Could be a companion story to my other story A Mother's Heartbreak. Doesn't have to be.
Some people had a single word. Others had speeches.
Sarah Connor was born with eight little words. Eight words that scared the shit out of her parents. The soulmate mark appears at birth on every person's arm and it shows the first words your soulmate will speak to you. A lot of marks said something like Can I buy you a drink? or Do you have a cigarette? Not Sarah Connor's. Come with me if you want to live. Sarah's parents just prayed that after the words turned red she would stay alive. Prayed that their child's soulmate would be the protector, not the threat.
Kyle Reese didn't give a lot of thought to the grey words that had adorned his arm since birth. Although his parents weren't too happy with them, aside from the fact that they were grey. Yes! Just please don't hurt me! did not sound like the beginning of a healthy relationship. It was a common thing to be born with grey words now. So he was mildly surprised that they crossed his mind as he stepped into the time displacement device. The only relationships he ever really had were his friendship with John Connor and the photo of a woman John had given him long ago. He would never admit it out loud but he thought he may be in love with the woman in that photo. Suddenly all he could feel was pain. It felt like he was being electrocuted. There was so much pain that it didn't even register to Kyle that his arm was burning and between the after effects, being chased and searching for Sarah Connor it didn't occur to Kyle to look at his arm and notice that his once grey words were now black.
Sarah had been in dangerous situations before. When she was younger she would sometimes go looking for trouble in hopes of finding her soulmate because of the words on her arm but she had stopped doing stupid things like that a long time ago. So when the hair on the back of her neck rose several times that day between the news broadcasts, and leaving her house, and she swore she had seen that man in the green trench coat at least three times today, she knew something was definitely wrong. She sat down in one of the nearby chairs having finished her conversation with the Lieutenant on the phone. She idly wondered if this was going to be the time her soulmate swept in and saved her, but quickly shook the thought away. He had never come every other time she was in danger so why should this time be any different? She needed to take up self defense classes so she could learn to save herself. The thunk of her drink hitting the ground brought her back to the real world as she bent over to pick it up but as she set it back on the table she noticed him. The man in the green trench coat was at the bar staring at her! Before she could do anything about it though, there was suddenly another man pushing his way through the crowd towards her. She gasped in relief, the police were here, they would handle it. But the man didn't look like a police officer… Could he be the one? She held her breath as he got to the table and waited for him to speak. But he didn't. He pulled a gun on her. In her shock and disappointment all she could do was sit there when there was suddenly a gun shot. She fell over but didn't feel any pain. That's when she realized the man with the gun had been shot. She leapt to her feet and ran towards the exit but got caught under the dead body of the woman behind her. Sarah struggled to free herself but she couldn't, when more shots rang out. She stared at the man who had merely fallen over despite multiple shots to the chest when a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
"Come with me if you want to live!" Between Sarah's shock and fear and confusion she did as she was ordered noticing it was the guy in the green trench coat who had been following her all day, and for the first time in her life not realizing that those were the same words branded onto her arm.
In fact neither of them noticed anything until several days later, in a dark, cheap hotel room.
