for Lsellersfic: "Helen Watt" (Primeval fic)
Title: Helen Watt.
now crossposted to Archive of our own - "Helen Watt".
Author: Keenir.
Written at the request of Lsellersfic for Help Haiti.
Prompt: What if Helen had never met Nick Cutter?
Pairing, if any: None.
Rating: Mature(?)
Summary: How Helen changes the world around her.
Disclaimer: I own none of the canon characters. If anyone reading this wants to play in this timeline, go right ahead - just share with the rest of us, okay?
NOTE: if this is not what you had in mind with the request, just say so, and I'll try again; no harm, no foul.
======================================================================
There are things said of Helen…
Some say she was struck by lightning a second after she was born.
Some say she looked to be perpetually sun-kissed.
Some say she was Satan, Nián, and a dozen other forces of darkness.
Some say she shouldered a weight no one should
Some say her pinkie finger could cure diseases.
Some say her laugh, though worn, was infectious.
Everyone who knew her, agreed that she was distinctive.
========================================
Blue Sky Park:
Ryan knew there was a good chance that one of the Creatures loose in this era was stalking him and his unit. Even so, with Lacey watching their six, they remained where they were, standing in camouflage - “Hold it right there,” he barked at Helen when she ran into the small clearing they were waiting in. More Creatures were behind her - pursuing her, like Ryan was, only carnassally-inclined.
Helen Watt was only remarkable if you knew what to look at. Such as those lean calves and arms, honed over the course of God knows how much running and swimming and climbing. Such as the gritty determination that was a constant on her face, even right now when she had to be completely exhausted and cornered.
“Captain,” she said just as her pursuers came into view. Velociraptors, or near enough for paperwork. But Helen wasn’t looking at the dinosaurs, or even at the soldiers.
What had her attention soon came out from the underbrush, leaping into the space between Helen and Ryan, roaring at both of them, one at a time. Long canines shone, scattered sunlight off wet blood on the stabbing instruments.
The velociraptors roared back at the big cat, who charged the feathered Creatures.
Ryan’s men opened fire on the three Creatures while they were circling, killing the Creatures neatly.
And, Tom noticed, Helen Watt was nowhere to be seen, and no blood trail to show where she’d gone. We won’t chase you this time. We get two sets of Creatures and somebody who raised one of them. That’s a bonus. Makes it easier to say you got away. In his mind, Ryan felt he owed her - not much, but enough for right now.
During their first encounter with Helen, she’d stayed put long enough for them to triangulate her position with a radio she’d lifted off Private Tremayne…Helen disappeared just before Ryan had been able to catch her, but she’d left behind an Arthropleurid just weakly alive enough to keep its venom from being useless to a bitten Lt. Lacey.
“Next time,” Tom Ryan said to the wind in the woods, his officers nodding agreement that there would be a next time. We’ll see what happens next time.
========================================
Forest of Dean:
Connor Temple continued to follow the mysterious footprints through the forest, hoping the thunderclouds overhead didn’t soak him and his friends - and hoped the rain didn’t start pouring until after they found whatever it was that had left these tracks and whatever had a grainy photograph in the morning’s paper.
After one bout of thunder stopped rumbling, Connor could hear some clicking. A constant clicking, more like a cicada than a bunch of coughs, and I reallly need better timing metaphors.
The clicks began to crescendo into another sound - one cut off by the noise a droid makes when it hits the ground from midair. From right behind Connor.
He turned around right away, looking down at the purplish-grey gangly beast that had a spear in its side.
“You’re welcome,” a woman told Connor, who turned again, this time to see who had just saved him.
And Connor’s mind goes blank because he’s looking at Aeryn Sun and Eowyn and girl!Bobba Fett all in one body.
A second later, it hits him who she is: Helen Watt. The Helen Watt. You disappeared in Clearwell Caves seven years ago, Connor thought as he stared, thunderstruck that he finally got to meet her. Wait, if you’re not dead…
“What was that?” Connor asks, pointing at the fallen Future Predator.
“Hard to say,” Helen said, tucking what can only be an atlatl back into her belt without losing a step as she moves toward the fallen Future Predator.
“Classified?” Connor asked, hoping that that isn’t where she’s been all this time: locked away because of something classified.
“No, and not difficult to pronounce, either,” she said as she fiddled with the spear, rotating it back and forth some before yanking it out of the belly of the beast.
Connor recognized the old joke from various sci-fi shows. “So what is it?”
Holding a bamboo spear tipped with a venom-coated Protodonata mandible. “What does it appear to be?” she asked him.
“Long teeth, no noticeable eyes or ears, but there’s a swelling atop the cranium.”
“You heard it before I speared it,” Helen said, giving a hint.
“Clicks,” Connor said. “Can’t be a whale…but it can’t be a bat, either.”
A pity, then. “Hence my answer to you as to what it is.”
“Huh.”
“And you are?” Helen asked.
“Connor. I mean, my name’s Connor Temple. My friends are on their way back,” he blurted out, not entirely sure why.
“Then I’ll be off.”
“What? I mean, why?” he asked.
She looked at him with tired eyes. “Habit,” was all she said as she turned her head to look at the dirty part of the carcass and the ground to one side of it.
Sensing his hero was about to leave, Connor said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask,” Helen said.
“Where did you go? When you vanished off the face of the earth, I mean. Nobody knew where you were.”
Solitude. It wasn’t deliberate, but it’s what I like these days. She glanced at Connor, considering him. “Help me move this, and you’ll have your answer.”
Connor looked at the body. “You sure its dead?”
.**.
How did I forget to get her autograph? is what Connor was asking himself when Tom and Duncan entered the clearing where he was sitting on a fallen log.
“Connor,” Duncan said, seeing that their friend was staring at no spot in particular. Though Duncan and Tom didn’t know that there had been an Anomaly in that spot only five minutes ago. “Wake up, Sleeper.”
“Yeah, I’m your only hope,” Connor said.
“What’d you find?” Tom asked.
“I found…” and it wasn’t that he wasn’t sure how to describe it. More that he wasn’t sure he should. “Found a great idea. Bigger’n Middle Earth.”
”Mind sharing with us?” Duncan asked.
“Course I will. What do ya take me for?” And their hike back home consisted primarily of whether it should be a novel or a graphic novel that featured a time-traveling superheroine.
========================================
Home Office:
“Perhaps we should bring in an expert, Sir James?”
“And whom would you recommend, Miss Brown?” Lester inquired. “Stephen Hawking?”
“To ascertain the nature of the Anomalies,” she said, agreeing with him though it wasn’t where she had been aiming. “I was thinking more along the human side of the equation.”
“I rather thought that was why you were here,” he said, said both in jest and to remind her that people were her area of expertise. “Now, who did you have in mind?”
“Professor Nicholas Cutter. He heads the Department of Evolutionary Zoology at -” stopping when Lester held up one hand. At the Central Metropolitan University.
“And why, pray tell, would he be ideal to bring aboard?”
Claudia answered, “After our last encounter with Helen, I went through her publications. Professor Cutter’s name came up as the man who challenged her theories the most often.”
Lester considered that. “Very well,” he said at last. “Sound him out.”
Claudia Brown nodded, thinking to herself that With any luck, Cutter will agree to help.
.**.
Cutter’s Office:
“No,” he replied in a strong Scots accent.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Claudia said.
“You asked me if I’d be willing to help figure out what Dr. Watt was up to.”
“Yes,” Claudia said. Essentially.
“And that’s a thing I’m not willing to do,” Nick said.
“Why is that?” Claudia asked.
“Have you even read anything she wrote?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact I have.”
“And?”
“And I’ll admit she does have some…unconventional theories.”
Nick snorted. “Unconventional? No, I’m unconventional, with my insistence that it’s the parts of evolutionary theory that Darwin didn’t detail, that are the most important. Helen Watt’s a whole other kettle of fish.”
Claudia took a seat to reinforce the fact that she wasn’t leaving anytime soon. “How so?”
He waved his hand as though sifting for the right curse to wield about his professional rival. “Helen’s always thought that there was something else, something nobody’s ever considered, that was behind certain events in evolution.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Claudia said.
“I was being polite.”
Ah, diplomacy.
========================================
The End.
now crossposted to Archive of our own - "Helen Watt".
Author: Keenir.
Written at the request of Lsellersfic for Help Haiti.
Prompt: What if Helen had never met Nick Cutter?
Pairing, if any: None.
Rating: Mature(?)
Summary: How Helen changes the world around her.
Disclaimer: I own none of the canon characters. If anyone reading this wants to play in this timeline, go right ahead - just share with the rest of us, okay?
NOTE: if this is not what you had in mind with the request, just say so, and I'll try again; no harm, no foul.
======================================================================
There are things said of Helen…
Some say she was struck by lightning a second after she was born.
Some say she looked to be perpetually sun-kissed.
Some say she was Satan, Nián, and a dozen other forces of darkness.
Some say she shouldered a weight no one should
Some say her pinkie finger could cure diseases.
Some say her laugh, though worn, was infectious.
Everyone who knew her, agreed that she was distinctive.
========================================
Blue Sky Park:
Ryan knew there was a good chance that one of the Creatures loose in this era was stalking him and his unit. Even so, with Lacey watching their six, they remained where they were, standing in camouflage - “Hold it right there,” he barked at Helen when she ran into the small clearing they were waiting in. More Creatures were behind her - pursuing her, like Ryan was, only carnassally-inclined.
Helen Watt was only remarkable if you knew what to look at. Such as those lean calves and arms, honed over the course of God knows how much running and swimming and climbing. Such as the gritty determination that was a constant on her face, even right now when she had to be completely exhausted and cornered.
“Captain,” she said just as her pursuers came into view. Velociraptors, or near enough for paperwork. But Helen wasn’t looking at the dinosaurs, or even at the soldiers.
What had her attention soon came out from the underbrush, leaping into the space between Helen and Ryan, roaring at both of them, one at a time. Long canines shone, scattered sunlight off wet blood on the stabbing instruments.
The velociraptors roared back at the big cat, who charged the feathered Creatures.
Ryan’s men opened fire on the three Creatures while they were circling, killing the Creatures neatly.
And, Tom noticed, Helen Watt was nowhere to be seen, and no blood trail to show where she’d gone. We won’t chase you this time. We get two sets of Creatures and somebody who raised one of them. That’s a bonus. Makes it easier to say you got away. In his mind, Ryan felt he owed her - not much, but enough for right now.
During their first encounter with Helen, she’d stayed put long enough for them to triangulate her position with a radio she’d lifted off Private Tremayne…Helen disappeared just before Ryan had been able to catch her, but she’d left behind an Arthropleurid just weakly alive enough to keep its venom from being useless to a bitten Lt. Lacey.
“Next time,” Tom Ryan said to the wind in the woods, his officers nodding agreement that there would be a next time. We’ll see what happens next time.
========================================
Forest of Dean:
Connor Temple continued to follow the mysterious footprints through the forest, hoping the thunderclouds overhead didn’t soak him and his friends - and hoped the rain didn’t start pouring until after they found whatever it was that had left these tracks and whatever had a grainy photograph in the morning’s paper.
After one bout of thunder stopped rumbling, Connor could hear some clicking. A constant clicking, more like a cicada than a bunch of coughs, and I reallly need better timing metaphors.
The clicks began to crescendo into another sound - one cut off by the noise a droid makes when it hits the ground from midair. From right behind Connor.
He turned around right away, looking down at the purplish-grey gangly beast that had a spear in its side.
“You’re welcome,” a woman told Connor, who turned again, this time to see who had just saved him.
And Connor’s mind goes blank because he’s looking at Aeryn Sun and Eowyn and girl!Bobba Fett all in one body.
A second later, it hits him who she is: Helen Watt. The Helen Watt. You disappeared in Clearwell Caves seven years ago, Connor thought as he stared, thunderstruck that he finally got to meet her. Wait, if you’re not dead…
“What was that?” Connor asks, pointing at the fallen Future Predator.
“Hard to say,” Helen said, tucking what can only be an atlatl back into her belt without losing a step as she moves toward the fallen Future Predator.
“Classified?” Connor asked, hoping that that isn’t where she’s been all this time: locked away because of something classified.
“No, and not difficult to pronounce, either,” she said as she fiddled with the spear, rotating it back and forth some before yanking it out of the belly of the beast.
Connor recognized the old joke from various sci-fi shows. “So what is it?”
Holding a bamboo spear tipped with a venom-coated Protodonata mandible. “What does it appear to be?” she asked him.
“Long teeth, no noticeable eyes or ears, but there’s a swelling atop the cranium.”
“You heard it before I speared it,” Helen said, giving a hint.
“Clicks,” Connor said. “Can’t be a whale…but it can’t be a bat, either.”
A pity, then. “Hence my answer to you as to what it is.”
“Huh.”
“And you are?” Helen asked.
“Connor. I mean, my name’s Connor Temple. My friends are on their way back,” he blurted out, not entirely sure why.
“Then I’ll be off.”
“What? I mean, why?” he asked.
She looked at him with tired eyes. “Habit,” was all she said as she turned her head to look at the dirty part of the carcass and the ground to one side of it.
Sensing his hero was about to leave, Connor said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask,” Helen said.
“Where did you go? When you vanished off the face of the earth, I mean. Nobody knew where you were.”
Solitude. It wasn’t deliberate, but it’s what I like these days. She glanced at Connor, considering him. “Help me move this, and you’ll have your answer.”
Connor looked at the body. “You sure its dead?”
.**.
How did I forget to get her autograph? is what Connor was asking himself when Tom and Duncan entered the clearing where he was sitting on a fallen log.
“Connor,” Duncan said, seeing that their friend was staring at no spot in particular. Though Duncan and Tom didn’t know that there had been an Anomaly in that spot only five minutes ago. “Wake up, Sleeper.”
“Yeah, I’m your only hope,” Connor said.
“What’d you find?” Tom asked.
“I found…” and it wasn’t that he wasn’t sure how to describe it. More that he wasn’t sure he should. “Found a great idea. Bigger’n Middle Earth.”
”Mind sharing with us?” Duncan asked.
“Course I will. What do ya take me for?” And their hike back home consisted primarily of whether it should be a novel or a graphic novel that featured a time-traveling superheroine.
========================================
Home Office:
“Perhaps we should bring in an expert, Sir James?”
“And whom would you recommend, Miss Brown?” Lester inquired. “Stephen Hawking?”
“To ascertain the nature of the Anomalies,” she said, agreeing with him though it wasn’t where she had been aiming. “I was thinking more along the human side of the equation.”
“I rather thought that was why you were here,” he said, said both in jest and to remind her that people were her area of expertise. “Now, who did you have in mind?”
“Professor Nicholas Cutter. He heads the Department of Evolutionary Zoology at -” stopping when Lester held up one hand. At the Central Metropolitan University.
“And why, pray tell, would he be ideal to bring aboard?”
Claudia answered, “After our last encounter with Helen, I went through her publications. Professor Cutter’s name came up as the man who challenged her theories the most often.”
Lester considered that. “Very well,” he said at last. “Sound him out.”
Claudia Brown nodded, thinking to herself that With any luck, Cutter will agree to help.
.**.
Cutter’s Office:
“No,” he replied in a strong Scots accent.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Claudia said.
“You asked me if I’d be willing to help figure out what Dr. Watt was up to.”
“Yes,” Claudia said. Essentially.
“And that’s a thing I’m not willing to do,” Nick said.
“Why is that?” Claudia asked.
“Have you even read anything she wrote?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact I have.”
“And?”
“And I’ll admit she does have some…unconventional theories.”
Nick snorted. “Unconventional? No, I’m unconventional, with my insistence that it’s the parts of evolutionary theory that Darwin didn’t detail, that are the most important. Helen Watt’s a whole other kettle of fish.”
Claudia took a seat to reinforce the fact that she wasn’t leaving anytime soon. “How so?”
He waved his hand as though sifting for the right curse to wield about his professional rival. “Helen’s always thought that there was something else, something nobody’s ever considered, that was behind certain events in evolution.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Claudia said.
“I was being polite.”
Ah, diplomacy.
========================================
The End.