Knowing

"I know a lot of people kid. I don't know you."

He stares. They both stare actually, but that doesn't make their gazes identical. The man stares in simple curiosity, the boy stares in shock.

He doesn't know, he thinks. He doesn't know me.

The boy's mind races. Far faster than that of any CPU, but far less efficient. How can he not know? Derek Reese, his uncle, the one who recognized him even before official introductions. The man who...died.

He realizes...it's not the same Derek. It couldn't be. The Derek he knew was shot, "terminated" so to speak. He died just over a decade than his original self, the man before him, was born. How could he have thought that they were one and the same?

He doesn't know.

"Anybody know the name John Connor?" original Derek asks, turning back to face the Resistance soldier who'd previously been aiming a rifle at humanity's saviour. Or at least supposedly humanity's saviour, because the teen has always been told two things in life. That it's his destiny to lead humanity to victory over the machines and "there is now fate for what we make for ourselves."

He always preferred to believe the latter. It was so much more appealing than a messiah complex. And how could destiny and the absence of fate co-exist anyway?

He doesn't know. Nor does the Resistance soldier in regards to knowing someone by the name of John Connor either.

It's the future. He's not in it, or at least the version that he was told he would become. He's free. He isn't fated to lead the Resistance in war, because given the presence of these humans now, it's clear that they've managed to do fine without him. He isn't the saviour of Man! He doesn't have a special destiny! He's escaped his fate!

...so why doesn't he feel relieved?

He doesn't know.

Derek turns back to him, clearly amused by this turn of events. A bumbling baby and seemingly a stupid one at that, somehow able to survive this world despite his lack of intelligence.

"Well...you know what?" he asks. "I think you're going to be famous."

What? the newcomer wonders. How can I be famous? I've escaped my fate and-...

"My brother's back and you're wearing his coat."

Silence. Both in mind and mouth. Some things don't need saying. Some things are too large for the mind.

Kyle Reese is one of those things.

The boy turns around, seeing another group of Resistance fighters making their way down the dark hallway. Like a beacon of light, a beacon of hope, a man leads them. A man that the boy recognizes instantly, despite knowing him only through the stories his mother told and seeing him at the park with his then-uncle. A man that the boy senses his kinship with immediately. A man that the time traveller instantly recognizes as Kyle Reese-his father.

The recognition isn't mutual.

Kyle Reese doesn't know him. How could he? The boy in front of him isn't a leader, one of those rare individuals who's remembered throughout time rather than casually forgotten after inevitably being on the receiving end of the machines' arsenal, as all soldiers meet in the end. The runt looks at him with a combination of surprise, hurt and for some bizarre reason, recognition, but he thinks little of it. All those close to him eventually die. He doesn't even bother looking at their pictures on memorial walls anymore and hasn't held such an image in his hand in years.

The boy knows this. But yet he's ignorant.

He's ignorant because of hope.

He's ignorant of how different this future is.

And seeing what looks like Cameron walk by his former father, only to pat a dog as if spitting on what hope he had of seeing a familiar face that recognized him in return, of the hope that she made it through the time displacement field and ended up elsewhere. The future world is one without hope and within seconds, the former saviour of mankind is no exception.

The boy knows now. He understands. He's been reborn. He no longer knows what the future holds for him, but unlike his earlier life, this is no longer a source of comfort. Because while there may be "no fate but what we make," the fate he's made for himself is worse than anything Skynet could have created. He ran from destiny and paid the price. He knows now, knows the truth...

Run too far...run from those who love you...

...and all you have left is yourself.

This is how it feels to be John Connor.

Forever.