Disclaimer: Don't own.

Warnings: Lots of swearing, and some mature themes. If you're a Terminator fan, you can probably handle it.

Bruises

-I-

In His Image

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them.

Genesis 1:27

Chapter One: Threat Level

She had been born in the throes of a doomed era, where monsters with glass eyes and plastic skin weren't always monsters. Now, she found herself, nude and alone, on the middle of an empty city street. Of course, it wasn't entirely empty. A Nissan here, a gang banger there. She lept from the scene and scurried behind the coverage of the pine trees so quickly, though, that most of them shook her image from their minds. She was a figment of their overactive, drug-fueled imaginations. She was most definitely not real.

Oh, but she was.

Her flaxen hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders. The cut of her locks was choppy, unprofessional. She didn't look like she'd visited an honest-to-God, hair-dryer-and-pomade hair dresser in ages. Rather, she looked like a child who'd been born so far in the past that a doting mother had to give her a trim instead. In actuality, she was from so far in the future that there was no around but a doe-eyed robot-monster to.

Scars, bruises and various nicks ran up and down her legs, curled around her waist and breasts, and grew, like jungle vines, up her white neck. A prominent scar that had faded to a dull pink twisted over the bridge of her nose and wound up on her other cheek.

In the moonlight, she shivered.

Before she'd left home, John had told her to be careful. Not only could she end up dead, she could do things to the very fabric of time that a girl of her age could not understand. John, scarred and stoic, but the John she'd always known, gave her a frosty kiss on the forehead and feed her several last lines of advice. She nodded, understanding. Her problem was not as John thought. It was not that she knew too little, but that she could comprehend far too much.

She was John Connor's daughter. She had the war marks of a Resistance fighter and the rosy cheeks of an innocent. She was misery and beauty and the kind of complicated, train wreck disaster that made everyone stop and stare. She had come from the future - to stop herself from ever being born.

--

In the Connor household, or rather the Baum household, sixteen-year-old John stirred awake. Even as a teenager, he'd had the natural senses of a fighter. He was often the first to wake up - besides Cameron, who didn't understand the purpose of sleep - and usually the last to go to bed unless one of Derek's old favourite shows was on. As much as Sarah liked to pretend she was an unbreakable stone tower, she still slept in later than most; even the futuristic Terminators that haunted her dreams were better than the oh-to-real ones who preyed on the city streets.

John pulled an old t-shirt over his head, barely looking at the design it bore. None of the typical teenage problems really plagued him. Sure, he worried about girls sometime and, yes, he was in danger of failing AP English if he didn't get his act together, but the problems he had were more along the lines of saving humanity from impending doom. He let out a sigh. Why can't I just be normal?

It was not the first time he'd thought this and it would, in no way, be the last. Still, it was a nice dream. Quickly, John finished dressing for the day. He let his fingers trail over the recently-shorn dark hair that was growing out at a more rapid pace than he'd used to have to pull a comb through his messy tendrils. Now, there was nothing left to comb. Of course, he wasn't melancholy to have the hair go; it was a hindrance and Cameron's confusion only grew exponentially whenever he played with it, lazily.

Cameron had informed the family - a disgruntled Sarah, an enraged Derek and a typically bored-out-of-his-mind John - that she would be on patrol all night, every night. Sarah agreed that it was a good idea, she said the quiet was killing her. Derek quickly agreed as well, though everyone knew it was only because he hated Cameron, as he did all the metal warriors.

That was why John didn't find it strange to hear the odd crunching of a fallen leaf; sure, Cameron was engineered to be as silent as silence itself; when you weren't staring at her, it sometimes felt like she wasn't in the room at all, but that didn't mean that she couldn't make a little noise.

There it was, again. A...rustling? Like paper being filed. John's piercing green eyes lifted from the simple carpeted floor towards the window. He first saw a pair of ripped jeans - and knees poking through the holes. Riley.

Half smiling dopily and half kind of pissed off that he'd been woken for nothing - Well, I shouldn't say 'nothing,' we have been going 'steady' for two weeks now - he went to the window and slid it open. Riley, blond, mad-at-the-world, sarcastic Riley. She waved and smiled in a way that melted some of the ice covering John's well-protected heart - just some.

"Hey, stranger," Riley greeted, adding a peck on the lips for good luck. "Long time, no make-out."

"Eloquent way to put it." John grinned; it was hard not to. Riley was pretty great. Sure, she was no high school sweetheart, but that was the best thing about her. She wasn't always pulling on his sleeve, whimpering for more. She treasured the time she spent with him, but in no way seemed sad when their eventual parting would take place. That was always how it was. John dismissed her, like a straight-A pupil, and she happily obliged, not even asking about next time.

"I try." A flash of a smile. Her blond waves were spilling over the old band tee and zip-up she wore, as per usual. She was really kind of pretty; not beautiful or hot. Pretty. Something in her forgiving eyes, he thought.

"Good to know." John looked down at his choice of ensemble - he wasn't exactly dressed up. He wasn't still in his sleepwear. He'd exchanged the ratty tee for an off-white thermal not long ago, and his jeans were (mostly) clean, but... To say he wasn't expecting his girlfriend to show up was the understatement of the pre-Judgement Day millennium.

"So." Riley flopped on the bed. "What's up?"

--

His house. It was right there. She wasn't nude any longer, having broken in to a cute two-storey - suburbia was fantastic; no locked doors - and slipped into a peach-coloured ribbed tank and cutoff shorts that no one would miss. Her hair was also swept into a high bun, the hair tie having been 'borrowed' from the girl who would find several items of close missing soon enough. She liked to call her current hairstyle 'artfully messy,' though a 'controlled rat's nest' was also a personal favourite.

Her green eyes - his green eyes - did a quick scan of the parameter for potential threats: nothing. It was true that she was no Terminator. She wasn't like Cameron, Daddy's favourite, or the other too-perfect-to-be-real cyborgs that were always walking around the camp, prepared for anything. A lot of people, even the Connors' most ardent supporters, were against his use of 'metalheads' as makeshift soldiers. Whenever someone expressed their dislike, he deadpanned, "Can't beat 'em, reprogram 'em." If it didn't make them understand his ways, it at least shut them up for a while.

"What's your business here?" The cool kiss of metal - a gun - on the arch of her back. She almost smiled. This was a familiar situation. She couldn't count on her hands or feet the amount of times she'd been kidnapped, tortured, or held at gunpoint. What better way to get at the Resistance leader than through his daughter? Sometimes, the newest, smartest batch of Terminators snatched her, more often than not it was a scorned soldier or someone who lost everything during the events of 2011.

"Cam," she said, smiling. She turned gracefully, even though her feet were killing her - it wasn't advised to shove size-nine feet into size-seven ankle socks. She hadn't risked taking shoes; it was far too obvious. "Pleasure to see you again."

The gun didn't waver. "I do not know you." She tried to picture how Cam, John's beloved Cam, would see her. Would some kind of scanner be showing 'Unknown Human'? Would a simple bar graph show 'Threat Level: LOW'?

"Not this you, maybe. But another you." The teenage girl, with a Glock now digging into her chest, squirmed. "A future you," she explained patiently. Just like the girl figured, the TOK 715's hold on her gun was unshakable. She expected nothing less.

Slowly, she felt the pressure release. A quick glance down proved Cam really had, indeed, withdrawn her weapon. The blonde smiled tightly, no teeth, all business. "Now, I need to see John."

Looking distraught, Cameron began with a forceful, "I can not let you do that."

--

John watched, a lump expanding in his throat, as Riley attempted seduction. It was rather...painful to watch. She was the antithesis of a girlie-girl and wiggling out of a Nirvana circa Nevermind tee, probably her brother's was anything but sexy. In fact, 'awkward' would've been the best definition of the act. Clumps of blond hair hung in front of her face as she pulled one arm successfully through the old tee. Slowly, with a grimace on her face, she began to work on the other arm.

"Ry - maybe this...isn't the best time," John surmised, watching his girlfriend with a bemused expression on his face. He was sitting on his bed, she was standing up. John wondered if she'd only came for an early-morning booty call.

Lips pouted, Riley, blond, sarcastic, outsider Riley, pulled her shirt back on effortlessly. "Fine," she huffed. "Fine. Another time, then." Smoothing the worn fabric of her shirt, Riley shot him one last half-smirk before she started to open the window. Riley wasn't exactly graceful and watching her huff and puff and fruitlessly attempt to blow the house down as her slippery fingers worked the heavy, bulletproof glass made John want to laugh out loud. Instead, playing the Good Guy, he walked over to her and slid it up.

"Thanks," she mumbled, obviously not meaning it. He watched the blonde go, watched her less-than-smooth movements as she did the Spiderman routine down the side of the house. He'd already flicked on his laptop when he heard Cameron's voice and that of another girl - Riley, maybe?

When the sixteen-year-old dashed over to the still open window, he found himself not watching another painful conversation between 'his sister' and Riley, but rather a tussle with Cameron and an unknown blonde. He knew that the girl wasn't Riley. Even though her back was to him and her hair was about the same colour, texture and length as his girlfriend's, her short-shorts and tank top wouldn't fly with Riley's unpopular-just-because style. Also, said blonde's feet were bare. Socked, but shoeless.

Strange. Then again, when was anything normal with the Connor family?