A hardened, troubled young soldier, assigned to protect the woman he's loved from afar for years. A union very brief and tragic, but no less intense and pivotal to the future of humanity.

Kyle Reese grows up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, one of a handful of human survivors of a brutal war between mankind and machines, fighting under the mantle of John Connor, trained by his mother Sarah to lead humanity to survival. At some point John gives Kyle a photo of Sarah as a young woman - beautiful, but clearly troubled. Kyle keeps it with him at all times, a good luck charm of sorts, and over time falls in love with her. The brutal world Kyle lives in left little room for romantic attachments, and Sarah appears to have been the only woman he ever loved. When Skynet - the self-aware computer network determined to destroy humanity - sends a Terminator cyborg back in time to assassinate Sarah before she can give birth to John, Kyle jumps at the chance to "meet the legend," to go on the one-way trip through time to protect her.

In 1984, Sarah Connor is a young coed struggling to make ends meet in a dead-end waitress job when the Terminator charges into her life, murdering her friends and family and demolishing a police station and nightclub in his attempts to get to her. It's in this nightclub she first meets Kyle, who saves her from the cyborg's bullets at the last moment and immediately goes on the run with her.

In their quiet moments together, Kyle tells Sarah about the future he came from - the war, his life, what her son is like. Sarah is not at all thrilled at having the future of humanity thrust on her shoulders, but is drawn to her bodyguard, feeling deep compassion for the suffering he's endured.

In their motel room the next night, Sarah becomes emotional as it hits her that the Terminator will never stop coming after her, that she's always going to be in danger. She laments Kyle's own pain, that he's not had the chance to know a normal life - to know love. Kyle confesses to Sarah about the photo John gave him, that he came across time for her - that he loves her and always has. These words are the tipping point for her. She draws him into a passionate kiss and, unknowing that the Terminator is closing in on their location at that very moment, they make love.

After, the two seem happier than either has since the movie started, but almost immediately the Terminator arrives, sending them on the run again. During this chase Kyle is grievously wounded, forcing a turn of the tables and Sarah trying to keep him alive as they continue to run. Between their efforts they eventually destroy the cyborg, but Kyle does not survive.

Long after his death, Kyle's memory is still very much a specter in Sarah's life. She has attempted to raise their son - who very much resembles him - to be the man Kyle told her he would be, the tough, resourceful leader humanity would need. She never marries, and never seems to have loved any man as much as she did Kyle. She thought of him regularly enough that young John heard her cry about him sometimes, and has experienced vivid dream-visions of him at crucial points in her life, which provide her with the strength she needs to face certain dangers. John learns well from his mother, becoming the rallying point for the human resistance, giving them the much needed focus to bring down Skynet. If Padmé had survived Revenge of the Sith, it's not difficult to imagine her pursuing a similar life to Sarah Connor's.