Author's Note: This fic alters much of Season 2, beginning around the end of Season 2 episode 8 (Mr. Ferguson is Ill Today). There may be small alterations to the past. Very few of the following events will be repeated as in the show. In other words, this goes majorly AU. There will be Jameron. The story will be divided into two or three parts, extending well into the future war with Skynet (in the sequel). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have while writing it. There will be occasional profanity and gore. Thanks to Kaotic and M1919 for beta-reading.
Beginning on November 2, 2008 - "Día de los Muertos"
(Day of the Dead Celebration) - in Mexico:
John stood staring below at the body of Cromartie. An overwhelming feeling came over him: the simple fact that Cromartie was dead or deactivated - whatever. The gaping hole in his head was something; it was a relief, but it was also a reminder of what it took. Their weak weapons fire from their MP5s and such served only as a distraction, more or less just scratching the thing thanks to its dense hyper-alloy. It was that one hole in his head, a shot from Derek's sniper rifle, that rendered Cromartie inactive. Only now did John realize that his shoulder finally hurt from shooting that damn 25 pound rifle, something more accurately described as a cannon.
"John," Derek said to grab his attention.
"Huh?"
"Keep digging."
John nodded slightly and began giving his muscles more excuses to ache as they deepened the hole. The Mexican sun reflected off the sand-dirt mixture all around. Everyone but Cameron was sweating heavily.
As they finished the hole and Cameron effortlessly lowered Cromartie, Sarah spoke. "You think there's any more of them out there?"
"I don't know," Cameron said. "It's possible."
They covered him in thermite and lit a flare, creating a molten pool of coltan and other materials where Cromartie lay. The stench of smoldering flesh and hair filled the air, and everyone did their best to breath minimally. Once cooked into the earth, they began covering the hole with previously displaced dirt.
Sarah spotted Ellison approaching. "I thought you left," she dryly told him.
His face was drawn into solemn seriousness, only distracted slightly by the foul odor. "We have a problem. The girl...Riley."
"What about her?"
"She's dead."
Everyone else turned away from their task of filling in the hole and faced Ellison. They all anxiously followed him to her body in an alley a block away in town. John's face was covered in sad surprise. She lay heaped face-forward into the ground, on bloodied sand. There was a near perfect grouping of two shots in her back where the heart should be.
"Metal bastard shot her as she fled," Derek commented, adding cynically, "two shots for good measure."
A few moments of staring ensued. Sarah spoke while eying the bystanders that were springing up, "We gotta get out of here."
"We can't just leave her here," Ellison protested.
"You really want to stick around and be attached to this? It's better if you were never here."
Ellison sighingly conceded. "Right."
"You didn't come to check out John. You weren't in Mexico. Can you pull that off?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Come on," Sarah told them all. John reluctantly moved away from the body. He stopped a moment to close her eyelids. With mixed emotions, they all left the small town of Déjalo.
An hour earlier:
Riley Dawson paced hurriedly down the alley. Nearing the end and not far away from the bus stop, she came face to face with Cromartie as he walked around the Corner. Terrified, Riley turned around instantly and ran as fast as her feet could take her. She knew it was stupid to run back toward the Connors, but what was she to do? Cromartie regarded her emotionlessly. He pulled his glock up to the ready. The only human reaction he let out were two blinks as his infiltrator programming dictated when he fired two well-aimed shots. He didn't want her going and warning the Connors, not that it would help them much anyway. Riley slumped forward, losing her balance as she bled out profusely into the dirt. Her eyes stayed glazed open looking in the direction of the Connors as her world faded to black.
Back in Los Angeles John lay on his bed, dejected. He analyzed much of his time around Riley. His thoughts were interrupted by Cameron as she walked into his room.
"Come to say 'I told you so'?" he asked sarcastically.
"No."
"Why not? You were right. I brought danger into her life. Hell, I brought death."
Despite the rhetorical nature of his question, she explained anyway, "I would gain nothing by reinforcing something that is no longer relevant."
She continued, "I came to say I'm sorry for your loss."
"I don't even know what I lost. I barely knew her...She barely knew me."
"Shouldn't that make it easier?" Cameron asked.
"I don't know."
Walking out of the elevator and across the floor to his office, James Ellison was stopped. He felt a chill as fear gripped him, however he managed to hide it.
"Ellison, have you seen this?" his co-worker asked.
"What?"
"Mexican police have a shootout involving your guys."
"The Connors."
"Yeah. No pictures..." Ellison sighed inwardly - relieved since any would likely include himself as well. "But they're pretty certain it was them."
"Huh." Ellison said with faked surprise, covering his amusement and involvement. "They just never seem to die."
"A witness also described your murder suspects - a John Doe and George Laszlo, but surely that can't be."
"That's impossible," Ellison stated, unintentionally thinking back to the moment where Cromartie lay disabled.
"Anyway, boss is giving you the lead on this," the coworker said while passing a file his way.
Now sitting in his office, Ellison looked up at the ceiling and sighed. He was in it deep with the Connors, those he once labeled crazy. More and more he wondered if he himself were going crazy.
Taking a break from all the Connors' recent troubles, Derek went to see his girlfriend. A knock on her door later and they were engrossed in each other's grasp, passionately sucking each other's faces off. A brief time later, after the festivities, they lay on Jesse's bed.
Noticing that Derek was staring off into space, the Australian inquired, "What's wrong? You seem distracted."
After a sigh, Derek turned to her and explained. "I was just thinking..."
"About what?"
"It's terrible. Yesterday John's girlfriend died."
She tried to respond but faltered as the news caught her off guard.
Derek took notice. "What's wrong? You're as pale as a ghost."
"How...how'd she die? Was it the metal?...Cameron?"
"It was Cromartie. Jesse, there's something you're not telling me."
After a few moments as it sank in, she fell apart. "The metal...now Connor's going to spend the rest of his life with that thing."
"What?" Derek asked, confused.
"We have to kill her, Derek. We can't let him get with that - thing!"
"Jesse, what the HELL are you talking about?"
"I tried. I tried to keep him away, but with her gone we'll have to take care of her ourselves."
"Are you insane, Jesse? She's the only thing we have to fight other metal."
Jesse was enveloped in tears. "Derek..."
"Jesse, you've gone fucking insane. You're not the Jesse I knew."
Shaking her head, she wallowed in further sobbing.
"This is way worse than AWOL, Jesse" Derek said as he put his pants back on, preparing to leave as he was pissed.
"It has to be done," she pleaded.
"No."
"I'll do it without you!" she threatened.
"You really mean that, don't you?" he asked rhetorically, overwhelmingly confused how the person he thought he knew could be so extreme and illogical.
"Yes," she said between tears.
He pulled his Beretta from the nightstand as he put his shoes back on. He knew how determined Jesse could be.
Sighing and closing his eyes at what had to be done, he pointed the gun to her head only several feet away.
"Please...Derek...you can't."
Derek wanted to say 'I love you' but he couldn't find the strength to voice it. With a final please, he pulled the trigger, gluing his eyes shut to avoid seeing the explosion of brain matter and blood spatter. He only opened his eyes once he had turned around and reached the door, averting his gaze from all but the exit.
Cameron was alerted to John's presence as he walked towards her room. She placed her current task of cleaning weapons aside and looked at him.
She invited him past the doorway where he stood. "Come in."
John sat on the bed next to her. After a few moments, John finally opened his mouth. "About the other night...You said in the future we talk a lot."
"Yes."
"About what?"
"Anything. Everything," she said in her usual minimalist and often cryptic fashion.
"I was thinking, and I've realized something...You're the only friend I have."
She let out a small but contagious smile. "As are you."
"I guess what I'm saying is we should be more...friendly."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Oh don't give me that. I saw your face whenever I was around Riley."
"I didn't like her."
"Yeah. Well, now I guess it's just you and me."
Smiling slightly, she repeated what he said. "Yes. Just you and me."
"Speaking of friendly, I'm sorry if I wasn't exactly the nicest to you before."
"You're forgiven," she said as if it were nothing.
"What I did the other day was stupid. You were right."
"Humans do stupid things," she replied purposely with a neutral voice.
Hearing the line he said previously repeated back to him, he chuckled.
As the conversation died down, John was overcome with her beauty. Her focus had remained entirely toward him a majority of the time. It made the moment very intense. They were sitting fairly close, and he'd love nothing more than to kiss her. Reluctantly and with great difficulty, John broke the trance.
"I'm uh going to bed. Good night."
"Good night." She watched him until he was out of the room.
The next day, an intern knocked on Ellison's office door.
"Come in." Noticing the file in the intern's hands, he asked, "what've you got for me?"
The intern handed him the file. "LAPD flagged this case for you, Agent Ellison."
"Why?"
"Ballistics matched one of your priors."
"The Andrew Goode murder," Ellison said while glancing through the first page. Photos on following pages depicted a rather ugly crime scene of an execution in a hotel room.
Left alone in his office and with another mess from the Connors, Ellison sighed. "I hope there was a good reason," he prayed and thought to himself.
Derek Reese stalked into the Connor home. His first destination was the refrigerator where he grabbed the entire six pack and walked out the back door. Sitting on the back steps and while on his third beer, Sarah came around. She matched his gaze into the distance where the sun had almost fully set.
"Bad day?" she asked him.
After a long swig of his beer, he offered her one. He remained staring ahead in silence.
John awoke the next day as the sun shined on his face through the window. A short while later, showered and dressed, he walked downstairs and found his mother cooking breakfast. As she saw him she poured more batter on the griddle. He poured some coffee for himself and sat down.
"Good morning, sleepyhead."
He ignored what she called him. "Morning, mom."
With his average response, she inquired with concern, "are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm good, mom."
"I mean with this whole Riley thing. You know you can talk to me."
"I know, mom. I'll be okay, really."
Sarah placed some ready pancakes on his plate. With an iron stomach, John dug in, devoid of excitement to her cooking. Man must eat...
After awhile, Sarah asked John, "do you know what's bothering Derek?"
"No. Why?"
"He wouldn't tell me. He came in last night and got himself drunk. He's still asleep in the basement."
John let out a 'huh'. He didn't figure Derek for that type of a person. He decided he'd check it out.
Ellison went through the motions. He had a LAPD detective show him the scene to keep up appearances. Thankfully the body was gone, but you could tell the bleeding and tissue run-off had been extensive. Headshots were almost always a nasty affair if the shooter had any sense of firepower.
"So, you can see the victim likely knew her killer, given how close and clean it was," the detective told him, acting as if the crime scene was nothing. Obviously he'd been with homicide for long time.
"That sounds about right." Ellison was tough, but the scene bothered him more than the seasoned LAPD detective. Ellison could recall the carnage from the crime scene photos. Homicide was rarely involved in his fields of investigation.
"The victim might have been some kind of female companion - a girlfriend." The detective suggested, trying to impress the agent.
"We can't know that. Not unless we catch him. It's too bad we never got a name other than 'John Doe'." Of course Ellison knew who this 'John Doe' was, but he wasn't going to tell anyone that.
The detective shook his head in agreement, deferring to the FBI agent as if he was much more qualified than himself. "You're probably right. Hope we catch 'em."
"Me too," Ellison half-wished himself.
John went down to the basement. He found Derek asleep on the raggedy old couch. He heard him mumble something.
Still asleep, Derek mumbled, 'Jess-Jesse'. He almost seemed like he was crying. In fact tears filled his eyelids, slowly leaking out even as he slept.
John repeated "Derek" a few times, each time getting louder. Finally he woke up, reflexively grabbing John's arm in a tight grip.
He blinked a couple times and let go, recognizing and then acknowledging him. "John."
"Derek, are you all right? We're worried about you." John had no idea what he would do if his uncle were to lose his hardened persona or something.
"Uh." Derek looked around at the beer and other alcoholic bottles on the floor around him. "I'm...fine."
"No you're not."
"It's none of your business."
In a manner that in many ways reflected his future self, he strongly rebutted. "Damn right it's my business. You're a soldier from the future sent by me, you're crying in our house, and you're my uncle."
Derek sat up more straight, feeling suddenly a bit as if he were talking to the General. "You're right..."
"So what is it?"
Derek looked down and sighed. "I did something - something terrible." Pausing a moment and gulping, he continued, "My girlfriend died. Only she didn't just die; I...killed her. She was AWOL, from the future."
John's mouth was opened agape. John couldn't imagine the pain Derek was going through, clearly it was something he hadn't wanted to do. All John asked was, "why?"
"You're not going to like this." John waited for him to continue. "She wanted to kill Cameron because her plan with who I gather involved Riley...died," Derek tried to say delicately but straight-forward.
All the dots connected. John now realized where Riley's awkwardness and personality came from. Judgment Day and apocalypse had been her dark troubles. He had always figured it was something bad, but this...this was: damn. After some moments, he asked Derek a question that he feared the answer to, "How long have you known?"
"About Riley? I didn't run into Jesse until a few months ago. She never told me anything - not until Riley died. Yesterday. I didn't know."
John knew his uncle could lie fairly well, but he believed him. He was yet again reminded of the distance loyal people would go for him, even extending that distance to some degree for things such as Cameron. Derek had ensured his girlfriend wouldn't get away with her plans, paying the ultimate price in the process. People dying for him or because of him once again weighed heavily on his mind. John also now knew what those who disagreed with him were capable of. All John could hope is that those kinds of people would be in the minority.
A/N: As you can probably see, I had a couple gripes with a few details in the series, particularly the unlikely efficacy of a shotgun against terminators. There won't be any of that, I assure you. Also, people bleed when they get shot. Headshots make a mess. That's how it is, and that's how it should be. If it isn't obvious, Ellison isn't working for a company called ZeiraCorp, and Cromartie isn't going to become John Henry. Nothing against BtR, but this fic is not and never will go there. I hope you enjoy it.
I've already written much of Chapter 2. It should be out soon.