Time Entangled (4/9)
Title: Time Entangled
Author: not_from_stars
Artist(s): skylar0grace
Media Link: Art Here
Word Count: 24,395
Fandom: Primeval
Genre: Angst; Het
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Abby Maitland/Connor Temple, Stephen Hart/Abby Maitland
Summary: Having worked for the Anomaly Research Center for a few years, Nick, Stephen, Tom, Abby, Connor and Claudia thought they had seen everything. But when an incursion turns out to be people instead of rampaging animals, that's not the only shock they get. Abby and Stephen are the first on the scene when Abby and Connor come through the anomaly. Abby and Connor are from a time line where some things have gone horrible wrong. Now, not only do they have to convince this time line's version of their friends what has happened, they need to find their way back to their own home and time line. Back in their world, Becker, Danny, Sarah and Jenny are working frantically to find a way to locate their friends and bring them home. Armed with two years of notes and several journals, they're doing their best to open an anomaly and get their loved ones back because they know something that the other time line doesn't. They're running out of time.
Warnings/Spoilers: This is a complete AU and there should be no spoilers for anything.
Author’s Notes: I want to thank my beta and cheerleader, enochiansigils, for holding my hand through this and not letting me give up. skylar0grace made me lots of awesome art to accompany this fic and I can't thank her enough for everything she did for me!
The flat was incredibly silent as Sarah finished reading the last page of the journal. It was the kind of silence that happened right before a storm or an explosion. Sarah and Jenny were positive it was about to be both. It was why they had insisted that Becker and Danny come to Sarah’s place before they would tell them what they had found in the journals.
"That bitch shot Abby?"
It was Becker's voice that started the storm. Neither woman was surprised.
"According to Connor she did. He thought that Abby was dead or dying until she woke up a few hours later. She was in pain and bleeding heavily, but he got the bleeding to stop. Her pulse was hard to find because he was upset and he was afraid that if he touched her the wrong way, she really would die. The problem is, Abby thinks it was a through and through with all of the pain and blood there was. From what he’s written down here, Connor doesn't think so. He thinks the bullet is still in Abby's head because she's having painful headaches and sometimes it's hard for her to focus on what they're doing. She’s been getting sick, too." Sarah looked at both men. "He thinks that Abby is running out of time, guys. He thinks that she's dying. Abby, of course, keeps telling him not to worry, but he can see what’s happening to her even if she can’t."
"Where were they when this happened?" Becker clenched his fists as he started pacing the main room of Jenny's flat. "What else does he say in the next journal?"
"Helen was pulling them through different anomalies into different time periods and when Abby got shot it was because she blew up at Helen for using her to threaten Connor. She fought back and took a swing at her, wanting Connor to escape. Helen lost her composure and shot Abby. When Abby fell, Connor flipped and attacked Helen, taking both him and Helen over a cliff. Helen didn't survive but Connor did." Jenny said softly. "Helen didn’t survive the fall because they fought and Connor crushed her skull with the gun she had used on Abby."
Becker closed his eyes. It couldn’t have been an easy thing for Connor to take a life. Before this, he had always tried to see the good in everyone. It was hard for him to imagine the other man killing someone.
Danny seemed to read his mind.
“If she hurt Abby, then all bets were off when it came to how Connor would react,” he said, leaning against the wall and running a hand over his face. “Abby was the only reason he went with the bitch.”
“Not the only reason,” Sarah shook her head. “Abby didn’t fight back when all of this started because she was trying to protect Connor and Becker. Connor did the same thing. He knew that if he didn’t do what Helen wanted, either Becker or Danny would get shot trying to help him and Abby. When Helen held the gun to Abby’s head, he knew that he was the closest and if he went with her, he could keep all of you safe.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Becker bit out. “How long ago did Abby get hurt and Connor kill Helen?”
Jenny looked at him and Danny. “If we’re taking today’s date and subtracting the number of days that Connor has notated in these journals? Then the shooting would have happened approximately five months ago.”
Becker’s face turned pale, and Sarah hastily continued.
“But, you saw them the other day. You saw them and Abby was alive. Becker, remember, they are both alive and we will get them home.”
Becker took a deep breath and then another before he finally nodded. “Yeah, Danny and I saw both of them. Whatever is happening with Abby’s injury, it hasn’t taken her down.”
“That just means that we have to work harder,” Jenny finally said. “Because we don’t know what kind of condition either one of them are in after being out there for a little more than two years now. At the least, they are dangerously malnourished. At the worst…” She shook her head, not wanting to finish that sentence.
“At the worst, Abby’s got a ticking bomb in her head and they’re running out of time,” Danny finished.
Both of the women nodded reluctantly.
“If Abby’s running out of time, then so is Connor,” Becker’s voice was quiet. “If he loses her in all of this, he’ll give up, too. We all know that.”
“That’s not necessarily true, Becker,” Sarah argued softly. “The two of them love you, too, you know that. They’d fight like hell to get back to you.”
“I know they would, but in a situation like the one they’ve been in? They’ve had only each other to rely on. That means that they’ve kept each other fighting and holding on no matter what they’re going through.” Becker sighed quietly. “But if Abby dies while they’re so far away from home and safety, it will break Connor and he’ll die, too. If we lose Abby, then we’ll lose them both.”
“And even if we managed to get Connor back alive after that,” Danny added. “It still wouldn’t be the same. They were together in hell and if only one of them make it out, the other one will never recover from it.”
“I’ve seen it happen to relatives and close friends in combat,” Becker explained. “It doesn’t matter who is back at home waiting for them. If they lose their friend and partner something breaks inside them and is left out on the field.”
“That is not going to happen in this case,” Jenny argued. “We will get them home and we will get Abby proper medical care before anything worse happens. She will not die out wherever they are. Do I make myself clear, boys?” When they didn’t respond, Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving up on the two of them after all of this time that you’ve been working yourselves almost to death to get them back?”
“Of course we’re not,” Becker snapped, insulted that she would even suggest such a thing.
“Then get that beaten look out of your eyes because we have a lot of work to do.”
Nancy’s announcement caused the room to go silent with shock for a long moment.
Abby made a distressed sound and Stephen pulled her close to him, looking from Cutter to Ryan and then back to Sid and Nancy.
“Where was I, then?” Captain Ryan asked them levelly. “I’m the one who usually watches everyone’s backs when we go out.”
“You weren’t there, sir,” Nancy responded. “Like Connor said… I mean Sid… we’ve never seen you before in our lives. We don’t know who you are.”
“I’ve been with you guys since the team was formed,” Ryan insisted.
Nancy shook her head. “I’m telling you, we don’t know who you are!” Her face had gone a little pale. “Back home, we’ve never seen you before. I don’t know your name and I don’t know your face. Stephen was always the one that tried to protect us and taught me to shoot. When he died, Lester hired Becker to make sure no one else died, only it didn’t work!”
Sid made a sound of concern as he stepped closer to Nancy. “Easy, love,” he soothed, running a hand over her hair very carefully. He barely touched her, but she obviously took comfort from his nearness. “Your head is bothering you, again. You’re in pain, I can see it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, trying to brush it off. “It’s not important.”
“Well, that’s something that obviously doesn’t change no matter which Abby it is,” Stephen said wryly, even as the younger Abby elbowed him in the ribs. “According to her, nothing that hurts her important.”
“It is important,” Sid insisted, ignoring Stephen. “Abby, you need -“
“We need to get home, Connor,” she responded, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. “We need to get back and make sure everyone is all right. We don’t even know -“
“They are, Abby. They are. You know that they wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them until they found us - no matter how long it’s been.”
“How long have you been separated from your friends,” Abby asked the older version of herself.
Nancy looked at her quietly for a long moment. “A little more than two years,” she said finally. Sid nodded in agreement with her. “Connor has kept better track of the time than I’ve been able to, but from the times we’ve talked about it, it’s been about two years and a couple of months since we went through the anomaly.” It was obvious from the tone of her voice that there was a lot more to their story than what she was saying.
Claudia was taking a mental note of everything that was being said and not being said. Every time Nancy spoke, there was a sense of pain and sadness in her voice. However, something else she was noticing was that Nancy stopped Sid from revealing too much about where they were from or what had happened to them. She found that incredibly worrisome and she wondered what the two of them were hiding from all them.
“Where have you been all of this time?” Connor asked what everybody else was thinking. “If the two of you have been separated from everyone for two years, what happened?”
Sid frowned and Nancy shook her head. “We don’t know what kind of damage that it might do if we reveal too much. We can’t risk doing anything that might make changes in this time line.”
“It’s one of the things that has always been the biggest rule when working with the anomalies,” Sid said. “We are always very careful not to let anything interfere with anything that comes through the anomalies and when we go through them, we don’t let anything get left behind.”
“Something obviously went wrong in those plans,” Cutter said carefully. “Because the two of you got lost and ended up here with us, instead.”
“It wasn’t our fault we got lost,” Sid protested, staying next to Nancy as he defended them.
“No one ever said that it was,” Stephen said quietly. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened and why the two of you came through that anomaly to our time.”
“We thought it was the right one to get us back to our correct time.” Nancy’s voice was sour. “Instead, we found ourselves in a world with alternate versions of ourselves living a life that never even happened. Not only that, we were shot and locked up.”
“That was a mistake,” Ryan shook his head regretfully. “Those men have been punished and I’m very sorry that it happened. They shouldn’t have fired on you.”
“And locking us up at the ARC?” Sid questioned, tilting his head at him.
“That’s normal protocol when something happens that we’re not sure of,” Ryan explained. “We didn’t know where you were from or even what was going on.”
“That’s not the best way to greet people,” Sid pointed out. “I would re-evaluate your greeting procedures for new life before you accidentally start an intergalactic incident when other planets finally decide to make contact with us.”
“The last thing we’re concerned with is alien life forms,” Claudia shook her head. “What we need to know is what happened so that we can help you and make sure that nothing that could be hunting you comes through and causes any trouble here.”
“There’s no one hunting us,” Nancy argued. “Not any longer.”
“Who was hunting you?” Stephen questioned.
The two of them went silent, exchanging looks with each other.
“Why did you attack Professor Lester?” This time it was Abby’s soft voice that questioned them as she looked at Nancy. “And why did Connor attack the security team?”
“You don’t really to know the answers to that,” Sid shook his head.
“We understand that this is all very confusing to you -“ Cutter started to say to the two of them.
“You don’t understand anything!” Nancy burst out. “You don’t get it and you never will because where we come from all of you are dead!”
Three || Five
Author: not_from_stars
Artist(s): skylar0grace
Media Link: Art Here
Word Count: 24,395
Fandom: Primeval
Genre: Angst; Het
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Abby Maitland/Connor Temple, Stephen Hart/Abby Maitland
Summary: Having worked for the Anomaly Research Center for a few years, Nick, Stephen, Tom, Abby, Connor and Claudia thought they had seen everything. But when an incursion turns out to be people instead of rampaging animals, that's not the only shock they get. Abby and Stephen are the first on the scene when Abby and Connor come through the anomaly. Abby and Connor are from a time line where some things have gone horrible wrong. Now, not only do they have to convince this time line's version of their friends what has happened, they need to find their way back to their own home and time line. Back in their world, Becker, Danny, Sarah and Jenny are working frantically to find a way to locate their friends and bring them home. Armed with two years of notes and several journals, they're doing their best to open an anomaly and get their loved ones back because they know something that the other time line doesn't. They're running out of time.
Warnings/Spoilers: This is a complete AU and there should be no spoilers for anything.
Author’s Notes: I want to thank my beta and cheerleader, enochiansigils, for holding my hand through this and not letting me give up. skylar0grace made me lots of awesome art to accompany this fic and I can't thank her enough for everything she did for me!
The flat was incredibly silent as Sarah finished reading the last page of the journal. It was the kind of silence that happened right before a storm or an explosion. Sarah and Jenny were positive it was about to be both. It was why they had insisted that Becker and Danny come to Sarah’s place before they would tell them what they had found in the journals.
"That bitch shot Abby?"
It was Becker's voice that started the storm. Neither woman was surprised.
"According to Connor she did. He thought that Abby was dead or dying until she woke up a few hours later. She was in pain and bleeding heavily, but he got the bleeding to stop. Her pulse was hard to find because he was upset and he was afraid that if he touched her the wrong way, she really would die. The problem is, Abby thinks it was a through and through with all of the pain and blood there was. From what he’s written down here, Connor doesn't think so. He thinks the bullet is still in Abby's head because she's having painful headaches and sometimes it's hard for her to focus on what they're doing. She’s been getting sick, too." Sarah looked at both men. "He thinks that Abby is running out of time, guys. He thinks that she's dying. Abby, of course, keeps telling him not to worry, but he can see what’s happening to her even if she can’t."
"Where were they when this happened?" Becker clenched his fists as he started pacing the main room of Jenny's flat. "What else does he say in the next journal?"
"Helen was pulling them through different anomalies into different time periods and when Abby got shot it was because she blew up at Helen for using her to threaten Connor. She fought back and took a swing at her, wanting Connor to escape. Helen lost her composure and shot Abby. When Abby fell, Connor flipped and attacked Helen, taking both him and Helen over a cliff. Helen didn't survive but Connor did." Jenny said softly. "Helen didn’t survive the fall because they fought and Connor crushed her skull with the gun she had used on Abby."
Becker closed his eyes. It couldn’t have been an easy thing for Connor to take a life. Before this, he had always tried to see the good in everyone. It was hard for him to imagine the other man killing someone.
Danny seemed to read his mind.
“If she hurt Abby, then all bets were off when it came to how Connor would react,” he said, leaning against the wall and running a hand over his face. “Abby was the only reason he went with the bitch.”
“Not the only reason,” Sarah shook her head. “Abby didn’t fight back when all of this started because she was trying to protect Connor and Becker. Connor did the same thing. He knew that if he didn’t do what Helen wanted, either Becker or Danny would get shot trying to help him and Abby. When Helen held the gun to Abby’s head, he knew that he was the closest and if he went with her, he could keep all of you safe.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Becker bit out. “How long ago did Abby get hurt and Connor kill Helen?”
Jenny looked at him and Danny. “If we’re taking today’s date and subtracting the number of days that Connor has notated in these journals? Then the shooting would have happened approximately five months ago.”
Becker’s face turned pale, and Sarah hastily continued.
“But, you saw them the other day. You saw them and Abby was alive. Becker, remember, they are both alive and we will get them home.”
Becker took a deep breath and then another before he finally nodded. “Yeah, Danny and I saw both of them. Whatever is happening with Abby’s injury, it hasn’t taken her down.”
“That just means that we have to work harder,” Jenny finally said. “Because we don’t know what kind of condition either one of them are in after being out there for a little more than two years now. At the least, they are dangerously malnourished. At the worst…” She shook her head, not wanting to finish that sentence.
“At the worst, Abby’s got a ticking bomb in her head and they’re running out of time,” Danny finished.
Both of the women nodded reluctantly.
“If Abby’s running out of time, then so is Connor,” Becker’s voice was quiet. “If he loses her in all of this, he’ll give up, too. We all know that.”
“That’s not necessarily true, Becker,” Sarah argued softly. “The two of them love you, too, you know that. They’d fight like hell to get back to you.”
“I know they would, but in a situation like the one they’ve been in? They’ve had only each other to rely on. That means that they’ve kept each other fighting and holding on no matter what they’re going through.” Becker sighed quietly. “But if Abby dies while they’re so far away from home and safety, it will break Connor and he’ll die, too. If we lose Abby, then we’ll lose them both.”
“And even if we managed to get Connor back alive after that,” Danny added. “It still wouldn’t be the same. They were together in hell and if only one of them make it out, the other one will never recover from it.”
“I’ve seen it happen to relatives and close friends in combat,” Becker explained. “It doesn’t matter who is back at home waiting for them. If they lose their friend and partner something breaks inside them and is left out on the field.”
“That is not going to happen in this case,” Jenny argued. “We will get them home and we will get Abby proper medical care before anything worse happens. She will not die out wherever they are. Do I make myself clear, boys?” When they didn’t respond, Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving up on the two of them after all of this time that you’ve been working yourselves almost to death to get them back?”
“Of course we’re not,” Becker snapped, insulted that she would even suggest such a thing.
“Then get that beaten look out of your eyes because we have a lot of work to do.”
Nancy’s announcement caused the room to go silent with shock for a long moment.
Abby made a distressed sound and Stephen pulled her close to him, looking from Cutter to Ryan and then back to Sid and Nancy.
“Where was I, then?” Captain Ryan asked them levelly. “I’m the one who usually watches everyone’s backs when we go out.”
“You weren’t there, sir,” Nancy responded. “Like Connor said… I mean Sid… we’ve never seen you before in our lives. We don’t know who you are.”
“I’ve been with you guys since the team was formed,” Ryan insisted.
Nancy shook her head. “I’m telling you, we don’t know who you are!” Her face had gone a little pale. “Back home, we’ve never seen you before. I don’t know your name and I don’t know your face. Stephen was always the one that tried to protect us and taught me to shoot. When he died, Lester hired Becker to make sure no one else died, only it didn’t work!”
Sid made a sound of concern as he stepped closer to Nancy. “Easy, love,” he soothed, running a hand over her hair very carefully. He barely touched her, but she obviously took comfort from his nearness. “Your head is bothering you, again. You’re in pain, I can see it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, trying to brush it off. “It’s not important.”
“Well, that’s something that obviously doesn’t change no matter which Abby it is,” Stephen said wryly, even as the younger Abby elbowed him in the ribs. “According to her, nothing that hurts her important.”
“It is important,” Sid insisted, ignoring Stephen. “Abby, you need -“
“We need to get home, Connor,” she responded, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say. “We need to get back and make sure everyone is all right. We don’t even know -“
“They are, Abby. They are. You know that they wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them until they found us - no matter how long it’s been.”
“How long have you been separated from your friends,” Abby asked the older version of herself.
Nancy looked at her quietly for a long moment. “A little more than two years,” she said finally. Sid nodded in agreement with her. “Connor has kept better track of the time than I’ve been able to, but from the times we’ve talked about it, it’s been about two years and a couple of months since we went through the anomaly.” It was obvious from the tone of her voice that there was a lot more to their story than what she was saying.
Claudia was taking a mental note of everything that was being said and not being said. Every time Nancy spoke, there was a sense of pain and sadness in her voice. However, something else she was noticing was that Nancy stopped Sid from revealing too much about where they were from or what had happened to them. She found that incredibly worrisome and she wondered what the two of them were hiding from all them.
“Where have you been all of this time?” Connor asked what everybody else was thinking. “If the two of you have been separated from everyone for two years, what happened?”
Sid frowned and Nancy shook her head. “We don’t know what kind of damage that it might do if we reveal too much. We can’t risk doing anything that might make changes in this time line.”
“It’s one of the things that has always been the biggest rule when working with the anomalies,” Sid said. “We are always very careful not to let anything interfere with anything that comes through the anomalies and when we go through them, we don’t let anything get left behind.”
“Something obviously went wrong in those plans,” Cutter said carefully. “Because the two of you got lost and ended up here with us, instead.”
“It wasn’t our fault we got lost,” Sid protested, staying next to Nancy as he defended them.
“No one ever said that it was,” Stephen said quietly. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened and why the two of you came through that anomaly to our time.”
“We thought it was the right one to get us back to our correct time.” Nancy’s voice was sour. “Instead, we found ourselves in a world with alternate versions of ourselves living a life that never even happened. Not only that, we were shot and locked up.”
“That was a mistake,” Ryan shook his head regretfully. “Those men have been punished and I’m very sorry that it happened. They shouldn’t have fired on you.”
“And locking us up at the ARC?” Sid questioned, tilting his head at him.
“That’s normal protocol when something happens that we’re not sure of,” Ryan explained. “We didn’t know where you were from or even what was going on.”
“That’s not the best way to greet people,” Sid pointed out. “I would re-evaluate your greeting procedures for new life before you accidentally start an intergalactic incident when other planets finally decide to make contact with us.”
“The last thing we’re concerned with is alien life forms,” Claudia shook her head. “What we need to know is what happened so that we can help you and make sure that nothing that could be hunting you comes through and causes any trouble here.”
“There’s no one hunting us,” Nancy argued. “Not any longer.”
“Who was hunting you?” Stephen questioned.
The two of them went silent, exchanging looks with each other.
“Why did you attack Professor Lester?” This time it was Abby’s soft voice that questioned them as she looked at Nancy. “And why did Connor attack the security team?”
“You don’t really to know the answers to that,” Sid shook his head.
“We understand that this is all very confusing to you -“ Cutter started to say to the two of them.
“You don’t understand anything!” Nancy burst out. “You don’t get it and you never will because where we come from all of you are dead!”
Three || Five