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Terminator: Genisys and Revelations

Epilogue: Dark Fate

The Terminator has dug the grave quickly, and fashioned a wooden headstone in a similar amount of time.

Only two words carved into this marker – Sarah Connor. No years for the girl from another time. No inscription for the girl from another world. Few words from those gathered as well, for they had known her for the duration of a day. Muted farewells and no prayers, for if God resides in Heaven, he has long let Earth go to Hell. Even before the fire, and the End of Days. There is nothing to be said, for the road to the future is long, and its salvation is paved for by actions, not words.

The Terminator tells them it will load the 4WD – they've lingered her long enough. The REV 9 is still after them. Judgement Day is coming, and unless they stop it, the people of the world will meet fates far worse than the girl they've just buried. It heads off, the sound of a barking dog following it. For days ago, Legion has let loose the hounds of war, and what better than a similar soldier to face them?

Grace heads after the machine – she has no interest in this. Her future is not the girl's. Her enemy is not hers. She's seen hundreds of people die, and as long as Danielle Ramos is kept alive, hundreds more can afford to die as well. The needs of the future outweigh the needs of the present and today, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

Dani leaves not long after. She comprehends so little of this. Machines. Time travel. Doppelgangers. All she understands is that apparently, she has to be kept alive. For her sake, and for the sake of all mankind. Grace has told her this. That Judgement Day is coming. But casting a final look at the headstone, she tells herself…that she has to do it. For the sake of the woman whose hand she held as she died. For everyone living in this world, and for all those yet to be born.

Long shadows are cast over the last two who stand there. Man and woman. Mother and son. Eyes old, eyes weary – death has returned to their worlds, and death had taken another. The one named John Connor looks at the older woman. Sarah Connor. Wearing a flak jacket and dark sunglasses, while his clothes are simply 'normal.' A taste of a life that was denied to him from the moment he took first breath within this world. Life he dared dream he could take, before steel and death returned to his time.

"I know she wasn't my mother," he says

She looks at him.

"But seeing her die…it felt losing you again." She gives him a look, and he adds, "when they took you from me. When they took me away."

No more words are exchanged between mother and son. Just a final nod from the son, and the silence of the mother. Tacit acknowledgement of all that still binds them…and the gulfs that will exist forever. The fighter. The leader. Wandering through time like a pair of vagabonds.

The mother watches the son as he walks off towards the vehicle that awaits them. To those that are ready to drive down the highway that leads to the future. However, she is not yet ready. She stands here alone, as she has in this place so many times. The people who lived here have moved on. The girl who once come here had grown up – she, who came here so many years ago that she might live and bring new life into this world, knowing that the girl she once was had also come here to die. The girl, now a woman, who stands at the gravestone of her younger self, silent shame caught in the twilight breeze. Looking at the marker of one who fought as hard as she had. One who had run, but always faced the future. One whom Sarah Connor couldn't help but look upon in regret. Seeing who she had been. Who she could never be. And reminded of what she would always have to do. Things said that she could never take back, her only solace being that Sarah Connor hadn't died alone. Sarah Connor, the girl who lived, had come to the same place to die twice.

She draws a knife from her belt and kneels down in front of the grave. A knife that she had used years ago to carve two words into a place where she had rested, and dreamt of the future. A knife that she holds in her hands again. A knife which she uses to carve two words into the headstone before her, under the name of Sarah Connor. Words for the one buried here. Words for herself. Words for all those who have given their lives for the future, and all those yet to come.

NO FATE

She rises to her feet and walks away, under the light of the setting sun.

The End

A/N

"Da da dum, da dum dum." Oh. Wait. This isn't a movie.

Anyway, that's that. Thanks to the people who reviewed. By way of shameless plugging, I do have another Terminator story on my "to write" list (Veiled Gauntlet, detailed on my homepage), but that's a long way off. Like, a really long way off. Right now, as far as multi-chapters go, I'm kind of at this point where the only ones I write are ones that were originally oneshots. But as to what I'm working on now, there's a case of a 'traditional' multi-chaptered story (All the World's a Stage, a Firefly story that I've been working on for well over a year at this point), and one of those "once a oneshot, now a multi-chapter" stories titled A Song of Ice and Fire. Which isn't actually based on Game of Thrones, but My Little Pony. Because reasons.