Terminator Salvation: Yesterday's Got Nothing [John/Marcus]
Title: “Yesterday’s Got Nothing”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R
Timeline: post-T4
Summary: When John suspects there is malware in Marcus Wright’s system, he takes it upon himself to fix things. With mixed results. [John/Marcus, canon pairings implied]
Disclaimer: Terminator Salvation belongs to McG, Warner Bros., etc. The franchise belongs to James Cameron. Quotes from “Breakdown” by Guns N’ Roses; “Bleed the Freak” by Alice In Chains; Hebrews 10:17; “Bodies upon the gears” speech by Mario Savio.
A/N: This was never supposed to be this long. *whimpers* But these two highjacked my brain, then some other characters joined the party, and some elements of the novelizations and T:SCC seeped in. Also, for the sake of this story, let’s assume Marcus doesn’t really need a heart to live.
YESTERDAY’S GOT NOTHING
I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.
Richard Siken. “Wishbone”
They don’t talk about it. In fact, they don’t really talk about anything; Connor isn’t a conversational person. He prefers his broadcasts; he’s got the voice for that and he’s got something that makes you want to trust him. At least when he’s not holding a gun to your head. Or maybe even then.
Marcus first notices it when he pulls Connor out of the crossfire as they storm a Skynet Work Camp. He couldn’t say why he stayed; he is pretty sure he doesn’t owe Connor anything. Kyle understandably hero-worships the guy, but that’s Kyle’s problem. (Connor asked him once why he’d stayed. Marcus didn’t have a ready-made answer to that. But there weren’t a lot of options these days; besides, he wanted to see how his heart fared.)
That’s what it’s all about in the end. The heart. When he gave it away, he didn’t expect to come back from that. He must have done something really wrong if he kept bouncing between life and death like a goddamn rubber ball.
He pulls Connor out of the crossfire and shoves him behind a pile of debris. Feeble protection, but it’s the best they’ve got right now. Connor is clutching the tommy gun, and Marcus’s hand rests on his chest for a moment, palm flat against it, fingers splayed over the heart. He can feel it even through the thick fabric of the coat. Deep down, beating wildly, a strong, healthy rhythm. His. Not Connor’s.
Their eyes meet. Marcus thinks that he is done saving this guy. But no, not by a long shot.
--
He and Connor are similar in ways two polar opposites can be similar. When they walk through a crowd, everybody is staring. Connor wears his scar proudly, a testament to the things he’s done, the things he will get to do. Marcus hides his bared metal hand, the actual proof of him being half-it. If he brings his cyborg fingers up to Connor’s face, they will match the scar as if they are the ones that left it. Sometimes he really wants to do that, and then again. Connor had no right to bring him back.
Marcus carries silence in his chest now that another human piece of him is gone.
--
When Connor is around, Marcus catches himself inadvertently listening for that thumping sound. Over and over again. He watches, and watches, and watches. Connor is different with everyone. Harsh, ruthless in a fight. Quietly mirthful with his men. Gentle and tired when he thinks he is alone with Kate, a hand resting on her belly. She is due any day now, and Marcus could wager Connor is scared. Who wouldn’t be? The world is a shitty place for babies these days.
Then again, what does Marcus know about that? Jack squat.
--
He can spot a man hanging by a thread. It’s his natural talent. He was that man many times; he still is. And so is Connor. Between planning tactical offense, being the symbol of the Resistance and playing house with Kate, he is still just a man, and he is ripping at the seams.
There are things Connor is not telling others. Things that involve Kyle, Skynet and God knows what else. They probably don’t involve Marcus, so he shouldn’t worry, but it’s easier said than done.
“People say you’re some kind of a prophet,” Marcus comments.
“Oh yeah?” Connor looks up from the blueprints of yet another nuclear plant they are about to take. You can never have too many nuclear plants at your disposal. “What people?”
“Just people. They say you knew about the T-800 before you saw them.”
A thin smile graces Connor’s lips. A trademark of his.
“I knew they were building something new. I didn’t know what.”
Yeah, right.
“You told me they tried to kill your mother,” Marcus points out. “You told me we had been at war before either of us-.”
“Is this going anywhere?” Connor interrupts. Looks at him like he’s asking too many questions. The world infiltrator hasn’t been dropped once since Marcus saved Connor’s life, but it’s always there, unspoken, floating around like a ghost. Connor may be grateful for the heart but he will never let him forget that he is just like any of them on the inside. Machine.
Marcus holds his gaze firmly. “No.”
“Well, this is.” Connor gestures at the blueprints. “Get your head back in the game, Wright.”
--
Connor is not there when the baby is born. It’s a girl, nice and healthy, and Connor is not there to see her because he is lying on the floor of a recently liberated bunker, riddled with bullets. Mind you, he is not dying. It takes more than a bit of lead to off John Connor, especially since he seems to possess a clear idea of what he is not going to die from. Terminators and gunshot wounds are on the top of the list.
“For someone who positions himself as God’s gift to humanity, you can be remarkably reckless,” Marcus comments as he picks the bullets out of him. It must hurt like a bitch, which is fine by him. Plasma would have hurt less but Connor would have been toast with such a percentage of exposure.
“Did you see her?” Connor asks. His voice sounds huskier than ever.
“They wouldn’t let me.” No wonder. For all that he’s on John’s personal squad, Kate still doesn’t trust him. Not even when he sets out to bring Connor reinforcements. “Kyle did. Ask him when you get back.”
Connor keeps quiet. There is no damage to his vital organs (maybe “riddled with bullets” is a bit of an exaggeration), but it’ll probably take time for him to recover. There is no rush; Marcus has seen a couple of HKs hovering outside.
“Pancakes,” says Connor.
“Huh?”
“I miss pancakes. My mother used to…” He chuckles; the sound is wheezy and pained, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Always burned them. Or undercooked.”
Marcus listens for the heartbeat again. He doesn’t really remember his mother. Something tells him that if she had made them pancakes, he and Sam wouldn’t have ended up where they had done.
“Blink,” Connor whispers.
Marcus frowns a little.
“Blink, Wright. You’ve been staring at me continuously for hell knows how long. Humans don’t do that. Blink, you stupid tin can.”
He starts coughing. Marcus watches out for blood and feels relieved when it doesn’t come. The last thing Connor needs is to start haemorrhaging internally while there is no medic in the vicinity. While Kate is not around to fix him.
“Why did you do it, Connor?” Marcus asks. He blinks very deliberately, hoping the bastard is pleased now. His hand is over John’s heart again, feeling the beat. He must be pressing too hard because Connor inhales sharply and snaps:
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“If I were, you’d know.”
Connor gives him a level look. He is thinking of lying, it’s clear as day.
“You’re Skynet,” he says simply. “No matter what you tell yourself, inside you’re Skynet.”
“You gave me a Terminator’s heart!” Marcus spits. “Why? To make me even more like them? To show me I can’t be anything else?”
Connor shuts his eyes. He is human; he can’t stop blinking for too long.
“When I was a kid,” he says, “a Terminator came from the future to kill me.” Okay, what? “But another one came to protect me.” He looks at Marcus again, his eyes hard. “The trouble with humans is that they can be killed and they can’t be replaced. Machines aren’t like that. But when I was a kid, I cried when my Terminator died.” He takes a shaky breath. “You saved my life, Wright. Letting you die seemed like… a damn waste.”
Coming from Connor, it sounds like a fucking love confession. Marcus has no idea what to do with the revelations of John’s crazy childhood, but if that’s not trust, he doesn’t know what is.
“If we don’t get a proper doc to have a look at you ASAP,” he says through clenched teeth, “you’re screwed.”
Connor laughs.
--
The baby has John’s eyes. Sarah Connor’s eyes as people say. Marcus has only seen Sarah Connor once, an old, faded photo that John carries with him. She looked beautiful and sad. She is Madonna to John’s Christ; people tell legends about her exploits, legends about John’s childhood training in the jungle of Central America that fall in line with the idea that John Connor is a messiah sent to guide humanity to victory against the machines. There is another theory about him, supported by quite a lot of people. That he is a kook and a fraud. Be that as it may, Connor is a damn capable leader.
They haven’t talked since Marcus retrieved the wounded Connor from that bunker. While convalescent, John spends all of his time with Kate and their daughter or busies himself with broadcasts and tactical revision. It must be nice to have something to do other than shoot at things, Marcus muses. It must be nice to have someone to do it with. He and Blair have gradually fallen apart. Must be the new powersource in his chest. Not nearly as loud and clear as the previous one. Not nearly as inspiring. Hardly the attribute of a good man.
He doesn’t blame her. They are still on friendly terms; at least she doesn’t watch him like she suspects he could rip his heart out of Connor’s chest any time, nor does she treat him with condescending tolerance like he is the squad’s mascot tin can. He’s still got her, he’s still got Kyle and Star, he’s even got Connor in a way. It’s more than he had when he was alive. No reason to complain really.
--
Marcus ends up back in the brig when he shoots Barnes. People talk. They say it’s revenge for a little target practice Barnes did on him the first time around; Barnes himself certainly seems to think so. Shows how much they know: if there is anything Marcus wants to take revenge for, it’s the lieutenant’s annoying religious expatiation.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” Connor asks, folding his arms across his chest.
Marcus is strapped to a chair that reminds him uncomfortably of Longview.
“It was an involuntary movement.” His hand twitches under the straps.
“That nearly cost Barnes his life.”
“It was an accident,” Marcus repeats tersely. What exactly does he have to do to have them convinced that he doesn’t want anyone here dead? That it’s not his goddamn programming. Trouble is, he can’t be certain of the latter. He can’t be certain of anything.
Connor leans into him, eyes training into his.
“Wright, are you damaged?”
Isn’t that a million dollar question?
Marcus isn’t stupid. He knows full well what they’ll do to him if a glitch is discovered. If he cannot be in control of whatever Skynet has stuffed into him, he’s a liability. He will be put down and disassembled. He still believes it’s not right for him to stay alive, but he doesn’t want to die like this. Not like this, a heap of scrap metal that can be used to make another terrifying weapon.
“I don’t know,” he says wearily. “I don’t know.”
Connor nods, mostly to himself, and leaves.
--
Marcus doesn’t expect to see him again. But Connor returns, unpredictable as always, and loosens the straps, rolls Marcus’s sleeve up and tugs his glove down, exposing the metal. He’s got a tool box with him. That doesn’t look good.
“Tune-up,” he explains, catching Marcus’s inquiring look.
“Someone didn’t get enough Lego bricks for Christmas when he was a kid.”
“No,” Connor chuckles. “Just guns and ammo.”
Marcus snorts. In his old life, he would have probably thought those were really cool presents.
Connor pokes him with a screwdriver, his face a perfect mask of concentration. Marcus fixes him with a steady gaze, if only to avoid looking at his own exposed endoskeleton. He will never get used to the lack of pain and the sight of someone poking around in his insides like he is a thrashed car engine.
“Wiggle your fingers,” John tells him.
Marcus complies and tries to convince himself that he can’t hear faint humming his mechanical joints make.
“Squeeze.”
His fingers twitch and wrap around something. He looks down to see Connor’s hand in his.
“Harder.”
Marcus’s grip becomes firmer, and firmer still as Connor reiterates his command. He could break the man’s bones now. He would hear them shatter and snap, a brittle, crunchy sound that his own metallic carcass will never make.
John hisses and barely refrains from wincing. Marcus releases his hand.
“Connor-.”
“If you’re gonna say that I don’t have to do this or something, better save it.” He pulls a knife out of his pocket.
Marcus scoffs. “I was gonna say it was the wrong hand. But I understand that you’ve already figured it out.”
“Yeah.”
“You could have asked me, you know.”
John grins. “I’m not looking for an easy way out.” He slits Marcus’s fleshy forearm lengthwise, eliciting a soft, hissing sound from him. It doesn’t exactly hurt; more like tingles. Marcus watches blood ooze out of the incision, his mouth dry. He forces himself to keep looking even as Connor opens the flaps of flesh and peels them aside, revealing bone structure drenched in blood.
“Don’t forget to sew it back up,” Marcus says. “I can’t lose any more skin for you.”
“I was thinking,” Connor muses. “We could rip some skin off one of the T-800s and graft it onto your hand. It might take.”
“Careful, or I’m gonna think you actually care.”
John twists the screwdriver, and Marcus’s hand twitches involuntarily. “God forbid.” Their hands connect again for the same experiment: this time Marcus squeezes silently until John tells him to stop, and then he finds he cannot stop. His grip tightens. John groans and curses and tries to pull away, but Marcus is holding fast. His eyes widen. He compresses his lips and strains himself, trying to relax his wayward hand, all to no avail. Connor’s breathing quickens. Sweat beads up on his forehead. That crunching sound comes, and Marcus releases his grip abruptly.
“I… I thought I wasn’t designed for destruction.”
“It’s the same for all of you,” Connor says with a brittle chuckle. “Think of it as a default setting.”
“So what, I’m going to gradually lose control of my motor skills and go on a killing spree?”
“That, or you’ll do it suddenly.” Connor gets up, nursing his broken hand. Right, he needs medical attention. He came to fix Marcus’s hand and got his own broken. Talk about poetic justice.
Strangely, Marcus feels no satisfaction.
--
Kate comes to suture up the gash after she treats John’s hand. She is distant and taciturn and she clearly doesn’t want to talk about her husband, so Marcus tentatively asks after Barnes.
“He’s not ready to meet his maker just yet,” she says, without looking at him. She applies the stitches deftly, trained by years of operating under pressure, too accustomed to the mad rhythm to take things slower. “There. It’ll regenerate quickly, a little cut like that. You’ll be good as new in a couple of days, maybe sooner.”
Another reminder of how abnormal he is. Not that accelerated healing abilities are a bad thing.
“Kate,” he says, hesitantly. “It’s a glitch. I didn’t shoot him on purpose.” Didn’t break John’s hand on purpose.
She sighs. “Yes, I know.” It makes things a whole lot worse.
--
Connor returns the next day, his hand bandaged, a determined glint in his eyes. He shoves a bottle of moonshine into Marcus’s hands as he unfastens the straps and tells him to drink. He’ll need it.
“I don’t think the damage is mechanical,” Connor informs him. “I want to obtain some spare parts to be safe, but-.”
“What do you know,” Marcus laughs. “I’ve been told I’m high maintenance. Not that far off the mark, huh?” He looks up at Connor, and his mirth fades. “How bad is it?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out. It’s malware of some kind. Probably got in before you pulled out the chip. Or a sleeper program that was activated at some point.”
John walks round the chair and positions himself behind Marcus. The booze definitely comes in handy: if he is going to fiddle with the programming, Marcus had better have something to placate himself with. He just hopes Connor doesn’t forget that there is a real, vulnerable human brain inside that metal skull.
“So,” Connor says. “Texas, huh? You don’t sound Texan.”
Marcus knits his eyebrows. “What’s with the small talk?”
“Brain surgery. I need to make sure I don’t leave you impaired in any way. I don’t care what you do as long as you talk.”
Makes sense. Except Marcus doesn’t feel very chatty at the moment. He could ask about Connor’s mother or his inexplicable interest in Kyle or all the time-traveling shenanigans - or he could recite the alphabet until Connor got sick of it. But all he can think about is that Connor is cutting into his head and he can’t even feel it. How fucked up is that?
“You have a thing for irons, don’t you?” His tone is supposed to be teasing but his voice trembles. So does Connor’s hand, just for a second.
“I was a pretty decent hacker back in the day,” he says. “A delinquent, really. At least that’s what my foster folks called me.”
Marcus chuckles. “Something we got in common then. I used to jack cars.”
“Everybody warms themselves to a different fire,” Connor says enigmatically. Except not really because Marcus recognizes the quote. He mentally adds it to his catalogue of data on Connor and wonders briefly if Connor can somehow read it in his mind now that he is poking and prodding at it.
They continue their stroll down the memory lane, exchanging small, meaningless details (the kind that Marcus suspects can’t be used against them) until a noncom calls John away. He doesn’t bother strapping Marcus back down, but it’s implicit that he stays in the brig until the improvised surgery continues. Fine by him. At this point he is simply glad Connor hasn’t lobotomized him.
--
Kyle is away on a mission. So is Blair. They don’t get to say goodbye because nobody is allowed into the brig except John fucking Connor who takes his sweet time fixing Marcus’s glitches. He works slowly with a semi-disabled hand and constant interruptions, and to be frank, Marcus doesn’t feel any different, but then, he is not sure that he should.
“Talk to me, Wright,” Connor prods, and since Marcus doesn’t feel like talking, he starts singing:
My cup runneth over
Like blood from a stone…
Connor doesn’t interrupt, so he continues:
These stand for me.
Name your god and bleed the freak.
I'd like to see
How you all would bleed for me…
And something-something-something because damn if he can remember all the words.
“Interesting choice,” Connor comments.
“My brother,” Marcus says. Like that explains everything.
“Kyle said something about that.”
It figures that Connor would pry. But that information is not exactly classified.
“It’s fitting though,” Marcus says before he can stop himself. “People bleeding for you.”
His murderous hand jerks, fingers clenching against his will. John must have hit something in his head.
“Half-machine, half-suicidal. Interesting combination. But we already knew that.”
Marcus scoffs. Look who’s grown a sense of humour in a test tube.
He catches himself thinking that his banter with Connor has been soothing him more than alcohol lately. Things between them have become far less hostile than before. Not exactly friendly, but somehow comfortable.
“So that’s how you made friends with Terminators,” he quips.
He expects Connor to return it, crack some lame joke, but there is steel in his voice.
“What?”
“When you were a kid,” Marcus says uncertainly.
Connor comes to stand before him, eyes hard and narrowed in suspicion.
“Who told you that?”
“You did! Back in the bunker.” He trails off. Remembers that day, Connor’s blood all over the floor, picking bullets out of him. “That was just fever talking.” Of course. Time travel, eh?
He sighs. Stupid. Like Connor needs any more myths surrounding his enigmatic persona.
Connor doesn’t deny anything though. His jaw is set and he looks like he is about to pick Marcus apart piece by piece. He also looks hesitant.
“If you tell anyone, I’ll write you off as obsolete equipment and burn your endo while it’s still inside you.” His voice sounds level, emotionless, but the threat it carries makes Marcus’s skin crawl.
“Who would I tell? And what would I tell?”
“My mother knew a lot of things before they came to pass,” Connor says. “She tried to warn people but nobody listened. She spent three years in a nuthouse. We were always on the run, always had someone after us.”
“They listen now,” Marcus points out.
“Not always. There are some things they’re not ready to hear.”
“Like good scary robots.”
A small smile makes Connor’s mouth curve slightly. “Yeah. Like good scary robots.”
Marcus wants to ask: are there any? He wants to ask: am I one?
Connor moves closer; his leg ends up set against Marcus’s knee. He looks into Marcus’s eyes, and Marcus could swear he is wondering what those are made of.
--
Kyle returns a few days later, battered, bruised but alive. Connor lets Marcus out the day before that, having deemed the repairs sufficient for now. His hand stops convulsing, but the virus is still there. It will take a hell of a lot of scrubbing before they get it all out.
Kyle seems to avoid him at first. The reason for that becomes clear when Star brings them together one evening for a meagre meal. It’s meat of some kind, possibly even rat, but it still tastes better than coyotes Kyle used to eat in L.A.
“We found other Hybrids,” Kyle says in the middle of dinner. He is very deliberately not looking at Marcus.
“And?”
He knows the answer before Kyle gives it.
“They aren’t like you. No one is like you.”
All put down then. It shouldn’t bother him. Kyle is right: Marcus is unique.
They don’t talk about Marcus’s time in the brig. He doesn’t deliberately hide things from Kyle, but the fewer people know what is going on, the better. Star is chewing on her lump of sinewy meat, watching Marcus with dark, earnest eyes. He feels like he owes them some kind of explanation, but this thing he has going on with Connor is too convoluted to try and make head or tail of.
He spots a familiar picture in Kyle’s hand. The kid is still wrapped up in Connor’s jacket (Marcus doesn’t think he’s taken it off once since he got it) and just as he is about to shove the picture back into his pocket, Marcus stops him.
“Is that… Connor’s mother?”
It is dark in the tunnel but it looks like Kyle’s cheeks flush.
“Uh… yeah. Beautiful, isn’t she?” He casts his eyes down, dreamily. “He gave it to me before the mission. Kind of a good luck charm. I know it’s weird, but…” He shrugs. “She looks kinda sad. I wonder what she’s thinking about.”
Probably what it’s like to have Connor for a son.
--
Marcus is pretty sure Connor enjoys this. His latest idea of fun includes placing Marcus on a table and cutting his chest open, even though Marcus is quite certain he doesn’t think with his sternum.
“Kinky.”
Connor flashes him an icy look. Marcus responds with an innocent grin.
“You wanted to see what was inside,” Connor says coolly.
Marcus remembers the day he woke up in the post-op ward (or what passes for it at the base anyway), with that terrible quietness in his chest. Blair was with him, all but holding his hand, looking a little guilty, but it wasn’t her idea. It was Connor’s, his sole responsibility.
Marcus inclines his head to get a better view at his open chest. The last time he saw it, it still contained a living, beating heart in the hyper-alloy ribcage. The heart that resides in Connor’s chest now and pumps Connor’s blood. Connor’s fingers skirt the edges of the gaping hole, almost gentle.
“You stuffed a fuel cell in me,” Marcus breathes.
“We weren’t sure it’d take,” Connor says like it’s all one big experiment.
“You stuffed a nuclear powersource in me,” Marcus stresses, blood beginning to boil. He knew what was there, inside of him, but seeing it is a whole other thing. He screws his eyes shut, but the image is blazing underneath his eyelids. “God.”
“It works, doesn’t it?”
Marcus spits: “Didn’t it occur to you that if I’d offered you my fucking heart, I must have been okay with dying?”
“It did,” John answers calmly. Marcus looks at him, observes him tweaking something inside, near the fuel cell, and wonders if he can go off like a bomb and blast this whole accursed place apart. “But I hate it when people die for me, so deal with it.”
“What if this shit gives me brain cancer?” A valid question for someone with a nuclear reactor in his chest. “My brain is the only thing that sets me apart from them. If I lose it, will you replace it too?” He takes a deep breath. “My name is Marcus Wright. I was born in Abilene, Texas, August 22, 1975. I had a brother named Sam. I was executed in 2003 in Longview State Correctional Facility for multiple homicide.”
Connor listens, tense, unblinking.
“Am I still that person?” Marcus questions as he sits up. “Or was he a template for something else? Something artificial.”
“I asked you the same thing when we first met,” Connor points out. “You sounded pretty sure back then.” Marcus drills him with a hard look. Connor sighs irritably. “What do you want from me, Wright? Sympathy? I’m all out of it.”
“I want you,” Marcus says pointedly, “to tell me once and for all: am I a threat?”
He shouldn’t be asking what he already knows.
“Yes,” Connor says unequivocally. He will never sugar-coat things; Marcus can trust him on that.
“Then why-?”
“Everything that Skynet does is a threat. But in the future, I learn to reprogram them. I make them ours. And I think it starts with you.”
Marcus glowers at him. Bristles and snarls that he is not a fucking wind-up toy. But the truth it, he would be if it meant he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Kyle and Star and Blair. Kate and the baby. Hell, even Barnes.
“You done with the temper tantrum?” Connor asks calmly, nudging him back down on the table. “Because I don’t have all day.”
He continues the check-up. The fuel cell is cold and operational; nothing is leaking or going haywire. Marcus watches Connor’s hands disappear in his chest cavity and it dawns upon him that the mechanics of his fucked up body fascinates Connor. He fascinates Connor.
--
He is relieved when Blair comes back. His relief is peculiar; it’s not that she has returned unscathed, but that she is here, between him and Connor. They fall back into their friends with benefits routine. Blair kisses him bluntly, eyes bright and sprightly, and he doesn’t tells her that his hand can constrict around her throat any time, or that he’s got a virus in his system. It’s not that he deliberately lies to her; but when he is with her, like this, it makes him feel human.
He thinks of Connor. Of Connor’s hands and Connor’s watchful eyes and his heart. Remembers the incisions that should have hurt. His pain threshold is very unstable these days. Sometimes the sensation returns, fortified by the memories of what it should feel like, and Marcus can barely stand it. On days like these he wants to react, to inflict pain on others, on Connor most of all, and he wonders if that is part of the Skynet programming too.
“You told me once,” he whispers to Blair as she lies in his arms, her head on his shoulder (she never puts it on his chest anymore; it’s too quiet), “that we get to choose who we want to be. Knowing what you know of me now, do you still believe it’s true?”
She looks up, dark hair falling like a curtain over the side of her face. She sizes him up and smiles.
“You really need to ask?”
--
Marcus starts going on missions again. Small stuff: supply runs, hunting, short-distance recon. What use does one put a faulty infiltrating machine?
He dreams sometimes, more frequently these days. In his dreams, he walks through waves of flame that strip him of his skin until there is nothing left but metal gleaming ominously in the fiery glares. There is nothing left in him but determination. He marches purposefully on towards his ultimate goal. John Connor. Priority target.
Terminate John Connor.
He awakes with a start, bites back a groan and sinks back on the cot. Listens for the frantic heartbeat and cannot hear it. The fuel cell is silent as a grave.
The next night, it begins again.
--
Shortly before Christmas, one of the recon teams delivers the news that Connor has been waiting for. Something about the new location for the base. He leaves with them and he is gone for a long time. So long that his men grow concerned.
Marcus takes longer missions. Almost single-handedly exterminates a detachment of T-600s. Catches bullets and watches the scars skin over the next day. Succeeds in not thinking about Connor. More or less.
Kyle goes on field missions under Barnes’s command and tries his peace-making skills on the two of them. It ends with Barnes grudgingly declaring: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more,” and lots of booze in the aftermath of a bloody skirmish with some rogues on patrol, during which Marcus shields the lieutenant from a burst of machine-gun fire.
A nurse picks the bullets out of him afterwards, reminding him of that day in the bunker when Connor told him about time-traveling Terminators.
On Christmas Eve, Marcus goes to see Kate. He has never been to the Connors’ quarters before. He wouldn’t push his luck now but he needs to ask her something.
She opens the door but doesn’t invite him in. He catches a glimpse of Star behind her back; the girl has been spending a lot of time there, helping to babysit. In her absence, Kyle discreetly indicated that he was glad Star had found herself a suitable task that would keep her out of harm’s way.
“What…” Marcus hesitates. “What did John tell you about what he was doing with me?”
The name rolls off of his tongue, unwonted. If Kate finds the use of her husband’s first name strange, she doesn’t show it. She steps out into the corridor, shuts the door and gestures at Marcus to walk with her.
“I know what John told me. I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me the truth?”
Marcus falters. Her reply is too ambiguous to go by.
“People don’t always understand John,” Kate says all of a sudden. “He does a lot of things that might appear questionable if you don’t have the inside information. So far everything he’s done served only one purpose: to save humanity. To defeat the machines. Trust me when I say that it’s the only agenda John has.”
Trust her? She’s the one who doesn’t trust him. And yet, these are probably the most honest words she has ever said to him.
“Kate,” he asks quietly. “What are John’s plans for Kyle? And don’t tell me he doesn’t have any.”
For a moment she looks wistful. She keeps silent.
They come across a makeshift Christmas celebration. There is no tree of course, nothing to indicate it is Christmas, but then, Marcus never had that when he was alive either. He and Sam, they just used to drive around in another boldly stolen vehicle, breaking the speed limit on the centre strip. Back then it would seem the road would never end.
He looks at Kate, her fair-skinned face framed by red hair almost ethereal in the dim light of the grimy field lamps. She seems oddly placid. Not worried about her arguably missing husband.
“Not this time,” she says with a soft smile when Marcus points it out.
John is not the only one who knows the future.
--
A few men from Connor’s squad return the day before the New Year. Connor is not with them. The Resistance has captured the Serrano Point nuclear power plant (ahead of schedule, according to Kate’s bewildering remark) at Avila Beach. Connor stayed behind, having appropriated the place as the new permanent base of operations.
January 1st sees the Resistance relocate there. It feels strange being around Connor again. He looks older and sports a limp; the last few weeks have taken their toll. Marcus listens to his first regular broadcast after a three-week interval and thinks: pretentious bastard. And also: show-off. And a tiny bit of: alive.
Connor doesn’t seek him out, so Marcus drops by uninvited. Kate isn’t there. Neither is Star. Connor is cradling his daughter in his arms, humming a nursery rhyme in what sounds like Spanish. He spots Marcus but finishes the song stubbornly.
“So,” Marcus says. Awkward. “Not ‘Welcome to the Jungle’?” Connor snickers. “I’ve gotta hand it to you: this is horrific. Maybe you should just sing to Skynet. Guaranteed to drop it dead.”
“Let’s make it a duet,” Connor suggests. “Because I haven’t forgotten the horror of your singing.” He places the baby back in the crib while Marcus pretends to be affronted. “I hear there’s been no incidents?”
Marcus shakes his head. Wants to tell Connor that it was irresponsible of him to leave a faulty machine at the base while he was away. Not to mention, Marcus could have done his part fighting off the machines here.
Connor walks over to the container in the corner of the room and opens it, showing Marcus a number of metal pieces.
“Spare parts,” he all but grins. Marcus thinks he has plenty of that inside already, but Connor always plans for contingency. That’s his way. “So. Do you mind if I stick a cable into your head?”
“Will it stop you if I say I do?” Marcus asks and follows John out of the room. Star sneaks in like a quiet shadow as if she somehow knew she’d be needed soon.
“I believe I found a way to sneak a more informative peek at your interface,” Connor explains. He seats Marcus into a chair in one of the empty rooms and produces his toolbox.
“By hooking me up to the Matrix? I’m placing an order on the woman in red then.”
Connor snorts. Marcus can feel the knife blade prodding gently at the back of his head where the neural processing chip inserted by Skynet used to be. It hurts a little but not as much as he remembers. He wonders if the enhanced pain threshold actually signifies that he’s done for.
“Talk to me, Connor,” he says after a while. Huh. They’ve been here before.
“It’s just…” John’s voice comes out breathless. “The mechanics of this. The craftsmanship.” He struggles to keep admiration out but it seeps in nonetheless. “I don’t think… I don’t think it was possible for Skynet to alter your memories. Those memories you have of being Marcus Wright, those are yours. Skynet couldn’t have tampered with them. And now that your chip is gone, no one will.”
Marcus exhales shakily. His chest tightens with relief. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth; he doesn’t hold it back. Connor’s face comes into view as the man bends over him upside down, and Marcus flashes him a full-fledged grin like a patient would smile at an oncologist who’s just disproved that he has cancer.
“That only means you wouldn’t be manipulated into harming anyone in the Resistance,” Connor points out. “You still got that virus. Tricky bastard.”
“Fun times never end,” Marcus grumbles.
Connor pulls back and continues exploring. Maybe he’s plugged Marcus into something and is downloading his cerebral interface somewhere (if that’s even a thing because seriously, how does one keep track of all that insane robot lingo?). At times like these Connor looks like a cross between a mad scientist and an overjoyed teenager on his birthday.
He walks around the chair, tweaking wires and cables, taking the readings, doing God knows what and nodding to himself about it. He checks Marcus’s hands again and notes with satisfaction that there seem to be no involuntary responses this time. The digits of Marcus’s skeletal hand curl around Connor’s fingers, cold alloy against skin, and slide upwards, brushing over his wrist, the interlacing of blue veins that makes Marcus wonder what his own veins are made of. Connor looks down. Marcus could pull those veins out like wires, close them and hot-wire Connor like a car. Underneath all the exterior, John Connor is not that different from the machines he fights against.
--
The thing between Connor and him that has been smouldering for months erupts in the aftermath of another scuffle. Half the squad has been felled. They had a strategy that looked infallible on paper, but Marcus knows first-hand that things that seem good in your head don’t always turn out well when put into practice. And because he’s not one of Connor’s zealous groupies, he says so point-blank. They’re full of adrenaline, battle-high, and they start yelling at each other as Connor lectures him about fucking subordination, and Marcus insists that Connor just hates admitting that he may have been wrong. Things escalate pretty quickly. He calls Connor a fanatic. Connor retorts that he’s got no business listening to a failed car thief playing soldier. It’s a fucking war, Connor says. People die and it can’t always be helped.
“I’m sorry,” Barnes interjects, “but I’m with him.”
It takes both of them a moment to realize that he means Marcus. This world never seems to run out of surprises.
“You’re one crazy son of a gun, sir,” Barnes continues, “and I’ll be the first to follow you into hell itself. But right now you sound more like General Ashdown than John Connor. Is that how we’re gonna do things now?” His eyes flicker briefly to Marcus. “Metal boy’s right. There ain’t no such thing as collateral damage. We ain’t machines. We can’t rebuild our dead.”
The fight goes out of Connor. He exhales a measured breath and nods. Admits they are right. Looks like he flashes back to something. Marcus mouths “thank you” at Barnes, who gives him a don’t-thank-me shrug.
Later, Connor says: “I don’t want to be that person.” They are waiting for the Aerostats to pass. Barnes and the rest of the survivors have gone ahead, set to signal them when the way is cleared, so it’s just the two of them, and Connor is confessing. “I have to make choices. And I have to live with them. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking it doesn’t affect me.”
“I know it does,” says Marcus.
“You had, what, two people killed? Three? I don’t even know many died for me or because of me. I don’t know all of their names, I don’t know all of their faces. Doesn’t make it any easier.”
Marcus remembers the names and the faces and he would probably find the not knowing easier after all, but he doesn’t press the point.
“Are you done angsting?” he asks, imitating Connor’s own brisk, nonchalant tone. Because they can’t have their commander falling apart in the middle of the enemy territory.
Apparently, he’s done angsting, and now he’s angry. He balls his hand into a fist and punches Marcus in the face and curses breathlessly because it’s got to hurt. Marcus grits his teeth and throws a counter-blow, drawing blood, which Connor spits off, looking more irritated than hurt. They grapple for a while until Marcus slams him into the wall and hisses:
“What the fuck are you doing? Do you want me to go nuts again?”
“Oh, stop hiding behind your glitches, Wright! If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it ages ago. You wanna be thought of as human, start acting like one.”
Marcus hates it that this man always seems to have a point. Sometimes he does want to kill him and he could swear this desire has nothing to do with Skynet.
Marcus stares down the hard line of their bodies pressed against each other. Feels all the tension coiled dangerously inside both of them. Hears the steady, maddening sound of John’s heartbeat. Remembers crashing the bones of John’s hand. Remembers John’s hands fixing something inside him. John’s knife breaking the skin, Kate’s needle putting it back together. It’s a really fucked up feeling, that one. A trigger demanding to be pulled.
He shifts slightly, grinding inadvertently harder against Connor. For all they know, the noise of their tussle may have attracted some of the scouts. He looks at Connor, bloodied mouth and the deep, dark scar, and he shifts again, this time on purpose. Connor releases a shaky breath and moves. The friction is just a little too much.
Marcus leans closer, wondering if human blood would taste any different from his own. But he doesn’t dare touch Connor’s lips; that would make things too damn real. As it were, it’s going too slow, driving them both nuts. Marcus slips his left hand underneath Connor’s shirt. It’s naked metal; he has long since stopped bothering with the glove. Despite the absence of skin, it’s safer this way. This is not the crazy hand. And it makes it less real too. It’s just metal.
He scrapes his fingers against Connor’s abdomen, eliciting a string of husky, voiceless moans that go straight down to his own groin. Connor buckles insistently, forward and unpretentious, like it’s a continuation of the fight. Marcus’s hand slides lower, not exactly caressing but as gentle as you’d expect a metal limb to be. His fingers wrap smoothly around Connor’s length. Connor bites down an actual groan. This is very thin ice covering the abyss of guilt and self-deprecation.
He keeps stroking, settling on a somewhat ragged rhythm. Surprisingly, Connor returns the favour. Marcus almost tells him not to because his touch is too damn human. He thrusts into John’s hand despite himself. It’s all just means to an end.
Marcus loses himself in the cadence of John’s breathing, in the mingled scents of dust and sweat and plasma and oil and God knows what else. Somewhere along the way John rests his forehead against Marcus’s shoulder for purchase, and for a nano-second, it doesn’t feel like wrong time, wrong place, wrong person.
--
There are dogs at the base, German shepherds that Marcus would like a lot more if they didn’t bark at him every time, making heads turn from every direction. It’s like a public service announcement: here comes the pet Terminator. Or half-Terminator. Or whatever.
They don’t talk. Back to square zero. Marcus thinks he shouldn’t be able to even look at Kate (and that consideration probably makes him a half-decent person because such things never used to bother him before) but he keeps running into her even as Connor avoids him.
To be fair, he most likely isn’t. He’s just busy doing his messianic thing. He disappears again, and just like before, Kate murmurs: “Not this time.” It strikes Marcus that she is not certain about the future at all. She is reassuring herself, stubbornly, desperately. He asks her why.
“I have to remember,” she says, “that one day John might be gone, and I will have to shoulder all this alone.” There is defiance in her voice, like she knows something and is unwilling to let it come to pass. She gives him a half-smile. “But it’s not going to be today.”
He believes her.
--
Connor returns in time for his birthday celebration. There is an ocean of booze, enough to drop a horde of elephants, and someone digs up an old recording of some freedom-fighting speech from the sixties. A hoarse voice calls people to rise, to act, to win. Marcus has no idea where they’ve got the recording from, but it fits the situation, and he finds himself repeating the words noiselessly: you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… - lips barely moving: upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! It would have worked better if the voice was Connor’s.
“Kate once said we were ahead of schedule,” Marcus observes. “What did she mean?”
“Only that we’re moving along faster than we’re supposed to. But so is Skynet.”
“Moving where? To victory or-?”
A drunken choir showers Connor with birthday wishes. He laughs and toasts and drinks.
“When you first saw me,” Marcus says, “you seemed surprised. You were surprised. For someone who knows the future-.”
“The future’s not set,” John interrupts. “I know a future. More than one, in fact. And in all of them it takes Skynet about eight more years to release Series 800. You, on the other hand… You are something else.” He fixes Marcus with a pointed look; Marcus doesn’t know whether he should be flattered or concerned. “We’re navigating blind here. You burned all my maps.”
They stare at each other for what feels like a very long time. Marcus licks his lips, more out of habit than necessity.
“Where does Kyle fit in?”
There is a momentary change in Connor’s disposition - blink and you’ll miss it. Marcus almost does.
“The same as we all,” says Connor. “He’s the Resistance.”
“Bullshit. You were crazy about him in Skynet Central and you’re no less crazy about him now.”
He glances at Kyle who’s had one drink too many and is sleeping in the corner of the room, having successfully tuned out all the noise. He looks even younger now, just a child.
Marcus steps up, invading Connor’s personal space. He can punch him again if he doesn’t like the answer. He wonders if eyes are really windows to the soul; either Connor needs to clean the window-pane, or he’s got no soul.
“Kate told me to trust you. She says you have a reason for everything you do. Do you?”
“Are you asking me if I am the messiah? Some kind of mystical saviour? The hand of God?” John chuckles humourlessly. “I’m not. But if you’re asking me if I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to win this war, then… yes. Yes, I am.”
There is a tiny pause before the final answer, like a record skipping. Connor’s full of his own glitches. Marcus doesn’t know if he finds it reassuring.
“You might have to become that person,” he whispers.
Someone fires up the speech again. It thunders through the room, half-drowned by the music from Barnes’s boombox. All that noise nearly swallows Connor’s answer.
“Not if I have somebody to pull me back.”
Marcus hesitates, and lays down conditions. “You’ll tell me about Kyle.”
“You might not like it.”
Big surprise. Marcus laughs, suddenly relieved.
“There’s a hell of a lot of shit I don’t like about you, Connor. That doesn’t seem to stop us.”
Connor smiles and declares that it’s something to drink to. Marcus decides that it’s a good thing.
September 11-20, 2012
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R
Timeline: post-T4
Summary: When John suspects there is malware in Marcus Wright’s system, he takes it upon himself to fix things. With mixed results. [John/Marcus, canon pairings implied]
Disclaimer: Terminator Salvation belongs to McG, Warner Bros., etc. The franchise belongs to James Cameron. Quotes from “Breakdown” by Guns N’ Roses; “Bleed the Freak” by Alice In Chains; Hebrews 10:17; “Bodies upon the gears” speech by Mario Savio.
A/N: This was never supposed to be this long. *whimpers* But these two highjacked my brain, then some other characters joined the party, and some elements of the novelizations and T:SCC seeped in. Also, for the sake of this story, let’s assume Marcus doesn’t really need a heart to live.
YESTERDAY’S GOT NOTHING
I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.
Richard Siken. “Wishbone”
They don’t talk about it. In fact, they don’t really talk about anything; Connor isn’t a conversational person. He prefers his broadcasts; he’s got the voice for that and he’s got something that makes you want to trust him. At least when he’s not holding a gun to your head. Or maybe even then.
Marcus first notices it when he pulls Connor out of the crossfire as they storm a Skynet Work Camp. He couldn’t say why he stayed; he is pretty sure he doesn’t owe Connor anything. Kyle understandably hero-worships the guy, but that’s Kyle’s problem. (Connor asked him once why he’d stayed. Marcus didn’t have a ready-made answer to that. But there weren’t a lot of options these days; besides, he wanted to see how his heart fared.)
That’s what it’s all about in the end. The heart. When he gave it away, he didn’t expect to come back from that. He must have done something really wrong if he kept bouncing between life and death like a goddamn rubber ball.
He pulls Connor out of the crossfire and shoves him behind a pile of debris. Feeble protection, but it’s the best they’ve got right now. Connor is clutching the tommy gun, and Marcus’s hand rests on his chest for a moment, palm flat against it, fingers splayed over the heart. He can feel it even through the thick fabric of the coat. Deep down, beating wildly, a strong, healthy rhythm. His. Not Connor’s.
Their eyes meet. Marcus thinks that he is done saving this guy. But no, not by a long shot.
--
He and Connor are similar in ways two polar opposites can be similar. When they walk through a crowd, everybody is staring. Connor wears his scar proudly, a testament to the things he’s done, the things he will get to do. Marcus hides his bared metal hand, the actual proof of him being half-it. If he brings his cyborg fingers up to Connor’s face, they will match the scar as if they are the ones that left it. Sometimes he really wants to do that, and then again. Connor had no right to bring him back.
Marcus carries silence in his chest now that another human piece of him is gone.
--
When Connor is around, Marcus catches himself inadvertently listening for that thumping sound. Over and over again. He watches, and watches, and watches. Connor is different with everyone. Harsh, ruthless in a fight. Quietly mirthful with his men. Gentle and tired when he thinks he is alone with Kate, a hand resting on her belly. She is due any day now, and Marcus could wager Connor is scared. Who wouldn’t be? The world is a shitty place for babies these days.
Then again, what does Marcus know about that? Jack squat.
--
He can spot a man hanging by a thread. It’s his natural talent. He was that man many times; he still is. And so is Connor. Between planning tactical offense, being the symbol of the Resistance and playing house with Kate, he is still just a man, and he is ripping at the seams.
There are things Connor is not telling others. Things that involve Kyle, Skynet and God knows what else. They probably don’t involve Marcus, so he shouldn’t worry, but it’s easier said than done.
“People say you’re some kind of a prophet,” Marcus comments.
“Oh yeah?” Connor looks up from the blueprints of yet another nuclear plant they are about to take. You can never have too many nuclear plants at your disposal. “What people?”
“Just people. They say you knew about the T-800 before you saw them.”
A thin smile graces Connor’s lips. A trademark of his.
“I knew they were building something new. I didn’t know what.”
Yeah, right.
“You told me they tried to kill your mother,” Marcus points out. “You told me we had been at war before either of us-.”
“Is this going anywhere?” Connor interrupts. Looks at him like he’s asking too many questions. The world infiltrator hasn’t been dropped once since Marcus saved Connor’s life, but it’s always there, unspoken, floating around like a ghost. Connor may be grateful for the heart but he will never let him forget that he is just like any of them on the inside. Machine.
Marcus holds his gaze firmly. “No.”
“Well, this is.” Connor gestures at the blueprints. “Get your head back in the game, Wright.”
--
Connor is not there when the baby is born. It’s a girl, nice and healthy, and Connor is not there to see her because he is lying on the floor of a recently liberated bunker, riddled with bullets. Mind you, he is not dying. It takes more than a bit of lead to off John Connor, especially since he seems to possess a clear idea of what he is not going to die from. Terminators and gunshot wounds are on the top of the list.
“For someone who positions himself as God’s gift to humanity, you can be remarkably reckless,” Marcus comments as he picks the bullets out of him. It must hurt like a bitch, which is fine by him. Plasma would have hurt less but Connor would have been toast with such a percentage of exposure.
“Did you see her?” Connor asks. His voice sounds huskier than ever.
“They wouldn’t let me.” No wonder. For all that he’s on John’s personal squad, Kate still doesn’t trust him. Not even when he sets out to bring Connor reinforcements. “Kyle did. Ask him when you get back.”
Connor keeps quiet. There is no damage to his vital organs (maybe “riddled with bullets” is a bit of an exaggeration), but it’ll probably take time for him to recover. There is no rush; Marcus has seen a couple of HKs hovering outside.
“Pancakes,” says Connor.
“Huh?”
“I miss pancakes. My mother used to…” He chuckles; the sound is wheezy and pained, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Always burned them. Or undercooked.”
Marcus listens for the heartbeat again. He doesn’t really remember his mother. Something tells him that if she had made them pancakes, he and Sam wouldn’t have ended up where they had done.
“Blink,” Connor whispers.
Marcus frowns a little.
“Blink, Wright. You’ve been staring at me continuously for hell knows how long. Humans don’t do that. Blink, you stupid tin can.”
He starts coughing. Marcus watches out for blood and feels relieved when it doesn’t come. The last thing Connor needs is to start haemorrhaging internally while there is no medic in the vicinity. While Kate is not around to fix him.
“Why did you do it, Connor?” Marcus asks. He blinks very deliberately, hoping the bastard is pleased now. His hand is over John’s heart again, feeling the beat. He must be pressing too hard because Connor inhales sharply and snaps:
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“If I were, you’d know.”
Connor gives him a level look. He is thinking of lying, it’s clear as day.
“You’re Skynet,” he says simply. “No matter what you tell yourself, inside you’re Skynet.”
“You gave me a Terminator’s heart!” Marcus spits. “Why? To make me even more like them? To show me I can’t be anything else?”
Connor shuts his eyes. He is human; he can’t stop blinking for too long.
“When I was a kid,” he says, “a Terminator came from the future to kill me.” Okay, what? “But another one came to protect me.” He looks at Marcus again, his eyes hard. “The trouble with humans is that they can be killed and they can’t be replaced. Machines aren’t like that. But when I was a kid, I cried when my Terminator died.” He takes a shaky breath. “You saved my life, Wright. Letting you die seemed like… a damn waste.”
Coming from Connor, it sounds like a fucking love confession. Marcus has no idea what to do with the revelations of John’s crazy childhood, but if that’s not trust, he doesn’t know what is.
“If we don’t get a proper doc to have a look at you ASAP,” he says through clenched teeth, “you’re screwed.”
Connor laughs.
--
The baby has John’s eyes. Sarah Connor’s eyes as people say. Marcus has only seen Sarah Connor once, an old, faded photo that John carries with him. She looked beautiful and sad. She is Madonna to John’s Christ; people tell legends about her exploits, legends about John’s childhood training in the jungle of Central America that fall in line with the idea that John Connor is a messiah sent to guide humanity to victory against the machines. There is another theory about him, supported by quite a lot of people. That he is a kook and a fraud. Be that as it may, Connor is a damn capable leader.
They haven’t talked since Marcus retrieved the wounded Connor from that bunker. While convalescent, John spends all of his time with Kate and their daughter or busies himself with broadcasts and tactical revision. It must be nice to have something to do other than shoot at things, Marcus muses. It must be nice to have someone to do it with. He and Blair have gradually fallen apart. Must be the new powersource in his chest. Not nearly as loud and clear as the previous one. Not nearly as inspiring. Hardly the attribute of a good man.
He doesn’t blame her. They are still on friendly terms; at least she doesn’t watch him like she suspects he could rip his heart out of Connor’s chest any time, nor does she treat him with condescending tolerance like he is the squad’s mascot tin can. He’s still got her, he’s still got Kyle and Star, he’s even got Connor in a way. It’s more than he had when he was alive. No reason to complain really.
--
Marcus ends up back in the brig when he shoots Barnes. People talk. They say it’s revenge for a little target practice Barnes did on him the first time around; Barnes himself certainly seems to think so. Shows how much they know: if there is anything Marcus wants to take revenge for, it’s the lieutenant’s annoying religious expatiation.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” Connor asks, folding his arms across his chest.
Marcus is strapped to a chair that reminds him uncomfortably of Longview.
“It was an involuntary movement.” His hand twitches under the straps.
“That nearly cost Barnes his life.”
“It was an accident,” Marcus repeats tersely. What exactly does he have to do to have them convinced that he doesn’t want anyone here dead? That it’s not his goddamn programming. Trouble is, he can’t be certain of the latter. He can’t be certain of anything.
Connor leans into him, eyes training into his.
“Wright, are you damaged?”
Isn’t that a million dollar question?
Marcus isn’t stupid. He knows full well what they’ll do to him if a glitch is discovered. If he cannot be in control of whatever Skynet has stuffed into him, he’s a liability. He will be put down and disassembled. He still believes it’s not right for him to stay alive, but he doesn’t want to die like this. Not like this, a heap of scrap metal that can be used to make another terrifying weapon.
“I don’t know,” he says wearily. “I don’t know.”
Connor nods, mostly to himself, and leaves.
--
Marcus doesn’t expect to see him again. But Connor returns, unpredictable as always, and loosens the straps, rolls Marcus’s sleeve up and tugs his glove down, exposing the metal. He’s got a tool box with him. That doesn’t look good.
“Tune-up,” he explains, catching Marcus’s inquiring look.
“Someone didn’t get enough Lego bricks for Christmas when he was a kid.”
“No,” Connor chuckles. “Just guns and ammo.”
Marcus snorts. In his old life, he would have probably thought those were really cool presents.
Connor pokes him with a screwdriver, his face a perfect mask of concentration. Marcus fixes him with a steady gaze, if only to avoid looking at his own exposed endoskeleton. He will never get used to the lack of pain and the sight of someone poking around in his insides like he is a thrashed car engine.
“Wiggle your fingers,” John tells him.
Marcus complies and tries to convince himself that he can’t hear faint humming his mechanical joints make.
“Squeeze.”
His fingers twitch and wrap around something. He looks down to see Connor’s hand in his.
“Harder.”
Marcus’s grip becomes firmer, and firmer still as Connor reiterates his command. He could break the man’s bones now. He would hear them shatter and snap, a brittle, crunchy sound that his own metallic carcass will never make.
John hisses and barely refrains from wincing. Marcus releases his hand.
“Connor-.”
“If you’re gonna say that I don’t have to do this or something, better save it.” He pulls a knife out of his pocket.
Marcus scoffs. “I was gonna say it was the wrong hand. But I understand that you’ve already figured it out.”
“Yeah.”
“You could have asked me, you know.”
John grins. “I’m not looking for an easy way out.” He slits Marcus’s fleshy forearm lengthwise, eliciting a soft, hissing sound from him. It doesn’t exactly hurt; more like tingles. Marcus watches blood ooze out of the incision, his mouth dry. He forces himself to keep looking even as Connor opens the flaps of flesh and peels them aside, revealing bone structure drenched in blood.
“Don’t forget to sew it back up,” Marcus says. “I can’t lose any more skin for you.”
“I was thinking,” Connor muses. “We could rip some skin off one of the T-800s and graft it onto your hand. It might take.”
“Careful, or I’m gonna think you actually care.”
John twists the screwdriver, and Marcus’s hand twitches involuntarily. “God forbid.” Their hands connect again for the same experiment: this time Marcus squeezes silently until John tells him to stop, and then he finds he cannot stop. His grip tightens. John groans and curses and tries to pull away, but Marcus is holding fast. His eyes widen. He compresses his lips and strains himself, trying to relax his wayward hand, all to no avail. Connor’s breathing quickens. Sweat beads up on his forehead. That crunching sound comes, and Marcus releases his grip abruptly.
“I… I thought I wasn’t designed for destruction.”
“It’s the same for all of you,” Connor says with a brittle chuckle. “Think of it as a default setting.”
“So what, I’m going to gradually lose control of my motor skills and go on a killing spree?”
“That, or you’ll do it suddenly.” Connor gets up, nursing his broken hand. Right, he needs medical attention. He came to fix Marcus’s hand and got his own broken. Talk about poetic justice.
Strangely, Marcus feels no satisfaction.
--
Kate comes to suture up the gash after she treats John’s hand. She is distant and taciturn and she clearly doesn’t want to talk about her husband, so Marcus tentatively asks after Barnes.
“He’s not ready to meet his maker just yet,” she says, without looking at him. She applies the stitches deftly, trained by years of operating under pressure, too accustomed to the mad rhythm to take things slower. “There. It’ll regenerate quickly, a little cut like that. You’ll be good as new in a couple of days, maybe sooner.”
Another reminder of how abnormal he is. Not that accelerated healing abilities are a bad thing.
“Kate,” he says, hesitantly. “It’s a glitch. I didn’t shoot him on purpose.” Didn’t break John’s hand on purpose.
She sighs. “Yes, I know.” It makes things a whole lot worse.
--
Connor returns the next day, his hand bandaged, a determined glint in his eyes. He shoves a bottle of moonshine into Marcus’s hands as he unfastens the straps and tells him to drink. He’ll need it.
“I don’t think the damage is mechanical,” Connor informs him. “I want to obtain some spare parts to be safe, but-.”
“What do you know,” Marcus laughs. “I’ve been told I’m high maintenance. Not that far off the mark, huh?” He looks up at Connor, and his mirth fades. “How bad is it?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out. It’s malware of some kind. Probably got in before you pulled out the chip. Or a sleeper program that was activated at some point.”
John walks round the chair and positions himself behind Marcus. The booze definitely comes in handy: if he is going to fiddle with the programming, Marcus had better have something to placate himself with. He just hopes Connor doesn’t forget that there is a real, vulnerable human brain inside that metal skull.
“So,” Connor says. “Texas, huh? You don’t sound Texan.”
Marcus knits his eyebrows. “What’s with the small talk?”
“Brain surgery. I need to make sure I don’t leave you impaired in any way. I don’t care what you do as long as you talk.”
Makes sense. Except Marcus doesn’t feel very chatty at the moment. He could ask about Connor’s mother or his inexplicable interest in Kyle or all the time-traveling shenanigans - or he could recite the alphabet until Connor got sick of it. But all he can think about is that Connor is cutting into his head and he can’t even feel it. How fucked up is that?
“You have a thing for irons, don’t you?” His tone is supposed to be teasing but his voice trembles. So does Connor’s hand, just for a second.
“I was a pretty decent hacker back in the day,” he says. “A delinquent, really. At least that’s what my foster folks called me.”
Marcus chuckles. “Something we got in common then. I used to jack cars.”
“Everybody warms themselves to a different fire,” Connor says enigmatically. Except not really because Marcus recognizes the quote. He mentally adds it to his catalogue of data on Connor and wonders briefly if Connor can somehow read it in his mind now that he is poking and prodding at it.
They continue their stroll down the memory lane, exchanging small, meaningless details (the kind that Marcus suspects can’t be used against them) until a noncom calls John away. He doesn’t bother strapping Marcus back down, but it’s implicit that he stays in the brig until the improvised surgery continues. Fine by him. At this point he is simply glad Connor hasn’t lobotomized him.
--
Kyle is away on a mission. So is Blair. They don’t get to say goodbye because nobody is allowed into the brig except John fucking Connor who takes his sweet time fixing Marcus’s glitches. He works slowly with a semi-disabled hand and constant interruptions, and to be frank, Marcus doesn’t feel any different, but then, he is not sure that he should.
“Talk to me, Wright,” Connor prods, and since Marcus doesn’t feel like talking, he starts singing:
My cup runneth over
Like blood from a stone…
Connor doesn’t interrupt, so he continues:
These stand for me.
Name your god and bleed the freak.
I'd like to see
How you all would bleed for me…
And something-something-something because damn if he can remember all the words.
“Interesting choice,” Connor comments.
“My brother,” Marcus says. Like that explains everything.
“Kyle said something about that.”
It figures that Connor would pry. But that information is not exactly classified.
“It’s fitting though,” Marcus says before he can stop himself. “People bleeding for you.”
His murderous hand jerks, fingers clenching against his will. John must have hit something in his head.
“Half-machine, half-suicidal. Interesting combination. But we already knew that.”
Marcus scoffs. Look who’s grown a sense of humour in a test tube.
He catches himself thinking that his banter with Connor has been soothing him more than alcohol lately. Things between them have become far less hostile than before. Not exactly friendly, but somehow comfortable.
“So that’s how you made friends with Terminators,” he quips.
He expects Connor to return it, crack some lame joke, but there is steel in his voice.
“What?”
“When you were a kid,” Marcus says uncertainly.
Connor comes to stand before him, eyes hard and narrowed in suspicion.
“Who told you that?”
“You did! Back in the bunker.” He trails off. Remembers that day, Connor’s blood all over the floor, picking bullets out of him. “That was just fever talking.” Of course. Time travel, eh?
He sighs. Stupid. Like Connor needs any more myths surrounding his enigmatic persona.
Connor doesn’t deny anything though. His jaw is set and he looks like he is about to pick Marcus apart piece by piece. He also looks hesitant.
“If you tell anyone, I’ll write you off as obsolete equipment and burn your endo while it’s still inside you.” His voice sounds level, emotionless, but the threat it carries makes Marcus’s skin crawl.
“Who would I tell? And what would I tell?”
“My mother knew a lot of things before they came to pass,” Connor says. “She tried to warn people but nobody listened. She spent three years in a nuthouse. We were always on the run, always had someone after us.”
“They listen now,” Marcus points out.
“Not always. There are some things they’re not ready to hear.”
“Like good scary robots.”
A small smile makes Connor’s mouth curve slightly. “Yeah. Like good scary robots.”
Marcus wants to ask: are there any? He wants to ask: am I one?
Connor moves closer; his leg ends up set against Marcus’s knee. He looks into Marcus’s eyes, and Marcus could swear he is wondering what those are made of.
--
Kyle returns a few days later, battered, bruised but alive. Connor lets Marcus out the day before that, having deemed the repairs sufficient for now. His hand stops convulsing, but the virus is still there. It will take a hell of a lot of scrubbing before they get it all out.
Kyle seems to avoid him at first. The reason for that becomes clear when Star brings them together one evening for a meagre meal. It’s meat of some kind, possibly even rat, but it still tastes better than coyotes Kyle used to eat in L.A.
“We found other Hybrids,” Kyle says in the middle of dinner. He is very deliberately not looking at Marcus.
“And?”
He knows the answer before Kyle gives it.
“They aren’t like you. No one is like you.”
All put down then. It shouldn’t bother him. Kyle is right: Marcus is unique.
They don’t talk about Marcus’s time in the brig. He doesn’t deliberately hide things from Kyle, but the fewer people know what is going on, the better. Star is chewing on her lump of sinewy meat, watching Marcus with dark, earnest eyes. He feels like he owes them some kind of explanation, but this thing he has going on with Connor is too convoluted to try and make head or tail of.
He spots a familiar picture in Kyle’s hand. The kid is still wrapped up in Connor’s jacket (Marcus doesn’t think he’s taken it off once since he got it) and just as he is about to shove the picture back into his pocket, Marcus stops him.
“Is that… Connor’s mother?”
It is dark in the tunnel but it looks like Kyle’s cheeks flush.
“Uh… yeah. Beautiful, isn’t she?” He casts his eyes down, dreamily. “He gave it to me before the mission. Kind of a good luck charm. I know it’s weird, but…” He shrugs. “She looks kinda sad. I wonder what she’s thinking about.”
Probably what it’s like to have Connor for a son.
--
Marcus is pretty sure Connor enjoys this. His latest idea of fun includes placing Marcus on a table and cutting his chest open, even though Marcus is quite certain he doesn’t think with his sternum.
“Kinky.”
Connor flashes him an icy look. Marcus responds with an innocent grin.
“You wanted to see what was inside,” Connor says coolly.
Marcus remembers the day he woke up in the post-op ward (or what passes for it at the base anyway), with that terrible quietness in his chest. Blair was with him, all but holding his hand, looking a little guilty, but it wasn’t her idea. It was Connor’s, his sole responsibility.
Marcus inclines his head to get a better view at his open chest. The last time he saw it, it still contained a living, beating heart in the hyper-alloy ribcage. The heart that resides in Connor’s chest now and pumps Connor’s blood. Connor’s fingers skirt the edges of the gaping hole, almost gentle.
“You stuffed a fuel cell in me,” Marcus breathes.
“We weren’t sure it’d take,” Connor says like it’s all one big experiment.
“You stuffed a nuclear powersource in me,” Marcus stresses, blood beginning to boil. He knew what was there, inside of him, but seeing it is a whole other thing. He screws his eyes shut, but the image is blazing underneath his eyelids. “God.”
“It works, doesn’t it?”
Marcus spits: “Didn’t it occur to you that if I’d offered you my fucking heart, I must have been okay with dying?”
“It did,” John answers calmly. Marcus looks at him, observes him tweaking something inside, near the fuel cell, and wonders if he can go off like a bomb and blast this whole accursed place apart. “But I hate it when people die for me, so deal with it.”
“What if this shit gives me brain cancer?” A valid question for someone with a nuclear reactor in his chest. “My brain is the only thing that sets me apart from them. If I lose it, will you replace it too?” He takes a deep breath. “My name is Marcus Wright. I was born in Abilene, Texas, August 22, 1975. I had a brother named Sam. I was executed in 2003 in Longview State Correctional Facility for multiple homicide.”
Connor listens, tense, unblinking.
“Am I still that person?” Marcus questions as he sits up. “Or was he a template for something else? Something artificial.”
“I asked you the same thing when we first met,” Connor points out. “You sounded pretty sure back then.” Marcus drills him with a hard look. Connor sighs irritably. “What do you want from me, Wright? Sympathy? I’m all out of it.”
“I want you,” Marcus says pointedly, “to tell me once and for all: am I a threat?”
He shouldn’t be asking what he already knows.
“Yes,” Connor says unequivocally. He will never sugar-coat things; Marcus can trust him on that.
“Then why-?”
“Everything that Skynet does is a threat. But in the future, I learn to reprogram them. I make them ours. And I think it starts with you.”
Marcus glowers at him. Bristles and snarls that he is not a fucking wind-up toy. But the truth it, he would be if it meant he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Kyle and Star and Blair. Kate and the baby. Hell, even Barnes.
“You done with the temper tantrum?” Connor asks calmly, nudging him back down on the table. “Because I don’t have all day.”
He continues the check-up. The fuel cell is cold and operational; nothing is leaking or going haywire. Marcus watches Connor’s hands disappear in his chest cavity and it dawns upon him that the mechanics of his fucked up body fascinates Connor. He fascinates Connor.
--
He is relieved when Blair comes back. His relief is peculiar; it’s not that she has returned unscathed, but that she is here, between him and Connor. They fall back into their friends with benefits routine. Blair kisses him bluntly, eyes bright and sprightly, and he doesn’t tells her that his hand can constrict around her throat any time, or that he’s got a virus in his system. It’s not that he deliberately lies to her; but when he is with her, like this, it makes him feel human.
He thinks of Connor. Of Connor’s hands and Connor’s watchful eyes and his heart. Remembers the incisions that should have hurt. His pain threshold is very unstable these days. Sometimes the sensation returns, fortified by the memories of what it should feel like, and Marcus can barely stand it. On days like these he wants to react, to inflict pain on others, on Connor most of all, and he wonders if that is part of the Skynet programming too.
“You told me once,” he whispers to Blair as she lies in his arms, her head on his shoulder (she never puts it on his chest anymore; it’s too quiet), “that we get to choose who we want to be. Knowing what you know of me now, do you still believe it’s true?”
She looks up, dark hair falling like a curtain over the side of her face. She sizes him up and smiles.
“You really need to ask?”
--
Marcus starts going on missions again. Small stuff: supply runs, hunting, short-distance recon. What use does one put a faulty infiltrating machine?
He dreams sometimes, more frequently these days. In his dreams, he walks through waves of flame that strip him of his skin until there is nothing left but metal gleaming ominously in the fiery glares. There is nothing left in him but determination. He marches purposefully on towards his ultimate goal. John Connor. Priority target.
Terminate John Connor.
He awakes with a start, bites back a groan and sinks back on the cot. Listens for the frantic heartbeat and cannot hear it. The fuel cell is silent as a grave.
The next night, it begins again.
--
Shortly before Christmas, one of the recon teams delivers the news that Connor has been waiting for. Something about the new location for the base. He leaves with them and he is gone for a long time. So long that his men grow concerned.
Marcus takes longer missions. Almost single-handedly exterminates a detachment of T-600s. Catches bullets and watches the scars skin over the next day. Succeeds in not thinking about Connor. More or less.
Kyle goes on field missions under Barnes’s command and tries his peace-making skills on the two of them. It ends with Barnes grudgingly declaring: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more,” and lots of booze in the aftermath of a bloody skirmish with some rogues on patrol, during which Marcus shields the lieutenant from a burst of machine-gun fire.
A nurse picks the bullets out of him afterwards, reminding him of that day in the bunker when Connor told him about time-traveling Terminators.
On Christmas Eve, Marcus goes to see Kate. He has never been to the Connors’ quarters before. He wouldn’t push his luck now but he needs to ask her something.
She opens the door but doesn’t invite him in. He catches a glimpse of Star behind her back; the girl has been spending a lot of time there, helping to babysit. In her absence, Kyle discreetly indicated that he was glad Star had found herself a suitable task that would keep her out of harm’s way.
“What…” Marcus hesitates. “What did John tell you about what he was doing with me?”
The name rolls off of his tongue, unwonted. If Kate finds the use of her husband’s first name strange, she doesn’t show it. She steps out into the corridor, shuts the door and gestures at Marcus to walk with her.
“I know what John told me. I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me the truth?”
Marcus falters. Her reply is too ambiguous to go by.
“People don’t always understand John,” Kate says all of a sudden. “He does a lot of things that might appear questionable if you don’t have the inside information. So far everything he’s done served only one purpose: to save humanity. To defeat the machines. Trust me when I say that it’s the only agenda John has.”
Trust her? She’s the one who doesn’t trust him. And yet, these are probably the most honest words she has ever said to him.
“Kate,” he asks quietly. “What are John’s plans for Kyle? And don’t tell me he doesn’t have any.”
For a moment she looks wistful. She keeps silent.
They come across a makeshift Christmas celebration. There is no tree of course, nothing to indicate it is Christmas, but then, Marcus never had that when he was alive either. He and Sam, they just used to drive around in another boldly stolen vehicle, breaking the speed limit on the centre strip. Back then it would seem the road would never end.
He looks at Kate, her fair-skinned face framed by red hair almost ethereal in the dim light of the grimy field lamps. She seems oddly placid. Not worried about her arguably missing husband.
“Not this time,” she says with a soft smile when Marcus points it out.
John is not the only one who knows the future.
--
A few men from Connor’s squad return the day before the New Year. Connor is not with them. The Resistance has captured the Serrano Point nuclear power plant (ahead of schedule, according to Kate’s bewildering remark) at Avila Beach. Connor stayed behind, having appropriated the place as the new permanent base of operations.
January 1st sees the Resistance relocate there. It feels strange being around Connor again. He looks older and sports a limp; the last few weeks have taken their toll. Marcus listens to his first regular broadcast after a three-week interval and thinks: pretentious bastard. And also: show-off. And a tiny bit of: alive.
Connor doesn’t seek him out, so Marcus drops by uninvited. Kate isn’t there. Neither is Star. Connor is cradling his daughter in his arms, humming a nursery rhyme in what sounds like Spanish. He spots Marcus but finishes the song stubbornly.
“So,” Marcus says. Awkward. “Not ‘Welcome to the Jungle’?” Connor snickers. “I’ve gotta hand it to you: this is horrific. Maybe you should just sing to Skynet. Guaranteed to drop it dead.”
“Let’s make it a duet,” Connor suggests. “Because I haven’t forgotten the horror of your singing.” He places the baby back in the crib while Marcus pretends to be affronted. “I hear there’s been no incidents?”
Marcus shakes his head. Wants to tell Connor that it was irresponsible of him to leave a faulty machine at the base while he was away. Not to mention, Marcus could have done his part fighting off the machines here.
Connor walks over to the container in the corner of the room and opens it, showing Marcus a number of metal pieces.
“Spare parts,” he all but grins. Marcus thinks he has plenty of that inside already, but Connor always plans for contingency. That’s his way. “So. Do you mind if I stick a cable into your head?”
“Will it stop you if I say I do?” Marcus asks and follows John out of the room. Star sneaks in like a quiet shadow as if she somehow knew she’d be needed soon.
“I believe I found a way to sneak a more informative peek at your interface,” Connor explains. He seats Marcus into a chair in one of the empty rooms and produces his toolbox.
“By hooking me up to the Matrix? I’m placing an order on the woman in red then.”
Connor snorts. Marcus can feel the knife blade prodding gently at the back of his head where the neural processing chip inserted by Skynet used to be. It hurts a little but not as much as he remembers. He wonders if the enhanced pain threshold actually signifies that he’s done for.
“Talk to me, Connor,” he says after a while. Huh. They’ve been here before.
“It’s just…” John’s voice comes out breathless. “The mechanics of this. The craftsmanship.” He struggles to keep admiration out but it seeps in nonetheless. “I don’t think… I don’t think it was possible for Skynet to alter your memories. Those memories you have of being Marcus Wright, those are yours. Skynet couldn’t have tampered with them. And now that your chip is gone, no one will.”
Marcus exhales shakily. His chest tightens with relief. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth; he doesn’t hold it back. Connor’s face comes into view as the man bends over him upside down, and Marcus flashes him a full-fledged grin like a patient would smile at an oncologist who’s just disproved that he has cancer.
“That only means you wouldn’t be manipulated into harming anyone in the Resistance,” Connor points out. “You still got that virus. Tricky bastard.”
“Fun times never end,” Marcus grumbles.
Connor pulls back and continues exploring. Maybe he’s plugged Marcus into something and is downloading his cerebral interface somewhere (if that’s even a thing because seriously, how does one keep track of all that insane robot lingo?). At times like these Connor looks like a cross between a mad scientist and an overjoyed teenager on his birthday.
He walks around the chair, tweaking wires and cables, taking the readings, doing God knows what and nodding to himself about it. He checks Marcus’s hands again and notes with satisfaction that there seem to be no involuntary responses this time. The digits of Marcus’s skeletal hand curl around Connor’s fingers, cold alloy against skin, and slide upwards, brushing over his wrist, the interlacing of blue veins that makes Marcus wonder what his own veins are made of. Connor looks down. Marcus could pull those veins out like wires, close them and hot-wire Connor like a car. Underneath all the exterior, John Connor is not that different from the machines he fights against.
--
The thing between Connor and him that has been smouldering for months erupts in the aftermath of another scuffle. Half the squad has been felled. They had a strategy that looked infallible on paper, but Marcus knows first-hand that things that seem good in your head don’t always turn out well when put into practice. And because he’s not one of Connor’s zealous groupies, he says so point-blank. They’re full of adrenaline, battle-high, and they start yelling at each other as Connor lectures him about fucking subordination, and Marcus insists that Connor just hates admitting that he may have been wrong. Things escalate pretty quickly. He calls Connor a fanatic. Connor retorts that he’s got no business listening to a failed car thief playing soldier. It’s a fucking war, Connor says. People die and it can’t always be helped.
“I’m sorry,” Barnes interjects, “but I’m with him.”
It takes both of them a moment to realize that he means Marcus. This world never seems to run out of surprises.
“You’re one crazy son of a gun, sir,” Barnes continues, “and I’ll be the first to follow you into hell itself. But right now you sound more like General Ashdown than John Connor. Is that how we’re gonna do things now?” His eyes flicker briefly to Marcus. “Metal boy’s right. There ain’t no such thing as collateral damage. We ain’t machines. We can’t rebuild our dead.”
The fight goes out of Connor. He exhales a measured breath and nods. Admits they are right. Looks like he flashes back to something. Marcus mouths “thank you” at Barnes, who gives him a don’t-thank-me shrug.
Later, Connor says: “I don’t want to be that person.” They are waiting for the Aerostats to pass. Barnes and the rest of the survivors have gone ahead, set to signal them when the way is cleared, so it’s just the two of them, and Connor is confessing. “I have to make choices. And I have to live with them. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking it doesn’t affect me.”
“I know it does,” says Marcus.
“You had, what, two people killed? Three? I don’t even know many died for me or because of me. I don’t know all of their names, I don’t know all of their faces. Doesn’t make it any easier.”
Marcus remembers the names and the faces and he would probably find the not knowing easier after all, but he doesn’t press the point.
“Are you done angsting?” he asks, imitating Connor’s own brisk, nonchalant tone. Because they can’t have their commander falling apart in the middle of the enemy territory.
Apparently, he’s done angsting, and now he’s angry. He balls his hand into a fist and punches Marcus in the face and curses breathlessly because it’s got to hurt. Marcus grits his teeth and throws a counter-blow, drawing blood, which Connor spits off, looking more irritated than hurt. They grapple for a while until Marcus slams him into the wall and hisses:
“What the fuck are you doing? Do you want me to go nuts again?”
“Oh, stop hiding behind your glitches, Wright! If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it ages ago. You wanna be thought of as human, start acting like one.”
Marcus hates it that this man always seems to have a point. Sometimes he does want to kill him and he could swear this desire has nothing to do with Skynet.
Marcus stares down the hard line of their bodies pressed against each other. Feels all the tension coiled dangerously inside both of them. Hears the steady, maddening sound of John’s heartbeat. Remembers crashing the bones of John’s hand. Remembers John’s hands fixing something inside him. John’s knife breaking the skin, Kate’s needle putting it back together. It’s a really fucked up feeling, that one. A trigger demanding to be pulled.
He shifts slightly, grinding inadvertently harder against Connor. For all they know, the noise of their tussle may have attracted some of the scouts. He looks at Connor, bloodied mouth and the deep, dark scar, and he shifts again, this time on purpose. Connor releases a shaky breath and moves. The friction is just a little too much.
Marcus leans closer, wondering if human blood would taste any different from his own. But he doesn’t dare touch Connor’s lips; that would make things too damn real. As it were, it’s going too slow, driving them both nuts. Marcus slips his left hand underneath Connor’s shirt. It’s naked metal; he has long since stopped bothering with the glove. Despite the absence of skin, it’s safer this way. This is not the crazy hand. And it makes it less real too. It’s just metal.
He scrapes his fingers against Connor’s abdomen, eliciting a string of husky, voiceless moans that go straight down to his own groin. Connor buckles insistently, forward and unpretentious, like it’s a continuation of the fight. Marcus’s hand slides lower, not exactly caressing but as gentle as you’d expect a metal limb to be. His fingers wrap smoothly around Connor’s length. Connor bites down an actual groan. This is very thin ice covering the abyss of guilt and self-deprecation.
He keeps stroking, settling on a somewhat ragged rhythm. Surprisingly, Connor returns the favour. Marcus almost tells him not to because his touch is too damn human. He thrusts into John’s hand despite himself. It’s all just means to an end.
Marcus loses himself in the cadence of John’s breathing, in the mingled scents of dust and sweat and plasma and oil and God knows what else. Somewhere along the way John rests his forehead against Marcus’s shoulder for purchase, and for a nano-second, it doesn’t feel like wrong time, wrong place, wrong person.
--
There are dogs at the base, German shepherds that Marcus would like a lot more if they didn’t bark at him every time, making heads turn from every direction. It’s like a public service announcement: here comes the pet Terminator. Or half-Terminator. Or whatever.
They don’t talk. Back to square zero. Marcus thinks he shouldn’t be able to even look at Kate (and that consideration probably makes him a half-decent person because such things never used to bother him before) but he keeps running into her even as Connor avoids him.
To be fair, he most likely isn’t. He’s just busy doing his messianic thing. He disappears again, and just like before, Kate murmurs: “Not this time.” It strikes Marcus that she is not certain about the future at all. She is reassuring herself, stubbornly, desperately. He asks her why.
“I have to remember,” she says, “that one day John might be gone, and I will have to shoulder all this alone.” There is defiance in her voice, like she knows something and is unwilling to let it come to pass. She gives him a half-smile. “But it’s not going to be today.”
He believes her.
--
Connor returns in time for his birthday celebration. There is an ocean of booze, enough to drop a horde of elephants, and someone digs up an old recording of some freedom-fighting speech from the sixties. A hoarse voice calls people to rise, to act, to win. Marcus has no idea where they’ve got the recording from, but it fits the situation, and he finds himself repeating the words noiselessly: you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… - lips barely moving: upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! It would have worked better if the voice was Connor’s.
“Kate once said we were ahead of schedule,” Marcus observes. “What did she mean?”
“Only that we’re moving along faster than we’re supposed to. But so is Skynet.”
“Moving where? To victory or-?”
A drunken choir showers Connor with birthday wishes. He laughs and toasts and drinks.
“When you first saw me,” Marcus says, “you seemed surprised. You were surprised. For someone who knows the future-.”
“The future’s not set,” John interrupts. “I know a future. More than one, in fact. And in all of them it takes Skynet about eight more years to release Series 800. You, on the other hand… You are something else.” He fixes Marcus with a pointed look; Marcus doesn’t know whether he should be flattered or concerned. “We’re navigating blind here. You burned all my maps.”
They stare at each other for what feels like a very long time. Marcus licks his lips, more out of habit than necessity.
“Where does Kyle fit in?”
There is a momentary change in Connor’s disposition - blink and you’ll miss it. Marcus almost does.
“The same as we all,” says Connor. “He’s the Resistance.”
“Bullshit. You were crazy about him in Skynet Central and you’re no less crazy about him now.”
He glances at Kyle who’s had one drink too many and is sleeping in the corner of the room, having successfully tuned out all the noise. He looks even younger now, just a child.
Marcus steps up, invading Connor’s personal space. He can punch him again if he doesn’t like the answer. He wonders if eyes are really windows to the soul; either Connor needs to clean the window-pane, or he’s got no soul.
“Kate told me to trust you. She says you have a reason for everything you do. Do you?”
“Are you asking me if I am the messiah? Some kind of mystical saviour? The hand of God?” John chuckles humourlessly. “I’m not. But if you’re asking me if I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to win this war, then… yes. Yes, I am.”
There is a tiny pause before the final answer, like a record skipping. Connor’s full of his own glitches. Marcus doesn’t know if he finds it reassuring.
“You might have to become that person,” he whispers.
Someone fires up the speech again. It thunders through the room, half-drowned by the music from Barnes’s boombox. All that noise nearly swallows Connor’s answer.
“Not if I have somebody to pull me back.”
Marcus hesitates, and lays down conditions. “You’ll tell me about Kyle.”
“You might not like it.”
Big surprise. Marcus laughs, suddenly relieved.
“There’s a hell of a lot of shit I don’t like about you, Connor. That doesn’t seem to stop us.”
Connor smiles and declares that it’s something to drink to. Marcus decides that it’s a good thing.
September 11-20, 2012