![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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
Part Six
"So now we're feeding a mammoth and two...what are they called again?" James asked his assistant, just to see whether she'd know. He'd been making an effort to pay attention since a few stray facts about future predators (hunt primarily by sound) and mammoths (sharp tusks) had saved his life.
"Hadrosaurs," Lorraine supplied correctly. Good to know she was paying attention.
"My God, we should have fired Hart; they're probably eating something roughly equal to his salary!"
Lorraine did not look amused as she gave him the file he wanted and left. Was she fond of him too? The women did seem to go for Stephen. Of course, the military men seemed to like him too, which didn't bear much thinking about. So many of the soldiers seemed intent on visiting him that James had had to order them to go only in civilian clothes. Jenny's cover story involving traders in restricted wildlife had been pretty thin to start; if that was the best she could do, she must have needed sick leave as much as Cutter's whole team did. Numerous visiting soldiers would not help the cover story.
No one could tell that all these athletic men with short haircuts were military as long as they weren't in their gear, right? James wished he could put himself on sick leave, but he'd had to settle for leaving earlier than usual a few nights. His wife quite liked having him home more, but he knew it couldn't last.
Of course, once all the reports were in and read, James might find himself with a lot of free time. This could become the first job from which he'd ever been fired. He shouldn't mind. He'd been saying for as long as he could remember that it was more trouble than it was worth. He'd land on his feet; his skills were too useful to leave him out of work for long.
James did find, though, that the thought of leaving here now held no appeal.
Cutter finally arrived, and James pulled his lead team into a meeting to go over the usual details. They'd been doing necropsies on what was left of the various creatures that Leek and Helen Cutter had kept in their menagerie, but a number of them had been too mangled, by humans or other predators or both, for much study at all. Still, he was keeping busy the veterinarians he'd finally been able to hire, and Abby and Cutter assisted with the necropsies and kept the team and James informed.
Connor reported no new advances on the ADD. If Helen had been slipping back and forth through anomalies since it had come online, it either wasn't working right, or she must have been getting in and out before they got there—which prompted the question of how she managed that. Connor had a theory that she had stolen a future version of the ADD, which sounded rather science fictional to James, but, then again, a Columbian mammoth had saved him from something out of Alien, so he couldn't really complain.
Connor had been making progress on the rover, working with their new electronics expert, which was something, anyway.
"I can also make a more limited model we could just stick in while holding onto it," Connor enthused. "MALP on a stick!"
Abby made the mistake of asking, "What?" and off he went on some tangent about Star Wars or Star Trek or Star Gate. Lester wasn't sure even Connor could keep them all those Stars straight, but no one here could correct him.
Cutter managed to interrupt, once again living up to his name. "What we really need is a quick way to tell which era we're looking at," he said. "At this point, we've got a mammoth and two hadrosaurs to repatriate; we can't just stick them through the next anomaly to open up."
"We're working on a more sophisticated environment sampling system," Connor began, and then he was off to the races once more. Cutter seemed to understand him at least, but Abby showed signs of her eyes glazing over, and Jenny had begun flipping through a folder and scribbling notes to herself. He didn't believe for a second they were about Connor's ideas.
James longed for the days when he could just send them off to work out the details themselves, but he'd recently learned how crucial details could be. He also needed to keep an eye on how his people were doing. Cutter looked perpetually tired still. Abby and Connor seemed to have bounced back reasonably well, except that he'd caught them both with haunted looks on their faces when they didn't know anyone was observing. Jenny alone seemed fairly untouched—but now she insisted on being in on all the meetings, so perhaps she wasn't. Hart himself actually seemed in reasonably good spirits—possibly unreasonably good spirits, with some chemical assistance.
Connor and Cutter finally finished their conversation, Cutter with looks around the table as if he was just realising everyone else had tuned out. Connor just jotted some things down and failed to notice anyone else.
"Jenny, what have you got for us today?" James asked the table.
Jenny spread out her notes more noticeably. "We've finished redoing security checks on all personnel. Leek definitely doctored the results of the first checks on six men; another four were questionable, but he hired them anyway. Four of the ten who worked for him died from injuries inflicted by animals, two by gunshot wounds"—she didn't mention that she'd made one of those kills herself—"two were caught by our security forces, and two remain at large. The Home Office have identified them as suspected terrorists, and all levels of local and national law enforcement are watching for them, as are most of our allies."
James couldn't help his eye roll. "How is it we can manage to kill future predators, dinosaurs, sabretooth tigers, and God knows what else, and still capture two men and kill two, while the entire rest of the world can't manage to find the remaining two?"
"Maybe they've gone through an anomaly," Connor said seriously.
"That assumes some of them aren't registering on the ADD," Cutter said, almost in a growl.
"The Home Office have also identified Helen as a suspected terrorist," Jenny added with her eyes on Cutter.
"'Suspected terrorist' doesn't begin to cover it," Cutter muttered, and from the fierce looks on their faces, everyone else agreed.
James thought with some satisfaction as he looked around the table that he wouldn't want to be Helen Cutter if she did manage to run into this team. "We want her alive," he reminded them, just in case.
"We should have put a tracker in her when we had her prisoner," Connor said bluntly.
Abby started and leaned towards him. "Connor, that's...."
Cutter just stared, perhaps not happy with how cynicism looked on the youngest member of the team. James had to admit he didn't much care for it himself.
Connor looked at the pages in front of him. He didn't seem to notice the others' reactions, and he didn't seem to be joking.
Jenny pursed her lips and shuffled some papers. "In other matters, we've got security clearance for a respected psychiatrist who will now be available—"
She was cut short by a snort from Cutter. That seemed to surprise her, and she said, a little defensively, "Well, Stephen has begun seeing him!"
"Stephen doesn't need a psychiatrist!" Cutter barked.
Everyone froze. James had an almost irresistible urge to laugh, but he didn't want to be the reason Cutter finally snapped. Abby and Connor appeared to have stopped breathing and were now both looking studiously at the table. Jenny simply regarded Cutter with amazement.
Cutter turned his glare from Jenny to James, and James couldn't help himself. His lips twitched. He decided that he would not bring up replacing Hart, even temporarily, at this particular meeting.
Cutter made a noise of disgust. "Although perhaps some others could use counselling." Then he pushed back from the table and demanded, "Is this meeting over?"
James nodded, not trusting his voice.
He'd never seen the room empty so fast.
***
Nick tried to put the damned meeting out of his mind while he reviewed necropsy finding on the future predators. They needed a better name than "giant bat-things," but he'd like to give them a proper scientific name, and he wanted to understand their evolutionary place to decide what it should be.
They had a good deal of post-mortem evidence about their brains now. That they had highly developed areas related to hearing made sense; what he really wanted to know but couldn't work out with the damned things dead was whether they had language. How intelligent were they? Was there any hope of reasoning with them?
The electronics people and Connor had been all over the control devices used on the creatures, but apparently they'd been pretty well fried; the ARC couldn't get them to work at all. The experts knew enough to agree that the technology seemed far in advance of anything available now, which meant Helen had been to the future, but they already knew that, didn't they? It didn't tell them a damned thing about the creatures—but it did tell them that some intelligent race in the future probably had opposable thumbs, and perhaps an understanding of electronics that grew out of contemporary humans'.
Nick had to wonder what kind of people would make control devices for these things. Was that so they didn't have to kill or be killed, which seemed his team's only option? Then why were some of the creatures running around free?
Or were the devices used as Leek had used them? And perhaps Helen? How much of the plan had been hers? Did future people use the creatures as weapons against other people? What had Helen intended for them, and why had she ever allied with Leek?
It made his head hurt. He didn't want to think that Helen would use these creatures to hurt people; after all, she'd helped them track down the one she knew had slipped into their own time. Perhaps he should think of it as his time, rather; Helen didn't seem to owe too much allegiance to it any longer. Or the people who lived in it, himself included. She didn't care whether it was Nick or Stephen who went into that room with the creatures, as long as it wasn't her. He'd never realised she could be so cold. She'd said that people died, that species died. Yet she'd risked her life to save Claudia, and later she'd done it again to get rid of the risk of the bat-creatures.
Had she changed since then? Perhaps with her extra trips through anomalies, she'd seen more timeline alterations than just Claudia's disappearance and Jenny's appearance in more or less the same place. Then again, she seemed fascinated by Jenny, as if she'd never seen such a change before.
Jenny hadn't pressed him about Claudia since that day she asked him in hospital. She'd looked at him a few times with an odd expression, and he'd thought she was about to ask, but then each time something had interrupted.
Maybe he should talk to her about it. But what more could he say? He'd told her the important things.
Then Nick remembered something he hadn't thought about in weeks. He checked his wallet. The photo was still there.
He went to find Jenny. She had her own little office, private like his; he'd never actually been in there before. She usually found him, or they met in a conference room or Lester's office.
She greeted him with a smile. "Reconsidering the offer of a psychiatrist?"
He scowled at her but then decided her words were ironically appropriate. "Actually, I have proof I'm not crazy. You might think Helen and I shared a delusion, but this, this you'll find hard to deny. May I?" He gestured to one of the comfortable chairs by a small round table rather than the chair on the opposite side of the desk from where she sat.
"By all means." Jenny came around the desk herself and sat in one of the other three chairs.
"This," he said, flourishing the photo, "is Claudia."
Jenny took the picture in silence, frowning deeply when she saw it.
He explained how he'd dropped round that evening just after she'd started working at the ARC, to show her the photo—until Jenny's fiancé had appeared.
"She looks just like me!" Jenny said, glancing at him only for a moment. "I mean, she doesn't use make-up to her best advantage, and she could certainly dress better, but…anyone could mistake her for me." She held the photo close to her eyes, turning it slightly as if different light might reveal something more.
Nick preferred Claudia's more judicious use of make-up, actually, but he didn't think announcing that would win him any points.
"Why didn't you show this to me sooner?" Jenny asked, not taking her eyes from the photo. "I understand why you didn't that evening, but…."
"Why did I let you think I was crazy?" Nick wondered that now himself. "I…I thought it would just complicate matters more if I did show you. You were here, and Claudia was gone, and I needed to get my head around this new reality, I suppose." That sounded reasonable, but the truth was that he didn't really understand himself why he hadn't brought the picture out again between then and now.
"But why not show it to your team, at least?" Jenny said, slowly handing the photo back as if she'd rather hang onto it herself.
"Well, Connor actually believed me…."
"I know," Jenny said. "I've been talking to him about alternate realities and timeline and all these science-fiction-sounding things…." She flashed a nervous smile.
Connor had believed him all along—but Stephen hadn't. He never actually said he didn't believe Nick, but Nick could see it in his eyes and his bearing. He could have shown Stephen the proof, but he supposed he'd wanted Stephen to believe him based on his word alone. After all, Nick had told himself, he had never lied to Stephen. Stephen was the liar. So Nick didn't need to justify himself, didn't need to prove himself.
Nick had let the differing timelines become one more wedge between them. Abby had been concerned about him too, maybe even more than Stephen had been, and Nick had just brushed her worry aside. He didn't know why.
"You've drifted off again," Jenny complained. "Just like Stephen, but without the medication!"
"Sorry, I…."
"What?" She seemed genuinely interested.
"I don't know why I didn't show anyone else this," he admitted. "Everything just seems to have gone wrong since…." Since Helen stuck her verbal knife in his back. Only it wasn't his back. She'd done it right to his face. And in front of everyone.
"James thinks we've all been so sleep-deprived as to become irrational," Jenny told him with a cautious smile, as if to take the sting from the words.
"Does he include himself?" Nick couldn't keep the acid out of his voice entirely.
Jenny laughed. "He doesn't say so, but I think he does."
"It's no excuse," Nick said, poking at a bit of dust or lint on his shirt angrily. He should have had more sleep—if he could have slept. He'd lain awake far too many nights. Wondering what he should have done differently: should he have noticed something about Helen? But when? He didn't even know when the affair had been. Should he have realised Stephen was keeping something from him? Doubtless. But he wasn't married to Stephen. Helen—how could he not have realised? He loved her! He knew things weren't right between them, and he'd been trying to make it better.
"For him, or for you?" Jenny sighed, obviously realising he hadn't been paying enough attention. "Lack of sleep is no excuse for you, or for James?" she repeated.
Nick huffed. "Either. Both."
"Well, you're caught up now, right?" The question seemed innocent, but the look was a little too piercing.
"What do you think?" he asked with annoyance.
Jenny straightened her back a little. "I think you're still not getting enough, and that's why you're so touchy."
Touchy? Of course he was touchy! What did they expect from him? In the past week, he'd fired his best friend, who'd slept with his ex-wife again, and then been captured by the ex-wife and another psychopath—
Of course, everyone else had plenty of reason to be sensitive too. Jenny had perhaps most of all. PR jobs weren't supposed to be life-endangering. Or to require killing. Perhaps if he gave a little more thought to what other people might be thinking or feeling….
He made himself smile and told her he appreciated her concern.
When he thought about it, he really did appreciate the concern. He just didn't know how to cope with it right now. He was no longer sure why he'd come to her office, and he excused himself and rose.
Jenny stood as well. "Nick?" she said tentatively, putting a hand gently on his arm. "Thanks. For showing me. It's...disturbing to know that...." She frowned again as she sought words, something that usually took little effort.
"I know," Nick assured her. "Hard to get your head around." He admitted, "I'm not even sure why I showed you."
Jenny clasped her hands in front of her. "The timelines can change, and Helen knows it. We need to remember it as well."
"Cheerful thought," he said with a snort.
Jenny smiled. It was the sort of smile that made Nick think he didn't want to cross her. "The cheerful thought is that we can work together. We haven't always done it so well, but we can do it. Whatever Helen had planned, we stopped her."
Nick started to say, "This time," but he managed to smile himself and say instead, "That's true." He went back to his office not certain how reassured he was, but he felt oddly lighter for having finally shared that photograph with someone.
***
Stephen had been very good about not pressing Connor on the subject of Abby. He had no right to speak of anything related to romance, or even women. He kept hoping Connor would bring it up, but Connor mostly talked about what he was working on with his ADD and rover.
So finally Stephen asked, "Have you said anything to Abby?"
Connor seemed to fold in on himself, pulling his hands together in his lap and bending his shoulders as he hunched slightly. "About...?"
Connor knew what he meant, or he wouldn't have reacted like that. Stephen knew now what the answer would be, but he went ahead with the question. "Have you asked her out? Now that Caroline's out of the picture?"
Connor tucked his chin closer. He looked like he might just go into fetal position right there in the uncomfortable chair all the non-military visitors complained about. "I don't think that's such a good idea at the moment."
"Why not?"
"Well, Rex is still getting over everything, and—"
"She's not still pissed off with you for that?"
"She says she isn't."
Oh. Maybe like Cutter, Abby was still working on forgiveness. Maybe Connor was right not to press his luck.
Connor smiled a little. "We've got time."
"But that's the thing!" Stephen surprised himself with the exclamation. "You don't know how much time you've got!"
It was completely the wrong thing to say; he knew it while the words were still leaving his mouth, but he couldn't seem to stop them. Connor's mouth shut tightly, and he turned his face away. Stephen cursed himself silently.
Well, screw it. He only knew that Connor had seen something on Leek's security systems because Cutter had told him. He wasn't even sure what Connor had seen. He wasn't going to keep avoiding the entire subject of what had happened to him. He didn't have to tread quite as lightly with Connor as with the others; Connor was almost as likely as he to say stupid things, and quicker to forgive. He might as well jump in with both feet.
"I suppose it's different for you, though." Stephen made himself sound cheerful. "Neither of you is idiot enough to end up on the wrong side of a locked door."
That did at least bring Connor's eyes, now wide open, back to his face.
Stephen continued, "You and Abby don't pull anywhere near as many stupid stunts, so you can probably afford to take things a little slower."
"You saved Cutter's life! You saved everybody! If those creatures had escaped—" Connor's body unwound so fast he threatened to fall out of the chair.
"If those creatures had escaped," Stephen answered, "the Special Forces boys who were already on their way would have had a whole lot more mess to clean up, and maybe, maybe some more people would have died. But don't make me out to be a hero. I didn't save the world. Nick would have done it himself. I only saved Cutter, and barely that."
"But you did!" Connor argued heatedly, leaning towards Stephen. "You saved him, and you saved us, because we were still awfully close to the building, and we only had the one gun! We'd have all—"
"You wouldn't have," Stephen insisted, "because Nick would have done it if I hadn't stopped him. He was nearly in already; I was almost too slow."
Connor frowned fiercely. "But you did save everyone," he insisted.
Stephen held up his good hand. "Fine. Have it your way," he said, making it clear enough that he didn't believe Connor but wasn't going to argue any more.
But Connor wouldn't quit. "I know what you did," he said more quietly. "I saw it."
"And you shouldn't have," Stephen replied, and he was finally able to say, "I'm sorry."
Connor shook his head. "I'm not. You think it wasn't bad enough for Abby? She never saw anything, but she was here at the hospital wondering—waiting to hear, for hours and hours, like I was. At least I knew I'd done...."
"You'd done all you could," Stephen said with sudden understanding. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for Connor to have been involved after all. He'd seen Valerie's death. He'd watched Tom die. Seeing Stephen couldn't be half as bad, at least not since Stephen was still around to talk about it.
Connor nodded. "I wish it hadn't happened, mate, but at least I could do something. The girls...."
"They're okay now, aren't they?" Stephen asked. He thought they seemed their usual selves, but recent events had shown him not to be the best judge of people.
"I think so. I mean, Caroline—I haven't talked to her since Lester let her go. I made sure she was okay, but...."
Stephen nodded.
"Abby—Abby's all right." Connor grinned suddenly. "She lectures you and she lectures the professor, and I think she's getting it all out of her system."
Stephen grinned. "And we deserve it."
Connor's smile faded. "You're not the only one—"
Stephen raised his hand again. "No way. I know you feel bad about Caroline. But you were breaking up with her. You did the right thing."
Connor looked horrified. "You didn't hear how I broke up with her? And why she took Rex?"
Stephen was confused. "I knew she took Rex, but I thought that was Leek's doing?"
Connor told him with some shame about the breakup by text message, and Stephen said nothing. He'd done far worse than that himself.
"Caroline wasn't upset that you dumped her, I think," Stephen said cautiously. He'd never met the woman, so he couldn't be sure. And he didn't honestly care if what he was saying was true or not, though perhaps he ought to care. He cared more about how Connor felt. "She'd lost her pay cheque, and she took Rex to try to get more out of Leek, right?"
Connor straightened a little. "Yeah! I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. "I mean, I apologized to Abby, but we don't...we don't talk about it. It's still a little bit of a sore spot," he said, dropping his voice confidingly.
"I know what you mean," Stephen said. "Yeah, you're right. Give her some time. And yourself," he added.
Connor nodded. "I think we all need it," he said a little too pointedly.
Stephen wasn't really in a position to turn down advice from anyone at this time.
***
Nick had nearly finished with his reports from the necropsies on the giant bat creatures, though he still hadn't settled on a name; he was fairly sure chiroptera did not still apply. Well, there was a problem he could safely put off until another day. He clicked save yet again on his computer. Now he'd just put it aside for Stephen to proofread and—
Oh, damn. He couldn't believe he'd just done that. How could he forget? He was just so used to Stephen reading over things for him, tying up loose ends, untangling his convoluted sentences, fixing the format.... Of course, he'd had Abby do more and more of that lately, because he hadn't wanted to ask Stephen for anything. Abby was perhaps a little less critical than Stephen, less willing to tamper with Nick's words, but.... He'd thought it was better than feeling he owed something to the man who'd slept with his wife. Of course, he owed that man his life, but he'd saved Stephen's life a few times too. For some reason it was asking for the little things that bothered him.
Asking Stephen to help with little things might mean they were still friends, after all. He thought he'd forgiven Stephen, but then he'd remember, and the knowledge of what Stephen had done, and concealed for so many years, would rankle. He wouldn't ask for favours. Stephen must have noticed, and maybe that was part of why Stephen got so pissed off: it probably looked like Nick didn't trust him.
The insane part was that Nick did trust him, with his life, and with his team. He had trusted him not to reveal the anomalies, as much as he wanted to, and he trusted him to protect the public. He just didn't trust Stephen with his wife. Maybe he didn't trust him with anything personal, for a time there, and his work, his words, were too personal to put into Stephen's hands. Knowing that Stephen had slept with Helen once again did hurt, when Stephen had confessed it, and it actually still hurt now. How could Stephen do that to him? Even if the marriage was over, surely it was a betrayal. And to come late when the mammoth appeared, endangering everyone....
But of course Stephen thought the conspiracy endangered everyone, and he was right. Leek would have killed them all—except Stephen, who had been fired by that time and wasn't among Leek's targets.
Yet Stephen had been the one who came closest to dying.
Nick meant what he'd told Stephen. He'd had enough of being miserable; shutting Stephen out hadn't made him feel better in the long run. If he was perfectly honest, he'd admit it felt good at moments, delivering a cutting remark; actually hitting Stephen had felt deeply satisfying for, oh, several seconds altogether! He'd found some satisfaction in knowing that people were badmouthing Stephen over the affair, even if the rumours made him look as gullible as Stephen looked guilty.
Any pleasure he'd taken in Stephen's discomfiture curdled in his stomach every time he visited him in hospital, or even thought of how he looked now.
A few days before, a walking stick that branched into four feet near its base had appeared by Stephen's bedside. Nick saw it on walking into the room, and all he could think was that old people used it, not young people like Stephen. Stephen must have read it in his face, and he had said something cheerful and made him sit down and tried to distract him. Nick had asked about it, and Stephen answered rather off-handedly his left leg wasn't quite up to taking his weight, and that he should have had crutches but that was clearly out, waving the cast-encased wrist a little inside his sling.
In the end, he must have been successful at distracting Nick, because Nick had accepted his reassurances that walking with a stick was a definite improvement, and he hadn't asked for more details. He had never actually seen Stephen using the stick, however; he'd never even seen him out of his hospital bed.
On to Part Eight
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
Part Six
"So now we're feeding a mammoth and two...what are they called again?" James asked his assistant, just to see whether she'd know. He'd been making an effort to pay attention since a few stray facts about future predators (hunt primarily by sound) and mammoths (sharp tusks) had saved his life.
"Hadrosaurs," Lorraine supplied correctly. Good to know she was paying attention.
"My God, we should have fired Hart; they're probably eating something roughly equal to his salary!"
Lorraine did not look amused as she gave him the file he wanted and left. Was she fond of him too? The women did seem to go for Stephen. Of course, the military men seemed to like him too, which didn't bear much thinking about. So many of the soldiers seemed intent on visiting him that James had had to order them to go only in civilian clothes. Jenny's cover story involving traders in restricted wildlife had been pretty thin to start; if that was the best she could do, she must have needed sick leave as much as Cutter's whole team did. Numerous visiting soldiers would not help the cover story.
No one could tell that all these athletic men with short haircuts were military as long as they weren't in their gear, right? James wished he could put himself on sick leave, but he'd had to settle for leaving earlier than usual a few nights. His wife quite liked having him home more, but he knew it couldn't last.
Of course, once all the reports were in and read, James might find himself with a lot of free time. This could become the first job from which he'd ever been fired. He shouldn't mind. He'd been saying for as long as he could remember that it was more trouble than it was worth. He'd land on his feet; his skills were too useful to leave him out of work for long.
James did find, though, that the thought of leaving here now held no appeal.
Cutter finally arrived, and James pulled his lead team into a meeting to go over the usual details. They'd been doing necropsies on what was left of the various creatures that Leek and Helen Cutter had kept in their menagerie, but a number of them had been too mangled, by humans or other predators or both, for much study at all. Still, he was keeping busy the veterinarians he'd finally been able to hire, and Abby and Cutter assisted with the necropsies and kept the team and James informed.
Connor reported no new advances on the ADD. If Helen had been slipping back and forth through anomalies since it had come online, it either wasn't working right, or she must have been getting in and out before they got there—which prompted the question of how she managed that. Connor had a theory that she had stolen a future version of the ADD, which sounded rather science fictional to James, but, then again, a Columbian mammoth had saved him from something out of Alien, so he couldn't really complain.
Connor had been making progress on the rover, working with their new electronics expert, which was something, anyway.
"I can also make a more limited model we could just stick in while holding onto it," Connor enthused. "MALP on a stick!"
Abby made the mistake of asking, "What?" and off he went on some tangent about Star Wars or Star Trek or Star Gate. Lester wasn't sure even Connor could keep them all those Stars straight, but no one here could correct him.
Cutter managed to interrupt, once again living up to his name. "What we really need is a quick way to tell which era we're looking at," he said. "At this point, we've got a mammoth and two hadrosaurs to repatriate; we can't just stick them through the next anomaly to open up."
"We're working on a more sophisticated environment sampling system," Connor began, and then he was off to the races once more. Cutter seemed to understand him at least, but Abby showed signs of her eyes glazing over, and Jenny had begun flipping through a folder and scribbling notes to herself. He didn't believe for a second they were about Connor's ideas.
James longed for the days when he could just send them off to work out the details themselves, but he'd recently learned how crucial details could be. He also needed to keep an eye on how his people were doing. Cutter looked perpetually tired still. Abby and Connor seemed to have bounced back reasonably well, except that he'd caught them both with haunted looks on their faces when they didn't know anyone was observing. Jenny alone seemed fairly untouched—but now she insisted on being in on all the meetings, so perhaps she wasn't. Hart himself actually seemed in reasonably good spirits—possibly unreasonably good spirits, with some chemical assistance.
Connor and Cutter finally finished their conversation, Cutter with looks around the table as if he was just realising everyone else had tuned out. Connor just jotted some things down and failed to notice anyone else.
"Jenny, what have you got for us today?" James asked the table.
Jenny spread out her notes more noticeably. "We've finished redoing security checks on all personnel. Leek definitely doctored the results of the first checks on six men; another four were questionable, but he hired them anyway. Four of the ten who worked for him died from injuries inflicted by animals, two by gunshot wounds"—she didn't mention that she'd made one of those kills herself—"two were caught by our security forces, and two remain at large. The Home Office have identified them as suspected terrorists, and all levels of local and national law enforcement are watching for them, as are most of our allies."
James couldn't help his eye roll. "How is it we can manage to kill future predators, dinosaurs, sabretooth tigers, and God knows what else, and still capture two men and kill two, while the entire rest of the world can't manage to find the remaining two?"
"Maybe they've gone through an anomaly," Connor said seriously.
"That assumes some of them aren't registering on the ADD," Cutter said, almost in a growl.
"The Home Office have also identified Helen as a suspected terrorist," Jenny added with her eyes on Cutter.
"'Suspected terrorist' doesn't begin to cover it," Cutter muttered, and from the fierce looks on their faces, everyone else agreed.
James thought with some satisfaction as he looked around the table that he wouldn't want to be Helen Cutter if she did manage to run into this team. "We want her alive," he reminded them, just in case.
"We should have put a tracker in her when we had her prisoner," Connor said bluntly.
Abby started and leaned towards him. "Connor, that's...."
Cutter just stared, perhaps not happy with how cynicism looked on the youngest member of the team. James had to admit he didn't much care for it himself.
Connor looked at the pages in front of him. He didn't seem to notice the others' reactions, and he didn't seem to be joking.
Jenny pursed her lips and shuffled some papers. "In other matters, we've got security clearance for a respected psychiatrist who will now be available—"
She was cut short by a snort from Cutter. That seemed to surprise her, and she said, a little defensively, "Well, Stephen has begun seeing him!"
"Stephen doesn't need a psychiatrist!" Cutter barked.
Everyone froze. James had an almost irresistible urge to laugh, but he didn't want to be the reason Cutter finally snapped. Abby and Connor appeared to have stopped breathing and were now both looking studiously at the table. Jenny simply regarded Cutter with amazement.
Cutter turned his glare from Jenny to James, and James couldn't help himself. His lips twitched. He decided that he would not bring up replacing Hart, even temporarily, at this particular meeting.
Cutter made a noise of disgust. "Although perhaps some others could use counselling." Then he pushed back from the table and demanded, "Is this meeting over?"
James nodded, not trusting his voice.
He'd never seen the room empty so fast.
***
Nick tried to put the damned meeting out of his mind while he reviewed necropsy finding on the future predators. They needed a better name than "giant bat-things," but he'd like to give them a proper scientific name, and he wanted to understand their evolutionary place to decide what it should be.
They had a good deal of post-mortem evidence about their brains now. That they had highly developed areas related to hearing made sense; what he really wanted to know but couldn't work out with the damned things dead was whether they had language. How intelligent were they? Was there any hope of reasoning with them?
The electronics people and Connor had been all over the control devices used on the creatures, but apparently they'd been pretty well fried; the ARC couldn't get them to work at all. The experts knew enough to agree that the technology seemed far in advance of anything available now, which meant Helen had been to the future, but they already knew that, didn't they? It didn't tell them a damned thing about the creatures—but it did tell them that some intelligent race in the future probably had opposable thumbs, and perhaps an understanding of electronics that grew out of contemporary humans'.
Nick had to wonder what kind of people would make control devices for these things. Was that so they didn't have to kill or be killed, which seemed his team's only option? Then why were some of the creatures running around free?
Or were the devices used as Leek had used them? And perhaps Helen? How much of the plan had been hers? Did future people use the creatures as weapons against other people? What had Helen intended for them, and why had she ever allied with Leek?
It made his head hurt. He didn't want to think that Helen would use these creatures to hurt people; after all, she'd helped them track down the one she knew had slipped into their own time. Perhaps he should think of it as his time, rather; Helen didn't seem to owe too much allegiance to it any longer. Or the people who lived in it, himself included. She didn't care whether it was Nick or Stephen who went into that room with the creatures, as long as it wasn't her. He'd never realised she could be so cold. She'd said that people died, that species died. Yet she'd risked her life to save Claudia, and later she'd done it again to get rid of the risk of the bat-creatures.
Had she changed since then? Perhaps with her extra trips through anomalies, she'd seen more timeline alterations than just Claudia's disappearance and Jenny's appearance in more or less the same place. Then again, she seemed fascinated by Jenny, as if she'd never seen such a change before.
Jenny hadn't pressed him about Claudia since that day she asked him in hospital. She'd looked at him a few times with an odd expression, and he'd thought she was about to ask, but then each time something had interrupted.
Maybe he should talk to her about it. But what more could he say? He'd told her the important things.
Then Nick remembered something he hadn't thought about in weeks. He checked his wallet. The photo was still there.
He went to find Jenny. She had her own little office, private like his; he'd never actually been in there before. She usually found him, or they met in a conference room or Lester's office.
She greeted him with a smile. "Reconsidering the offer of a psychiatrist?"
He scowled at her but then decided her words were ironically appropriate. "Actually, I have proof I'm not crazy. You might think Helen and I shared a delusion, but this, this you'll find hard to deny. May I?" He gestured to one of the comfortable chairs by a small round table rather than the chair on the opposite side of the desk from where she sat.
"By all means." Jenny came around the desk herself and sat in one of the other three chairs.
"This," he said, flourishing the photo, "is Claudia."
Jenny took the picture in silence, frowning deeply when she saw it.
He explained how he'd dropped round that evening just after she'd started working at the ARC, to show her the photo—until Jenny's fiancé had appeared.
"She looks just like me!" Jenny said, glancing at him only for a moment. "I mean, she doesn't use make-up to her best advantage, and she could certainly dress better, but…anyone could mistake her for me." She held the photo close to her eyes, turning it slightly as if different light might reveal something more.
Nick preferred Claudia's more judicious use of make-up, actually, but he didn't think announcing that would win him any points.
"Why didn't you show this to me sooner?" Jenny asked, not taking her eyes from the photo. "I understand why you didn't that evening, but…."
"Why did I let you think I was crazy?" Nick wondered that now himself. "I…I thought it would just complicate matters more if I did show you. You were here, and Claudia was gone, and I needed to get my head around this new reality, I suppose." That sounded reasonable, but the truth was that he didn't really understand himself why he hadn't brought the picture out again between then and now.
"But why not show it to your team, at least?" Jenny said, slowly handing the photo back as if she'd rather hang onto it herself.
"Well, Connor actually believed me…."
"I know," Jenny said. "I've been talking to him about alternate realities and timeline and all these science-fiction-sounding things…." She flashed a nervous smile.
Connor had believed him all along—but Stephen hadn't. He never actually said he didn't believe Nick, but Nick could see it in his eyes and his bearing. He could have shown Stephen the proof, but he supposed he'd wanted Stephen to believe him based on his word alone. After all, Nick had told himself, he had never lied to Stephen. Stephen was the liar. So Nick didn't need to justify himself, didn't need to prove himself.
Nick had let the differing timelines become one more wedge between them. Abby had been concerned about him too, maybe even more than Stephen had been, and Nick had just brushed her worry aside. He didn't know why.
"You've drifted off again," Jenny complained. "Just like Stephen, but without the medication!"
"Sorry, I…."
"What?" She seemed genuinely interested.
"I don't know why I didn't show anyone else this," he admitted. "Everything just seems to have gone wrong since…." Since Helen stuck her verbal knife in his back. Only it wasn't his back. She'd done it right to his face. And in front of everyone.
"James thinks we've all been so sleep-deprived as to become irrational," Jenny told him with a cautious smile, as if to take the sting from the words.
"Does he include himself?" Nick couldn't keep the acid out of his voice entirely.
Jenny laughed. "He doesn't say so, but I think he does."
"It's no excuse," Nick said, poking at a bit of dust or lint on his shirt angrily. He should have had more sleep—if he could have slept. He'd lain awake far too many nights. Wondering what he should have done differently: should he have noticed something about Helen? But when? He didn't even know when the affair had been. Should he have realised Stephen was keeping something from him? Doubtless. But he wasn't married to Stephen. Helen—how could he not have realised? He loved her! He knew things weren't right between them, and he'd been trying to make it better.
"For him, or for you?" Jenny sighed, obviously realising he hadn't been paying enough attention. "Lack of sleep is no excuse for you, or for James?" she repeated.
Nick huffed. "Either. Both."
"Well, you're caught up now, right?" The question seemed innocent, but the look was a little too piercing.
"What do you think?" he asked with annoyance.
Jenny straightened her back a little. "I think you're still not getting enough, and that's why you're so touchy."
Touchy? Of course he was touchy! What did they expect from him? In the past week, he'd fired his best friend, who'd slept with his ex-wife again, and then been captured by the ex-wife and another psychopath—
Of course, everyone else had plenty of reason to be sensitive too. Jenny had perhaps most of all. PR jobs weren't supposed to be life-endangering. Or to require killing. Perhaps if he gave a little more thought to what other people might be thinking or feeling….
He made himself smile and told her he appreciated her concern.
When he thought about it, he really did appreciate the concern. He just didn't know how to cope with it right now. He was no longer sure why he'd come to her office, and he excused himself and rose.
Jenny stood as well. "Nick?" she said tentatively, putting a hand gently on his arm. "Thanks. For showing me. It's...disturbing to know that...." She frowned again as she sought words, something that usually took little effort.
"I know," Nick assured her. "Hard to get your head around." He admitted, "I'm not even sure why I showed you."
Jenny clasped her hands in front of her. "The timelines can change, and Helen knows it. We need to remember it as well."
"Cheerful thought," he said with a snort.
Jenny smiled. It was the sort of smile that made Nick think he didn't want to cross her. "The cheerful thought is that we can work together. We haven't always done it so well, but we can do it. Whatever Helen had planned, we stopped her."
Nick started to say, "This time," but he managed to smile himself and say instead, "That's true." He went back to his office not certain how reassured he was, but he felt oddly lighter for having finally shared that photograph with someone.
***
Stephen had been very good about not pressing Connor on the subject of Abby. He had no right to speak of anything related to romance, or even women. He kept hoping Connor would bring it up, but Connor mostly talked about what he was working on with his ADD and rover.
So finally Stephen asked, "Have you said anything to Abby?"
Connor seemed to fold in on himself, pulling his hands together in his lap and bending his shoulders as he hunched slightly. "About...?"
Connor knew what he meant, or he wouldn't have reacted like that. Stephen knew now what the answer would be, but he went ahead with the question. "Have you asked her out? Now that Caroline's out of the picture?"
Connor tucked his chin closer. He looked like he might just go into fetal position right there in the uncomfortable chair all the non-military visitors complained about. "I don't think that's such a good idea at the moment."
"Why not?"
"Well, Rex is still getting over everything, and—"
"She's not still pissed off with you for that?"
"She says she isn't."
Oh. Maybe like Cutter, Abby was still working on forgiveness. Maybe Connor was right not to press his luck.
Connor smiled a little. "We've got time."
"But that's the thing!" Stephen surprised himself with the exclamation. "You don't know how much time you've got!"
It was completely the wrong thing to say; he knew it while the words were still leaving his mouth, but he couldn't seem to stop them. Connor's mouth shut tightly, and he turned his face away. Stephen cursed himself silently.
Well, screw it. He only knew that Connor had seen something on Leek's security systems because Cutter had told him. He wasn't even sure what Connor had seen. He wasn't going to keep avoiding the entire subject of what had happened to him. He didn't have to tread quite as lightly with Connor as with the others; Connor was almost as likely as he to say stupid things, and quicker to forgive. He might as well jump in with both feet.
"I suppose it's different for you, though." Stephen made himself sound cheerful. "Neither of you is idiot enough to end up on the wrong side of a locked door."
That did at least bring Connor's eyes, now wide open, back to his face.
Stephen continued, "You and Abby don't pull anywhere near as many stupid stunts, so you can probably afford to take things a little slower."
"You saved Cutter's life! You saved everybody! If those creatures had escaped—" Connor's body unwound so fast he threatened to fall out of the chair.
"If those creatures had escaped," Stephen answered, "the Special Forces boys who were already on their way would have had a whole lot more mess to clean up, and maybe, maybe some more people would have died. But don't make me out to be a hero. I didn't save the world. Nick would have done it himself. I only saved Cutter, and barely that."
"But you did!" Connor argued heatedly, leaning towards Stephen. "You saved him, and you saved us, because we were still awfully close to the building, and we only had the one gun! We'd have all—"
"You wouldn't have," Stephen insisted, "because Nick would have done it if I hadn't stopped him. He was nearly in already; I was almost too slow."
Connor frowned fiercely. "But you did save everyone," he insisted.
Stephen held up his good hand. "Fine. Have it your way," he said, making it clear enough that he didn't believe Connor but wasn't going to argue any more.
But Connor wouldn't quit. "I know what you did," he said more quietly. "I saw it."
"And you shouldn't have," Stephen replied, and he was finally able to say, "I'm sorry."
Connor shook his head. "I'm not. You think it wasn't bad enough for Abby? She never saw anything, but she was here at the hospital wondering—waiting to hear, for hours and hours, like I was. At least I knew I'd done...."
"You'd done all you could," Stephen said with sudden understanding. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for Connor to have been involved after all. He'd seen Valerie's death. He'd watched Tom die. Seeing Stephen couldn't be half as bad, at least not since Stephen was still around to talk about it.
Connor nodded. "I wish it hadn't happened, mate, but at least I could do something. The girls...."
"They're okay now, aren't they?" Stephen asked. He thought they seemed their usual selves, but recent events had shown him not to be the best judge of people.
"I think so. I mean, Caroline—I haven't talked to her since Lester let her go. I made sure she was okay, but...."
Stephen nodded.
"Abby—Abby's all right." Connor grinned suddenly. "She lectures you and she lectures the professor, and I think she's getting it all out of her system."
Stephen grinned. "And we deserve it."
Connor's smile faded. "You're not the only one—"
Stephen raised his hand again. "No way. I know you feel bad about Caroline. But you were breaking up with her. You did the right thing."
Connor looked horrified. "You didn't hear how I broke up with her? And why she took Rex?"
Stephen was confused. "I knew she took Rex, but I thought that was Leek's doing?"
Connor told him with some shame about the breakup by text message, and Stephen said nothing. He'd done far worse than that himself.
"Caroline wasn't upset that you dumped her, I think," Stephen said cautiously. He'd never met the woman, so he couldn't be sure. And he didn't honestly care if what he was saying was true or not, though perhaps he ought to care. He cared more about how Connor felt. "She'd lost her pay cheque, and she took Rex to try to get more out of Leek, right?"
Connor straightened a little. "Yeah! I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. "I mean, I apologized to Abby, but we don't...we don't talk about it. It's still a little bit of a sore spot," he said, dropping his voice confidingly.
"I know what you mean," Stephen said. "Yeah, you're right. Give her some time. And yourself," he added.
Connor nodded. "I think we all need it," he said a little too pointedly.
Stephen wasn't really in a position to turn down advice from anyone at this time.
***
Nick had nearly finished with his reports from the necropsies on the giant bat creatures, though he still hadn't settled on a name; he was fairly sure chiroptera did not still apply. Well, there was a problem he could safely put off until another day. He clicked save yet again on his computer. Now he'd just put it aside for Stephen to proofread and—
Oh, damn. He couldn't believe he'd just done that. How could he forget? He was just so used to Stephen reading over things for him, tying up loose ends, untangling his convoluted sentences, fixing the format.... Of course, he'd had Abby do more and more of that lately, because he hadn't wanted to ask Stephen for anything. Abby was perhaps a little less critical than Stephen, less willing to tamper with Nick's words, but.... He'd thought it was better than feeling he owed something to the man who'd slept with his wife. Of course, he owed that man his life, but he'd saved Stephen's life a few times too. For some reason it was asking for the little things that bothered him.
Asking Stephen to help with little things might mean they were still friends, after all. He thought he'd forgiven Stephen, but then he'd remember, and the knowledge of what Stephen had done, and concealed for so many years, would rankle. He wouldn't ask for favours. Stephen must have noticed, and maybe that was part of why Stephen got so pissed off: it probably looked like Nick didn't trust him.
The insane part was that Nick did trust him, with his life, and with his team. He had trusted him not to reveal the anomalies, as much as he wanted to, and he trusted him to protect the public. He just didn't trust Stephen with his wife. Maybe he didn't trust him with anything personal, for a time there, and his work, his words, were too personal to put into Stephen's hands. Knowing that Stephen had slept with Helen once again did hurt, when Stephen had confessed it, and it actually still hurt now. How could Stephen do that to him? Even if the marriage was over, surely it was a betrayal. And to come late when the mammoth appeared, endangering everyone....
But of course Stephen thought the conspiracy endangered everyone, and he was right. Leek would have killed them all—except Stephen, who had been fired by that time and wasn't among Leek's targets.
Yet Stephen had been the one who came closest to dying.
Nick meant what he'd told Stephen. He'd had enough of being miserable; shutting Stephen out hadn't made him feel better in the long run. If he was perfectly honest, he'd admit it felt good at moments, delivering a cutting remark; actually hitting Stephen had felt deeply satisfying for, oh, several seconds altogether! He'd found some satisfaction in knowing that people were badmouthing Stephen over the affair, even if the rumours made him look as gullible as Stephen looked guilty.
Any pleasure he'd taken in Stephen's discomfiture curdled in his stomach every time he visited him in hospital, or even thought of how he looked now.
A few days before, a walking stick that branched into four feet near its base had appeared by Stephen's bedside. Nick saw it on walking into the room, and all he could think was that old people used it, not young people like Stephen. Stephen must have read it in his face, and he had said something cheerful and made him sit down and tried to distract him. Nick had asked about it, and Stephen answered rather off-handedly his left leg wasn't quite up to taking his weight, and that he should have had crutches but that was clearly out, waving the cast-encased wrist a little inside his sling.
In the end, he must have been successful at distracting Nick, because Nick had accepted his reassurances that walking with a stick was a definite improvement, and he hadn't asked for more details. He had never actually seen Stephen using the stick, however; he'd never even seen him out of his hospital bed.
On to Part Eight
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
This is great. Lester was even more brilliant than usual, and Nick was done wonderfully - his thought patterns made sense, y'know?
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Very interesting Nick thoughts re the future predators, like the possibility of reasoning with them. And yay for him finally showing someone that photo of Claudia!
Much love for the soldiers visiting Stephen so often that Lester had to order them to wear civvies ;)
From:
no subject
Not that wearing civvies will do much good, as Lester realizes: too many athletic-looking men with very short hair, and people will draw their own conclusions. (Of course, those conclusions may not be exactly right....)
From:
no subject
*howls laughing* I do so love Lester!
So, Nick's finally started to think about how he feels about Stephen and why. That's certainly an improvement!
From:
no subject
Nick couldn't sulk forever, despite his best efforts! It really is hard, though, to be fair: anger and resentment can very easily become a habit. I've done it myself on much more minor grounds, and finally pulled myself out. I have had colleagues for whom such thoughts have become a way of life, and I have to remind myself that I don't want to end up like them.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
One small Brit point -- it's pay cheque and not pay check.
From:
no subject
I'm glad I got a good balance among the Boys in this installment. It's really hard when I break it down into LJ chunks, because I think in larger units normally (as you no doubt vividly recall from having read the draft of "New Tracks"!).
From:
no subject
Loving it!
From:
no subject