Mistakes Made

Connor looked up from the pile of dossiers and reports stacked on his desk when Marcus' distinctive banging knock came. The way the door rattled in its frame with each knock suggested the cyborg was upset about something; he usually controlled his strength better.

"It's open, Marcus, I was about to radio for you anyway."

When the door opened the first thing that Connor noticed was a fantastic bruise across Marcus' face. It looked like someone had tried to beat his face in. The bruise would probably be gone in an hour but it represented some serious effort at skull-busting.

"What the hell happened to you? More trouble with the new guys from Georgia?" Some of the new shipment of Southern soldiers hadn't taken very well to Marcus and there'd been a few fights. Kyle had gotten two black eyes and one of the Georgians had lost two teeth. Marcus had restrained himself from doing more than disabling but he'd never ended up with anything like this before.

"Not quite. One of the Texans, that new Skynet tech: Walker. I wanted to talk with him about joining the pirate team. He had a wrench handy."

"How long until he can get back to work?" Connor wondered that Kate hadn't already radioed him to let him know the tech would be off duty for a day or two.

"I didn't hit him." Marcus dropped himself into one of the chairs in Connor's office. It protested his weight and the force with which he put himself into it.

Connor was momentarily confounded. Marcus had a lot of admirable qualities but his response to violence was violence. He hadn't seriously hurt anyone except Barnes and the other soldiers who had attacked Blair after the wedding to show their disapproval for her 'betrayal'. Still, Connor hadn't heard of a fight where Marcus didn't hit back when someone attacked him.

"You just let him beat the shit out of you?"

"Pretty much." Marcus shrugged, "I took the wrench away after a bit."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"That's why I came to find you. I need to talk about this. I don't really know –" Marcus paused and Connor could see the other man almost visibly organizing his thoughts. "We had a talk before he hit me. Walker had some news for me."

"He had news for you. And then he beat the shit out of you with a wrench. But only after he gave you this news." It did not, in fact, make more sense when he repeated it. He hadn't thought it would.

"Right."

"What kind of news was this?"

Marcus opened and closed his mouth twice before he twisted his face into a determined grimace and just spat it out. "Walker's my nephew. My sister's son. He has some issues with me related to that."

"You have a sister?" Connor blinked. That was the easiest of the thoughts flying through his head to deal with. He knew about Marcus' brother, Tyler. The one that had been killed during the stand-off that ended up with Marcus on death row.

"Alicia. Walker says she was with the Texas Resistance up 'til five years ago when a squad of 600's attacked her base and blew it to hell." Marcus' voice was usually under almost perfect control and his Texan accent almost undetectable. The control was slipping and Texas twanged through his words now, underscoring how unsettled he was.

"You never mentioned her." It was meant to be a question but it came out almost as an accusation. Connor was wondering what else Marcus might have not told anyone about his past. He shook his head sharply, it didn't matter. The past was over.

"I never mentioned a lot about me, Connor. Seein' as how it's all comin' back to bite me in the ass –"

"Or beat you in the face." He couldn't help himself. The cold stare that Marcus gave him was enough that he didn't have any more interjections. He also surreptitiously moved his chair back a few inches. "Why not talk to Blair about this? Not that I don't care, but shouldn't she hear this?"

"Blair thinks I'm a good guy, Connor. Walker reminded me that I'm not. Never have been."

"Kyle and Star might not agree. You're their hero. Hell, Marcus, you're Sarah's hero too." There weren't many kids on the base who didn't like Marcus. Most of the adults didn't approve of him but somehow, despite his incredible lack of interpersonal skills, the kids trusted him instantly and did whatever he told them to do. Marcus was the only one who could get Sarah Jeanette Connor to sit still for more then ten minutes, a feat even her parents had yet to master.

"They don't know me." Marcus shook his head and Connor noticed that the normal fire in his eyes was gone. They were empty, lifeless. For the first time since he'd met the man, Connor could almost believe Marcus was a machine. "First twenty-eight years of my life all I did was get drunk or high, fuck around and beat the shit out of anyone that pissed me off. I got my brother killed because I scared the piss out of some poor rookie cop and he started shootin'. Then I snapped his partner's neck when the fucker shot Tyler for tryin' to surrender."

"That fucker might have deserved it, but the other one didn't. He got off two shots and his hand was shakin' so bad they didn't come anywhere near me."

A gleam of something very dark showed in Marcus' eyes when he locked gazes with Connor and General John Connor couldn't stop a shiver going down his spine when he saw that light. "I didn't fuckin' blink and my hand wasn' shakin' when I put a bullet in that rookie's face."

Marcus reached out and tapped Connor on the right cheekbone, just under the eye. Connor almost flinched when the finger touched his skin. "Right there."

"Marcus –" Connor trailed off. He didn't know what to say. He'd known, Marcus had told him, that Marcus had been a murderer. He'd been on death row for killing two policemen. Connor remembered, vaguely, seeing the trial on TV and articles in the paper. Marcus had plead guilty, given a full confession. He didn't make any appeals on the death sentence which had gathered considerable attention. His execution was one of the fastest in state history.

"Good guys don't kill cops. They don't steal cars for fun, send people to the hospital, leave their sisters to whatever hell shows up at the door for them and never try to make things right. They don't make their sisters watch them get the needle for two counts of murder."

"Good guys save people's lives, Marcus." Connor didn't have time for his best soldier and his second in command to break down. "Good guys risk their lives so some asshole who set them on fire can survive when they should be dead. They walk into Skynet Central to save two kids that need them. They adopt little girls who don't have any parents and turn out to be the best damn father a little girl could ever want. You've been a good man since the first day I met you, Wright. I've never seen you be anything but a good man. What you did before, that was another life."

"It was still my life, Connor. It was me that did those things."

"What are you going to do, then? Give up? Going to go get yourself killed and leave Blair, Kyle, and Star on their own because you're not good enough for them?" Connor could see that hurt. Marcus flinched at the words and the dull look in his eyes cleared for a moment in a flash of anger.

"I'm not leaving them, ever."

"Walker might have heard about who you were, but we know who you are now. How is it going to help anyone if you waste this second chance you were so damn happy about getting because someone reminded you how bad you fucked up the first one?"

Marcus opened his mouth to speak but Connor cut him off. "You can't fix what happened with that cop, Marcus. Or with your sister." Even the spasm of pain that crossed Marcus' face didn't stop Connor. "All you can do is be a good man now that you have your chance. You were willing to give up your heart for a second chance three years ago. Now it's all just a pile of shit?"

"No." Slowly, Marcus shook his head and some measure of life was back in his eyes when he looked up. "You're right, even if I should break your face for half what you said."

"Better, Marcus." Connor grinned at the shorter man. "I'll know it's a really bad day when you don't threaten to break at least one of my bones."

The dark-haired cyborg laughed as he stood up and wrapped his hand around Connor's in a grip just short of painful. His blue eyes locked with Connor's emerald gaze and he gave that often-infuriating half smile of his. "Thanks, Connor."

"I'm always here if you need me, Marcus. If your head ever needs fixing, you haven't got a shortage of people willing to bang it back into shape." Connor sat back down as he watched Marcus leave the office. Walker could be a problem if the man kept causing issues with Marcus, but there was hope the man could come around. Family meant a lot these days and, given enough time, the young tech might learn that his uncle really was a different man then the one he'd heard about growing up.

Connor hoped that Marcus and his nephew would come to terms. Marcus deserved his second chance, no matter what he'd done in the old world.