Side Effects - Crossover: Primeval/Torchwood - Gen-ish (Stephen)
Title: Side Effects
Characters: Stephen Hart, Torchwood team (some Stephen/Nick)
Word Count: 2300
Rating: PG
A/N: A cracky crossover written for 7_lies. Set in S1 for both shows.
Summary: When Torchwood steps in to save a member of Nick Cutter's team, the side effects of the alien drug they use are a little unexpected.
He woke like he was floating - every limb weightless, every thought worthless. The world seemed a numb, dull place when Stephen opened his eyes and found himself lying on a cold surface. The ceiling was miles away. He was vaguely aware that he should have been in a great deal more pain than he was. They'd been in Cardiff, he'd been trying to track a dinosaur - a dinosaur that had turned out to be something else entirely - and…
And what?
And where was everyone?
"Nngh?" he asked. His lips wouldn't move properly. Nothing would.
"Shhh, shh," a female voice instructed him. "Go back to sleep, love. You'll feel better when you wake up again."
He wanted to argued, wanted to ask questions, but there was a nipping pain in his arm and then…
*
He woke again with the sense of time having passed -
"He's coming around, Owen," that same female voice said. What was that accent? Welsh? He must still be in Cardiff. "Are we ready?"
"Not remotely," a man grumbled.
Stephen's eyes slurred open. White coats and men in safety goggles: he blinked a few times for good measure. He had the distinct feeling that he might have just woken up in a morgue if his surroundings were anything to go by. He almost didn't want to ask why. "Wha' happened?" he forced himself to say. It sounded like he had a wad of cotton wool stuck in his mouth.
"Now I don't want you to panic," the woman said. She talked slowly to him like a schoolchild and smiled, gap-toothed and worried. "There's been a bit of an accident, but don't worry. We're professionals."
"Hos'ital?" he tried to asked.
"No, not a hospital. Not exactly."
"We're better than any hospital, mate. Trust me." The man didn't bother to smile. "I'm Doctor Owen Harper; this is PC Cooper. What's the last thing you remember?"
"The 'nomaly," Stephen said, mostly to himself. They'd been trying to herd the creature back inside it when a large black car had appeared with people spilling out of it. TORCHWOOD, it had read on the side. "My team - my friends. Where…?"
"Ah." Doctor Harper looked as if he was considering what the best lie to tell was. "They had to go… um. They had to go home."
"Without me?" Stephen would have smirked if he'd had control of his face. He was all too aware that his body was numb and that he couldn't move a muscle below his neck. "Doesn't sound like 'utter."
Or Connor. Or Abby. Or even Claudia. They were a team - they stuck together.
"Now," PC Cooper said. She sat beside the cold slab he was lying on. "I don't want you to be scared-"
"I'm not afraid," Stephen snapped, as well as he was able when it was so hard to move his mouth. "I just wanna know what you've done with my friends."
"We've not 'done' anything with them," Harper sighed. "We took you back here 'cause you got hurt. They're probably still out there trying to find you."
Stephen tried to wriggle his toes or his fingers. Nothing happened. "Cutter's gonna go mad when he finds you."
"I'm not worried." Owen smirked. "My boss could kick your boss's arse any day of the week."
If you think that you clearly haven't met Nick, Stephen thought. He bottled away that fear, curling it into a ball, and asked what he should have asked all along. "What's wrong with me? Can't move…"
"Oh!" Cooper's smile was genuine now - sweet and gentle. "Don't worry about that. Owen went, um, a little overboard with the painkillers."
"Well, how was I supposed to know the right dosage of something that came through the Rift?" Owen complained.
"It's not permanent?" Stephen checked. The idea of never being able to move again, not even twitch a finger… that scared him. "It'll wear off?"
"Yeah," she promised. "…Eventually."
"How 'ventually?"
"We don't exactly know. Could be anything, I suppose. Might be in a few minutes; might be in a few days." She winced apologetically. "Sorry."
"'s okay." It wasn't really but raging at her wouldn't help anyone. "I'm Stephen, by the way."
"We know." There was a glint in Owen's eyes that said that they knew everything. "You can call me Owen, I guess. If I've paralysed you we should probably be on first-name terms."
"Yeah," Stephen agreed, eyes flicking around to explore the medical bay as best he could. It was far from the most welcoming place he'd ever been in: even Lester's office was more reassuring. "Guess so."
*
He didn't see the boss too much other than a few fleeting visits. Jack would smiled - slick and fake - and want to know little details about Stephen's team. He avoided answering as much as he could - if they wouldn't tell him about Torchwood then he wouldn't tell them about Cutter's work - but he always made him smirk when he had a little more control of his mouth again: if Cutter and the others were harassing Jack enough to make him start asking questions like that it meant that they hadn't given up on him. It meant that they still cared.
He met the rest of the team from time to time - Ianto when he helped Owen transfer him to a more comfortable room; Toshiko when she tried to quiz him about the weaponry she'd found in his bag - but for the most part it was Gwen and Owen who kept him company and kept him sane.
Not so bad, really.
By the end of the week he was able to twitch his toes if he focused really, really hard.
"Stephen?" Owen asked as he popped his head through the door. "D'you mind giving your friends a ring and letting them know you're not dead or anything?"
Lying helplessly in bed, Stephen's eyes narrowed. He'd been nagging them for a phone call for days now. Changing their minds like this, so suddenly… It seemed odd. "Why?"
"No reason." Owen looked nervously over his shoulder. "They just, y'know, seem worried."
Considering that they'd watched a wickedly sharp set of dinosaur claws carve him open and that he'd then been carted off by a set of mysterious strangers, Stephen would have been remarkably insulted if they hadn't been concerned. "How worried?" he asked suspiciously.
Owen sighed in annoyance. "They've kind of sieged the Hub."
"… You're kidding me," Stephen said. It was hard not to grin and eventually he lost the battle: his smile beamed like bright sunshine. "You do realise there are only about, what, three of them?"
"Four, actually." Owen rubbed worried at his forehead. "But Jack and the professor have been arguing for hours and I think the blonde chick'll kick our arses if we try to leave to go home."
Stephen smirked. "Yeah, that sounds like Abby."
"And we could just shoot them, but we figured a phone call might be a better first option."
"Definitely," Stephen agreed hastily, smirk fading. "Bring the phone over."
He instructed Owen on the number to dial - and silently cursed him when he had to hold the phone to his ear. Owen's fingers were cold as death as he listened to the phone ringing.
"Now's really not a good time," Cutter snapped when he answered.
Stephen had never thought hearing Cutter angry and frustrated could be a good thing - something good enough to make him smile again. "It's me, Nick," he said. "I'm fine."
"You're-" Cutter sounded as if he might explode at any moment: Stephen imagined that Claudia was having one hell of a time trying to control him. "Get out here now."
"I can't really move right now, actually."
"What?"
"I'm sort of paralysed," he explained awkwardly. "It'll wear off."
"What? When?"
"Eventually." One week for one toe. This might take a very long time. "Cutter, maybe you guys should head home. I can join you once I'm better."
"No. We're not leaving you behind," Cutter insisted.
"I'm fine." He didn't feel the healing claw-marks on his chest. He didn't feel anything at all and maybe by the time he did regain sensation the wound would have healed up entirely - in a round-about way the 'painkillers' that Owen had tried out on him had worked. "Go."
"You're part of the team," Cutter said. "We're not going to abandon you as a hostage in Cardiff!"
"I'm not a hostage!" Voices raised. Stephen should have known that calling Cutter while they were both stressed would never end well. "I'm just a patient."
"I might buy that a little more if you were in a real hospital," Cutter snapped.
"I'm fine," Stephen insisted yet again. "Stop worrying about me and just go home. You have other things to deal with."
How many more anomalies had opened since they'd been waiting here? How many other creatures were through in this time? How many more people had to die because of him?
"Stephen…"
"I mean it. Go home." They could argue on this for hours - back and forth endlessly. "You know I'm right, Nick," he eventually said quietly.
The silence stretched for long enough that Stephen began to wonder if Nick had thrown the phone away in a fit of anger until he said, "How long?"
"What?"
"How long do you think you'll be here?" it sounded like it took a lot of willpower to make sure that those were the words that came from his mouth.
Stephen glanced questioningly at Owen but received only a clueless shrug in response. "We don't know," he answered.
"What happened back there, Stephen?" Cutter sounded more frustrated than he had in a long while: he punctuated his question with a sound almost like a growl. "Never mind - you can tell me when you get home."
"I will," Stephen promised. "And I'll phone you again too."
"You'd better. If I go more than two days without word then we're coming in to rescue you. Whatever it takes."
Stephen knew he meant every word of that. It made him wish more than ever for the use of his legs so that he could go out there and calm him down, make him see reason. Instead he had to lie there with alien drugs running through his veins under the control of an organisation he knew nothing about.
Owen hung up the phone once the goodbyes were dealt with. "Thanks," he said. "That guy was doing my head in."
"Yeah, Cutter's rather…" He remembered bickering matches and greedy, never-ending kisses. "Persistent."
Owen's eyes glittered at him, too knowing and observant. "Getting involved with the boss, mate?" he said. "It never ends well. Trust me - I've seen it."
"Thanks for the concern, but I'm fine. We're fine." Or he they would be, in any case, as long as Cutter never found out what had happened between him and Helen. As long as he could keep that a secret…
Owen's eyes lingered a little too long, a little too carefully. "I'm serious. Be careful."
He looked serious, sounded serious, and that alone was rare enough to make Stephen nod - a tiny inclination of his head, the most he could manage. "I can look after myself, doctor."
Owen snorted. "That'd be a little more convincing if you weren't currently completely paralysed."
Stephen rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling when Owen left to find Jack. Owen was right, of course. This thing with Cutter… It was ridiculous. It would be the end of them one day. Too dangerous. Too foolish. Stephen knew he'd just have to keep prodding Cutter's buttons until the man finally snapped and abandoned him. He hadn't the strength to be the one to put an end to it.
You never were the strong one, Helen's voice echoed in his unhearing ears.
*
Two weeks later he could move his legs once more and decided that that meant he was well enough to leave. His arms still wouldn't respond and he felt like he was wearing a straightjacket. Standing was difficult; balance was impossible.
"You could stay a little longer," Gwen said as she helped him to walk across the Hub. "You're not well enough yet."
"I can walk," Stephen said - though it was 'more or less' walking rather than properly walking. "Most of the drug seems to have worn off."
"You still can't move your arms or anything. This is so stupid - Owen, tell him."
"He'll be fine, Gwen," Owen sighed. He opened the door for them. "His people can take care of him. We got him through the worst of it and the drug can't be detected by conventional equipment any more which is - sorry, mate - the main reason we were keeping him here anyway. He's good to go."
"We don't even know who we're handing him over to. 'His people'…"
"Gwen," Stephen said, sounding as soothing as he could. "I trust them - "
"I don't."
" - and, really, I have no reason to trust any of you either."
'Torchwood'. Almost a month had passed and he still possessed no knowledge other than its name - and they still knew nothing about the anomalies or the work of Cutter's team. Secrets all around.
"I'll miss having you around, y'know," Owen admitted. "Sort of."
Stephen held back a smile: it was hard not to patronise him now. Teasing him, however, might be fatal. He wisely held himself back. They passed out of the Hub through a fake tourist office and into Cardiff's sunshine. The feel of it on his face was foreign. It had been so very long.
"Stephen!" he heard Abby yelling, followed by an identical call from Connor. He let himself smile now, like a proud father back from a business trip.
"Guess that's our cue to leave," Owen muttered, handing him to Abby when she reached them. Gwen left too like a ghost in the night but Stephen's eyes were on Cutter's car - on Cutter ¬¬- as he began to shakily stagger over there with the help of his friends.
Despite it all - hunting wounds and kidnapping and painkillers-gone-wrong - he'd made it back home. When he heard Cutter start to rant and rave he grinned and gratefully took a seat in the car. He knew he wouldn't stop smiling for a long while yet.
Characters: Stephen Hart, Torchwood team (some Stephen/Nick)
Word Count: 2300
Rating: PG
A/N: A cracky crossover written for 7_lies. Set in S1 for both shows.
Summary: When Torchwood steps in to save a member of Nick Cutter's team, the side effects of the alien drug they use are a little unexpected.
He woke like he was floating - every limb weightless, every thought worthless. The world seemed a numb, dull place when Stephen opened his eyes and found himself lying on a cold surface. The ceiling was miles away. He was vaguely aware that he should have been in a great deal more pain than he was. They'd been in Cardiff, he'd been trying to track a dinosaur - a dinosaur that had turned out to be something else entirely - and…
And what?
And where was everyone?
"Nngh?" he asked. His lips wouldn't move properly. Nothing would.
"Shhh, shh," a female voice instructed him. "Go back to sleep, love. You'll feel better when you wake up again."
He wanted to argued, wanted to ask questions, but there was a nipping pain in his arm and then…
*
He woke again with the sense of time having passed -
"He's coming around, Owen," that same female voice said. What was that accent? Welsh? He must still be in Cardiff. "Are we ready?"
"Not remotely," a man grumbled.
Stephen's eyes slurred open. White coats and men in safety goggles: he blinked a few times for good measure. He had the distinct feeling that he might have just woken up in a morgue if his surroundings were anything to go by. He almost didn't want to ask why. "Wha' happened?" he forced himself to say. It sounded like he had a wad of cotton wool stuck in his mouth.
"Now I don't want you to panic," the woman said. She talked slowly to him like a schoolchild and smiled, gap-toothed and worried. "There's been a bit of an accident, but don't worry. We're professionals."
"Hos'ital?" he tried to asked.
"No, not a hospital. Not exactly."
"We're better than any hospital, mate. Trust me." The man didn't bother to smile. "I'm Doctor Owen Harper; this is PC Cooper. What's the last thing you remember?"
"The 'nomaly," Stephen said, mostly to himself. They'd been trying to herd the creature back inside it when a large black car had appeared with people spilling out of it. TORCHWOOD, it had read on the side. "My team - my friends. Where…?"
"Ah." Doctor Harper looked as if he was considering what the best lie to tell was. "They had to go… um. They had to go home."
"Without me?" Stephen would have smirked if he'd had control of his face. He was all too aware that his body was numb and that he couldn't move a muscle below his neck. "Doesn't sound like 'utter."
Or Connor. Or Abby. Or even Claudia. They were a team - they stuck together.
"Now," PC Cooper said. She sat beside the cold slab he was lying on. "I don't want you to be scared-"
"I'm not afraid," Stephen snapped, as well as he was able when it was so hard to move his mouth. "I just wanna know what you've done with my friends."
"We've not 'done' anything with them," Harper sighed. "We took you back here 'cause you got hurt. They're probably still out there trying to find you."
Stephen tried to wriggle his toes or his fingers. Nothing happened. "Cutter's gonna go mad when he finds you."
"I'm not worried." Owen smirked. "My boss could kick your boss's arse any day of the week."
If you think that you clearly haven't met Nick, Stephen thought. He bottled away that fear, curling it into a ball, and asked what he should have asked all along. "What's wrong with me? Can't move…"
"Oh!" Cooper's smile was genuine now - sweet and gentle. "Don't worry about that. Owen went, um, a little overboard with the painkillers."
"Well, how was I supposed to know the right dosage of something that came through the Rift?" Owen complained.
"It's not permanent?" Stephen checked. The idea of never being able to move again, not even twitch a finger… that scared him. "It'll wear off?"
"Yeah," she promised. "…Eventually."
"How 'ventually?"
"We don't exactly know. Could be anything, I suppose. Might be in a few minutes; might be in a few days." She winced apologetically. "Sorry."
"'s okay." It wasn't really but raging at her wouldn't help anyone. "I'm Stephen, by the way."
"We know." There was a glint in Owen's eyes that said that they knew everything. "You can call me Owen, I guess. If I've paralysed you we should probably be on first-name terms."
"Yeah," Stephen agreed, eyes flicking around to explore the medical bay as best he could. It was far from the most welcoming place he'd ever been in: even Lester's office was more reassuring. "Guess so."
*
He didn't see the boss too much other than a few fleeting visits. Jack would smiled - slick and fake - and want to know little details about Stephen's team. He avoided answering as much as he could - if they wouldn't tell him about Torchwood then he wouldn't tell them about Cutter's work - but he always made him smirk when he had a little more control of his mouth again: if Cutter and the others were harassing Jack enough to make him start asking questions like that it meant that they hadn't given up on him. It meant that they still cared.
He met the rest of the team from time to time - Ianto when he helped Owen transfer him to a more comfortable room; Toshiko when she tried to quiz him about the weaponry she'd found in his bag - but for the most part it was Gwen and Owen who kept him company and kept him sane.
Not so bad, really.
By the end of the week he was able to twitch his toes if he focused really, really hard.
"Stephen?" Owen asked as he popped his head through the door. "D'you mind giving your friends a ring and letting them know you're not dead or anything?"
Lying helplessly in bed, Stephen's eyes narrowed. He'd been nagging them for a phone call for days now. Changing their minds like this, so suddenly… It seemed odd. "Why?"
"No reason." Owen looked nervously over his shoulder. "They just, y'know, seem worried."
Considering that they'd watched a wickedly sharp set of dinosaur claws carve him open and that he'd then been carted off by a set of mysterious strangers, Stephen would have been remarkably insulted if they hadn't been concerned. "How worried?" he asked suspiciously.
Owen sighed in annoyance. "They've kind of sieged the Hub."
"… You're kidding me," Stephen said. It was hard not to grin and eventually he lost the battle: his smile beamed like bright sunshine. "You do realise there are only about, what, three of them?"
"Four, actually." Owen rubbed worried at his forehead. "But Jack and the professor have been arguing for hours and I think the blonde chick'll kick our arses if we try to leave to go home."
Stephen smirked. "Yeah, that sounds like Abby."
"And we could just shoot them, but we figured a phone call might be a better first option."
"Definitely," Stephen agreed hastily, smirk fading. "Bring the phone over."
He instructed Owen on the number to dial - and silently cursed him when he had to hold the phone to his ear. Owen's fingers were cold as death as he listened to the phone ringing.
"Now's really not a good time," Cutter snapped when he answered.
Stephen had never thought hearing Cutter angry and frustrated could be a good thing - something good enough to make him smile again. "It's me, Nick," he said. "I'm fine."
"You're-" Cutter sounded as if he might explode at any moment: Stephen imagined that Claudia was having one hell of a time trying to control him. "Get out here now."
"I can't really move right now, actually."
"What?"
"I'm sort of paralysed," he explained awkwardly. "It'll wear off."
"What? When?"
"Eventually." One week for one toe. This might take a very long time. "Cutter, maybe you guys should head home. I can join you once I'm better."
"No. We're not leaving you behind," Cutter insisted.
"I'm fine." He didn't feel the healing claw-marks on his chest. He didn't feel anything at all and maybe by the time he did regain sensation the wound would have healed up entirely - in a round-about way the 'painkillers' that Owen had tried out on him had worked. "Go."
"You're part of the team," Cutter said. "We're not going to abandon you as a hostage in Cardiff!"
"I'm not a hostage!" Voices raised. Stephen should have known that calling Cutter while they were both stressed would never end well. "I'm just a patient."
"I might buy that a little more if you were in a real hospital," Cutter snapped.
"I'm fine," Stephen insisted yet again. "Stop worrying about me and just go home. You have other things to deal with."
How many more anomalies had opened since they'd been waiting here? How many other creatures were through in this time? How many more people had to die because of him?
"Stephen…"
"I mean it. Go home." They could argue on this for hours - back and forth endlessly. "You know I'm right, Nick," he eventually said quietly.
The silence stretched for long enough that Stephen began to wonder if Nick had thrown the phone away in a fit of anger until he said, "How long?"
"What?"
"How long do you think you'll be here?" it sounded like it took a lot of willpower to make sure that those were the words that came from his mouth.
Stephen glanced questioningly at Owen but received only a clueless shrug in response. "We don't know," he answered.
"What happened back there, Stephen?" Cutter sounded more frustrated than he had in a long while: he punctuated his question with a sound almost like a growl. "Never mind - you can tell me when you get home."
"I will," Stephen promised. "And I'll phone you again too."
"You'd better. If I go more than two days without word then we're coming in to rescue you. Whatever it takes."
Stephen knew he meant every word of that. It made him wish more than ever for the use of his legs so that he could go out there and calm him down, make him see reason. Instead he had to lie there with alien drugs running through his veins under the control of an organisation he knew nothing about.
Owen hung up the phone once the goodbyes were dealt with. "Thanks," he said. "That guy was doing my head in."
"Yeah, Cutter's rather…" He remembered bickering matches and greedy, never-ending kisses. "Persistent."
Owen's eyes glittered at him, too knowing and observant. "Getting involved with the boss, mate?" he said. "It never ends well. Trust me - I've seen it."
"Thanks for the concern, but I'm fine. We're fine." Or he they would be, in any case, as long as Cutter never found out what had happened between him and Helen. As long as he could keep that a secret…
Owen's eyes lingered a little too long, a little too carefully. "I'm serious. Be careful."
He looked serious, sounded serious, and that alone was rare enough to make Stephen nod - a tiny inclination of his head, the most he could manage. "I can look after myself, doctor."
Owen snorted. "That'd be a little more convincing if you weren't currently completely paralysed."
Stephen rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling when Owen left to find Jack. Owen was right, of course. This thing with Cutter… It was ridiculous. It would be the end of them one day. Too dangerous. Too foolish. Stephen knew he'd just have to keep prodding Cutter's buttons until the man finally snapped and abandoned him. He hadn't the strength to be the one to put an end to it.
You never were the strong one, Helen's voice echoed in his unhearing ears.
*
Two weeks later he could move his legs once more and decided that that meant he was well enough to leave. His arms still wouldn't respond and he felt like he was wearing a straightjacket. Standing was difficult; balance was impossible.
"You could stay a little longer," Gwen said as she helped him to walk across the Hub. "You're not well enough yet."
"I can walk," Stephen said - though it was 'more or less' walking rather than properly walking. "Most of the drug seems to have worn off."
"You still can't move your arms or anything. This is so stupid - Owen, tell him."
"He'll be fine, Gwen," Owen sighed. He opened the door for them. "His people can take care of him. We got him through the worst of it and the drug can't be detected by conventional equipment any more which is - sorry, mate - the main reason we were keeping him here anyway. He's good to go."
"We don't even know who we're handing him over to. 'His people'…"
"Gwen," Stephen said, sounding as soothing as he could. "I trust them - "
"I don't."
" - and, really, I have no reason to trust any of you either."
'Torchwood'. Almost a month had passed and he still possessed no knowledge other than its name - and they still knew nothing about the anomalies or the work of Cutter's team. Secrets all around.
"I'll miss having you around, y'know," Owen admitted. "Sort of."
Stephen held back a smile: it was hard not to patronise him now. Teasing him, however, might be fatal. He wisely held himself back. They passed out of the Hub through a fake tourist office and into Cardiff's sunshine. The feel of it on his face was foreign. It had been so very long.
"Stephen!" he heard Abby yelling, followed by an identical call from Connor. He let himself smile now, like a proud father back from a business trip.
"Guess that's our cue to leave," Owen muttered, handing him to Abby when she reached them. Gwen left too like a ghost in the night but Stephen's eyes were on Cutter's car - on Cutter ¬¬- as he began to shakily stagger over there with the help of his friends.
Despite it all - hunting wounds and kidnapping and painkillers-gone-wrong - he'd made it back home. When he heard Cutter start to rant and rave he grinned and gratefully took a seat in the car. He knew he wouldn't stop smiling for a long while yet.