Primeval fic: "dinner and for after"

Nov 14, 2009 18:17

TalliW, this was originally going to be for you (since its what you asked for), but then the story went pear-shaped. sorry.

Title: Dinner and for after.
Pairings/Characters: Lester, Helen.
Rating: Mature.
Summary: Lester and Helen enjoy a nice, quiet dinner.
Spoilers: series 1 (for the Ring), late series 3 (for the event referenced in this story)
Disclaimer: I own none of the Primeval characters or locations.
Notes:
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This Helen across the table, her face washed in candlelight, she was not the Helen so often at odds with his team. There were times James thought that she was younger than the hardbitten woman who'd led so many to their doom, and there were times he considered this Helen to be more mature than the puppetmaster of Leek.

He wasn't sure how he was going to break the news that had been brought before him earlier today: that Christine Johnson had shot Helen Cutter dead. Naturally Becker and Quinn had thought his insistance on seeing the body was because of how long the woman had been a thorn in the ARC's side. Page seems to have an inkling; I'll have to deal with her.

"You're quiet," Helen Lester nee Cutter nee Bassett said.

"You'd tell me if you knew something," James Lester said, and regretted his wording immediately - and not simply because he hadn't ended with 'wouldn't you?'

"I know many things, James," Helen said in that toying voice of hers. "Could you be more specific, or shall I extract it from you?"

He considered that, but refrained from agreeing - that was how, after all, they'd gotten the little one he'd remarked would like the mammoth. "It was at work."

"Ah. And how am I?"

"Fit as ever," James said, deliberately avoiding.

"And?" in a tone that made Future Predators stop in their tracks and run the other way.

"Dead."

He watched her eyes in the candlelight.

"Bullet?" Helen asked, surprisingly clinical for someone who had just been told she'd been seen dead.

Lester nodded.

"I saw it early in my travels," Helen said.

All this time, all you've been through - you did everything while knowing how you were going to die. "And here I spent no small number of hours trying to avoid breaking the bad news."

"Do that again, James," Helen said, "and I won't wear that lace teddy you're so fond of."

He shrugged. "I don't mind," deliberately misunderstanding her.

Helen's face was amused and mock-scowling. "You have until I've finished this delectable soup, and if you have not apologized by then, I shall have to take matters into my own hands."

"Hm," James said. "Like being threatened by a panda."

Helen grinned, knowing exactly what they would do later.
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The End

primeval, primeval fanfiction, helen cutter

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