Fic: Job's Eyes, Primeval
Title: Job's Eyes
Author: Claire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,416
Summary: It's not like you mean for it to happen...
Warnings: Originally written for viva_gloria for Yuletide
Job's Eyes
It's not like you mean for it to happen, not like you go out there thinking you're going to end up trapped somewhere that shouldn't be possible. And when it does happen, when trees and forest and the faint sound of the motorway in the distance die in an explosion of fractured light, you still don't know what or why or how. How can you?
The first night is spent in a daze, tucked as far as you can against a rock and jumping at every sound you hear, so sure that you're going to wake up at any moment and find Nick next to you, snoring like a freight train.
All you can think is that you shouldn't be here, that you shouldn't have given in to the curiosity running through you. Nick's always laughed at the times you spend on some of the forums, soft Scottish complaining about idiots and crackpots who wouldn't know a real fossil if it bit them in the arse. And he's not wrong, most of the people on there wouldn't. But some of them-- They'd pulled you in with stories, with descriptions, with tales of seeing things that should be long gone, dead and buried and turned to stone eons before an image of civilisation ever appeared on the horizon.
Aye, an' they'll be seein' bloody ET next--
But even Nick's comments couldn't stop you from reading, couldn't stop you from wondering. Because you couldn't be the only one seeing the pattern, couldn't be the only one seeing the two, three, four reports a year that centre around the Forest of Dean.
If it had been somewhere else, you could have ignored it. It's not as though you were prepared to get on a plane and fly out to Illanois (and you wonder if this is why evoluntionaryindiana39 stopped posting, wonder if there are other glittering light shows to tempt the unsuspecting). But the Forest of Dean? Well, that was barely around the corner. Hell, you've driven further for dinner before, so it was easy enough to talk yourself into going.
Not that you believed the reports, mind, no matter what Nick kept teasing you about. No sane person would. Then again, no sane person would have been running from what you're pretty sure was a gorgonopsid in Tescos carpark, either.
And now look at you.
You wish Nick was here. Or Stephen. Or both of them. Wish they were here, you were back home, wish the world would stop sounding so wrong. But the way it sounds is nothing compared to the way it looks when the sun finally crests into the sky, like all the things you've thought, all the things you've taught wide-eyed students about are actually within reach.
You lose yourself for hours, half forgetting where you are, half forgetting what's happened, as you start to find things that just shouldn't exist. It makes you think of the ammonite sitting on the bedroom shelf, of the text books you bought at uni that are still in the bookcase, spines cracked and worn. And it makes you think of your dad, of that damn dinosaur book he gave you when you were twelve because the newsagent had already sold out of that week's issue of Jackie.
You fill your backpack until you can't carry anything else, and have to start picking and choosing what to take with you. Because you've got to take something, anything, just so they believe you, just so they don't count you in with the rest of the crazies claiming to see God, to see aliens, to see dinosaurs.
The sun's low in the sky when you think about making your way back, about your triumphant return and how you're about to turn the entire world of evolutionary science on its head. It's got nothing to do with the way the world is turning darker, with the memory of hard rock and cold leeching the warmth from your skin. And if there's no one there to contradict you, no one there to point out the lie, well, it's not your fault.
So you go back the way you think you came. And when all you find is more darkness, more plants that should be nothing more than minerals in the ground, you tell yourself that you just turned around in the dark, tell yourself that you'll find a beacon shining in the distance, if only you keep looking.
It's three days before you finally find something, orange and broken and glittering just in front of you. You don't sob as you find it, you don't. Because that's not you. You don't sob and you don't stagger closer, dirty and thirsty and cursing the need you have to know. And you don't hope. Because hope's for idiots and children, and you're neither.
The sun is shining when you step through, burning harsh and visible, even though you closed your eyes when you moved into the whatever-the-hell-they-are that brought you here.
You don't need to open your eyes to know you're not home, you can feel the knowledge settling into your stomach like a stone. The sun's too bright, too there, and the silence in the air is deafening. Your hands come up to your face to protect your eyes as you open them and squint into the distance, covering the miles of sand surrounding you on every side in a single glance. There's nothing, nothing, not even birds in the sky. The place that you've come to is utterly barren, stark and dead and wrong.
You've been walking for miles before you see it shimmering in the distance. This time, you don't even pause as you step through.
You lose track of time after that, days blending into nights blending into days blending into eras that should be gone and forgotten. You've long since got rid of the samples you collected from the first time (the Devonian, you later decide), abandoned somewhere in what you think may have been the Cambrian so you can carry food (with the hope that it won't kill you) and more water (but part of you not caring, even if it does).
You can't remember how many times you've gone into the light, beckoned towards them with fractured temptation. And each time you do, each time you walk through, you think that maybe, just maybe, this one will be the one to lead you back home.
You tell yourself you don't know when it changes, tell yourself you don't know when you stop looking for a way back to Nick and start looking for something else. Tell yourself you don't know when it went from This isn't where I belong, to I can make the world different, changed, better. You tell yourself that, but there's another voice that tells you you're lying. (It's funny how you never realised before that the voice inside you sounds so much like your husband.)
Your mantra changes because you have no choice.
You nearly don't survive it the first time you're there. The predators are stronger, faster, better than anything you've had to outrun before. Of course, you've never had to dodge around abandoned cars before, either. And you should have known this could happen. If they can send you back, then they can send you forward. It's just a miracle that it hasn't happened before now.
Your heart is pounding when you finally managed to wrench open the door, to slam it behind you just as the bang of something bouncing off it reverberates through the air. It takes your brain a while to catch up with what your eyes are seeing. You've been so used to trees and green and creatures that should only exist in books and museums being the only things that surround you, that computers throw you, even if only for a minute.
Most of them don't work, dead and corroded and useless for anything except gathering dust. But one of them works, muted blue light casting a faint pallor across the room.
Anomaly Research Centre, the screen declares.
Answers, you decree.
And so you sit down (the chair's rusty and squeaking but usable, once the debris is cleared off it), take a breath, and start to read.
Author: Claire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,416
Summary: It's not like you mean for it to happen...
Warnings: Originally written for viva_gloria for Yuletide
Job's Eyes
It's not like you mean for it to happen, not like you go out there thinking you're going to end up trapped somewhere that shouldn't be possible. And when it does happen, when trees and forest and the faint sound of the motorway in the distance die in an explosion of fractured light, you still don't know what or why or how. How can you?
The first night is spent in a daze, tucked as far as you can against a rock and jumping at every sound you hear, so sure that you're going to wake up at any moment and find Nick next to you, snoring like a freight train.
All you can think is that you shouldn't be here, that you shouldn't have given in to the curiosity running through you. Nick's always laughed at the times you spend on some of the forums, soft Scottish complaining about idiots and crackpots who wouldn't know a real fossil if it bit them in the arse. And he's not wrong, most of the people on there wouldn't. But some of them-- They'd pulled you in with stories, with descriptions, with tales of seeing things that should be long gone, dead and buried and turned to stone eons before an image of civilisation ever appeared on the horizon.
Aye, an' they'll be seein' bloody ET next--
But even Nick's comments couldn't stop you from reading, couldn't stop you from wondering. Because you couldn't be the only one seeing the pattern, couldn't be the only one seeing the two, three, four reports a year that centre around the Forest of Dean.
If it had been somewhere else, you could have ignored it. It's not as though you were prepared to get on a plane and fly out to Illanois (and you wonder if this is why evoluntionaryindiana39 stopped posting, wonder if there are other glittering light shows to tempt the unsuspecting). But the Forest of Dean? Well, that was barely around the corner. Hell, you've driven further for dinner before, so it was easy enough to talk yourself into going.
Not that you believed the reports, mind, no matter what Nick kept teasing you about. No sane person would. Then again, no sane person would have been running from what you're pretty sure was a gorgonopsid in Tescos carpark, either.
And now look at you.
You wish Nick was here. Or Stephen. Or both of them. Wish they were here, you were back home, wish the world would stop sounding so wrong. But the way it sounds is nothing compared to the way it looks when the sun finally crests into the sky, like all the things you've thought, all the things you've taught wide-eyed students about are actually within reach.
You lose yourself for hours, half forgetting where you are, half forgetting what's happened, as you start to find things that just shouldn't exist. It makes you think of the ammonite sitting on the bedroom shelf, of the text books you bought at uni that are still in the bookcase, spines cracked and worn. And it makes you think of your dad, of that damn dinosaur book he gave you when you were twelve because the newsagent had already sold out of that week's issue of Jackie.
You fill your backpack until you can't carry anything else, and have to start picking and choosing what to take with you. Because you've got to take something, anything, just so they believe you, just so they don't count you in with the rest of the crazies claiming to see God, to see aliens, to see dinosaurs.
The sun's low in the sky when you think about making your way back, about your triumphant return and how you're about to turn the entire world of evolutionary science on its head. It's got nothing to do with the way the world is turning darker, with the memory of hard rock and cold leeching the warmth from your skin. And if there's no one there to contradict you, no one there to point out the lie, well, it's not your fault.
So you go back the way you think you came. And when all you find is more darkness, more plants that should be nothing more than minerals in the ground, you tell yourself that you just turned around in the dark, tell yourself that you'll find a beacon shining in the distance, if only you keep looking.
It's three days before you finally find something, orange and broken and glittering just in front of you. You don't sob as you find it, you don't. Because that's not you. You don't sob and you don't stagger closer, dirty and thirsty and cursing the need you have to know. And you don't hope. Because hope's for idiots and children, and you're neither.
The sun is shining when you step through, burning harsh and visible, even though you closed your eyes when you moved into the whatever-the-hell-they-are that brought you here.
You don't need to open your eyes to know you're not home, you can feel the knowledge settling into your stomach like a stone. The sun's too bright, too there, and the silence in the air is deafening. Your hands come up to your face to protect your eyes as you open them and squint into the distance, covering the miles of sand surrounding you on every side in a single glance. There's nothing, nothing, not even birds in the sky. The place that you've come to is utterly barren, stark and dead and wrong.
You've been walking for miles before you see it shimmering in the distance. This time, you don't even pause as you step through.
You lose track of time after that, days blending into nights blending into days blending into eras that should be gone and forgotten. You've long since got rid of the samples you collected from the first time (the Devonian, you later decide), abandoned somewhere in what you think may have been the Cambrian so you can carry food (with the hope that it won't kill you) and more water (but part of you not caring, even if it does).
You can't remember how many times you've gone into the light, beckoned towards them with fractured temptation. And each time you do, each time you walk through, you think that maybe, just maybe, this one will be the one to lead you back home.
You tell yourself you don't know when it changes, tell yourself you don't know when you stop looking for a way back to Nick and start looking for something else. Tell yourself you don't know when it went from This isn't where I belong, to I can make the world different, changed, better. You tell yourself that, but there's another voice that tells you you're lying. (It's funny how you never realised before that the voice inside you sounds so much like your husband.)
Your mantra changes because you have no choice.
You nearly don't survive it the first time you're there. The predators are stronger, faster, better than anything you've had to outrun before. Of course, you've never had to dodge around abandoned cars before, either. And you should have known this could happen. If they can send you back, then they can send you forward. It's just a miracle that it hasn't happened before now.
Your heart is pounding when you finally managed to wrench open the door, to slam it behind you just as the bang of something bouncing off it reverberates through the air. It takes your brain a while to catch up with what your eyes are seeing. You've been so used to trees and green and creatures that should only exist in books and museums being the only things that surround you, that computers throw you, even if only for a minute.
Most of them don't work, dead and corroded and useless for anything except gathering dust. But one of them works, muted blue light casting a faint pallor across the room.
Anomaly Research Centre, the screen declares.
Answers, you decree.
And so you sit down (the chair's rusty and squeaking but usable, once the debris is cleared off it), take a breath, and start to read.