Fic: The Past Won't Last
Mar. 20th, 2012 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thelibraniniquity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tli_productionsTitle: The Past Won't Last
Fandom: Primeval
Summary: Wherein Stephen meets some new faces, some for the first time.
Characters: Becker/Stephen, Jess, Burton; references to and appearances by others.
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~3200
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fredbassett
Spoilers: Through s4 only.
Warnings: References to sex, character deaths and multiple time lines.
Author's Notes: A much belated third in a series, following React to Contact and Dipt Into the Future. There is at least a fourth installment planned, but I've no idea when that's going to happen. Title comes from "House of Love" by East 17. Huge thanks toexplodedpen and lady_drace for the usual handholding and support.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Hilary is bollocked to within an inch of his life for taking Stephen out of the ARC without permission.
Stephen watches the scene in Lester's office from a safe distance, which turns out to be the edge of Jess' computer terminals. The machines' lights and noises still unnerve him, but it's better than the far end of the room where soldiers and technicians are milling about. He has to consciously – and constantly – remind himself that there are no predators here, that this is real and not a fever dream, and nine times out of ten it nearly works.
“Have you decided what you're going to do yet?” Jess asks.
Stephen belatedly realises the question is directed at him, but he glances over to double check. “Stick around,” he says. There's probably still a marker in St. Barnabas' graveyard with his name on it. He can't imagine himself fitting in anywhere else in this time line.
Jess nods, her attention focused on one of the monitors. “Sergeant Brody, report to secondary avionics for immediate assist – no, the other secondary avionics.”
It takes Stephen a moment to remember her earpiece, and the black box on the surface beside her keyboard. He's noticed them on the hips of everyone in the ARC, and he's already guessed radio and GPS for their functions.
He waits until Jess is no longer preoccupied with moving dots on a screen. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Hilary leave Lester's office, eyes on Stephen until he turns in the opposite direction to talk to one of the soldiers. Stephen tracks both of them with ease.
“Jess?” He waits again until she looks up at him. “Could you set me up with a lab?”
o o o o o
“Word to the wise – she really doesn't like being called Claudia.”
Stephen tears his gaze away from the upper level of the ARC, where Lester and a woman named Jennifer Lewis are talking quietly. “Hello, Sarah.”
She pulls a face. “I don't know whether to be creeped out by the fact you're on first name terms with me or what that apparently means.”
Stephen shrugs. “Everyone else is going with both.”
“Fair enough.” Sarah stands beside him and they both watch Lester retreat to his office, leaving Jennifer on the balcony. She looks tired and drawn – but tenses up when she sees Stephen watching her.
She couldn't be less like Claudia if she'd tried.
“Are you sticking around, then?”
Stephen glances at her, then over her shoulder at the Special Forces detail that have been following him everywhere since he woke up in a barely disguised cell two hours ago. He shrugs again. “Fresh air's overrated.”
Sarah doesn't smile. Instead she shoves her hands in her jeans pockets and eyes Stephen critically, but she doesn't say anything.
Above them Jennifer walks down the ramp and towards Stephen. From this angle her tiredness is even more pronounced. “Dr Hart, isn't it?”
Stephen nods. The way she asks the question, he thinks he can infer his dead counterpart didn't have a PhD – unlike him, and then he remembers the way he'd tried to introduce himself to this version of his team.
“It's me. Stephen. Dr Stephen Hart! I... Nick?”
“And it's Jennifer Lewis,” he replies, deliberately lightly.
“Yes.” Jennifer's tone hardens slightly. “And don't forget it.”
Stephen shakes his head. “Never forget a name,” he replies. Or a face, or anything on a map. Paw prints in a rainforest or the ability to trace back through miles of undergrowth. The scent of a married woman on thin bedsheets or the sound of someone backing away from a Perspex window -
The irony has never escaped him that he can be so good with identifying factors and yet so bad with people.
“Hmm.” Jennifer doesn't look impressed. “Well, I'm sure there's something you can do to help out here.” She indicates the work in progress that the recently exploded ARC has become. “Your guards probably have better things to do.”
Stephen doesn't doubt it, but he remains quiet.
“I'll put him to work if you like,” Sarah chimes in unexpectedly. She nudges Stephen's arm. “Come on, then, let's see what you're capable of.”
Stephen's pretty sure she has no idea.
He follows her anyway.
o o o o o
Jess finds him a small box of a room near the soldiers' training area, just on the edge of the established laboratories, and introduces him to some of the basic security protocols as well. She disappears after extracting a promise to requisition supplies and equipment directly from her. Stephen quickly decides to bide his time before asking for the equivalent of a lock on his door. At least until he gets the lie of this new land.
There's a metal table with a single chair already inside the room. Stephen places the chair beside the hydraulic door and carefully manoeuvres the table until it's positioned at the centre of the room. He leans on the table with one hand but it doesn't make a sound or – so far as he can tell – move at all beneath his weight.
He sits cross-legged on the centre of the table, angles himself towards the door, splays his hands on his thighs and breathes. His instinct is still to avoid open spaces of any kind, and to be completely silent. His pulse is slightly elevated – loud, to his ears – and it takes a few minutes to bring that down to just below normal.
He wonders idly what progress Connor is making with the anomaly control he'd taken from Helen's possessions, which reminds him that he still doesn't have his rucksack back. There's nothing valuable or incriminating in there, just empty notebooks and sample containers he'd filled after having a funny reaction to prehistoric game that he remembers thinking at the time would be worth keeping just for the look on Danny's face when asked to oversee chemical analysis.
Hilary had said Danny had quit the ARC after Sarah's death, along with Jenny. Stephen makes a note to look them up when he's given explicit permission to leave this ARC.
A tapping on the laboratory door interrupts his thoughts and Stephen looks up. There's a man peering in through the glass portions of the door, but Stephen doesn't recognise him.
He nods, though, and the man steps inside. He has greying hair and an expensive looking suit, but he doesn't seem like a politician. He's carrying Stephen's rucksack in one hand.
Stephen waits.
The man takes in the lab with something that looks like amusement. “Dare I ask what's behind this... unusual layout?” he asks. His tone is light but his eyes are focused and his posture stiff.
Stephen considers all of this. “There are slug-like creatures who roam the floors of buildings in the future who consider human flesh a delicacy,” he says calmly. “You learn quickly to keep all appendages tucked in.”
“Indeed.” The man smiles but it seems forced. “I don't believe I was able to introduce myself yesterday.” He steps forward and offers Stephen his free hand. “I'm Philip Burton.”
Stephen shakes his hand and takes in as much detail as he can. The grip is neither firm nor limp, and so far the man's body language hasn't given away a single thing. Stephen's met rocks more informative than this man.
“Doctor Stephen Hart.”
“Yes.” Burton nods. “The scientist who's added some remarkable feats of good old-fashioned time travel to his list of accomplishments.”
“I wouldn't put it quite like that.”
Burton's eyes fix on him. “How would you put it?”
Stephen shrugs again. “I got lost. I found my way home. Both times,” he adds.
“Home?” Burton repeats. Then he smiles slightly. “An interesting concept, Dr Hart. Home is clearly not just a physical place to you, is it?”
Stephen blinks involuntarily. Home had been Nick for the better part of eight years, until his own fuck ups had destroyed them. Home had been a tiny flat near Central Met until he'd been dead for three months and the landlord had moved on. Home had been – was – is – Hilary's flat. Somewhere to hide that had turned into somewhere to live.
Somewhere to return to, inhumanly noisy neighbours and all.
“Didn't the Rat Pack sing something about that?” he offers after a longer hesitation than he'd like.
“I wouldn't know,” Burton replies. “I rarely listen to anything past Brahms.”
The silence lasts just long enough to become uncomfortable, then Burton asks: “What are you planning to use this laboratory for, other than to avoid non-existent predators?”
Stephen picks his words carefully. “I haven't decided yet. I thought requisitioning the space would be a good start.”
Burton nods. “Do let me know if there's anything you need,” he says, this time without the artificial levity. “Someone with your extensive hands-on experience of the anomalies shouldn't want for resources in a place like this.” As if just remembering what he's carrying, he dangles Stephen's rucksack by one of the straps. “And speaking of which, I believe this is yours.”
Stephen reaches out for it. It weighs less than it had yesterday, but he can't tell what's been taken from it. Perhaps the sample containers. He represses a smirk. “Thank you,” he says, when Burton closes the gap and hands him the bag.
“Of course.” Burton gives him one last, long and unreadable look before turning and leaving the lab. Stephen watches the door hiss open and waits for it to close fully before opening the bag and checking its contents.
The notebooks are still there as well as a couple of loose biros, but the filled sample containers and his spare hunting knife are missing. On a reflex Stephen checks his left ankle for the slight bulge of the strap holding his other knife.
Philip Burton. He'd recognised the name as soon as Hilary had mentioned him, but this is the first time he's been able to ascribe a face to it.
Stephen knows instinctively that knowing exactly who Philip Burton is and the depth of his links to the ARC is going to be important.
He just has to work out his next move.
o o o o o
It's nearly a full ten minutes before Stephen's curiosity gets the better of him. He ducks away from Sarah's half hearted attempt to interrogate him over tea and biscuits, claiming a need for the toilet, and heads for Nick's lab.
Its location is one thing that fortunately hasn't changed time lines, and Stephen still hasn't really wrapped his head around the fact that everything's different now, and not just because he's got a fading bruise on his cheek that Nick had left there yesterday.
Footsteps echo down the hallway, and Stephen slips inside the lab before he's spotted. And then he stops – and stares.
A huge model, all intertwined tubing and cables, dominates the room. Half of it's wrecked, probably from the force of the explosion, but some of the dismantling looks deliberate. Stephen almost smiles. He'd recognise Nick's handiwork anywhere, not that this particular effort is at all familiar.
There are post-it notes dotted around the model. Stephen reaches out to the nearest one, almost but not quite touching it, and wonders what it means. He pokes at the piece of paper and it turns around. The handwriting is tiny and messy and achingly familiar, but the words are easy to make out.
Ryan's skeleton discovered.
“You shouldn't be in here,” Sarah says from behind him, and it takes everything Stephen's got not to jump.
He half turns to look at her. “What is this?”
Sarah's expression softens. “Something Professor Cutter and I were working on. Come on,” she tells Stephen, nodding to the door.
He hesitates for a second – just long enough to clamp down on the swell of emotion and flashes of memories, Nick at CMU and in the ARC and everything hindsight has taught him he should have done and said differently.
There's something that sounds like a choke. Stephen realises it's him. Nick had been alive yesterday. He still has the bruise to prove it.
Air, Stephen thinks. He needs air.
He follows Sarah out of the lab, and as soon as her back is turned he ducks down a side corridor, and another one, and another one until he finds a partially destroyed fire exit leading up to the car park.
Half an hour later he's standing in front of a grave marker. Stephen James Hart along with dates and his age.
He wonders if Nick ever came here, the way Stephen had visited Nick's grave. The grave markers are two time lines apart but in the same graveyard. Stephen's standing seventeen metres from an empty plot that wasn't empty yesterday.
He doesn't cry. He hadn't cried at Nick's funeral, still smarting from a right hook and the hydraulic door that could only have been closed from the inside, but mostly drunk. Stephen had wondered then – and countless times since – what would have happened if he'd shut himself in that room like he'd intended to.
Now he knows.
He leaves the graveyard at the opposite end from where he'd come in and collides with an old woman, layered up against non-existent cold and stinking of cheap alcohol. Stephen helps her straighten herself up, apologises briefly and then takes off at a run. He keeps running until it starts to get dark and his toes are numb from cold and exertion.
Eventually he finds himself on a quiet street, standing in front of a block of flats. Some of the lights are on, and he slips in through the entrance door behind a kid carrying half a dozen pizza boxes.
A few minutes later Stephen knocks on a door.
A few minutes after that Becker opens it and lets him in.
The sex is rough, but not forceful. Becker doesn't resist, but he doesn't say no, either. He doesn't say much of anything, and that's the first thing in a long time that Stephen is thankful for.
o o o o o
Stephen's on the verge of a light doze when he sees movement outside the laboratory door. He straightens his back reflexively and focuses his eyes.
It's Hilary. Stephen tries to make himself relax.
“Jess told me where to find you.” Hilary lets the door close behind him before limping over to stand beside the table. “You're staying, then.”
Stephen wants to shrug. “Why not?” he asks, but even he notices the lack of inflection in his voice.
Judging by the look on his face, Hilary's aware of this as well.
“Matt wants to do an extensive debrief, when you're up for it.”
Stephen nods. His vision blurs briefly but the lab quickly comes back into focus again. Matt Anderson may be the team leader now but he's a new hire, maybe even connected to Burton's presence in the ARC and its hierarchy, and Stephen has no intention of repeating history and trusting the wrong people again.
A touch on his shoulder makes Stephen jump backwards. His reflexes kick in and he stops himself from falling off the table, but it's a close thing. He breathes in deeply but quietly and stares at Hilary's hand where it's still hovering in mid-air.
Hilary slowly withdraws his hand, and frowns. “Did you get any sleep at all last night?”
Stephen thinks about warm, itchy bedsheets, the noises of London in the night time outside and the infrequent, rumbling snores from the other side of the bed. He shakes his head.
A smile – inexplicably, perhaps – appears on Hilary's face, just for a second. “You're an idiot,” he tells Stephen, then steps back from the table slowly enough that his limp doesn't show. “Get some sleep. Go on.”
Stephen frowns at him. “But -”
Hilary just smirks, then sits on the chair beside the door. He folds his arms over his chest and stares at Stephen. “I'll keep watch, okay? Just get some sleep.”
His vision blurs again for a moment, and Stephen realises he's got a headache. And that he's exhausted.
There are worse things in this world – or even this time line, he decides, than letting a Special Forces soldier sit guard while he rests. Worse things than even letting his boyfriend look out for him.
Boyfriend, Stephen thinks, as he curls up on the table, facing Hilary and using his rucksack as a pillow. He's never used that word before; he's not even sure why he keeps thinking of Becker in terms of his first name when he only learned it at a family gathering. He has clearer memories of being pushed up against a bedroom door, hot breath on his face and being sworn to secrecy.
It's a better memory, something he only let himself think about when he was sure there were no predators lurking in the shadows.
That was another time, though.
Here, with a man Stephen can no longer deny means something to him, he's asleep within seconds.
o o o o o
Two days pass. Stephen keeps a deliberately low profile, as much as is possible given the way he'd arrived here and the renewed rumours that he and the head of security have picked their carnal relationship up from exactly where they'd left it.
With a few exceptions, people avoid him. Jess helps him furnish his lab; Abby shows up with a Thermos mug and a valiant attempt at conciliation, both of which Stephen accepts gratefully. They'd separated in the Cretaceous with a bitter argument, and though he knows there's too much history for them to ever be friends again, he'll take civil over hostile any day. They compare notes on pre – and post – historic survival but avoid more personal topics.
Connor stares at the whiteboards but manages to restrain himself from asking what Stephen plans to do with them.
Even Lester makes an appearance. He waffles about paperwork and legal resurrections.
Burton's absence is notable.
Matt postpones the debrief to chase after a legendary worm. Hilary spends that afternoon in Stephen's lab, injured leg propped up and inhaling unhealthy amounts of tea.
Stephen works around him. He still has a heightened awareness of other people, but he trusts Hilary not to make any sudden movements without warning him first. He starts with half an inch of paper spread across the floor, closes his eyes for a minute and copies down what he can remember, both from Nick's lab and a place that doesn't exist yet, except for on the other side of an anomaly.
It's easier than he remembers, but hard at the same time. He loses track of time until he hears a warning from behind him: “I'm coming over.”
Stephen braces himself, and listens to the uneven footfalls until he feels Hilary stooping down to look over his shoulder. He waits.
“I recognise this,” Hilary says slowly.
Stephen nods. “The anomaly model,” he says. He twists around to look up at Hilary. “Cutter was onto something. I just have to figure out what.”
Fandom: Primeval
Summary: Wherein Stephen meets some new faces, some for the first time.
Characters: Becker/Stephen, Jess, Burton; references to and appearances by others.
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~3200
Beta:
fredbassettSpoilers: Through s4 only.
Warnings: References to sex, character deaths and multiple time lines.
Author's Notes: A much belated third in a series, following React to Contact and Dipt Into the Future. There is at least a fourth installment planned, but I've no idea when that's going to happen. Title comes from "House of Love" by East 17. Huge thanks to
explodedpen and lady_drace for the usual handholding and support.Hilary is bollocked to within an inch of his life for taking Stephen out of the ARC without permission.
Stephen watches the scene in Lester's office from a safe distance, which turns out to be the edge of Jess' computer terminals. The machines' lights and noises still unnerve him, but it's better than the far end of the room where soldiers and technicians are milling about. He has to consciously – and constantly – remind himself that there are no predators here, that this is real and not a fever dream, and nine times out of ten it nearly works.
“Have you decided what you're going to do yet?” Jess asks.
Stephen belatedly realises the question is directed at him, but he glances over to double check. “Stick around,” he says. There's probably still a marker in St. Barnabas' graveyard with his name on it. He can't imagine himself fitting in anywhere else in this time line.
Jess nods, her attention focused on one of the monitors. “Sergeant Brody, report to secondary avionics for immediate assist – no, the other secondary avionics.”
It takes Stephen a moment to remember her earpiece, and the black box on the surface beside her keyboard. He's noticed them on the hips of everyone in the ARC, and he's already guessed radio and GPS for their functions.
He waits until Jess is no longer preoccupied with moving dots on a screen. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Hilary leave Lester's office, eyes on Stephen until he turns in the opposite direction to talk to one of the soldiers. Stephen tracks both of them with ease.
“Jess?” He waits again until she looks up at him. “Could you set me up with a lab?”
“Word to the wise – she really doesn't like being called Claudia.”
Stephen tears his gaze away from the upper level of the ARC, where Lester and a woman named Jennifer Lewis are talking quietly. “Hello, Sarah.”
She pulls a face. “I don't know whether to be creeped out by the fact you're on first name terms with me or what that apparently means.”
Stephen shrugs. “Everyone else is going with both.”
“Fair enough.” Sarah stands beside him and they both watch Lester retreat to his office, leaving Jennifer on the balcony. She looks tired and drawn – but tenses up when she sees Stephen watching her.
She couldn't be less like Claudia if she'd tried.
“Are you sticking around, then?”
Stephen glances at her, then over her shoulder at the Special Forces detail that have been following him everywhere since he woke up in a barely disguised cell two hours ago. He shrugs again. “Fresh air's overrated.”
Sarah doesn't smile. Instead she shoves her hands in her jeans pockets and eyes Stephen critically, but she doesn't say anything.
Above them Jennifer walks down the ramp and towards Stephen. From this angle her tiredness is even more pronounced. “Dr Hart, isn't it?”
Stephen nods. The way she asks the question, he thinks he can infer his dead counterpart didn't have a PhD – unlike him, and then he remembers the way he'd tried to introduce himself to this version of his team.
“It's me. Stephen. Dr Stephen Hart! I... Nick?”
“And it's Jennifer Lewis,” he replies, deliberately lightly.
“Yes.” Jennifer's tone hardens slightly. “And don't forget it.”
Stephen shakes his head. “Never forget a name,” he replies. Or a face, or anything on a map. Paw prints in a rainforest or the ability to trace back through miles of undergrowth. The scent of a married woman on thin bedsheets or the sound of someone backing away from a Perspex window -
The irony has never escaped him that he can be so good with identifying factors and yet so bad with people.
“Hmm.” Jennifer doesn't look impressed. “Well, I'm sure there's something you can do to help out here.” She indicates the work in progress that the recently exploded ARC has become. “Your guards probably have better things to do.”
Stephen doesn't doubt it, but he remains quiet.
“I'll put him to work if you like,” Sarah chimes in unexpectedly. She nudges Stephen's arm. “Come on, then, let's see what you're capable of.”
Stephen's pretty sure she has no idea.
He follows her anyway.
Jess finds him a small box of a room near the soldiers' training area, just on the edge of the established laboratories, and introduces him to some of the basic security protocols as well. She disappears after extracting a promise to requisition supplies and equipment directly from her. Stephen quickly decides to bide his time before asking for the equivalent of a lock on his door. At least until he gets the lie of this new land.
There's a metal table with a single chair already inside the room. Stephen places the chair beside the hydraulic door and carefully manoeuvres the table until it's positioned at the centre of the room. He leans on the table with one hand but it doesn't make a sound or – so far as he can tell – move at all beneath his weight.
He sits cross-legged on the centre of the table, angles himself towards the door, splays his hands on his thighs and breathes. His instinct is still to avoid open spaces of any kind, and to be completely silent. His pulse is slightly elevated – loud, to his ears – and it takes a few minutes to bring that down to just below normal.
He wonders idly what progress Connor is making with the anomaly control he'd taken from Helen's possessions, which reminds him that he still doesn't have his rucksack back. There's nothing valuable or incriminating in there, just empty notebooks and sample containers he'd filled after having a funny reaction to prehistoric game that he remembers thinking at the time would be worth keeping just for the look on Danny's face when asked to oversee chemical analysis.
Hilary had said Danny had quit the ARC after Sarah's death, along with Jenny. Stephen makes a note to look them up when he's given explicit permission to leave this ARC.
A tapping on the laboratory door interrupts his thoughts and Stephen looks up. There's a man peering in through the glass portions of the door, but Stephen doesn't recognise him.
He nods, though, and the man steps inside. He has greying hair and an expensive looking suit, but he doesn't seem like a politician. He's carrying Stephen's rucksack in one hand.
Stephen waits.
The man takes in the lab with something that looks like amusement. “Dare I ask what's behind this... unusual layout?” he asks. His tone is light but his eyes are focused and his posture stiff.
Stephen considers all of this. “There are slug-like creatures who roam the floors of buildings in the future who consider human flesh a delicacy,” he says calmly. “You learn quickly to keep all appendages tucked in.”
“Indeed.” The man smiles but it seems forced. “I don't believe I was able to introduce myself yesterday.” He steps forward and offers Stephen his free hand. “I'm Philip Burton.”
Stephen shakes his hand and takes in as much detail as he can. The grip is neither firm nor limp, and so far the man's body language hasn't given away a single thing. Stephen's met rocks more informative than this man.
“Doctor Stephen Hart.”
“Yes.” Burton nods. “The scientist who's added some remarkable feats of good old-fashioned time travel to his list of accomplishments.”
“I wouldn't put it quite like that.”
Burton's eyes fix on him. “How would you put it?”
Stephen shrugs again. “I got lost. I found my way home. Both times,” he adds.
“Home?” Burton repeats. Then he smiles slightly. “An interesting concept, Dr Hart. Home is clearly not just a physical place to you, is it?”
Stephen blinks involuntarily. Home had been Nick for the better part of eight years, until his own fuck ups had destroyed them. Home had been a tiny flat near Central Met until he'd been dead for three months and the landlord had moved on. Home had been – was – is – Hilary's flat. Somewhere to hide that had turned into somewhere to live.
Somewhere to return to, inhumanly noisy neighbours and all.
“Didn't the Rat Pack sing something about that?” he offers after a longer hesitation than he'd like.
“I wouldn't know,” Burton replies. “I rarely listen to anything past Brahms.”
The silence lasts just long enough to become uncomfortable, then Burton asks: “What are you planning to use this laboratory for, other than to avoid non-existent predators?”
Stephen picks his words carefully. “I haven't decided yet. I thought requisitioning the space would be a good start.”
Burton nods. “Do let me know if there's anything you need,” he says, this time without the artificial levity. “Someone with your extensive hands-on experience of the anomalies shouldn't want for resources in a place like this.” As if just remembering what he's carrying, he dangles Stephen's rucksack by one of the straps. “And speaking of which, I believe this is yours.”
Stephen reaches out for it. It weighs less than it had yesterday, but he can't tell what's been taken from it. Perhaps the sample containers. He represses a smirk. “Thank you,” he says, when Burton closes the gap and hands him the bag.
“Of course.” Burton gives him one last, long and unreadable look before turning and leaving the lab. Stephen watches the door hiss open and waits for it to close fully before opening the bag and checking its contents.
The notebooks are still there as well as a couple of loose biros, but the filled sample containers and his spare hunting knife are missing. On a reflex Stephen checks his left ankle for the slight bulge of the strap holding his other knife.
Philip Burton. He'd recognised the name as soon as Hilary had mentioned him, but this is the first time he's been able to ascribe a face to it.
Stephen knows instinctively that knowing exactly who Philip Burton is and the depth of his links to the ARC is going to be important.
He just has to work out his next move.
It's nearly a full ten minutes before Stephen's curiosity gets the better of him. He ducks away from Sarah's half hearted attempt to interrogate him over tea and biscuits, claiming a need for the toilet, and heads for Nick's lab.
Its location is one thing that fortunately hasn't changed time lines, and Stephen still hasn't really wrapped his head around the fact that everything's different now, and not just because he's got a fading bruise on his cheek that Nick had left there yesterday.
Footsteps echo down the hallway, and Stephen slips inside the lab before he's spotted. And then he stops – and stares.
A huge model, all intertwined tubing and cables, dominates the room. Half of it's wrecked, probably from the force of the explosion, but some of the dismantling looks deliberate. Stephen almost smiles. He'd recognise Nick's handiwork anywhere, not that this particular effort is at all familiar.
There are post-it notes dotted around the model. Stephen reaches out to the nearest one, almost but not quite touching it, and wonders what it means. He pokes at the piece of paper and it turns around. The handwriting is tiny and messy and achingly familiar, but the words are easy to make out.
Ryan's skeleton discovered.
“You shouldn't be in here,” Sarah says from behind him, and it takes everything Stephen's got not to jump.
He half turns to look at her. “What is this?”
Sarah's expression softens. “Something Professor Cutter and I were working on. Come on,” she tells Stephen, nodding to the door.
He hesitates for a second – just long enough to clamp down on the swell of emotion and flashes of memories, Nick at CMU and in the ARC and everything hindsight has taught him he should have done and said differently.
There's something that sounds like a choke. Stephen realises it's him. Nick had been alive yesterday. He still has the bruise to prove it.
Air, Stephen thinks. He needs air.
He follows Sarah out of the lab, and as soon as her back is turned he ducks down a side corridor, and another one, and another one until he finds a partially destroyed fire exit leading up to the car park.
Half an hour later he's standing in front of a grave marker. Stephen James Hart along with dates and his age.
He wonders if Nick ever came here, the way Stephen had visited Nick's grave. The grave markers are two time lines apart but in the same graveyard. Stephen's standing seventeen metres from an empty plot that wasn't empty yesterday.
He doesn't cry. He hadn't cried at Nick's funeral, still smarting from a right hook and the hydraulic door that could only have been closed from the inside, but mostly drunk. Stephen had wondered then – and countless times since – what would have happened if he'd shut himself in that room like he'd intended to.
Now he knows.
He leaves the graveyard at the opposite end from where he'd come in and collides with an old woman, layered up against non-existent cold and stinking of cheap alcohol. Stephen helps her straighten herself up, apologises briefly and then takes off at a run. He keeps running until it starts to get dark and his toes are numb from cold and exertion.
Eventually he finds himself on a quiet street, standing in front of a block of flats. Some of the lights are on, and he slips in through the entrance door behind a kid carrying half a dozen pizza boxes.
A few minutes later Stephen knocks on a door.
A few minutes after that Becker opens it and lets him in.
The sex is rough, but not forceful. Becker doesn't resist, but he doesn't say no, either. He doesn't say much of anything, and that's the first thing in a long time that Stephen is thankful for.
Stephen's on the verge of a light doze when he sees movement outside the laboratory door. He straightens his back reflexively and focuses his eyes.
It's Hilary. Stephen tries to make himself relax.
“Jess told me where to find you.” Hilary lets the door close behind him before limping over to stand beside the table. “You're staying, then.”
Stephen wants to shrug. “Why not?” he asks, but even he notices the lack of inflection in his voice.
Judging by the look on his face, Hilary's aware of this as well.
“Matt wants to do an extensive debrief, when you're up for it.”
Stephen nods. His vision blurs briefly but the lab quickly comes back into focus again. Matt Anderson may be the team leader now but he's a new hire, maybe even connected to Burton's presence in the ARC and its hierarchy, and Stephen has no intention of repeating history and trusting the wrong people again.
A touch on his shoulder makes Stephen jump backwards. His reflexes kick in and he stops himself from falling off the table, but it's a close thing. He breathes in deeply but quietly and stares at Hilary's hand where it's still hovering in mid-air.
Hilary slowly withdraws his hand, and frowns. “Did you get any sleep at all last night?”
Stephen thinks about warm, itchy bedsheets, the noises of London in the night time outside and the infrequent, rumbling snores from the other side of the bed. He shakes his head.
A smile – inexplicably, perhaps – appears on Hilary's face, just for a second. “You're an idiot,” he tells Stephen, then steps back from the table slowly enough that his limp doesn't show. “Get some sleep. Go on.”
Stephen frowns at him. “But -”
Hilary just smirks, then sits on the chair beside the door. He folds his arms over his chest and stares at Stephen. “I'll keep watch, okay? Just get some sleep.”
His vision blurs again for a moment, and Stephen realises he's got a headache. And that he's exhausted.
There are worse things in this world – or even this time line, he decides, than letting a Special Forces soldier sit guard while he rests. Worse things than even letting his boyfriend look out for him.
Boyfriend, Stephen thinks, as he curls up on the table, facing Hilary and using his rucksack as a pillow. He's never used that word before; he's not even sure why he keeps thinking of Becker in terms of his first name when he only learned it at a family gathering. He has clearer memories of being pushed up against a bedroom door, hot breath on his face and being sworn to secrecy.
It's a better memory, something he only let himself think about when he was sure there were no predators lurking in the shadows.
That was another time, though.
Here, with a man Stephen can no longer deny means something to him, he's asleep within seconds.
Two days pass. Stephen keeps a deliberately low profile, as much as is possible given the way he'd arrived here and the renewed rumours that he and the head of security have picked their carnal relationship up from exactly where they'd left it.
With a few exceptions, people avoid him. Jess helps him furnish his lab; Abby shows up with a Thermos mug and a valiant attempt at conciliation, both of which Stephen accepts gratefully. They'd separated in the Cretaceous with a bitter argument, and though he knows there's too much history for them to ever be friends again, he'll take civil over hostile any day. They compare notes on pre – and post – historic survival but avoid more personal topics.
Connor stares at the whiteboards but manages to restrain himself from asking what Stephen plans to do with them.
Even Lester makes an appearance. He waffles about paperwork and legal resurrections.
Burton's absence is notable.
Matt postpones the debrief to chase after a legendary worm. Hilary spends that afternoon in Stephen's lab, injured leg propped up and inhaling unhealthy amounts of tea.
Stephen works around him. He still has a heightened awareness of other people, but he trusts Hilary not to make any sudden movements without warning him first. He starts with half an inch of paper spread across the floor, closes his eyes for a minute and copies down what he can remember, both from Nick's lab and a place that doesn't exist yet, except for on the other side of an anomaly.
It's easier than he remembers, but hard at the same time. He loses track of time until he hears a warning from behind him: “I'm coming over.”
Stephen braces himself, and listens to the uneven footfalls until he feels Hilary stooping down to look over his shoulder. He waits.
“I recognise this,” Hilary says slowly.
Stephen nods. “The anomaly model,” he says. He twists around to look up at Hilary. “Cutter was onto something. I just have to figure out what.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 09:37 pm (UTC)Can't wait for the next part!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-20 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 10:04 am (UTC)And I only realised last night that it had been some 9 months since I updated this series. Hopefully it won't be that long before the next part is up :)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 09:36 pm (UTC)Brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-01 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-02 09:17 am (UTC)