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TITLE: Fresh Scars
AUTHOR: Aelfgyfu
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen; violence, occasional bad language, dubious humour)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, episode-related, hurt/comfort, attempts at humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: This story takes a sharp right turn minutes before the end of episode 2.07 to put right what once went wrong. Now everyone has some healing to do—but some far more than others.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not sure "hurt/comfort" is quite the right label; Brilliant Husband suggests "hurt/discomfort": some people just aren't very good at comfort.
Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and hestia8 all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. lukadreaming volunteered extraordinarily helpful Brit-picking even after I originally posted the story. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Nick didn't know whether to be relieved that he wasn't going to be able to go back to visit Stephen this evening to have a more rational talk with him, or pissed off that he couldn't get it over with. The ADD had gone off just as he was leaving the building for the day. Stephen didn't really need a second visit in one day from him. Yet he wanted to clear the air between them. Maybe then he could put everything behind him, the betrayals and the atonement.
He suspected, though, that Stephen would have rushed into that room anyway, even if he'd never betrayed Nick. He was too careless of his own life, while appointing himself guardian of everyone else's.
Lester had apparently decided they'd all become too careless. The new procedures he'd instituted included the team as well as their military escort getting into full gear for each call, so at least Nick wasn't slogging through the rain in his regular clothes as they looked for the anomaly. Someone else would have to wash these outfits. He really didn't think a bunch of people working in the dark dressed in black was a very good idea when most of them had guns, however.
Nor would proper gear have made any damned difference when they went looking for Caroline, since they hadn't been going to check on an anomaly that time. Stephen hadn't even been working for the ARC; he'd been trying to save Helen from fabricated persecution.
"Light! That way!" Abby called, and they all squelched through the mud some more as he began to see a light that definitely shouldn't be there. At least this anomaly had opened in a wooded area, not in a building or a residential area.
"Hold it!" called out one of the military men, and they all froze. Cutter found himself tightening his grip on the tranq gun. He and Lester had gone several rounds about that, but Cutter didn't want to be carrying something lethal into the field before even knowing what they were facing. Of course, they could only make wild guesses at the tranquillizer dosage until they knew what animals they were facing. Lester didn't seem to have realised that little problem, and Abby had shown no inclination to enlighten him.
After they stood still for a couple of minutes, Cutter began moving forward, slowly. "What is it?" he asked impatiently, but he did keep his voice down.
"The sergeant thinks he's got some tracks," an enlisted man said.
"In this rain?" Abby asked sceptically.
Cutter worked his way up and found a couple of men, apparently including the sergeant, bent over a muddy patch in front of the anomaly. "So what have we got?"
Two discouraged faces turned up towards him. "Frankly, sir? We have no idea. The grass has been partly stripped away, so we know something came through here, presumably since the rain started," said one of the soldiers. "But it's too muddy to tell what."
"Can you tell how many of them?"
The man shook his head.
Nick waited a moment. "Well, what can you tell? How big? How heavy?"
"Not enough to go on, sir." The young man pressed his lips together.
Nick didn't manage to catch himself before he huffed out loud. "Which way it went?"
The man cast his light around from side to side. "Not really, sir."
By now everyone had knotted up behind him, and a brief glance at Abby and Connor's miserable faces told him they were thinking about Stephen, too. Well, they needed to get over it. Stephen wouldn't be back for weeks. They'd have to make do for a while without him, and just be grateful they'd get him back on the team eventually. And they would. Nick wouldn't believe otherwise.
They spent several more minutes standing still and playing torches around in the rain trying to look around without walking and thereby destroying tracks. Nick was about ready to call it a night and leave some SFs to alert them if anything did come through when a voice called, "I think I have something."
Of course, everyone started towards the man at once, until Abby's voice rang out clearly: "Let Cutter through, and nobody else move!" Thank God someone had a good head on her shoulders.
Nick found a young black man bent over some low bushes. "I found the mud had been messed about here, and it looks like something may have been eating the bushes, sir." He indicated some ragged patches in the bushes and the muck in the area in front of them, which honestly didn't look like a lot to Nick.
"You have some training in tracking?"
"A little," the man said. "I'm afraid it's all in tracking humans, though. Search and rescue training, then SERE. I was just assigned to the ARC three weeks ago." He trailed off, standing, and played his torch over the other side of the bushes. "The grass is torn up over there, too," he added.
"Right. I'll follow you."
Actually, it turned out that he wouldn't. This new man—Miller was the young soldier's name—seemed to need time and space to try to pick up the trail of whatever it was, which was eminently sensible. At least all indications so far were that whatever had come through was herbivorous. Of course, there might be more than one creature, so he insisted Miller take an enlisted man, at least.
Nick splashed back through the rain and mud to find Connor. Maybe he could send his moon rover through, at least determine what era they were dealing with.
Soldiers seemed to be just standing about, looking around as if they thought a T. Rex might jump out of the trees at any moment. Well, that's what soldiers were for, he supposed. Abby was still playing her torch across the ground near the anomaly, but it looked even muddier there than it had before; too many people about. Connor was lugging the rover towards the anomaly. Nick brought them up to speed while Connor prepared to send his creation through.
"So how does this man work out herbivore?" Abby asked with some interest, uncrossing her arms.
"Signs it was eating bushes." He pointed in the general direction of the lieutenant.
"And if it was eating, it probably wasn't being pursued at the time," she said with a nod.
"True." Cutter smiled. Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad.
Of course, that wasn't what he was thinking three hours later, after Connor's rover had found an even worse storm on the other side and come to a halt in the rain, a success it followed by losing the signal completely. Finally Nick let two of the military men go through to retrieve it, since no animals had been seen on the other side, but he had to endure Connor's puppy eyes as the young man alternately apologized for the technical failure and begged to be sent after it himself. Fortunately the retrieval only took a few minutes.
While tromping through the muck, Nick tried to keep his mind on his job, but he found it hard not to think about Stephen. At least with Stephen he could have shared a laugh about this mess. Well, once he could have. Not so much the last few months. And that was a damned shame, wasn't it?
It wasn't as if Stephen had made the only errors. For months, Nick had found it difficult to get over the fact that Stephen had never come clean about the affair—but now he was finding it nearly as difficult to get over the fact that he hadn't told Stephen there was a conspiracy until Stephen had found hard evidence of it himself. He couldn't think why he hadn't told Stephen. It wasn't that he thought Stephen was involved; that was a possibility he had considered only to dismiss. He'd been going to tell Stephen, a couple of times, and then something had happened, and it had slipped his mind. Maybe he just wanted to forget, as if he could make the conspiracy cease to exist by pretending it didn't.
Instead, he'd left Stephen to look for answers himself, and Stephen had gone to someone who would give him answers. Or, rather, she had come to him. The answers were lies, but Stephen hadn't known that. Maybe he should have known, but Nick hadn't left him anywhere else to turn, had he? Instead, Nick had shut him down the moment he saw Helen, thought the worst of him until Stephen finally confirmed it by doing what Nick had assumed.
If he hadn't accused Stephen of sleeping with Helen again and fired him on the spot, Stephen would still have been on the team. Hell, Stephen had gone back to ARC despite being fired publicly and only left again when Nick had hit him.
So Stephen might have been with them when they all went to go get Rex, and God knew where that might have ended. But then he'd have been inside with Nick, and maybe they could have freed themselves sooner, before it was too late. Or maybe he wouldn't have gone for Rex; maybe he'd have stayed at the ARC, in case of a new anomaly. He tended to do responsible things like that, with the glaring exception of coming late in the case of the mammoth. Even then, though, he thought he was doing something important, bringing some answers to the whole team.
If Stephen had stayed at the ARC, or if Jenny had stayed because it was getting to be too much of a crowd, someone could have told Lester where they had gone. When he couldn't reach them, he would have sent soldiers.
Nick knew that what-ifs were nothing but trouble. He'd had enough of them since Helen's original disappearance. What if he hadn't said this or that to set her off? What if he'd been more attentive? They only made him feel worse, never better.
Knowing that some thoughts were no good and stopping yourself from thinking them, however, were two vastly different things.
They then had the joy of locating a pair of small hadrosaurs and trying to capture them in the drizzle that wouldn't quite go away. They arrived back at the anomaly site to find that it had just closed. By the time they headed back to the ARC around 5 am with two sedated dinosaurs in the truck, Nick had resigned himself to getting nothing better than a quick shower and a quick nap back at their base. The night was already pretty well shot, and with the lost sleep his hopes that this day would be any better receded.
***
This time Stephen did seem to be lucid enough for an interview, James noted with relief before he sat down and pulled out his recording device.
"We'll do a full and proper debrief later," James assured him, "but for now I'd like to be sure we've got the basics covered, to make sure we know everything crucial before any more time goes by." He didn't add that they'd all been far too sloppy already, and he wasn't going to make that mistake again. He prided himself on not repeating mistakes.
Stephen nodded silently. He seemed less loquacious now that they'd lowered the dosage of painkillers.
The interview went smoothly enough; since Cutter had already told him that Hart was convinced Lester was behind the conspiracy, there weren't any big surprises. Stephen chose his words carefully at times, and Lester knew he was keeping things back, but he didn't press until the end of the interview.
"Anything you'd like to add? Anything we might have omitted?" Lester asked.
Stephen thought for a moment before shaking his head. "I think we've covered it all."
"Good." He read the time off his watch and shut off the recording device. "Now that we're off the record, you can tell me when you started sleeping with Helen Cutter again."
Stephen's start was slight, but he was otherwise so still that it was quite noticeable, and might have been evident even to someone without James's observational skills.
"What?" he blustered.
"When did you start sleeping with her again?" James repeated.
Stephen paused, clearly considering whether to deny it or not. "I don't see that it's any of your business," he said stiffly at last, his eyes drifting away from James's face.
"And two weeks ago, I'd have agreed," James retorted, "but that was before I realised just how badly personal issues have been interfering with everyone's judgement." He looked straight at Stephen.
"I won't do it again," Stephen said, briefly returning his gaze. "That's done forever."
"Does Cutter know? Or is he going to go ballistic all over again?"
Stephen let out a breath. "I told him everything."
Would that it were that simple. "And he forgave you?"
Stephen didn't answer, instead studying the fingers at the end of the injured arm as he moved them gingerly.
"Well, that's not good," James said. "And this is exactly why I need to know. Because even when Cutter says he can work things out, we both know—hell, the whole ARC knows!—he doesn't, and they come back to bite us all later. So I need to know the situation so that I can deal with it." His interest was purely professional. He wasn't a gossip. You didn't get to be where he was by sharing what you knew.
He also needed to know just how badly messed up this man was before he had him working anywhere again, let alone on Cutter's team. Helen would be back, and James had to be certain of how Stephen would react. In fact, it would help to know how he'd react even before he got back to work, in case Helen did manage to slip past the undercover guards he'd managed to post in and around the hospital.
When Stephen still said nothing, he added in exasperation, "You must have worked out by now that I'm not the enemy! We're on the same side here!" No one said he had to like the people he worked with; life was generally easier if he didn't like them. Open hostility, however, benefited no one.
Stephen looked directly at him and held his gaze this time. "Yeah, that's why you decided to mock us publicly when Helen took it upon herself to destroy Nick and me."
Well, maybe it wouldn't make the highlights reel for personnel management, but for God's sake, that wasn't really his forte. "With ammunition you handed her!"
"Nearly a decade before." Stephen kept his voice low and measured, not angry, but a great deal of bitterness lurked in there.
"So I hurt your feelings, and you think that makes me a conspirator?"
"I think you don't give a damn about any of us," Stephen returned coolly. Before James could answer, he continued, "And it's not a matter of my feelings. Yeah, maybe I deserved whatever you could dish out, but she stood there trying to destroy Nick in front of everyone, and you helped her."
"You have an awfully peculiar way of showing your loyalty to Cutter," James returned. Stephen still didn't break his gaze, a little to his surprise. So he was ready to play rough? Good. If he wanted any more part of this business, he couldn't keep whining, and James would be damned if he was going to let him hide behind injuries or medication.
"No, don't tell me," he said, pretending to muse for a moment. "Let me guess. You didn't sleep with her until Cutter fired you, at which point you decided you owed him nothing." Stephen gave that little start again, and his gaze started to drift away, but he forced it back to James's face. "You thought it wasn't a betrayal at that point."
Stephen opened his mouth slightly and closed it again. James shifted slightly in the chair, pushing his legs out a little more, relaxing his posture to signal that he'd wait. Let the man stew for a bit; he'd say something.
"Nick knows what I did, and when," Stephen said, apparently unfazed. "And that it won't ever happen again."
"I'm sure that's what you said last time."
There was a tightening in Stephen's face, but he didn't answer. He just stared back at James. Maybe the man was smarter than he'd been acting lately, and thank God if that were the case.
A minute went on, then a little more.
Stephen frowned. "So you're going to sit there staring at me until... when?"
James smiled. "You mean you've finally worked out that frequently you're better off not speaking?"
That earned him a concerted glare. Stephen shifted a little, winced slightly—and picked up the book from his bedside table with a little more wincing and proceeded to open it.
James waited a little longer, but Stephen seemed intent on ignoring him. He leaned forward to see the book's spine. "Michael Crichton? You're reading Crichton?"
Stephen smiled. "Well, I've read the Jurassic Park books before, and Connor recommended this one." He turned the cover towards James so he could see the title: The Thirteenth Warrior. "You can borrow it when I'm done." The smile turned a little too sweet.
Now this was the man he'd known before Helen dropped her bombshell, the man who annoyed him nearly as much as Cutter. Maybe they could actually get past this god awful mess, and he could put together a functioning team again. Hart wouldn't be out in the field for some time yet. It might be a lot easier to get Cutter to accept someone they all knew wasn't permanently replacing Hart, even if Cutter hadn't yet decided whether he wanted Stephen back on the team or not.
"Thanks, but I think my kids are a little young for it still," James said as he stood.
A slight frown passed over Stephen's face at the insult, but he didn't try to retort. "Say hi to the others for me," he said dismissively, holding the book open awkwardly against his chest with his good hand.
James rolled his eyes, even if Hart wasn't looking. "I'm sure they'll be here soon enough," he said.
***
Stephen didn't know what to make of Lester's visits. He was surprised the man hadn't sent someone else, but then, he did want to be the one asking the questions. He seemed far too smug about figuring out what Stephen had done with Helen—and even what he'd been thinking. He supposed stupidity wasn't that hard to work out. And maybe Lester needed to feel smarter than someone, since Leek had so nearly killed him, according to Connor.
Leek must have been insane to be messing about with future predators like that, Stephen mused. But then, anyone who conspired with Helen had to be either mad or stupid. Possibly both. He probably fitted into the latter category. He hadn't meant to conspire with her, but he'd kept her presence secret long enough for her to work with Leek and get all those creatures, from various eras. Was the ADD not detecting all the anomalies? He'd have to ask Connor.
He still couldn't believe he'd trusted Helen about Lester and never noticed anything odd about Leek. He'd never much liked Leek; the man seemed too fawning, too eager to please. Beyond that, however, Leek hadn't made any particular impression on Stephen. He didn't talk a whole lot with him. Still, it seemed there ought to have been some clue.
Nick Cutter's arrival put an end to Stephen's musings.
Stephen smiled at seeing Cutter but then realised maybe he shouldn't be smiling. Not after what he'd said the day before. Besides, Cutter looked a little rough. He seemed to have skipped shaving again. He was much later than usual; Lester said they'd come back not long before sunrise.
"Stephen," Nick greeted him neutrally, sliding in to the chair.
"Cutter," he replied in the same tone. He really ought to let Cutter speak first. That reduced the chances of him saying anything stupid. What was it Lester had said? The less he spoke, the better?
"I just...." Cutter shifted around in the chair, apparently trying to get comfortable. That would probably fail. "I had convinced myself that you hadn't slept with her again, after you... after you ran off and nearly got yourself killed for me, and I wasn't prepared to hear that you had."
Stephen wasn't sure whether he was supposed to speak now or not.
Apparently not. Cutter gave up on the chair and stood, beginning to pace. "And maybe if we'd had this out back when... back when I first found out, we'd have got past all this, and you wouldn't have done it again."
Stephen had tried to have it out, actually, but Nick wouldn't talk about it. He couldn't really say that, though, could he? They had decreased his medication. His mind felt a little clearer, but he wasn't sure he was a good judge. The dull ache he'd had in his leg and abdomen seemed a little worse since they'd cut the medication....
"I thought I was okay with it," Nick said, walking away from him towards the opposite wall. Then, of course, he had to turn already. "I told you that it didn't matter. But I suppose it did. Only I'd already told you that it didn't matter, so then I couldn't say anything more, could I?"
That was definitely a rhetorical question. Right?
Nick had reached the wall by Stephen's head and pivoted again. "But I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, even now...." He took a hand out of his pocket and ran it through hair. It was still blond after all these years. A miracle it hadn't gone grey or fallen out, the way things had been going.
Nick came to a halt about midway down the bed and turned to look at Stephen again.
Now he definitely expected Stephen to speak. Should he apologize again? It couldn't hurt. He was genuinely sorry. Maybe he hadn't been sorry enough before; he hadn't managed to say it. "I am sorry," he said.
"Why?" Nick asked.
"Because I hurt you! Because I betrayed you, because...."
Nick was shaking his head. "I meant, why did you sleep with her in the first place? You knew she was married; you even knew to whom!"
Stephen thought back. He'd really tried hard not to think back to what he'd done for years. He'd been relieved when Cutter hadn't pressed him for any details, truth be told. "It didn't start out that way. She was my tutor; she told me... she complimented me. A lot. All for my work, at first."
Cutter ran his hand through his hair again impatiently. Right, cut to the chase.
"Then it started getting more personal, and then we were both looking at a paper together, and—I don't even know who started it, Nick, to be honest. I was kissing her."
Nick nodded silently.
"One thing led to another. I didn't... I know it's not an excuse, but I didn't really know you then. I hadn't worked with you yet." He sounded pathetic. He was pretty pathetic. He knew who Nick was. He just didn't know Nick. That didn't change the fact that he was sleeping with someone else's wife.
"I see," Nick said eventually.
There was a long silence. Stephen wasn't sure how much to say. He'd promised Abby there'd be no more secrets, but he had already learned far too well that one could tell too much of the truth, or tell it badly.
At least Nick took a deep breath. "So: did you use my bed?"
"God, no!" That hurt. Maybe he should be less forceful when he spoke. Or maybe he just deserved it.
"The spare room?"
"No! No, Cutter, I've never even been in your house when you weren't there." He bit his lip. The dull ache in his guts was sharpening.
Nick nodded curtly.
Stephen tried not to sigh. "What else do you want to know?" He wanted to warn Nick not to ask anything he'd regret knowing the answer to, but he was in no position to ask that—and of course it wouldn't do any good.
"How long?"
"A couple of months." He tried to remember more precisely, but it was a blur now.
"Who broke it off?"
"She did."
Nick nodded knowingly. "Got tired of you."
"No, I—" Oh, hell. Once he started talking, he never did know when to shut up.
"You what?"
"Erm, I...."
"No secrets any more, remember? That's how she got leverage over you in the first place."
Stephen took a deep breath and hoped Nick would honour his promise not to hit him while he was in hospital. And that this wouldn't be the last visit he'd ever make. "I... she dumped me because I said I wanted to marry her."
A lot of possibilities had occurred to him, but Nick laughing his head off wasn't one of them.
"You wanted to marry her? You are daft! She was married, you know, at the time! Still is, as far as she's concerned, I think," he added in an undertone. Then he looked more serious for a moment. "You wanted her to leave me?"
"To be honest," Stephen admitted, "I wasn't thinking of you at all. We'd had a row, we'd made up, I was feeling...I was...." In love with her, or so he'd thought. "I just blurted it out, I hadn't planned it. I think for a moment I had even forgotten she was married." He couldn't remember. That was one of the times he wanted most to blot out of his mind, and he'd done a fairly good job. If you thought about something else the moment a certain thing came into your head, every time, and did it for years, you really could forget. Some of it, anyway.
Nick had the ghost of a smile on his face. "You were besotted."
"Yes."
Nick laughed again, but not so hard, and maybe not unkindly. "And she took this how?"
Well, if opening all of Stephen's old wounds made Nick feel better, it might be worth it. Talking felt like it was opening the newer ones too, but he could hardly protest. Meet Nick more than halfway, Abby had said, and she was right, of course.
"She... she...pitched a fit," he finally managed. "Said I was too possessive, that she'd thought I was different but I was really like everyone else, that I didn't respect her.... She told me she could lose her position if I compromised her in any way...." He knew now, and he should have known then, exactly what she was doing.
He saw a surprising sympathy in Nick's face. "And then she dumped you."
Stephen almost laughed, but he stopped himself in time. "No, then I apologized—grovelled, really. I told her I'd do anything for her."
"Yes, I seem to recall her saying something to that effect," Nick said drily.
Stephen took a breath—not a deep one—and went on. "I promised I'd never tell anyone, because I thought she was genuinely worried she'd get sacked if the dean found out."
Cutter snorted. "Like Matthews?"
Matthews had slept with one postgraduate student after another. Everyone knew. No one did anything. Everyone detested Matthews, though, and Stephen hadn't wanted that to happen to Helen.
"It would have been different for Helen," Stephen said, before realising that he was defending her. What he'd said was actually true, though; there had been lots of Matthewses over the years, at CMU and more prestigious schools, and they weren't all detested. But they were all men.
Now, though, Stephen wondered if she'd even really feared their relationship coming out, or if she just wanted to see if he'd promise.
"So you grovelled and she still dumped you?" Nick asked. There was a slight note of satisfaction in his voice.
"Not right away. We made up again, she let me think... but it wasn't more than a couple of weeks." Stephen realised he was panting slightly. He rested his head back against his pillow, trying not to let his eyes close.
"And that was it, until...."
"Until the day—the day before, I suppose—I ended up here." He gathered his breath. "And I know I betrayed you, Cutter, and I betrayed the whole team, but you most of all...."
Cutter stepped closer, and he flinched back just slightly, sucking in a breath when the movement hurt his abdomen too much. Nick froze and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine," Stephen answered.
Nick's snort told Stephen clearly enough that he didn't believe him, but he let it go. "Look, Stephen, I... oh, hell, I'm rubbish at this!" He rubbed a hand over his face, then the other hand. "Abby said I should talk to you," he murmured from behind his palms.
"I know," Stephen said with relief that they seemed to be moving onto safer ground. "I got a lecture too."
"Oh, really?" Nick's hands came down. "The one I got was about how you were in pain and on medication that mess with your head and I really have to go the extra mile and tell you the things I just kind of assume you already know."
"She told me you'd been through so much that I ought to meet you more than halfway."
Nick smiled himself. "Abby fancies herself some kind of counsellor."
That reminded Stephen that he'd be meeting with his counsellor today: a psychiatrist, vetted by Jenny and Lester. It was probably best not to mention that right now.
"She's right," Stephen told Cutter. "At least, I think she is," he added more cautiously. "Is it helping?"
Nick thought for a moment, pursing his lips. "I think it is, actually." He grinned wickedly. "So you wanted to make an honest woman of my wife?"
Stephen winced at pain more mental than physical.
"I think probably I should be upset about this, and I'm not promising I won't get mad later," Cutter said, sliding at last back into the chair. "But it does seem awfully funny, especially from where I'm sitting."
So Stephen was now providing amusement for Cutter.
"She practically proposed to me, you know," Nick told him. "Kept starting sentences with 'when we're married' until I finally took her to a jeweller's and let her pick out the ring she liked best." Nick smiled—Stephen would have thought of the look as "fond" before, but now he wasn't sure.
Stephen shook his head carefully. He'd never given a thought about who had proposed to whom, or anything about their marriage, until he'd really come to know Nick. Then it was too late to undo what he'd done, and telling him about an affair that had already ended would not only break his promise but hurt Nick—and possibly ruin their friendship. Once she had disappeared, he wasn't sure if he was bound by the promise or not, but he did know telling could only cause more hurt. He'd never quite believed she was dead. He told Nick she was, because Nick needed to hear it, or he'd have kept looking forever.
"So after she dumped you, you never...?"
"Tried to get her back?" Stephen exhaled slowly. "I might have, except that was right before term started up again, and...."
"That was the year you became my student," Nick said more seriously. "I thought you were awfully shy at first. Well, that clears up some things."
Helen had begun pursuing more and more outlandish theories—about evolutionary leaps and overlaps and throwbacks. She'd been publishing less and less, and she cast off her students. Stephen had been neither the first nor the last to go. A couple of times she'd teased him by walking up to him at a department function and whispering something filthy in his ear to see if she could make him react in front of Nick, which he thought odd given her fears of being caught. Other than those two instances, he might as well have imagined the whole affair, for all she showed of it before her disappearance. He'd kept his promise and not told anyone about the affair.
Some promises were better broken. He'd come to that conclusion awfully late.
Nick was shifting in the chair again. "You'd think they could get more comfortable chairs," he grumbled.
"The nurse doesn't want you keeping me up too long," Stephen said with relief that Nick had come to the end of his questions. "She'll probably be along any moment now to tell you to let me rest."
Nick nodded decisively. "Then I'd better tell you before I get tossed out on my ear. I'm not happy—and I can't forget. I'm trying. I think I can forgive, but... I'm still working on that bit."
Stephen turned his head too sharply, startled, and sucked in a breath, but Nick didn't seem to notice.
"It might take me a while. But there's too damned much between us to let Helen screw us over. You've saved my life so many times I can't even count."
"But you've saved mine," Stephen protested.
"Not at this kind of cost," Nick said, glancing around, his eyes going to the stick they now let Stephen use to walk a little—mostly to the toilet.
Stephen protested, "You would have—" Nick very nearly did get to the room before him, and if he hadn't paused to give Stephen a quick hug, he'd probably have been able to get in and lock the door.
Nick cut him off. "Doesn't matter. You did. And besides that, we've got over a decade of friendship—years of awful department parties where we stood to the side and mocked the others. Years of paperwork you helped me through, and grants I got to keep you on. And now two years, or nearer three, I s'pose, of fighting to keep the past and future where they belong. I'm gonna keep working on this forgiveness thing. I'm not very good at it, as you might have noticed. But you deserve it. And damn it, so do I. I've been making myself miserable, too."
Stephen couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled like this. His face was starting to ache, too, but it made a nice counterpoint to the other pains. "And you've only just realised that?"
Cutter made a face. "Abby rather drove it home."
The nurse did turn up then, and Nick said goodbye and left. Stephen was alone again until physio. God, he was getting sick of this hospital room; he was looking forward to being moved to the rehab facility, where they'd let him out more.
Nick had been civil. He'd been more than civil. He would come back.
Part Seven
AUTHOR: Aelfgyfu
RATING: FRT (fan-rated teen; violence, occasional bad language, dubious humour)
CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, episode-related, hurt/comfort, attempts at humour; AU, fix-it
SUMMARY: This story takes a sharp right turn minutes before the end of episode 2.07 to put right what once went wrong. Now everyone has some healing to do—but some far more than others.
SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07
WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not sure "hurt/comfort" is quite the right label; Brilliant Husband suggests "hurt/discomfort": some people just aren't very good at comfort.
Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (
dudethemath), kristen_mara, and hestia8 all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. lukadreaming volunteered extraordinarily helpful Brit-picking even after I originally posted the story. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.DISCLAIMER: Primeval and its characters are owned by Impossible Pictures, ITV Productions, M6 Films, Pro 7, and possibly other entities I couldn't easily find on IMDb. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched. So watch the show, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Nick didn't know whether to be relieved that he wasn't going to be able to go back to visit Stephen this evening to have a more rational talk with him, or pissed off that he couldn't get it over with. The ADD had gone off just as he was leaving the building for the day. Stephen didn't really need a second visit in one day from him. Yet he wanted to clear the air between them. Maybe then he could put everything behind him, the betrayals and the atonement.
He suspected, though, that Stephen would have rushed into that room anyway, even if he'd never betrayed Nick. He was too careless of his own life, while appointing himself guardian of everyone else's.
Lester had apparently decided they'd all become too careless. The new procedures he'd instituted included the team as well as their military escort getting into full gear for each call, so at least Nick wasn't slogging through the rain in his regular clothes as they looked for the anomaly. Someone else would have to wash these outfits. He really didn't think a bunch of people working in the dark dressed in black was a very good idea when most of them had guns, however.
Nor would proper gear have made any damned difference when they went looking for Caroline, since they hadn't been going to check on an anomaly that time. Stephen hadn't even been working for the ARC; he'd been trying to save Helen from fabricated persecution.
"Light! That way!" Abby called, and they all squelched through the mud some more as he began to see a light that definitely shouldn't be there. At least this anomaly had opened in a wooded area, not in a building or a residential area.
"Hold it!" called out one of the military men, and they all froze. Cutter found himself tightening his grip on the tranq gun. He and Lester had gone several rounds about that, but Cutter didn't want to be carrying something lethal into the field before even knowing what they were facing. Of course, they could only make wild guesses at the tranquillizer dosage until they knew what animals they were facing. Lester didn't seem to have realised that little problem, and Abby had shown no inclination to enlighten him.
After they stood still for a couple of minutes, Cutter began moving forward, slowly. "What is it?" he asked impatiently, but he did keep his voice down.
"The sergeant thinks he's got some tracks," an enlisted man said.
"In this rain?" Abby asked sceptically.
Cutter worked his way up and found a couple of men, apparently including the sergeant, bent over a muddy patch in front of the anomaly. "So what have we got?"
Two discouraged faces turned up towards him. "Frankly, sir? We have no idea. The grass has been partly stripped away, so we know something came through here, presumably since the rain started," said one of the soldiers. "But it's too muddy to tell what."
"Can you tell how many of them?"
The man shook his head.
Nick waited a moment. "Well, what can you tell? How big? How heavy?"
"Not enough to go on, sir." The young man pressed his lips together.
Nick didn't manage to catch himself before he huffed out loud. "Which way it went?"
The man cast his light around from side to side. "Not really, sir."
By now everyone had knotted up behind him, and a brief glance at Abby and Connor's miserable faces told him they were thinking about Stephen, too. Well, they needed to get over it. Stephen wouldn't be back for weeks. They'd have to make do for a while without him, and just be grateful they'd get him back on the team eventually. And they would. Nick wouldn't believe otherwise.
They spent several more minutes standing still and playing torches around in the rain trying to look around without walking and thereby destroying tracks. Nick was about ready to call it a night and leave some SFs to alert them if anything did come through when a voice called, "I think I have something."
Of course, everyone started towards the man at once, until Abby's voice rang out clearly: "Let Cutter through, and nobody else move!" Thank God someone had a good head on her shoulders.
Nick found a young black man bent over some low bushes. "I found the mud had been messed about here, and it looks like something may have been eating the bushes, sir." He indicated some ragged patches in the bushes and the muck in the area in front of them, which honestly didn't look like a lot to Nick.
"You have some training in tracking?"
"A little," the man said. "I'm afraid it's all in tracking humans, though. Search and rescue training, then SERE. I was just assigned to the ARC three weeks ago." He trailed off, standing, and played his torch over the other side of the bushes. "The grass is torn up over there, too," he added.
"Right. I'll follow you."
Actually, it turned out that he wouldn't. This new man—Miller was the young soldier's name—seemed to need time and space to try to pick up the trail of whatever it was, which was eminently sensible. At least all indications so far were that whatever had come through was herbivorous. Of course, there might be more than one creature, so he insisted Miller take an enlisted man, at least.
Nick splashed back through the rain and mud to find Connor. Maybe he could send his moon rover through, at least determine what era they were dealing with.
Soldiers seemed to be just standing about, looking around as if they thought a T. Rex might jump out of the trees at any moment. Well, that's what soldiers were for, he supposed. Abby was still playing her torch across the ground near the anomaly, but it looked even muddier there than it had before; too many people about. Connor was lugging the rover towards the anomaly. Nick brought them up to speed while Connor prepared to send his creation through.
"So how does this man work out herbivore?" Abby asked with some interest, uncrossing her arms.
"Signs it was eating bushes." He pointed in the general direction of the lieutenant.
"And if it was eating, it probably wasn't being pursued at the time," she said with a nod.
"True." Cutter smiled. Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad.
Of course, that wasn't what he was thinking three hours later, after Connor's rover had found an even worse storm on the other side and come to a halt in the rain, a success it followed by losing the signal completely. Finally Nick let two of the military men go through to retrieve it, since no animals had been seen on the other side, but he had to endure Connor's puppy eyes as the young man alternately apologized for the technical failure and begged to be sent after it himself. Fortunately the retrieval only took a few minutes.
While tromping through the muck, Nick tried to keep his mind on his job, but he found it hard not to think about Stephen. At least with Stephen he could have shared a laugh about this mess. Well, once he could have. Not so much the last few months. And that was a damned shame, wasn't it?
It wasn't as if Stephen had made the only errors. For months, Nick had found it difficult to get over the fact that Stephen had never come clean about the affair—but now he was finding it nearly as difficult to get over the fact that he hadn't told Stephen there was a conspiracy until Stephen had found hard evidence of it himself. He couldn't think why he hadn't told Stephen. It wasn't that he thought Stephen was involved; that was a possibility he had considered only to dismiss. He'd been going to tell Stephen, a couple of times, and then something had happened, and it had slipped his mind. Maybe he just wanted to forget, as if he could make the conspiracy cease to exist by pretending it didn't.
Instead, he'd left Stephen to look for answers himself, and Stephen had gone to someone who would give him answers. Or, rather, she had come to him. The answers were lies, but Stephen hadn't known that. Maybe he should have known, but Nick hadn't left him anywhere else to turn, had he? Instead, Nick had shut him down the moment he saw Helen, thought the worst of him until Stephen finally confirmed it by doing what Nick had assumed.
If he hadn't accused Stephen of sleeping with Helen again and fired him on the spot, Stephen would still have been on the team. Hell, Stephen had gone back to ARC despite being fired publicly and only left again when Nick had hit him.
So Stephen might have been with them when they all went to go get Rex, and God knew where that might have ended. But then he'd have been inside with Nick, and maybe they could have freed themselves sooner, before it was too late. Or maybe he wouldn't have gone for Rex; maybe he'd have stayed at the ARC, in case of a new anomaly. He tended to do responsible things like that, with the glaring exception of coming late in the case of the mammoth. Even then, though, he thought he was doing something important, bringing some answers to the whole team.
If Stephen had stayed at the ARC, or if Jenny had stayed because it was getting to be too much of a crowd, someone could have told Lester where they had gone. When he couldn't reach them, he would have sent soldiers.
Nick knew that what-ifs were nothing but trouble. He'd had enough of them since Helen's original disappearance. What if he hadn't said this or that to set her off? What if he'd been more attentive? They only made him feel worse, never better.
Knowing that some thoughts were no good and stopping yourself from thinking them, however, were two vastly different things.
They then had the joy of locating a pair of small hadrosaurs and trying to capture them in the drizzle that wouldn't quite go away. They arrived back at the anomaly site to find that it had just closed. By the time they headed back to the ARC around 5 am with two sedated dinosaurs in the truck, Nick had resigned himself to getting nothing better than a quick shower and a quick nap back at their base. The night was already pretty well shot, and with the lost sleep his hopes that this day would be any better receded.
***
This time Stephen did seem to be lucid enough for an interview, James noted with relief before he sat down and pulled out his recording device.
"We'll do a full and proper debrief later," James assured him, "but for now I'd like to be sure we've got the basics covered, to make sure we know everything crucial before any more time goes by." He didn't add that they'd all been far too sloppy already, and he wasn't going to make that mistake again. He prided himself on not repeating mistakes.
Stephen nodded silently. He seemed less loquacious now that they'd lowered the dosage of painkillers.
The interview went smoothly enough; since Cutter had already told him that Hart was convinced Lester was behind the conspiracy, there weren't any big surprises. Stephen chose his words carefully at times, and Lester knew he was keeping things back, but he didn't press until the end of the interview.
"Anything you'd like to add? Anything we might have omitted?" Lester asked.
Stephen thought for a moment before shaking his head. "I think we've covered it all."
"Good." He read the time off his watch and shut off the recording device. "Now that we're off the record, you can tell me when you started sleeping with Helen Cutter again."
Stephen's start was slight, but he was otherwise so still that it was quite noticeable, and might have been evident even to someone without James's observational skills.
"What?" he blustered.
"When did you start sleeping with her again?" James repeated.
Stephen paused, clearly considering whether to deny it or not. "I don't see that it's any of your business," he said stiffly at last, his eyes drifting away from James's face.
"And two weeks ago, I'd have agreed," James retorted, "but that was before I realised just how badly personal issues have been interfering with everyone's judgement." He looked straight at Stephen.
"I won't do it again," Stephen said, briefly returning his gaze. "That's done forever."
"Does Cutter know? Or is he going to go ballistic all over again?"
Stephen let out a breath. "I told him everything."
Would that it were that simple. "And he forgave you?"
Stephen didn't answer, instead studying the fingers at the end of the injured arm as he moved them gingerly.
"Well, that's not good," James said. "And this is exactly why I need to know. Because even when Cutter says he can work things out, we both know—hell, the whole ARC knows!—he doesn't, and they come back to bite us all later. So I need to know the situation so that I can deal with it." His interest was purely professional. He wasn't a gossip. You didn't get to be where he was by sharing what you knew.
He also needed to know just how badly messed up this man was before he had him working anywhere again, let alone on Cutter's team. Helen would be back, and James had to be certain of how Stephen would react. In fact, it would help to know how he'd react even before he got back to work, in case Helen did manage to slip past the undercover guards he'd managed to post in and around the hospital.
When Stephen still said nothing, he added in exasperation, "You must have worked out by now that I'm not the enemy! We're on the same side here!" No one said he had to like the people he worked with; life was generally easier if he didn't like them. Open hostility, however, benefited no one.
Stephen looked directly at him and held his gaze this time. "Yeah, that's why you decided to mock us publicly when Helen took it upon herself to destroy Nick and me."
Well, maybe it wouldn't make the highlights reel for personnel management, but for God's sake, that wasn't really his forte. "With ammunition you handed her!"
"Nearly a decade before." Stephen kept his voice low and measured, not angry, but a great deal of bitterness lurked in there.
"So I hurt your feelings, and you think that makes me a conspirator?"
"I think you don't give a damn about any of us," Stephen returned coolly. Before James could answer, he continued, "And it's not a matter of my feelings. Yeah, maybe I deserved whatever you could dish out, but she stood there trying to destroy Nick in front of everyone, and you helped her."
"You have an awfully peculiar way of showing your loyalty to Cutter," James returned. Stephen still didn't break his gaze, a little to his surprise. So he was ready to play rough? Good. If he wanted any more part of this business, he couldn't keep whining, and James would be damned if he was going to let him hide behind injuries or medication.
"No, don't tell me," he said, pretending to muse for a moment. "Let me guess. You didn't sleep with her until Cutter fired you, at which point you decided you owed him nothing." Stephen gave that little start again, and his gaze started to drift away, but he forced it back to James's face. "You thought it wasn't a betrayal at that point."
Stephen opened his mouth slightly and closed it again. James shifted slightly in the chair, pushing his legs out a little more, relaxing his posture to signal that he'd wait. Let the man stew for a bit; he'd say something.
"Nick knows what I did, and when," Stephen said, apparently unfazed. "And that it won't ever happen again."
"I'm sure that's what you said last time."
There was a tightening in Stephen's face, but he didn't answer. He just stared back at James. Maybe the man was smarter than he'd been acting lately, and thank God if that were the case.
A minute went on, then a little more.
Stephen frowned. "So you're going to sit there staring at me until... when?"
James smiled. "You mean you've finally worked out that frequently you're better off not speaking?"
That earned him a concerted glare. Stephen shifted a little, winced slightly—and picked up the book from his bedside table with a little more wincing and proceeded to open it.
James waited a little longer, but Stephen seemed intent on ignoring him. He leaned forward to see the book's spine. "Michael Crichton? You're reading Crichton?"
Stephen smiled. "Well, I've read the Jurassic Park books before, and Connor recommended this one." He turned the cover towards James so he could see the title: The Thirteenth Warrior. "You can borrow it when I'm done." The smile turned a little too sweet.
Now this was the man he'd known before Helen dropped her bombshell, the man who annoyed him nearly as much as Cutter. Maybe they could actually get past this god awful mess, and he could put together a functioning team again. Hart wouldn't be out in the field for some time yet. It might be a lot easier to get Cutter to accept someone they all knew wasn't permanently replacing Hart, even if Cutter hadn't yet decided whether he wanted Stephen back on the team or not.
"Thanks, but I think my kids are a little young for it still," James said as he stood.
A slight frown passed over Stephen's face at the insult, but he didn't try to retort. "Say hi to the others for me," he said dismissively, holding the book open awkwardly against his chest with his good hand.
James rolled his eyes, even if Hart wasn't looking. "I'm sure they'll be here soon enough," he said.
***
Stephen didn't know what to make of Lester's visits. He was surprised the man hadn't sent someone else, but then, he did want to be the one asking the questions. He seemed far too smug about figuring out what Stephen had done with Helen—and even what he'd been thinking. He supposed stupidity wasn't that hard to work out. And maybe Lester needed to feel smarter than someone, since Leek had so nearly killed him, according to Connor.
Leek must have been insane to be messing about with future predators like that, Stephen mused. But then, anyone who conspired with Helen had to be either mad or stupid. Possibly both. He probably fitted into the latter category. He hadn't meant to conspire with her, but he'd kept her presence secret long enough for her to work with Leek and get all those creatures, from various eras. Was the ADD not detecting all the anomalies? He'd have to ask Connor.
He still couldn't believe he'd trusted Helen about Lester and never noticed anything odd about Leek. He'd never much liked Leek; the man seemed too fawning, too eager to please. Beyond that, however, Leek hadn't made any particular impression on Stephen. He didn't talk a whole lot with him. Still, it seemed there ought to have been some clue.
Nick Cutter's arrival put an end to Stephen's musings.
Stephen smiled at seeing Cutter but then realised maybe he shouldn't be smiling. Not after what he'd said the day before. Besides, Cutter looked a little rough. He seemed to have skipped shaving again. He was much later than usual; Lester said they'd come back not long before sunrise.
"Stephen," Nick greeted him neutrally, sliding in to the chair.
"Cutter," he replied in the same tone. He really ought to let Cutter speak first. That reduced the chances of him saying anything stupid. What was it Lester had said? The less he spoke, the better?
"I just...." Cutter shifted around in the chair, apparently trying to get comfortable. That would probably fail. "I had convinced myself that you hadn't slept with her again, after you... after you ran off and nearly got yourself killed for me, and I wasn't prepared to hear that you had."
Stephen wasn't sure whether he was supposed to speak now or not.
Apparently not. Cutter gave up on the chair and stood, beginning to pace. "And maybe if we'd had this out back when... back when I first found out, we'd have got past all this, and you wouldn't have done it again."
Stephen had tried to have it out, actually, but Nick wouldn't talk about it. He couldn't really say that, though, could he? They had decreased his medication. His mind felt a little clearer, but he wasn't sure he was a good judge. The dull ache he'd had in his leg and abdomen seemed a little worse since they'd cut the medication....
"I thought I was okay with it," Nick said, walking away from him towards the opposite wall. Then, of course, he had to turn already. "I told you that it didn't matter. But I suppose it did. Only I'd already told you that it didn't matter, so then I couldn't say anything more, could I?"
That was definitely a rhetorical question. Right?
Nick had reached the wall by Stephen's head and pivoted again. "But I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, even now...." He took a hand out of his pocket and ran it through hair. It was still blond after all these years. A miracle it hadn't gone grey or fallen out, the way things had been going.
Nick came to a halt about midway down the bed and turned to look at Stephen again.
Now he definitely expected Stephen to speak. Should he apologize again? It couldn't hurt. He was genuinely sorry. Maybe he hadn't been sorry enough before; he hadn't managed to say it. "I am sorry," he said.
"Why?" Nick asked.
"Because I hurt you! Because I betrayed you, because...."
Nick was shaking his head. "I meant, why did you sleep with her in the first place? You knew she was married; you even knew to whom!"
Stephen thought back. He'd really tried hard not to think back to what he'd done for years. He'd been relieved when Cutter hadn't pressed him for any details, truth be told. "It didn't start out that way. She was my tutor; she told me... she complimented me. A lot. All for my work, at first."
Cutter ran his hand through his hair again impatiently. Right, cut to the chase.
"Then it started getting more personal, and then we were both looking at a paper together, and—I don't even know who started it, Nick, to be honest. I was kissing her."
Nick nodded silently.
"One thing led to another. I didn't... I know it's not an excuse, but I didn't really know you then. I hadn't worked with you yet." He sounded pathetic. He was pretty pathetic. He knew who Nick was. He just didn't know Nick. That didn't change the fact that he was sleeping with someone else's wife.
"I see," Nick said eventually.
There was a long silence. Stephen wasn't sure how much to say. He'd promised Abby there'd be no more secrets, but he had already learned far too well that one could tell too much of the truth, or tell it badly.
At least Nick took a deep breath. "So: did you use my bed?"
"God, no!" That hurt. Maybe he should be less forceful when he spoke. Or maybe he just deserved it.
"The spare room?"
"No! No, Cutter, I've never even been in your house when you weren't there." He bit his lip. The dull ache in his guts was sharpening.
Nick nodded curtly.
Stephen tried not to sigh. "What else do you want to know?" He wanted to warn Nick not to ask anything he'd regret knowing the answer to, but he was in no position to ask that—and of course it wouldn't do any good.
"How long?"
"A couple of months." He tried to remember more precisely, but it was a blur now.
"Who broke it off?"
"She did."
Nick nodded knowingly. "Got tired of you."
"No, I—" Oh, hell. Once he started talking, he never did know when to shut up.
"You what?"
"Erm, I...."
"No secrets any more, remember? That's how she got leverage over you in the first place."
Stephen took a deep breath and hoped Nick would honour his promise not to hit him while he was in hospital. And that this wouldn't be the last visit he'd ever make. "I... she dumped me because I said I wanted to marry her."
A lot of possibilities had occurred to him, but Nick laughing his head off wasn't one of them.
"You wanted to marry her? You are daft! She was married, you know, at the time! Still is, as far as she's concerned, I think," he added in an undertone. Then he looked more serious for a moment. "You wanted her to leave me?"
"To be honest," Stephen admitted, "I wasn't thinking of you at all. We'd had a row, we'd made up, I was feeling...I was...." In love with her, or so he'd thought. "I just blurted it out, I hadn't planned it. I think for a moment I had even forgotten she was married." He couldn't remember. That was one of the times he wanted most to blot out of his mind, and he'd done a fairly good job. If you thought about something else the moment a certain thing came into your head, every time, and did it for years, you really could forget. Some of it, anyway.
Nick had the ghost of a smile on his face. "You were besotted."
"Yes."
Nick laughed again, but not so hard, and maybe not unkindly. "And she took this how?"
Well, if opening all of Stephen's old wounds made Nick feel better, it might be worth it. Talking felt like it was opening the newer ones too, but he could hardly protest. Meet Nick more than halfway, Abby had said, and she was right, of course.
"She... she...pitched a fit," he finally managed. "Said I was too possessive, that she'd thought I was different but I was really like everyone else, that I didn't respect her.... She told me she could lose her position if I compromised her in any way...." He knew now, and he should have known then, exactly what she was doing.
He saw a surprising sympathy in Nick's face. "And then she dumped you."
Stephen almost laughed, but he stopped himself in time. "No, then I apologized—grovelled, really. I told her I'd do anything for her."
"Yes, I seem to recall her saying something to that effect," Nick said drily.
Stephen took a breath—not a deep one—and went on. "I promised I'd never tell anyone, because I thought she was genuinely worried she'd get sacked if the dean found out."
Cutter snorted. "Like Matthews?"
Matthews had slept with one postgraduate student after another. Everyone knew. No one did anything. Everyone detested Matthews, though, and Stephen hadn't wanted that to happen to Helen.
"It would have been different for Helen," Stephen said, before realising that he was defending her. What he'd said was actually true, though; there had been lots of Matthewses over the years, at CMU and more prestigious schools, and they weren't all detested. But they were all men.
Now, though, Stephen wondered if she'd even really feared their relationship coming out, or if she just wanted to see if he'd promise.
"So you grovelled and she still dumped you?" Nick asked. There was a slight note of satisfaction in his voice.
"Not right away. We made up again, she let me think... but it wasn't more than a couple of weeks." Stephen realised he was panting slightly. He rested his head back against his pillow, trying not to let his eyes close.
"And that was it, until...."
"Until the day—the day before, I suppose—I ended up here." He gathered his breath. "And I know I betrayed you, Cutter, and I betrayed the whole team, but you most of all...."
Cutter stepped closer, and he flinched back just slightly, sucking in a breath when the movement hurt his abdomen too much. Nick froze and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine," Stephen answered.
Nick's snort told Stephen clearly enough that he didn't believe him, but he let it go. "Look, Stephen, I... oh, hell, I'm rubbish at this!" He rubbed a hand over his face, then the other hand. "Abby said I should talk to you," he murmured from behind his palms.
"I know," Stephen said with relief that they seemed to be moving onto safer ground. "I got a lecture too."
"Oh, really?" Nick's hands came down. "The one I got was about how you were in pain and on medication that mess with your head and I really have to go the extra mile and tell you the things I just kind of assume you already know."
"She told me you'd been through so much that I ought to meet you more than halfway."
Nick smiled himself. "Abby fancies herself some kind of counsellor."
That reminded Stephen that he'd be meeting with his counsellor today: a psychiatrist, vetted by Jenny and Lester. It was probably best not to mention that right now.
"She's right," Stephen told Cutter. "At least, I think she is," he added more cautiously. "Is it helping?"
Nick thought for a moment, pursing his lips. "I think it is, actually." He grinned wickedly. "So you wanted to make an honest woman of my wife?"
Stephen winced at pain more mental than physical.
"I think probably I should be upset about this, and I'm not promising I won't get mad later," Cutter said, sliding at last back into the chair. "But it does seem awfully funny, especially from where I'm sitting."
So Stephen was now providing amusement for Cutter.
"She practically proposed to me, you know," Nick told him. "Kept starting sentences with 'when we're married' until I finally took her to a jeweller's and let her pick out the ring she liked best." Nick smiled—Stephen would have thought of the look as "fond" before, but now he wasn't sure.
Stephen shook his head carefully. He'd never given a thought about who had proposed to whom, or anything about their marriage, until he'd really come to know Nick. Then it was too late to undo what he'd done, and telling him about an affair that had already ended would not only break his promise but hurt Nick—and possibly ruin their friendship. Once she had disappeared, he wasn't sure if he was bound by the promise or not, but he did know telling could only cause more hurt. He'd never quite believed she was dead. He told Nick she was, because Nick needed to hear it, or he'd have kept looking forever.
"So after she dumped you, you never...?"
"Tried to get her back?" Stephen exhaled slowly. "I might have, except that was right before term started up again, and...."
"That was the year you became my student," Nick said more seriously. "I thought you were awfully shy at first. Well, that clears up some things."
Helen had begun pursuing more and more outlandish theories—about evolutionary leaps and overlaps and throwbacks. She'd been publishing less and less, and she cast off her students. Stephen had been neither the first nor the last to go. A couple of times she'd teased him by walking up to him at a department function and whispering something filthy in his ear to see if she could make him react in front of Nick, which he thought odd given her fears of being caught. Other than those two instances, he might as well have imagined the whole affair, for all she showed of it before her disappearance. He'd kept his promise and not told anyone about the affair.
Some promises were better broken. He'd come to that conclusion awfully late.
Nick was shifting in the chair again. "You'd think they could get more comfortable chairs," he grumbled.
"The nurse doesn't want you keeping me up too long," Stephen said with relief that Nick had come to the end of his questions. "She'll probably be along any moment now to tell you to let me rest."
Nick nodded decisively. "Then I'd better tell you before I get tossed out on my ear. I'm not happy—and I can't forget. I'm trying. I think I can forgive, but... I'm still working on that bit."
Stephen turned his head too sharply, startled, and sucked in a breath, but Nick didn't seem to notice.
"It might take me a while. But there's too damned much between us to let Helen screw us over. You've saved my life so many times I can't even count."
"But you've saved mine," Stephen protested.
"Not at this kind of cost," Nick said, glancing around, his eyes going to the stick they now let Stephen use to walk a little—mostly to the toilet.
Stephen protested, "You would have—" Nick very nearly did get to the room before him, and if he hadn't paused to give Stephen a quick hug, he'd probably have been able to get in and lock the door.
Nick cut him off. "Doesn't matter. You did. And besides that, we've got over a decade of friendship—years of awful department parties where we stood to the side and mocked the others. Years of paperwork you helped me through, and grants I got to keep you on. And now two years, or nearer three, I s'pose, of fighting to keep the past and future where they belong. I'm gonna keep working on this forgiveness thing. I'm not very good at it, as you might have noticed. But you deserve it. And damn it, so do I. I've been making myself miserable, too."
Stephen couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled like this. His face was starting to ache, too, but it made a nice counterpoint to the other pains. "And you've only just realised that?"
Cutter made a face. "Abby rather drove it home."
The nurse did turn up then, and Nick said goodbye and left. Stephen was alone again until physio. God, he was getting sick of this hospital room; he was looking forward to being moved to the rehab facility, where they'd let him out more.
Nick had been civil. He'd been more than civil. He would come back.
Part Seven
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I will say, though, that staff sleeping with students in UK universities is a no-no -- it's seen as a abuse of power by the member of staff. I'm sure some places do try to sweep it under the table, but if you read through Times Higher, the industry magazine, there are cases of where it *hasn't* been swept under a table.
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I'm not saying it's common, and I am most certainly not saying it's all right. I was furious at the end of 1.06—with Helen. I've ranted about it elsewhere (apparently not on my own LJ, since I can't find my comments now). The characters seemed clearly not to view Helen's original affair with Stephen as we do, which I fear is also realistic: where I've known of affairs or eve incidents between faculty and students, a lot of blame has been targeted at the student. That's completely unfair, but I've seen it happen more than once, sadly.
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I suspect in some places students won't report it for fear of not being believed. But most unis over here have a policy on it.
I'm sure it has been swept under the carpet in some places, but I know Fred has also got some salutary tales of what happens to those who *do* get caught with their pants down!
I'm afraid it's one of my hobbyhorses, as you've gathered *g*. A tutor sleeping with a student is *always* an abuse of power imo!
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I did think that the writers on the show didn't get how serious Helen's abuse of power was (or even that it was her abuse of power), or at least the characters didn't get it. I can understand Nick reacting the way he did initially, but not his ongoing bullheadedness. Abby's response to Stephen only makes sense to me if I think it springs partly from her interest in Stephen—and her terrible disappointment to find out that when he asked her out (while believing he would die) he already had a girlfriend. I'm trying to strike a balance, keeping the characters true to what we saw on the show as far as I can while trying to make them consistent and believable beyond what we saw in the show (because they had some serious failures there, especially with Stephen).
I don't actually watch Numb3rs (might someday but I haven't had time), but I saw an article where they talked to one of the mathematicians who acted as a consultant for the show. He (? I think it was, but I'm not sure if I remember correctly) said he not only gave them actual formulas and equations but advised them on academic matters. At one point, they had written a faculty member dating a graduate student, with no apparent idea that that was wrong! He disabused them of that. Then again, the fact that writers who probably all had college degrees thought that scenario was perfectly acceptable shows that at least some people don't see it as an issue. Those people are as likely to blame the student as the professor, I fear.
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The affair was very realistically presented. That's very much the way I see it having happened.
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Yay for the boys kinda-mostly making up! And go Abby. xD And Lester rocked, too. All around, just great!
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Love Lester manfully trying to resist any idea that he might actually care about his team :-)
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And, well, I'd be an incoherent mess of SQUEEEEE if I had to tell you everything I loved about this story, but I just wanted you to know that I did love it! Very much so!
The characters, the storyline, the interaction, it all just fits (although I do have say Stephen on drugs was particularly hilarious =D )
It's probably going to be read and re-read a couple of hundred times or so, just so you know *grin*
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////He was too careless of his own life, while appointing himself guardian of everyone else's.////
Yep! Yay for Nick being determined that Stephen will be able to come back onto the team. And yay for Nick confronting his own secrets re the conspiracy, and the boys making some headway (glad they both know that each other got The Abby Lecture *G*)
Hugs Lester for making sure there are guards around.
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Love you Lester here, pretending he doesn't care for the team and snarking.
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