Terminator: The Fire Behind Her, Red As Roses Title: The Fire Behind Her, Red As Roses Fandom: Terminator Spoilers:Terminator: Salvation (with references to the canon of T3 and the rumoured original ending to Terminator: Salvation Disclaimers: Characters and world belong to… James Cameron and others. No copyright infringement is intended. This fic was inspired by what I heard was the original ending to Terminator: Salvation. The title comes from a line from Alice Hoffman's Green Angel. This is my first attempt at Terminator fic and I'm very new to the fandom, so be gentle.
Kate was a hoverer. Always had been. Back when she was a veterinarian, she was the first one to wake up at three in the morning to tend to a puking cat or a dog who had gotten too close to a porcupine, and she'd stay by the animal's side through thick and thin. After Judgment Day, she'd turned her focus to human medicine, learning the most in the trenches. She was a fixer at heart; she needed to make things better. That probably explained why she'd stuck with John. Beyond his desire to make sure the Resistance never lost its humanity, John wanted to make things better, even if only by inches.
But it wasn't just John Connor on that cold metal table, slowly dying with each weakening beat of his heart. That was her husband. That was the father of her soon-to-be-born child. That was the leader of the Resistance—not because his mother's tapes said so and not because of fate, but because of sheer power of will. He might not have been the leader on paper or by title, but the people listened to him. If he said stand down, no one moved. He was the heart of the Resistance, and he was fading away as his men purposefully avoided the medical tent. John Connor was their leader but he was still a man and he deserved to die with dignity.
Kate thought he deserved not to die at all.
When they'd got married, they started off with no rings. There was no real currency anymore, no jewellery stores. They had their word and that was enough. In time, they found a couple who had died in each other's arms, and Barnes had rescued the wedding rings from the bodies before they could be melted for scrap. Kate's was a bit too loose and John's too snug, but they wore them all the same. With ashes hanging in the sky like storm clouds, everyone needed a bit of brightness.
When Kate had realized she was pregnant, she hadn't known what to do. Did she really want to bring an innocent child up during a war, when humanity was reduced to its basest form and machines could slaughter them at any moment? For John, there was no question. Yes. Absolutely, unequivocally yes. They were fighting for the future. What better reminder of that than a child who, if the Resistance was strong enough, would never know the war as anything more than a memory?
Now, the baby's father might end up as little more than a memory, a legacy. Kate didn't have the supplies to save him. Back when they were kids—before Judgment Day, before the war—John's injuries could have been easily mended, but not now.
"Kate?" A tentative voice, roughened by dirty air and exertion and war-weariness but still female. "It's Blair. Can we come in?"
Kate stood quickly and wiped her eyes. "Yeah. Sure." She kissed John's forehead and quickly stepped back. She couldn't appear too hopeless or else the soldiers' morale would plummet. She barely blinked when Blair pushed through the heavy curtain, but when Marcus walked through, metal skeleton fully exposed in places along his arms, she flinched. "John's resting. There's not much I can do for him now."
"There's not much any of us can do for him," Blair replied. Her words weren't meant to be harsh, but they felt like punches in the gut to Kate. "But Marcus can."
Kate turned to Marcus. "How?" She'd be willing to entertain almost anything to save John, the Resistance be damned. Yes, she was a doctor and a soldier, but she was also a wife and a mother. What was the purpose of fighting for life if you didn't have a life worth living for anymore?
"When I was hooked up to Skynet, I was going through their files. I was trying to find out what I am." Marcus was composed, but a fine tremor in his jaw gave him away. Though his skeleton was metal, he clearly still thought of himself as human. "I found my files—found out how they made me."
Kate blinked, her breathing slow. As much as she sympathised with Marcus, she didn't have time for his self-introspection. "How can that help John?"
Blair gently guided the doctor to the far side of the tent and motioned for her to keep her voice low. "The Resistance needs John. We all know that. Without him, we're still soldiers, but we're not an army. We'd fracture within days. No one else has enough of a following to take over."
"And most of the soldiers don't trust me," Marcus said quietly. "I unnerve them. And I don't blame them for that." He gazed down at his right hand, its metal bones completely exposed and glinting in the low light. "But I want to help."
"You've been a tremendous help, Marcus," Kate replied slowly, rubbing her temples. "Without you, we never would've been able to infiltrate Skynet as well as we did today."
At the word infiltrate, Marcus flinched. "I've done some bad things in my life, Doc. Things that can't be washed away by what I did today. But I want to go out on a good note. I want my death to mean something."
Taken aback, Kate stood hastily, hands unconsciously going to her belly. "You're not dying. I examined you already. Except for some surface damage—"
"Take my body and give it to John," Marcus insisted softly. "My heart's strong enough." He took Blair's hand in his good one and squeezed. "I can make him strong. Stronger than Skynet. It wouldn't be the first time you've used Skynet's weapons against it."
The notion made Kate dizzy. If she did what Marcus was suggesting, she'd be no better than Doctor Frankenstein, using one body to make the imitation of life in another. She would have to be the only one allowed to tend to John's wounds, to ensure the others wouldn't find out. John would never be able to father another child. She would have to live with the fact that her husband was a machine—that her child was being raised by a machine.
But John would also be alive. Not fully human, but alive. In these days, that counted for something.
It was so risky. She didn't have any alchemical recipe for turning metal into a man. Kate had always dissected the metal, but never worried about putting it back together. John may never forgive her. If the others found out, it could destroy the Resistance entirely.
Kate felt a light touch on her shoulder and saw Marcus's metal hand. It wasn't as cold as she thought it would be. "I don't know how," she whispered, blinded by tears. She thought back to all the key moments in Resistance history—Sarah Connor meeting Kyle Reese, the reconfigured T-850, Judgment Day—and knew each had hinged on someone having the guts to make a monumental decision that would either backfire royally or help the Resistance win the war.
With his other hand, Marcus handed her a chip. "Blair will help you. I already told her how to access the files you'll need."
The doctor glanced the soldier and then at the machine, avoiding John entirely. "If we do this," Kate said, voice wavering, "no one can ever know. Just us, Blair. Only us."
"I know." Blair's dark eyes were also swimming in tears as she went on tiptoe and kissed Marcus. "It's the best thing, Kate. It's our only chance." She gave a half-laugh that sounded more like a sob. "We'll have to watch him around the magnetized mines, though."
It was strangely anti-climactic. As Blair and Marcus said their farewells, Kate secured the medical bay and gathered the equipment they'd need. Before she sedated John fully, she kissed him and stroked his face, trying to will memory into her fingers and eyes as she told him Marcus was donating his heart. When Marcus stretched out on his table, he looked over at John and the two men, man and machine, shared a stoic nod—John acknowledging Marcus's sacrifice, Marcus committing to his chosen end—before leaving the lives they'd known behind.
Blair had no advanced medical training but she took direction well, following Kate's brusque orders without a fuss. Soon each woman was bloody to her elbows, transferring organs here and there while checking the file Marcus had given them. Dismantling the Terminator was eerie and tedious, and Kate found herself wondering if Skynet had started making human-skinned units not only for camouflage but more to prey on the Resistance's love of humanity. It was harder to kill a machine with a human face, with skin that bled and tore like yours.
Marcus's skin, expertly removed for a minimum of tell-tale cut lines, lay empty and lifeless on a gurney and while Blair worked on wiring John's brain into his new skull and securing the connections, Kate lovingly transferred her husband's organs into the metal skeleton. John's skin was stretched out underneath the skeleton, covered in an ointment so it wouldn't dry out without a blood supply. "I didn't realize we had so many bits," Blair panted, pushing hair off her forehead with the heel of her hand.
Kate gazed down at John's eyes, currently resting in a bowl until Blair was ready to connect them. "We're the most extraordinary machines of all," the doctor whispered.
)*(
By the time John finally came to, Kate had already forced herself to stay awake through one sleep cycle. Would his voice be the same? Would he be able to use his limbs with ease? Marcus had been a bit larger; would anyone notice? "John," she said tentatively, rising out of her chair and standing beside him, "how are you feeling?"
"Alive," John answered, with a hint of a smile. He held Kate's hand tight and used his other hand to examine his chest. "Where'd you make the incision?"
Kate hoped he didn't hear the hitch in her breathing. "I didn't want to give you another scar, so I went into through the one on your shoulder. It was trickier, but I didn't want to cause more damage." In truth, she'd used John's network of battle scars to remove his skin, wanting to keep him as intact as possible. "Does—does it hurt?"
"Not really, no. How long have I been out?" John slowly sat up and did his usual post-op round of stretches to make sure everything still worked.
"A day and a half." Enough time for Kate and Blair to sew Marcus's remains—and John's damaged parts—into the infiltrator's skin and dispose of it all safely and secretly. "I'm ordering another day of bed rest, though, so don't get any ideas."
John's smile finally reached his eyes, making them crinkle. "And how's our little one doing?" he asked, placing his free hand on Kate's belly.
Kate forced herself not to flinch, even when she looked down and saw Marcus's exposed metal finger bones for a moment. John's skin was warm and pink, his blood flow strong. She patted his hand and smiled. "A little cranky today, but good. John, if it's a boy, I know we wanted to name him Kyle, but—"
"Kyle Marcus," John stated, anticipating his wife's suggestion. "Marcus was a great help to the Resistance. We should honour that."
Tears in her eyes, Kate squeezed her husband's hand, grateful she couldn't feel the metal beneath the skin.