Across The Borders Of Time (9/14)
Title: Across The Borders Of Time
Author: not_from_stars
Artist(s): danceswithgary and whuffle
Media Link: DancesWithGary and Whuffle
Word Count: 37,255
Fandom: Primeval
Genre: Angst; Het and Slash
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Abby Maitland/Hilary Becker, Danny Quinn/Connor Temple
Summary: Captain Becker was forced to watch as Abby, Danny and Connor went through an anomaly to prevent Helen Cutter from destroying mankind. After Connor is hurt, Danny sends Abby ahead of them to stop Helen no matter what she has to do. Unfortunately, after killing Helen, Abby returns to the site of the anomaly -- only to watch it close before she can go through it. This leaves Abby trapped in the Pleistocene with no way of getting back home, and with no way of letting the people who love her know that she's alive.
Warnings/Spoilers: This is an AU of the last episode of Series 3 and into Series 4.
Author’s Notes: This story has been a labor of love, emphasis on the labor part. I want to thank my beta and cheerleader, enochiansigils, for holding my hand through this and not letting me give up. danceswithgary made me an awesome wallpaper I use on my netbook and a matching icon and she was so infinitely patient with me as I struggled with this story, I want to make sure she gets her thanks for that. I want to thank whuffle for making me extra pretties to go with this and also want to thank whuffle and morrigans_eve for adding their encouragement to that of enochiansigils so that I could stick to writing this.
When the anomaly alarm went off through the ARC, Becker was in Sarah’s office helping her pour over new notes they had been transcribing from the shorthand characters found in Helen Cutter’s journals. It was the first alarm that had sounded in a few days, so after looking up once at the team rushing to vehicles, he dismissed it from his mind. He was still the leader of the security team, but unless he was needed, he didn’t go out on every call any longer. When there was more than one anomaly opening, he would go - always fighting against the hope that would rise before he could stop it. The problem with hope over the last two years was that it often had a constant companion in despair. Hope would say that they finally might know something and then just as quickly, despair would show him that there was nothing to be found that day.
So when Matt Anderson’s voice came through his earpiece, he almost didn’t respond because he was so involved in what he was reading that he heard him from a distance.
“Captain Becker!” This time Matt’s voice was sharp enough to break through his concentration.
He turned on his device so that he could respond. “Speaking.” Speaking, but not necessarily paying complete attention.
“I can hear that,” Matt retorted, but there was no bite in his voice. “Becker, we need you out here. We have a situation.”
“My men are trained to handle any situation that comes with the territory where the anomalies are concerned,” Becker said calmly. “You don’t need me for that.”
“Not this situation they’re not,” Matt argued. “Look, Becker, from the reports I’m getting, this anomaly brought something more than just creatures through it this time.”
Becker was unaware of his hands curling around the edge of the table until Sarah smacked at him to make him let go. “What’s going on out there, Matt?”
“I’m not there yet, but from what the men are telling me, there are people there.”
“People,” Becker repeated, looking at Sarah as he did so. “How many people?”
Sarah’s eyes widened and she hurriedly contacted Jenny, asking her and Lester to come to her office.
“I don’t know yet,” Matt admitted. “But Becker, one of the descriptions matches Danny Quinn. He’s really giving the men a hard time and I don’t want him to get shot. They’re not live rounds, but as you know even the EMDs can pack a punch.”
Becker’s jaw clenched and he shook his head. “I’ll take care of that.” He switched the channel on his device so that he could issue orders to the team on the open site. “This is Captain Becker,” he said in an icy tone. “Do not fire your weapons on any human beings. I repeat, do not use your weapons on any humans - I don’t care what they do. That is an order. I’m on my way down there.”
He turned for the door, but stopped when Sarah called his name.
“You’ll let us know right away if it’s them.” It wasn’t really a question, but he could hear the same hope in her voice that he was feeling in his chest.
Becker nodded shortly, but his voice was soft. “Of course I will.”
He didn’t wait to hear her response before he was running down the hall and to a vehicle. He didn’t want to hope, but damn it. He just couldn’t help it.
As he drove to the coordinates that he had been given, he tried to keep his thoughts practical.
What if it wasn’t Danny? If it wasn’t Danny, then they would have another mystery on their hands as they tried to figure out who these people were and how they had ended up on the other side of an anomaly that brought them here. People. Matt had said there were people, so that meant more than one. If it was really Danny, then obviously, the other two people had to be Abby and Connor. No one else would be with Danny and Becker would bet his salary that Danny wouldn’t have traveled anywhere with a live Helen Cutter, so it wasn’t her that was there with him.
It had to be Abby, Connor and Danny. It just had to be.
No matter how calm and detached he tried to keep himself, those thoughts kept circling over and over in his mind. His truck had barely screeched to a stop before his feet were on the ground and he was not quite running to the anomaly.
“I promise you that if you point that at him one more time, I’m going to ram it down your pretty boy throat!”
Becker had to stop as his knees threatened to give way and drop him on his ass. He knew that voice. He knew that voice very well. It hadn’t changed much in two years, except that it sounded a lot more rough and tired than it had before. But it was still the same man. Becker elbowed past the circle of men that were keeping the man belonging to the voice from going anywhere.
When he finally had the other man in his sight, it was hard at first for him to speak. But finally after swallowing several times, he got his voice to work.
“Quinn, stop threatening the boys. They might take you seriously and then where would we be?”
“Headed somewhere where they could buy me a decent pint,” was Danny’s immediate response as he swung to smile faintly at Becker. “Well, time sure didn’t do you any favors, Becker. You’re still ugly as hell.”
Becker felt the first decent smile he given in a long time stretch across his face. “It’s nice to see you, too, Danny.”
Neither man would be able to remember who moved first, but it didn’t really matter. Before any more words could be said, they crossed the distance between them and were embracing each other tightly.
“Uh, Danny?”
Connor’s voice was suddenly far too controlled for Danny’s liking, considering what he had been busy doing to the other man. Danny lifted one hand and drew his nails down along Connor’s chest, smiling against the back of his neck when he felt the body beneath his tremble.
"Connor," Danny questioned in a low voice against his ear as he moved deeper into him. "Do you really want to talk right now?"
Connor shuddered, arching back against Danny, his hands digging into the bedding. He shook his head. "N-not really," he whimpered. "B-but we have to."
"Give me one good reason we should stop doing this --" He bucked his hips against Connor's, causing the other man to make a delightful keening noise deep in his throat as he moved his hand from his chest to encircle his erection and tug firmly. " -- and talk instead."
"B-because," Connor panted even as he pressed back hard against Danny's thrust and twitched in his hand. "T-that's an anomaly."
Danny went still for a long moment and then began thrusting again. "Terrific," he said, running his tongue along the outer part of Connor's ear. "I've shagged you so hard that now you're seeing things."
Connor gasped, trying to find his voice again. Being with Danny always caused him to feel such a multitude of sensations and sometimes the sheer pleasure of it robbed him of coherent speech.
Ok, doing things with Danny always caused him to have a problem with coherency of any kind.
That was why, when he had first seen the shards appear in the air through the trees, he had tried to ignore it. Orgasming with Danny had led to him having hallucinations many times as he came down afterward. However, this wasn't the same. He had never hallucinated an anomaly while shagging Danny -- or being shagged by him, for that matter.
"While I admit to seeing stars quite often when you bring me to an orgasm," Connor whimpered, pushing back again. "I have never once in all of those times hallucinated the shards of an anomaly."
"Damn it," Danny growled, his mouth resting on Connor's neck. "If you're teasing me..."
"I wouldn't tease you about something like this, Danny," Connor assured him. Then with a smile that Danny couldn't see, he arched his back up, tightening his ass around Danny's cock. "Especially since I have much more enjoyable ways of teasing you."
"Fuck, Connor!" Danny's smothered his yelp of surprise against Connor's back, his hips bucking involuntarily.
"Wouldn't you rather finish this on a real bed, Danny?" There was only a small hint of hesitation in Connor's voice. They had never discussed what might change between them when they finally got home and he had never wanted to ask.
Danny heard the unasked question and slid out out of Connor, turning and pulling the other man down onto the ground and into his arms.
"Listen to me," Danny growled. "You listen to me and you listen good, Connor Temple. I don't care what happens when we get home, but you're not going anywhere. You're mine and I'm not letting go of you until you want me to." He looked over Connor's head and saw the shards of the anomaly like Connor had said were there.
"But you love Abby and Becker."
"And you." There was a beat. "Idiot."
"Hey now, how was I supposed to know? It's not like we've had any discussions about our feelings and our plans like girls do."
"I wouldn't have spent all of this time shagging you and showing you how important you are if I didn't love you -- just like you love Abby and Becker," Danny pointed out. "And I definitely have plans for you when we get home."
Connor was quiet for a long time, laying with Danny and watching the anomaly, knowing that they should get moving if they were going to make it home.
"Do you think she found a way home?"
"She has to have."
"What if she didn't?"
"Then we'll start opening anomalies all over the damned place until we find her." Danny's voice was firm in that. "If she didn't get home on her own, then we'll make sure we bring her home."
Connor nodded. "Danny?"
"Yeah, Connor?"
"Don't you think we should probably put some clothes on if we're going home? It would be really awkward to walk through an anomaly in nothing but our skin. What if Lester is there?"
Danny couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, Connor. We should probably get dressed and get our stuff together so we can go home."
After one more hard and lengthy kiss, the two of them rolled to their sides and began the process of getting their clothes on and gathering all of their supplies. This included all of the notes and the gadgets Connor had created in the time they had been here. With their packs a lot fuller than they had been two years ago, Connor and Danny started the climb down from their mountain cave to the forest floor below.
Once they had gotten down to the forest floor and were standing in front of the anomaly, Danny had to take a steadying breath. After two years, was this really happening? Were they finally about to return home? Would Abby be there? Would all of their friends still be there or would they have moved on after so long?
“Danny?”
He was pulled from his thoughts by Connor’s quiet voice. “Yeah?”
“We should go. We don’t know how long this one will stay open.” Or even if it would be the right one to take them home, though he wasn’t about to voice that worry.
Danny nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go home, then.” He gave Connor a faint smile before the two of them stepped through the anomaly together.
They stepped right into chaos. They had barely moved from one time to the other when there was shouting and guns being held on them. It wasn’t quite the welcome home that either one of them had expected. After the third time they were told to get down and a gun was pushed in Connor’s face, Danny’s already fraying temper started to snap.
“I promise you that if you point that at him one more time, I’m going to ram it down your pretty boy throat!”
“Quinn, stop threatening the boys. They might take you seriously and then where would we be?”
“Headed somewhere where they could buy me a decent pint,” was Danny’s immediate response as he swung to smile faintly at Becker. “Well, time sure didn’t do you any favors, Becker. You’re still ugly as hell.”
That wasn't quite true, but it was an easy response. One thing hadn't changed. That was Becker and he was greeting him in a way that he always had.
He wasn’t sure which one of them moved first and he didn’t rightly care. He was just happy to be holding onto Becker and hugging him. After a few moments, he stepped back and Connor was taking a turn clinging to Becker. He wasn’t at all surprised when Becker pulled him back and the three of them just stood there for a long moment holding onto each other.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Danny said gruffly, seeing the shadows that had gathered beneath Becker’s eyes. He had never seen his friend look so drawn and exhausted. He was thinner, too. At least he felt thinner. No less muscular, just a bit trimmer than he remembered him being.
“Yeah, well, you know, it’s been pretty busy here, Quinn.” Becker’s smile was faint. “We’ve been trying to find you. We’ve been doing everything we could think of. We sent several missions into the future. We only recently figured out that you guys had probably gone into the past after a stop in the future.” Becker knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flood of words and the guilt that came with them. “We couldn’t get to you.”
“Hey,” Connor said quietly. “Hey, stop. We’re home now. It’s all right.”
Danny’s demeanor was starting to lighten more than it had in awhile and he pulled Connor closer to him. They were home. After two years of hell, they had finally managed to make it back home where they belonged. Everything was going to be all right now.
Then, Becker asked the question that brought all of their worlds crashing back down again.
“Where’s Abby?”
Chapter Eight || Chapter Ten
Author: not_from_stars
Artist(s): danceswithgary and whuffle
Media Link: DancesWithGary and Whuffle
Word Count: 37,255
Fandom: Primeval
Genre: Angst; Het and Slash
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Abby Maitland/Hilary Becker, Danny Quinn/Connor Temple
Summary: Captain Becker was forced to watch as Abby, Danny and Connor went through an anomaly to prevent Helen Cutter from destroying mankind. After Connor is hurt, Danny sends Abby ahead of them to stop Helen no matter what she has to do. Unfortunately, after killing Helen, Abby returns to the site of the anomaly -- only to watch it close before she can go through it. This leaves Abby trapped in the Pleistocene with no way of getting back home, and with no way of letting the people who love her know that she's alive.
Warnings/Spoilers: This is an AU of the last episode of Series 3 and into Series 4.
Author’s Notes: This story has been a labor of love, emphasis on the labor part. I want to thank my beta and cheerleader, enochiansigils, for holding my hand through this and not letting me give up. danceswithgary made me an awesome wallpaper I use on my netbook and a matching icon and she was so infinitely patient with me as I struggled with this story, I want to make sure she gets her thanks for that. I want to thank whuffle for making me extra pretties to go with this and also want to thank whuffle and morrigans_eve for adding their encouragement to that of enochiansigils so that I could stick to writing this.
When the anomaly alarm went off through the ARC, Becker was in Sarah’s office helping her pour over new notes they had been transcribing from the shorthand characters found in Helen Cutter’s journals. It was the first alarm that had sounded in a few days, so after looking up once at the team rushing to vehicles, he dismissed it from his mind. He was still the leader of the security team, but unless he was needed, he didn’t go out on every call any longer. When there was more than one anomaly opening, he would go - always fighting against the hope that would rise before he could stop it. The problem with hope over the last two years was that it often had a constant companion in despair. Hope would say that they finally might know something and then just as quickly, despair would show him that there was nothing to be found that day.
So when Matt Anderson’s voice came through his earpiece, he almost didn’t respond because he was so involved in what he was reading that he heard him from a distance.
“Captain Becker!” This time Matt’s voice was sharp enough to break through his concentration.
He turned on his device so that he could respond. “Speaking.” Speaking, but not necessarily paying complete attention.
“I can hear that,” Matt retorted, but there was no bite in his voice. “Becker, we need you out here. We have a situation.”
“My men are trained to handle any situation that comes with the territory where the anomalies are concerned,” Becker said calmly. “You don’t need me for that.”
“Not this situation they’re not,” Matt argued. “Look, Becker, from the reports I’m getting, this anomaly brought something more than just creatures through it this time.”
Becker was unaware of his hands curling around the edge of the table until Sarah smacked at him to make him let go. “What’s going on out there, Matt?”
“I’m not there yet, but from what the men are telling me, there are people there.”
“People,” Becker repeated, looking at Sarah as he did so. “How many people?”
Sarah’s eyes widened and she hurriedly contacted Jenny, asking her and Lester to come to her office.
“I don’t know yet,” Matt admitted. “But Becker, one of the descriptions matches Danny Quinn. He’s really giving the men a hard time and I don’t want him to get shot. They’re not live rounds, but as you know even the EMDs can pack a punch.”
Becker’s jaw clenched and he shook his head. “I’ll take care of that.” He switched the channel on his device so that he could issue orders to the team on the open site. “This is Captain Becker,” he said in an icy tone. “Do not fire your weapons on any human beings. I repeat, do not use your weapons on any humans - I don’t care what they do. That is an order. I’m on my way down there.”
He turned for the door, but stopped when Sarah called his name.
“You’ll let us know right away if it’s them.” It wasn’t really a question, but he could hear the same hope in her voice that he was feeling in his chest.
Becker nodded shortly, but his voice was soft. “Of course I will.”
He didn’t wait to hear her response before he was running down the hall and to a vehicle. He didn’t want to hope, but damn it. He just couldn’t help it.
As he drove to the coordinates that he had been given, he tried to keep his thoughts practical.
What if it wasn’t Danny? If it wasn’t Danny, then they would have another mystery on their hands as they tried to figure out who these people were and how they had ended up on the other side of an anomaly that brought them here. People. Matt had said there were people, so that meant more than one. If it was really Danny, then obviously, the other two people had to be Abby and Connor. No one else would be with Danny and Becker would bet his salary that Danny wouldn’t have traveled anywhere with a live Helen Cutter, so it wasn’t her that was there with him.
It had to be Abby, Connor and Danny. It just had to be.
No matter how calm and detached he tried to keep himself, those thoughts kept circling over and over in his mind. His truck had barely screeched to a stop before his feet were on the ground and he was not quite running to the anomaly.
“I promise you that if you point that at him one more time, I’m going to ram it down your pretty boy throat!”
Becker had to stop as his knees threatened to give way and drop him on his ass. He knew that voice. He knew that voice very well. It hadn’t changed much in two years, except that it sounded a lot more rough and tired than it had before. But it was still the same man. Becker elbowed past the circle of men that were keeping the man belonging to the voice from going anywhere.
When he finally had the other man in his sight, it was hard at first for him to speak. But finally after swallowing several times, he got his voice to work.
“Quinn, stop threatening the boys. They might take you seriously and then where would we be?”
“Headed somewhere where they could buy me a decent pint,” was Danny’s immediate response as he swung to smile faintly at Becker. “Well, time sure didn’t do you any favors, Becker. You’re still ugly as hell.”
Becker felt the first decent smile he given in a long time stretch across his face. “It’s nice to see you, too, Danny.”
Neither man would be able to remember who moved first, but it didn’t really matter. Before any more words could be said, they crossed the distance between them and were embracing each other tightly.
“Uh, Danny?”
Connor’s voice was suddenly far too controlled for Danny’s liking, considering what he had been busy doing to the other man. Danny lifted one hand and drew his nails down along Connor’s chest, smiling against the back of his neck when he felt the body beneath his tremble.
"Connor," Danny questioned in a low voice against his ear as he moved deeper into him. "Do you really want to talk right now?"
Connor shuddered, arching back against Danny, his hands digging into the bedding. He shook his head. "N-not really," he whimpered. "B-but we have to."
"Give me one good reason we should stop doing this --" He bucked his hips against Connor's, causing the other man to make a delightful keening noise deep in his throat as he moved his hand from his chest to encircle his erection and tug firmly. " -- and talk instead."
"B-because," Connor panted even as he pressed back hard against Danny's thrust and twitched in his hand. "T-that's an anomaly."
Danny went still for a long moment and then began thrusting again. "Terrific," he said, running his tongue along the outer part of Connor's ear. "I've shagged you so hard that now you're seeing things."
Connor gasped, trying to find his voice again. Being with Danny always caused him to feel such a multitude of sensations and sometimes the sheer pleasure of it robbed him of coherent speech.
Ok, doing things with Danny always caused him to have a problem with coherency of any kind.
That was why, when he had first seen the shards appear in the air through the trees, he had tried to ignore it. Orgasming with Danny had led to him having hallucinations many times as he came down afterward. However, this wasn't the same. He had never hallucinated an anomaly while shagging Danny -- or being shagged by him, for that matter.
"While I admit to seeing stars quite often when you bring me to an orgasm," Connor whimpered, pushing back again. "I have never once in all of those times hallucinated the shards of an anomaly."
"Damn it," Danny growled, his mouth resting on Connor's neck. "If you're teasing me..."
"I wouldn't tease you about something like this, Danny," Connor assured him. Then with a smile that Danny couldn't see, he arched his back up, tightening his ass around Danny's cock. "Especially since I have much more enjoyable ways of teasing you."
"Fuck, Connor!" Danny's smothered his yelp of surprise against Connor's back, his hips bucking involuntarily.
"Wouldn't you rather finish this on a real bed, Danny?" There was only a small hint of hesitation in Connor's voice. They had never discussed what might change between them when they finally got home and he had never wanted to ask.
Danny heard the unasked question and slid out out of Connor, turning and pulling the other man down onto the ground and into his arms.
"Listen to me," Danny growled. "You listen to me and you listen good, Connor Temple. I don't care what happens when we get home, but you're not going anywhere. You're mine and I'm not letting go of you until you want me to." He looked over Connor's head and saw the shards of the anomaly like Connor had said were there.
"But you love Abby and Becker."
"And you." There was a beat. "Idiot."
"Hey now, how was I supposed to know? It's not like we've had any discussions about our feelings and our plans like girls do."
"I wouldn't have spent all of this time shagging you and showing you how important you are if I didn't love you -- just like you love Abby and Becker," Danny pointed out. "And I definitely have plans for you when we get home."
Connor was quiet for a long time, laying with Danny and watching the anomaly, knowing that they should get moving if they were going to make it home.
"Do you think she found a way home?"
"She has to have."
"What if she didn't?"
"Then we'll start opening anomalies all over the damned place until we find her." Danny's voice was firm in that. "If she didn't get home on her own, then we'll make sure we bring her home."
Connor nodded. "Danny?"
"Yeah, Connor?"
"Don't you think we should probably put some clothes on if we're going home? It would be really awkward to walk through an anomaly in nothing but our skin. What if Lester is there?"
Danny couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, Connor. We should probably get dressed and get our stuff together so we can go home."
After one more hard and lengthy kiss, the two of them rolled to their sides and began the process of getting their clothes on and gathering all of their supplies. This included all of the notes and the gadgets Connor had created in the time they had been here. With their packs a lot fuller than they had been two years ago, Connor and Danny started the climb down from their mountain cave to the forest floor below.
Once they had gotten down to the forest floor and were standing in front of the anomaly, Danny had to take a steadying breath. After two years, was this really happening? Were they finally about to return home? Would Abby be there? Would all of their friends still be there or would they have moved on after so long?
“Danny?”
He was pulled from his thoughts by Connor’s quiet voice. “Yeah?”
“We should go. We don’t know how long this one will stay open.” Or even if it would be the right one to take them home, though he wasn’t about to voice that worry.
Danny nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go home, then.” He gave Connor a faint smile before the two of them stepped through the anomaly together.
They stepped right into chaos. They had barely moved from one time to the other when there was shouting and guns being held on them. It wasn’t quite the welcome home that either one of them had expected. After the third time they were told to get down and a gun was pushed in Connor’s face, Danny’s already fraying temper started to snap.
“I promise you that if you point that at him one more time, I’m going to ram it down your pretty boy throat!”
“Quinn, stop threatening the boys. They might take you seriously and then where would we be?”
“Headed somewhere where they could buy me a decent pint,” was Danny’s immediate response as he swung to smile faintly at Becker. “Well, time sure didn’t do you any favors, Becker. You’re still ugly as hell.”
That wasn't quite true, but it was an easy response. One thing hadn't changed. That was Becker and he was greeting him in a way that he always had.
He wasn’t sure which one of them moved first and he didn’t rightly care. He was just happy to be holding onto Becker and hugging him. After a few moments, he stepped back and Connor was taking a turn clinging to Becker. He wasn’t at all surprised when Becker pulled him back and the three of them just stood there for a long moment holding onto each other.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Danny said gruffly, seeing the shadows that had gathered beneath Becker’s eyes. He had never seen his friend look so drawn and exhausted. He was thinner, too. At least he felt thinner. No less muscular, just a bit trimmer than he remembered him being.
“Yeah, well, you know, it’s been pretty busy here, Quinn.” Becker’s smile was faint. “We’ve been trying to find you. We’ve been doing everything we could think of. We sent several missions into the future. We only recently figured out that you guys had probably gone into the past after a stop in the future.” Becker knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flood of words and the guilt that came with them. “We couldn’t get to you.”
“Hey,” Connor said quietly. “Hey, stop. We’re home now. It’s all right.”
Danny’s demeanor was starting to lighten more than it had in awhile and he pulled Connor closer to him. They were home. After two years of hell, they had finally managed to make it back home where they belonged. Everything was going to be all right now.
Then, Becker asked the question that brought all of their worlds crashing back down again.
“Where’s Abby?”
Chapter Eight || Chapter Ten