a short trip to the parking lot into a journey.

She passed the truck, heading deeper into the parking lot, and Cameron slid purposefully out after her.

Fishing through her purse for her keys, the woman didn’t seem to notice the footsteps approaching from behind or Cameron's reflection in the driver's side window. It wasn't until Cameron’s shadow blocked the weak glow of the generator-powered lights that the woman realized someone was there.

"Dr. Felicia Burnett?"

The doctor stiffened, her heart leaping and her hand closing around the can of pepper spray in her purse. She started to turn, but Cameron was inside her guard before she could pull the useless weapon free of her bag. Knocking the can aside, Cameron clamped one hand over the doctor's mouth and pressed the muzzle of the gun into her back with the other.

"Come with me if you want to live."

 

ACT I

After leaving John to sleep, Allison waited for Sierra in her quarters.

She'd been there before, but only briefly, and never by herself. She looked around now in something akin to shock. She'd known Sierra liked to draw, but the red-headed soldier had always been very private, and Allison hadn't pushed. They hadn't been close enough for prying. Or at least, Allison had never thought they were. There had always been something… but then she'd assumed it had more to do with being two of the very few young women bearing arms for the resistance than anything personal.

That was before she'd known who Sierra was.  

The Spider wouldn’t have wasted her time watching over a relatively insignificant soldier for nothing more than female solidarity.

Allison stood in front of a portrait that could have been her twin and wondered, not for the first time why Tango and Prophet had included her in their private circle. She wasn't particularly special or talented. Derek and Kyle were old friends, but neither of them were highly decorated, either. How exactly had their leaders chosen who to trust and who to watch?

Had John told them? The John that didn’t exist anymore, the one who should have been Tango, Prophet and Sierra all rolled into one, the one who would have reprogrammed machines to do the work of an army?

Allison was having a little trouble wrapping her head around that. Time travel… it seemed like such a fairytale. A magical way out of the hell she'd grown up in. And yet, it hadn't been a happily ever after for those that had tried it. If John was telling the truth, then time travel in his timeline had become nothing more than an endless game of one-upmanship. The machines sent back terminators to kill him or anyone that posed a threat, and then John sent someone back to protect them. Repeat as needed. He'd sent soldiers first, and then machines.

He'd sent a machine named Cameron. A machine Sierra had known, and one John had come to the future looking for. Allison stared at her mirror-self and remembered the way he had looked at her that first night, as if for a moment he thought he'd found something he'd lost. Sierra looked at her that way, too.

"It's not you," Sierra confirmed wearily, shutting the door behind her. She didn't sound surprised to find Allison in her room, but then, of course, she wouldn't. She'd probably been getting regular updates.

"I know." Allison turned around, clasping her hands behind her back to conceal their trembling. She shifted her gaze back to the sketch. "Will you tell me about her?" 

Half-hidden by shadows, Sierra still looked like she'd been dragged through the killing fields. Her clothing was dirty and rumpled; she had a smear of ash or dirt across one cheekbone and a scratch along her jaw. Dried bloodstains along the hem of her shirt made Allison wonder if she'd even stopped long enough to change or get cleaned up since they'd brought Prophet back to base.

She didn't want to talk about Cameron. Allison could see that. Sierra had never liked talking about the past, especially her own, and yet her room was practically a shrine to it. It was a contradiction that Allison had yet to figure out. She had always assumed Sierra was aloof by nature. Sierra had the respect of the entire base under her own name, and all of humanity as the Spider, but no real friends. She'd just never seemed to need or want any. Knowing what she knew now, Allison suspected that it was fear that had made Sierra hide herself away behind a false name and keep everyone at a distance. Fear that John's loss would become hers, that anyone she loved could be taken away and used against her.

"She was my teacher." Sierra crossed the room to stand beside Allison, running her fingers along the crumbling edge of the portrait. "My aunt, my friend… Prophet brought me to them to keep me safe after my 'mother' left. They took me in… trained me, loved me, and then they died trying to protect me."

There was a world of pain in that simple history. "They?" asked Allison.

"John's mother." A ghost of a wry grin came and went on Sierra's face. "Sarah Connor. She didn't want me there at all, not at first. I thought she was going to kill Prophet when he showed up with me. But she let me stay, and she fought him to make sure I could take care of myself."

"He didn't want you to be a soldier."

"No." Sierra dropped her hand and turned to lean against the wall. "He only wanted to keep me safe." She lifted intense blue eyes to Allison's. "But no one is ever safe."

Especially those you love… the unspoken words were almost as loud in the preternaturally quiet room as the spoken ones. 

"Why me?"  Allison had to ask. "Why did they use me to make Cameron?"

"I don’t know," Sierra admitted after a moment's tense silence. "Cameron wouldn't talk about it, but you and John must have been close if he trusted you enough that a machine with your face could get to him."

"Oh." Close could mean so many things.  If everything John and the others were saying was true, then in the timeline Cameron had come from, John would have been in his early forties when it had happened. Close probably didn't mean…and yet… war could make something like a twenty-five year age difference seem a lot less important. Did it matter? Maybe. Morbid curiosity forced Allison to ask, "Did she kill me?"

"Probably." Sierra crossed the room and dropped down onto the narrow bed. "But she changed, she evolved. Whatever she'd done in the past, the Cameron I knew wasn't a killer."

"Like John Henry," Allison surmised, and Sierra nodded. "Is that why you watch me? Because of what she did? Because it might happen again?"

Sierra looked away, pulling her legs up onto the bed and tucking her knees against her chest. "She asked me to take care of you, after Sarah died. I think she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it herself."

Allison would have liked to insist that she could take care of herself, but clearly, she hadn't, at least not that time. She wasn't like Sierra, she hadn’t been raised or trained by a machine and she couldn't claim two of them as friends. They were still the worst demons of her nightmares, so if someone else wanted to get between her and them, she wasn't going to take umbrage at it. Though facing them side by side had a nicer ring to it.  

"John asked me to go back with him," Allison blurted. She hadn't been sure if she was going to tell Sierra about John's offer, but a confidence given demanded one in return. It would have felt like treason not to inform her senior officer about John's hidden plans if she hadn't been sure Sierra had already figured out he was going to attempt a return to the past. But this… this was a grey area. It was desertion, and yet it wasn't. If John succeeded, then this timeline wouldn't exist for her to have run from, so did it really count? She knew what her conscience said, but she also knew she was afraid. Not of the war that had been her life for over a decade, but of a future where a machine wore her face.  

"Has he?" Sierra voice was husky, and she didn’t look up from her knees. "Are you going to go?"

"I don't know yet." Allison stepped away from the wall, towards Sierra, but she stopped before she got to the bed. She didn't really know why she had come here. She wasn't exactly asking permission, and there was no real reason for Sierra to care one way or the other. They weren't friends, they were comrades. Each would have had the other’s back until death, but they barely knew each other.  All Allison knew was that when John had told her he was going and had asked her to come along, she'd thought of Sierra. "Do you think I should?"

"Why ask me?"

"Because, you…" Allison struggled to find an answer for the same question she'd asked herself. "You're the Spider! You have dozens of eyes that don’t even know who they're reporting to, and you still watch over me yourself."

Sierra looked up, and for a moment, they weren't soldiers, they weren't commanding officer and subordinate, they were just two people caught in the same whirlpool and who had no idea what they were to each other. Allison wasn't sure what she saw in the older woman's eyes before the wall went back up, but it was strong. It felt like grief and yearning at the same time, there for a breath and then gone in an instant. 

"It's late, you should go." Vulnerability cast off like a yoke, Sierra was every inch the Spider again. Her blue eyes shuttered, she rose and opened the door as casually as if they'd just finished a pleasant chat about the weather.

Allison hesitated, but there was no room for argument. The conversation wasn't just over, it had been repudiated. "Will I see you tomorrow?" she asked, pausing in the doorway.

Sierra couldn't soften, not because she’d gone cold, but rather she'd just become unreachable. But she came back a little ways to crook the corner of her mouth. "I'll be around," she allowed.

"Okay…" With a last uncertain look, Allison left her there and headed for her own bunk. Dawn was mere hours away, but she didn't think she'd be sleeping tonight.

Sierra watched her go, unsurprised when Duke padded out and plopped down on the floor. The dog hadn't been in the room a moment ago, but there had been an old wooden trunk across from her bed that Sierra had never seen before. Allison hadn't noticed, either, and for that, Sierra was grateful.

"If you hurt her," she said to the illusion of a dog once Allison was out of earshot. "I will hunt you down and destroy you."    

Weaver stood and took a few steps before turning and stretching out her forelegs in a canine bow. Then she shook herself and trotted off down the hall after Allison. 

*****

 

"Don't scream." Cameron emphasized the order with a sharp prod of the gun against Felicia's spine and the doctor nodded, lips pressed tightly together under Cameron's hand.

Cameron hadn't been there when the doctor had pulled a bullet out of Sarah's leg in a cold hospital morgue, but Derek Reese had. He'd given Cameron a name and a rough description a few weeks before he'd died, uncharacteristically blabbing the entire story out over a case of beer. It had shaken him, facing Sarah's mortality and bringing John's parentage out into the open, shaken him enough that he gotten drunk and spilled his guts to a machine.

A name wasn't much to go on in a city the size of Los Angeles, but Cameron had persevered, eventually tracking Felicia down through a volunteer program that connected doctors who wanted to help with charity organizations like The Good Shepherd. And so Cameron had waited outside of the center, watching for the woman whose photo had been pictured on their volunteer’s page. Cameron had promised not to bring Sarah to a hospital, she hadn't promised not to bring the hospital to Sarah.

Freeing Felicia's mouth, Cameron took her arm instead and led her across the lot towards the truck. She tried to be gentle, but the need to get back to Sarah's side was dragging on her like a heavy chain around her neck. Felicia stumbled, and Cameron yanked her upright, ignoring the doctor's sharp inhalation of pain and the way her heart skittered in her chest like a frightened rabbit.

Guilt surfaced, but Cameron shoved it aside, urging the doctor up through the driver's side of the cab and over into the passenger's seat. Felicia didn't resist. Her vital signs indicated mild shock, but she was coping better than Cameron had expected.

"What do you want from me?" the doctor asked after they had pulled out onto the street, grey eyes slipping from the road to the gun in Cameron's lap.

"You're a doctor." Cameron closed her fingers around the weapon, searching for the sense of balance that was eluding her. "I have a patient."

*****

 

John had barely closed the door behind Allison and flopped back down on his bed before there was another knock, this one somehow managing to sound polite despite the hour. Drained from spilling his guts, John considered ignoring it, but along with the politeness, there was a certain sense of patience in those three light taps that suggested whoever was out there was prepared to wait.

"Fine," he muttered under his breath. He wasn't sure who he was expecting to see on the other side of the door, but while he wouldn't have guessed it was Prophet, the grizzled leader wasn't exactly a surprise either.

"John."

"Prophet."

They looked at each other for a moment or two.

"May I come in?"

John blinked. "Yeah." He stepped back into his room and left the door to Prophet who closed it neatly behind himself. "Make yourself comfortable."

"Not in this lifetime," Prophet said with a soft chuckle, but he sat down on the edge of the bed anyway. "Comfort is something we all left behind a long time ago."

"I suppose you think that's my fault, too." John regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but he couldn't take them back, or deny the defensiveness behind them.

"No." Prophet gave no sign that he thought John's accusation was inappropriate, but he'd always been able to do that, project perfect calm, even when the situation was fucked all to hell. "I don’t. But I think maybe you do."

"I didn't…" Unable to settle, John paced back and forth in the small space. "I didn't mean to run, okay? I didn't mean to dump this all on you, Tango and Sierra, I just wanted Cameron back."

"And how'd that work out for you?" Prophet was still calm, still serene, but there was a trace of bite to his blunt question. "She's gone, John. So is Sarah, and so are most of the people on this planet. Now that's not all your fault. They could have died, and the end of the world could have come even if you'd stayed, but you can't know that, can you?"

"What if I can…?" John bit off his words and dropped down onto the trunk opposite Prophet, leaning forward with his hands clasped and his elbows on his knees. "What if I went back? You were there… would it fix anything? Could I save them?"

"You're asking me to tell the future of a past that didn’t happen, John. I can't do that. I can't look at one moment and say, yes, that's the moment John's presence could have changed things."

"Give me your best guess then!" John scrubbed his hands back through his hair. "I can't stay here not knowing… if there was something I could have done…"

Prophet let the moment hang between them for a few minutes before he spoke again, waiting until John was almost shaking with the tension.

"Who are you planning on going back for, John? Who is it you're trying to save? Them, or yourself? Your mom stepped out of that time bubble and let you go. Cameron sent you here on purpose to keep you safe. Neither of them wanted to force this burden on you anymore. What's done is done, John. They made their choices."   

"And I made mine, is that what you're saying?"

"No," Prophet said again. "I'm saying you need to be honest with yourself about why you want to do this, or Sierra won't help you. They don’t need you back in their lives if your only motivation is guilt and jealousy. Guilt and resentment poisoned your relationship with your mother then, and it will do the same thing again unless you've grown up enough to get past it. You can’t help them if you're not prepared to face the consequences of returning."

Stung, John opened his mouth to answer, but Prophet levelled him with a look that suggested he give it some serious thought first. John's initial reaction was to insist that his motives were his own, and none of anyone else's business, but the truth was, they were. However he felt about it, Sierra had obviously loved his mother and Cameron, and as far as he could tell, she was doing his job as well, or better, than he would have been doing it. He didn’t imagine he'd have been any happier to have taken on a life-altering destiny, only to have some whiny kid show up and sulk about not being important enough anymore. 

It was in that moment, with the man who had chased him and his mother across half of America, sitting across from James Ellison and asking him not to ruin his adoptive daughter's past for nothing more than pique, that the future finally became real to John. He hadn't realized until now that it hadn't been real, but Sierra was right… John was still thinking of this as his story, and his trip to the future as nothing more than a side plot that would eventually lead back to the main storyline where he was the hero again.

Why did he really want to go back?

Because that was where he was supposed to be.

The answer was there as soon as he let go of the tangle of anger and petulance that had been turning him inside out, and it was clean and uncomplicated. He didn’t belong here. It wasn't about destiny or being a saviour. It wasn't even about the people he'd left behind. This simply wasn't his time. He belonged in the past. Whatever that meant, whatever it changed, he could accept it.

Prophet must have seen the realization in his face, because he nodded once and rose from the bed. "I'll leave you to get a good night's sleep. We'll talk again in the morning."

"Prophet…" John stopped him at the door. "Can I ask you something?"

Prophet turned around slowly. "You can ask me anything, John."

"My mom…" John stood, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. "Tango said, back when I first got here, that she'd had someone at the end. Was it you?"

Prophet actually looked surprised. "Tango told you that?" he shook his head. "It wasn't me. Sarah and I lived together, worked together and fought together, but there was always a wall there. I don't think she ever completely forgave me for our past. There were only two people that she was really close to after you left, Sierra and…" he paused, the line between his brows deepening. "Well, that's not my place to say. I suspect your return may change a few things."

"You're seriously not going to tell me?"

Prophet smiled slowly. "No, I think I'll let you figure that one out for yourself. Goodnight, John." He turned to leave, opening the door to reveal yet a third visitor, this one still walking back and forth in front of the door as if he hadn't decided whether or not to actually knock. "Kyle," Prophet greeted the soldier with a clap on the shoulder. "Come on in, I was just on my way out." 

*****

 

Sarah spent most of the day fading in and out of consciousness. When night finally settled, bringing with it the suburban peace left behind by cars, bikes, and shouting children when they quit the streets, she managed to struggle to some degree of consciousness. The bedroom was close and stuffy, pungent with the heavy smell of sweat and air trapped too long indoors. Sarah took a deep breath of it anyway, tasting the bitter reality of her illness on the back of her tongue.

She was sick.

It wasn't a nebulous future possibility anymore. It was here and now, and even if this wasn't the end, it was a sample of what the end would be like. Before Cameron had come back, before she had told her how she would die, Sarah had never imagined herself dying weak and helpless in bed. Now she couldn't imagine dying any other way, and the thought terrified her.

With that image wrapping itself around her throat and threatening to choke her, Sarah struggled out from under the blankets, determined to at least open the window and get a little fresh air. Holding on to first the bed and then the wall for support, she made it as far as the dresser before her left arm gave way and her legs folded. She managed to lower herself awkwardly to the carpet instead of falling, but shame and frustration still burned in the back of her throat. For seventeen years, she had defined herself by her strength… and now it was gone, completely and utterly.

Sitting with her back against the dresser, Sarah pulled her legs up to her chest and dropped her head to her knees. She almost wanted to cry, a craving for the release of her frustration and terror, but there were no tears. All the spare moisture in her body had already sweated itself out into her sheets. Aching with fever and fear, she closed her eyes and willed the whole damned world to go away.

She was slipping over the edge into sleep again when a knock on the door dragged her back. "Come in…" Sarah rasped, expecting Cameron. She caught herself tucking her tangled hair behind her ears and trying to straighten her shirt, only to give it up in disgust once she realized what she was doing. The end of the world was coming, she very likely wouldn't live to see it, and here she was, sitting on the floor because she couldn’t stand, and fretting over what the machine would think of her appearance.  Humans really were irrational fools.

But it wasn't Cameron who edged sideways into the room carrying a tray with orange juice and a covered bowl.

"James…"

Sarah's mingled surprise and disappointment must have shown in her voice, because Ellison raised a single dark brow as he settled the tray onto the side table. "You were expecting someone else?"

"No," Sarah lied. "Why?"

"You tell me." He took the cover off the bowl, releasing a puff of steam carrying the rich salty smell of chicken soup. "Is there something going on with that machine that I should know about?"  

"Leave it alone, James." Sarah tried to make the request into a warning, but even to her ears, it sounded like a plea. "I told you, she's fine."

"You did." Ellison came around the end of the bed and offered Sarah a hand. What he didn't say was how can you be sure? The question was there in his eyes, but Ellison was trusting her, for now. Sarah wondered how long that would last. How would he react to Sarah basing her belief in Cameron's loyalty on nothing more substantial than the machine's word? Or if he found out what had happened between threadbare sheets in a motel miles away.

It didn’t matter right now. Sarah accepted the help and the trust, letting Ellison bring her to her feet and steer her back to the bed. She settled back against the headboard and cradled her aching arm against her ribs while he maneuvered a standing tray over her legs. The entire operation was awkward, neither of them entirely comfortable with their roles. Sarah missed Cameron's straightforward touch keenly. The terminator was no more of a nurse than Ellison, but for all the turmoil between them, Sarah was more comfortable being tended to by the machine. "How's Savannah holding up?" she asked to fill the silence, dipping her spoon into the soup even though the idea of eating made her stomach roil. "Is Cameron with her?"

"She's fine." Ellison sat down in the armchair beside the bed, the one Cameron had been using throughout the day. "She went to bed about an hour ago. She wanted to say goodnight but you were sleeping."    

Sarah put the spoonful of soup in her mouth, grimacing as her entire body seemed to rebel against the idea of swallowing. She got it down through sheer will alone. "And Cameron?" she asked, both to postpone another mouthful and because she didn’t understand why the machine would have left her to Ellison's ministrations. Once she'd accepted that Sarah meant it when she said no hospitals, Cameron had carried her up to bed and watched over her, not letting anyone disturb her.

"I have no idea."

The spoon dropped forgotten to the tray. "She's not here?"

"She left just after Savannah fell asleep. I don’t know where she was going."

"You didn't ask?"

"I asked." Ellison shifted on the chair, anger entering the line of his shoulders. "She was disinclined to share her plans with me. I thought you might know."

That explained the suspicion. Sarah shook her head. "I don't. She didn’t say anything to you?"

"Only that it would be very bad for my health if I let anything happen to you or Savannah while she was gone."

And that explained the nursemaid act… Sarah pushed the tray away, suddenly too nauseous to even try to eat. Cameron was acting on her own again, flaunting her independence. No wonder Ellison was worried. At the motel, Sarah had accepted that if they were ever going to be able to work together, she had to stop treating Cameron like a machine, stop expecting her to blindly follow orders like a long-legged automaton. In theory, in the dark of the night after a brutal day with Sarah's soul crying out for someone she could lean on, that had made sense. The reality of trusting Cameron to act in the best interest of the mission when she was in no position to monitor her, let alone stop her, was more daunting. It must have been twice as unnerving for Ellison who had no reason to believe that Cameron had any loyalty to him whatsoever.

Ellison took the tray without another word, folding up the legs and putting it back beside the bed. The uneaten food was covered up again and he was halfway out the door before Sarah called him back.

"James…?"

"Yes, Sarah?"

"If she calls or comes back…"

"I'll let you know," Ellison finished for her. The questions were there in his voice again, but Sarah knew he wouldn't ask them. There was too much between them for him to ask anything of her or for her to offer. It didn’t seem fair that Sarah could forgive a machine for trying to kill her, but she couldn’t forgive a good man for doing his job. Maybe it just wasn't fair, maybe it was just human. 

"Thank you," Sarah said to the closed door, but it didn't answer her. 

*****

 

Once Prophet was out of sight and the door was closed behind them, Kyle opened his mouth to speak but John held up a shaking hand. “You don’t have to say anything,” he murmured, not sure if he could stomach either the rejection or disappointed acceptance he was sure was coming. “You don’t have to tell me what you know of me. What you think of me.” He swallowed. “You have every right to be ashamed if you know the truth. And if you don’t…” John felt a traitorous tear slip down his cheek. “Then maybe that’s for the best.”

“John,” Kyle whispered.

“I’ve wasted this time,” John admitted. “As screwed up as my coming here was, it gave me a chance to see you… to meet you, the man I always wondered about. And I blew it. Just like I’ve blown everything else. Because now we’re out of time, and I’ll never be able to…” John’s words abruptly ended as Kyle wrapped one hand around his neck and crushed him against his chest in a hug that felt like coming home.

“Dad…” The word slipped out as John’s hands fisted in the back of Kyle’s coat and he hung on, a helpless sob escaping him. “I’m so sorry,” he whimpered, breathing in the scent of Kyle’s fatigues, gun oil, and the smell that was his father alone, letting it fill the hole left by the release of eighteen years worth of stifled emotions.

Kyle leaned back and looked at John, simply looked at him for a full minute. There were tears in his eyes as he finally took John in without any expectations in the way. All the similarities they shared. All the differences. “I didn’t want to believe,” he confessed. “When Prophet told me about you… about what you would become… I didn’t want my son to have to be that man.”

When John started to argue, Kyle shook his head. “And then I saw you, standing there in my coat… even if Prophet hadn’t shown me your picture, I still would have known you were my son.”

“My picture?” John whispered.

Kyle slowly let him go to reach into the front pocket on his jacket, pulling out a creased photograph. He unfolded it reverently before passing it to his son. “You and your mom.”

John’s fingers shook as he took the photograph, seeing his mother’s face for the first time in a year. They weren’t even looking at the camera, but they were smiling at each other with the sun setting behind them on a warm summer’s day. A tear splashed across his mother’s features and John wiped it away with his thumb, recognizing the last house they’d called a home in the background. They'd been at a barbeque… John managed a watery smile at the memory of the night his mom had caved and agreed to let them all go to Kacy’s to see the new baby. He could almost smell the grass, feel the heat on his face. His mother’s voice echoed in his head and he felt an answering ache in his heart.

“She’s beautiful,” Kyle murmured. “You both are.” He swallowed. “The family I should have had, but never will.”

John’s head came up at the naked anguish in his father’s voice. As hard as it was on him, John couldn’t imagine what this was like for Kyle. “I will make you proud of me,” he vowed. “And I will make sure that you and Derek don't have to live this life. That no one will.”

Kyle smiled sadly at him. “It’s an honorable life we lead, John.”

They stared at each other as John slowly nodded. “I know,” he whispered. “But you’ve had to lead this way of life one too many times already.”

“I suppose we all have,” Kyle said around another rough swallow. “I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t disappointed in your choices…”

“I deserted,” John finished for him, acknowledging for the first time how his doomed rescue attempt had looked from the outside.

“No." Kyle shook his head. "Not exactly… you thought you were doing the right thing. Prophet never said why…" Hesitating, Kyle rubbed at the back of his neck, as if trying to find the right words.  "He never told me about Cameron, or how you felt about her. I guess he saw it as another strike against you, risking everything for a machine, but maybe that's why it was supposed to be you in charge; you're different, you see things differently than the rest of us. I wish I had given you the chance to explain before now, but…”

“But then it would make all of this real. Me, my mom, time travel…” John guessed and had his hunch confirmed when Kyle looked up and nodded. “I always meant to go back,” John promised. “I didn't even think, when I jumped, that I might not be able to… I was stupid."

"You were in love," Kyle corrected him without judgment, and John shrugged an acknowledgement.

They were both quiet a moment.

“I guess it doesn't matter now,” Kyle said gently. He bit his lip before easing the photograph out of John’s hands and studying it in the low light. “I carry this with me for luck,” he admitted with a rough smirk. “Reminds me of what I’m fighting for.” He swallowed before glancing back up at his son. “Can you tell me about her? About yourself?”

John felt his throat tighten at the request. “If you’ll do the same for me," he agreed. "My mom always made sure I knew you were a hero, but she knew you such a short time.”

“I’m not a hero,” Kyle protested, thinking of himself as anything but a person to admire.

“You were to her. You always have been to me.” John cleared his throat as Kyle simply looked at him, a father memorizing every detail of the son he would soon never see again. John felt their impending separation beginning to rend loose another part of his soul, but he knew he wouldn’t trade this moment, this night, for anything. He laughed a little. “Derek once implied my mom was as tough as nuclear nails.”

Kyle smiled at the description. “She would have to be, to get my attention,” he said with a grin for his son. His face slowly grew serious. “Tell me more,” he almost pleaded.

They sat down on the bed as John composed his thoughts, wondering where to begin. He decided to start at the beginning. “There's no one else like my mom,” John began, feeling something inside himself that had been raw for almost ten years, ever since the social workers had first told him his mother was insane and his entire life had been one paranoid delusion after another, finally start to heal.

*****

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