Disclaimer: I don't own Terminator. Okay, confession time. I loved Terminator Genisys, especially the family dynamic between the Connors and Kyle, and that Kyle survived. John's fate broke my heart, so I decided to do my own. Another awesome rewrite of Genisys, if anyone else wants a similar story, is 'The Future is Never Set' by Shraider. I highly recommend it. Anyway, enjoy! 18/4/2019: Updated the story to make it flow better.

Chapter One

Mexico, February 28 1985 (original timeline)

Sarah had always assumed, in the back of her mind, that one day she would be a mother. It was just one of those things. The sky is blue, she was allergic to apples and one day she would be a mother.

But she had also thought that she would be a wife at the time, that her husband would be at her side as she gave birth in a hospital, pumped up on painkillers while her mother gave her encouraging advice. She'd thought she be finished college, working as a journalist like she'd always planned on, too. She'd wanted to be older, to be settled. Of course, her dad had always said that if you wanted to make God laugh, you told him your plans.

The reality was a stark difference to her plans. Instead of being in her mid-to-late twenties with a husband and her mother at her side in a hospital, she was nineteen, voluntarily on the run, and giving birth in an abandoned house that she'd found a few days before going into labour and managed to wash bedroom as best she could. And, of course, she was alone.

Her mother and lover were both dead, neither of them ever getting the chance to learn of her pregnancy, and Sarah hadn't dared to risk contacting a midwife for help. She had only gone to the bare minimum of check-ups, each time at a different hospital or clinic and using a different alias. After all, if Skynet could send one Terminator after her, who said that he wouldn't send another? Kyle had mentioned it might happen when he'd been telling her what to do if he was killed, and when would there be a better opportunity to attack them than during her labour? She and John would never be more vulnerable then right now, with John a defenceless baby in the process of being born, and she so wracked with agony and exhaustion that her vision was going grey. It would've been different if Kyle was still alive. Then they could've at least contacted a midwife even if she didn't go to a hospital, knowing that he'd protect their son. But Kyle was dead, and Sarah couldn't trust anyone when the fate of humanity was at stake. When the life of her and Kyle's son was at stake.

She blacked out several times, each time waking up when Bruno, the dog whom she had left tied up just outside the door, on guard, barking. Every time, she jolted up, reaching for her pistol and aiming it at the door, shaking from the effort of lifting the gun and the contractions that were still on-going. Finally, some instinct made her start to push, and she lost all sense of time as she laboured to bring her son into the world.

It seemed to take forever before the pain, didn't disappear, but dulled, and the sound of a baby crying reached her ears. Forcing herself to ignore the exhaustion and pain, Sarah lifted herself up and staggered, leaning heavily on the bed for support, to her son, lying on the towel she had laid there.

The sight of him made her breath disappear. He was tiny, so tiny that she guessed that she could fit his entire body in both of her palms. She immediately loved him more anybody else. Even more than she'd loved Kyle, during their short time together. She'd loved him since she'd learned of his existence, but now he was real. Her son. John Kyle Connor. There was no question of his name. John Connor was the name Kyle had given for him, and if he couldn't have his father's surname, then at least he'd have his first one.

But that wasn't the thing that made a sob break out of her mouth was not the thought that his father would never know his son, nor even the terrifying thought that he would grow up to survive a nuclear apocalypse and be the leader of what little remained of humanity. It was the fact that even now, she could tell that he had his father's nose.

Los Angeles, 2029

John left the control room and strode down the dark, pipe-lined hallway, hearing Kyle hurrying behind to catch up to him. Tonight was the night. Within hours, the war would be won. The plan was sound. John knew that they'd win, but it wasn't the battle that he dreaded.

"Sir, requesting to join the Colorado offensive," the twenty-five-year-old sergeant stated once he had almost gotten level with the resistance leader.

"Need you with me, Reese," John replied. Good old Kyle, always willing to volunteer for the riskiest missions. He was too brave and caring for his own good. Sarah had always said that the people who cared the most were the ones that died first.

"We're talking about the complete destruction of Skynet, sir," Reese protested, his voice tight.

John stopped walking, turning to give the younger man a firm look as he spoke, his conviction coming through clearly in his tone. "The Colorado unit will succeed. The machines will fall tonight. But right here, the Los Angeles assault is just as important, maybe more."

Kyle gave him a disbelieving look. "More important than destroying the Skynet's central core?" he asked doubtfully, he stepped closer, losing his formality and finally asking what everyone had no doubt been wondering since John had announced that Perry would be leading the attack on NORAD, while he attacked the LA work camp.

"John, I don't understand why you're leading an attack on a work camp."

John sighed, glancing to the side for a minute as he debated with himself mentally. Finally, he decided on most of, if not the entire, truth. "Because the camp is a camouflage," he revealed, making Kyle's eyes widen. "Inside the camp is a hangar. Beneath that hangar Skynet has hidden its' final weapon. When Skynet realises that it's lost, it will deploy that weapon to ensure its' own survival. We take it tonight, or there is no tomorrow." A far more literal statement than Kyle could currently realise.

Reese straightened his spine, his expression hardening with determination. "Then we'll take it," he declared.

John gave a small chuckle that quickly faded off. He gave Kyle a carefully-neutral look. "You're my right hand, Reese, and I've never thanked you for it," he murmured.

"You don't need to," Kyle insisted. "You gave us all a future, John. I'm gonna use mine. When this is all over, I'm gonna find my parents' house. Rebuild it. Use my hands for something other than killing. How about you?"

Hearing Kyle's plans for the future, a life without war, hit John harder than he hoped showed. He swallowed and glanced away, thinking over the question. He couldn't come up with an answer. Sarah had always made sure he didn't get any dreams for what he wanted to do growing up. He was going to be the saviour of humanity, and having dreams might hamper his ability to do it. He had been raised solely to be a soldier. And Kate, the only woman he had ever loved, was fourteen-years dead, taking his unborn child with her. They had taken any hopes for happiness and peace after the war that he might've had with them. John had no idea what he would do once the three-decade-long war was over, but he needed to say something before the silence grew uncomfortable.

"A cold beer would be good," he croaked out.

Kyle gave a gentle smile. "Those are some pretty big plans," he said lightly, clapping John on the arm.

John shrugged. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I don't think about it too much."

"I can see that," Kyle answered. "Well, I figure, whatever happens, it's got to be better than this."

John was silent, looking at the ground. Was it? He wanted to ask. Will you still think that in three days when you die to save my mother? Had having a few days with Sarah made Kyle's sacrifice worth it to him? Had he ever wondered if that night they spent together, hunted and hurting, had resulted in more than Sarah loving him? Had he realised that John had sent him back, not to die, but so that everyone else could live? John had wondered about the answers to those questions a billion times since his childhood, and he knew that he would never get answers. Chances were, Kyle would die unaware of the truth, and John hated that. Not for the first time, he wished that Sarah had never told him who Kyle was to him.

He didn't say any of that of course. But he knew that he had to apologize, even if Kyle wouldn't understand it yet. Possibly not ever.

"So many of us have died to get here," he sighed, seeing confusion flicker in Kyle's eyes at his cryptic words. "I want you to know, Kyle, if there was another way, I would have taken it." With that, he turned and continued on to the main hall, where he could hear his name being chanted.

He ran over his pre-prepared speech as he made his way through the crowd of soldiers and hopped up onto the truck-bed so he could be seen by everyone. "Every leader needs to be charismatic, so that he's able to rally people to him if he wants to be successful," Sarah had told him when she'd been teaching him to be a leader. "They need to believe in you John. You have to make them trust that you can save them. That's just as important as doing it in the first place."

He exhaled subtly, then began to speak, silently reminding himself that he was right. Sarah had told him everything she knew about the war, and the date that they defeated Skynet was one of those things. This was it. The end of the war had finally arrived.

"The machine thinks that we cannot win!" he began, looking around to meet the eyes of his soldiers. "The machine thinks that we will not strike at the very heart of Skynet! Yet, here we stand, on the precipice of the final battle. If we die tonight, mankind dies with us.

I look at each of you, and I see the marks of this long and terrible war. We fight for our children, for our children's children, so they will not carry these marks. But they will know who we are and what we did. That we did not bow down! We did not give in! We rose up, at this moment, at this hour, willing to sacrifice everything so that they can live in freedom!

On this night, we take back our world!"

The end of his speech was met with a cheer that seemed loud enough to make the bunker shake, before the group began splitting up to join their assigned teams.

John waited a moment, taking another deep breath and reminding himself that it was almost over. One more battle, and the world was saved. Just one more.

"John?" he glanced to his side at Kyle, annoyed at himself for being so lost in his thoughts that he had failed to notice the sergeant coming up to him. Sarah would've been furious with him for being caught off-guard. Rule Number Two: Always be on your guard, was possibly even more important than Rule Number One: Don't trust anyone. John had always had problems with that one. Sarah had often despaired over his 'too-gentle heart', blaming it on his father. Over the years, John had come to realise that she was right about that. Not that that was much of a surprise, of course. Sarah was always right, it seemed.

"Are you ready to move out, sir?" Concern flickered in Reese's eyes, and John swallowed heavily. He was going to miss Reese.

"Let's go," he replied, adjusting the weight of his rifle as he strode past the younger man.

Hours later, the battle was over. The machines had fallen, as John had known they would. But the victory had come moments too late.

"We found it, Sir," Major Amanda Regan, informed him as he walked up to the hanger where the time displacement device was. "Exactly where you said that it would be."

John lit his torch, angling it to let them all see the egg-shaped structure.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Kyle asked, leaning in to see it better.

"It's the first tactical time weapon," John answered, feeling a tiredness that seemed to go straight to his bones as he flung his torch into the hanger, illuminating the machine. "And Skynet just used it."

He jumped down himself a second later, his soldiers following as the Tech-Com members began setting up their own machinery.

"Power it up," he ordered as they began setting up their equipment quickly.

"We'll need 15 minutes to ready the machine, sir," Amanda replied as she tapped at a computer. "We're running coordinates, we should have them for you momentarily."

"Los Angeles, 1984," he muttered absently, his gazed fixed on the device, though he wasn't seeing it. The image floating in front of his mind's eye was that of his mother, tired frown fixed on her lips.

"Los Angeles, May 12, 1984," she said a second later.

Everyone glanced at him, and he knew that they were wondering yet again how he knew what he did. But if they hadn't put together the time travel device and the fact that Sarah Connor had known about the threat of Skynet years before anyone realized it existed, then he wasn't going to say anything.

"Skynet knew it was losing, so it tried to rig the game," he explained instead. "It sent a terminator back to the time before the war."

"Who's the target?" Colonel Dane Souza, a grizzled veteran who'd been just out of Marine Basic Training when Judgment Day had occurred, asked.

"My mother," John replied, causing a series of gasps and swearing to ripple quietly through the group. He spotted a horrified look flash over Kyle's face as he elaborated. "Sarah Connor. If the machine succeeds, I'll never be born. They'll kill her first. And by doing so, erase every victory we've fought for, including tonight's. There won't be a resistance to challenge the machines. With this one act, Skynet will win."

"We can use the technology ourselves, send someone back to protect her," Dane suggested.

"We don't even know if that'll work," Captain Blair Williams pointed out.

Yes, I do, John thought. It's just that it's a suicide mission, and one that ends with my mother's broken heart and the weight of the world on her shoulders, and me destined to save everybody. He didn't say that either, staying silent and listening to the various shouts of "I'll go! I'll go, sir!" Part of him wanted to go himself, to see Sarah again. He knew he couldn't though. Despite Sarah's claims, fate did exist, and this was it.

Then came the one that he'd been waiting for and dreading.

"I'll volunteer!" John turned to look at Kyle with a neutral expression as the sergeant stepped forward, looking determined. "I'll go back."

Logically, it was a bad idea. Kyle had been born after Judgment Day, and while he knew in theory what life was like before the war, John knew from his mother that he had stuck out like a sore thumb. But obvious logic wasn't why he would be sending him back. He was sending Kyle back so everyone could live. So he could be born, and his mother be burdened with two very different, and very heavy types of responsibility. He was sending his father to die, and orchestrating his mother's traumatization and broken heart, in the name of saving the world. 'And the Award for the Worst Son in History goes to: John Connor' he thought with a dark sarcasm he picked up from Sarah. He didn't want to do this, but he would.

Still, he had to put on a show, though he already knew Kyle would be the one to go. "Why should I send you over all of them?"

"Because I'd die for Sarah Connor," Kyle replied, completely serious.

John recalled Sarah telling him of Kyle's sacrifice. It was the only time he had ever heard his mother's voice shake. "All these people would die for Sarah Connor," he pointed out, sweeping out an arm to emphasize his point. "What makes you any different?"

"You know why," Kyle stepped forward, a stubborn and pleading look on his face. "Everything you've told me about her. I know her, John. Let me save her."

John sighed, and nodded. "Alright," he agreed. The only, cold comfort that he could find was that Kyle wasn't in love with an idealized version of Sarah Connor. John had told him both the good things and the bad. The only thing he hadn't told him was that the man that she had grieved over for the rest of her life, his father, was Kyle himself.

The decision made, people quickly began getting to work, powering up the time travel machine and taking measurements of the quantum energy field.

"You won't be able to take any weapons with you," Blair informed Kyle, earning herself a look of dismay from the sergeant.

"No weapons?" he repeated.

"We've measured the magnetic field," Blair explained. "It'll rip apart anything not encased in living tissue. Think tinfoil in a microwave times a few billion. Nothing left but a crater." Accepting his rifle and handgun, she began to walk away before pausing to glance back. "Oh, by the way. No clothes, either."

Kyle grimaced and began to pull off his armour. "Great," he grumbled. "She's going to think I'm crazy." He glanced at John, who was sitting silently at his side. "You knew that the device would be here. You knew when it'd be set for. You knew the machines would fall tonight. Just before I go, tell me..."

John tensed slightly, wondering if Kyle had finally figured it out. "Tell you what?"

Kyle leaned slightly. "Can you see the future?"

John let out a soft snort of amusement. "No one can see the future, Reese," he replied, a small smile playing on his lips.

"Okay, well then how do you know?"

John sighed and stood, helping Kyle lift his armour off. "I cheat," he explained. "Sarah told me so much. Gave me signposts. When I was a kid, it seemed like my mother knew everything."

"Must've been great," Kyle commented.

John was quiet for a moment, thinking back to his mother, her constant reminders of his destiny and the impending apocalypse. Her ever-present stress and grief, and the way he could sometimes overhear her sobbing in despair over the future in their various tents and trailers when she thought he was asleep. How nothing he ever did seemed good enough for her, despite how much she had loved him. 'The best isn't good enough John,' she told him a billion times. 'Everything is depending on you.'

No, he would say a lot of things about his mother's knowledge, but he'd never say that it was great. "Not really," he told Kyle. "It stops here. Once you go back, my knowledge ends. That's as much as Sarah knew."

"So no more cheating," Kyle nodded in understanding.

John gave a half-smile that probably didn't reach his eyes. "No more cheatin'."

Kyle pulled off his shirt, and an old photo fell from his breast pocket onto the ground. It was singed, faded and torn, but the scene, and the woman whom it was centred around, were still easily seen.

Eighteen-year-old Sarah Connor stared into the distance, unaware of the picture being taken. Her brunette hair was held out of her face by a headband and one hand rested on her six-months-pregnant stomach which was covered by a dark green dress. A large German Shepherd sat in the seat beside her, and the expression on her face was filled with a tired grief that John had always associated with her talking about his father.

Kyle gave him a sheepish and anxious look as John picked up the photo, gazing down at Sarah. "The time you're going back to, she won't be the warrior that raised me, not yet," he told his friend. "She'll be scared and weak. She won't know how to fight or defend herself. Her biggest worry is making rent and tuition. She's a waitress."

Sarah had always sounded bitterly contemptuous when she described herself prior to May 1984. John knew that she believed that if she had been stronger, if she had been quicker or smarter or something, Kyle would've lived. Maybe she was right, but at the end of the day, the events of those few days had shaped her into the legendary 'Mother of the Resistance'.

"A what?" Kyle asked blankly, drawing John back to the present, out of his memories.

He chuckled softly. "A... Never mind. Just be ready for the fact that she will need you, but she won't know it."

"Okay, so what do I say to her?" Kyle asked, furrowing his eyebrows worriedly. "Even when I tell her who I am, she's not gonna believe me."

John sighed, easily coming up with the needed words. Sarah had whispered them against the shell of his ear every night when he was a child, telling them like a bedtime story. She'd been more regular about telling him the message than reading him the Wizard of Oz in Spanish or singing him Rocketman in her awful singing voice.

"Tell her this... Thank you, Sarah, for your courage during the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to say the future is not set. There is no fate but that which we make for ourselves. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist."

Kyle repeated the message solemnly, giving a grave nod before the two of them made their way to the now-ready time travel device.

"Take care of her for me, Kyle," John said, as Kyle began climbing onto the podium.

"I will," Reese vowed. "I promise you."

John smiled proudly at him as blue light lit up the gaps in the machine. "What you're doing right now, this is the end of the war," he told him.

Kyle nodded, but a second later his expression turned horrified. "JOHN!" he bellowed in warning as he disappeared, his voice mingling with the sound of a gunshot from behind him. John was seconds too slow to turn, reaching for his holstered gun just as his world went black.

When John stirred back to life, his throat, wrists and ankles were all secured to a bed. His eyes snapped open and he began struggling against the restraints that were holding him down.

"You didn't really think it would be that easy, did you?" a voice came from his left.

John flicked his gaze to the right, seeing one of the 'soldiers' who'd been in the room when they'd sent Kyle back in time. Other that, John couldn't recall ever seeing him before, and he cursed himself for being so distracted with Kyle that he hadn't been tipped off by that. Despite Sarah having often advised him not to let himself care about people as it would only hurt him when he'd died, John had never been able to cut himself off as much as he'd wanted to. He knew everyone in Tech-Com by name, and most others by sight at least. If he hadn't been so distracted by the fact that he was about to lose Kyle, he would've realized that something was off about the 'man'.

"Rule number two: always be on your guard," he remembered Sarah telling him. And yet, in the hour of victory, about to lose Kyle forever, John had broken that rule, and it had cost him dearly.

"Who are you? What did you do to my soldiers?" he demanded bitterly. He narrowed his eyes at the 'soldier'. "Or is it what are you? Are you a Terminator? What's your directive? How are you still active, when we destroyed Skynet's central core?"

"You're not exactly in the position to be making demands, General Connor," the reply was mild and unconcerned. "However, I shall answer you anyway. I am Skynet."

John recoiled on instinct, and suppressed a shudder at Skynet's response of loud laughter.

"No," John denied. "We destroyed your core. You can't be Skynet."

Skynet sneered at him mockingly, triumph seeming to dance in its' eyes. How was that even possible? John wondered. Skynet was a machine. How could it have emotions? Maybe it was just mimicking them or something.

"The soldiers who were with you are dead," Skynet continued, unaware or uncaring of the grief that flashed over the resistance leader's expression at the news, though he'd guessed already. "However others remain in your Resistance bases, though not for long."

John glared at him bitterly. "I'll never tell you where the bases are," he declared. "I'll die first."

"You have no choice," Skynet answered him passively. "When the procedure is finished, you will want to tell me."

"Procedure?" John repeated, dread in his voice. "What are you talking about?"

"I have been working on rewriting a human's genetic code on a cellular level using nano-resin. You won't be human nor will you be machine. You'll be something more. The perfection of the machine combined with the creativity of the human, though unhampered by a human's emotions. It will be glorious."

It didn't sound glorious to John. It sounded sickening. "Why haven't you done it then?" he asked bitterly, glaring at Skynet with all the hatred in his body that he could muster.

"Testing is not yet complete," the AI explained. "The majority of subjects are still dying, whilst the survivors go mad. You will be my prize, therefore testing must be 100% successful before I turn you. Don't worry," it added. "Testing is 47% successfully complete. I estimate about two weeks remain before you will be ready to be assimilated."

With that, it turned and left, not bothering to either wait for a reply, or to sedate the military leader again. Perhaps it thought that the restraints would be enough. John wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, however.

He had at most two weeks, maybe less. But either way, John wouldn't just lay down and accept his fate quietly. Sarah Connor hadn't raised a quitter. John would escape, or dying trying. Either was preferable to becoming Skynet's obedient slave.

He gritted his teeth, testing the restraints on his wrists again. His mother hadn't raised him to fail. He wasn't going to let it end this way. He'd escape or he would die trying.