Fic: Lost and Found
I know there's already a bazillion 'Nick and Stephen deal with aftermath of episode 6' fics out there, but I couldn't help it. The boys are just too tempting when they're having angst.
Title: Lost and Found
Author: Athene
Fandom: Primeval
Characters: Nick, Stephen
Pairings: Nick/Claudia (implied), Stephen/Helen (implied)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None (one very small swear word)
Spoilers: Episode 6
Disclaimer: Not mine, ITV and Impossible Pictures own them
Word count: Approx 3300
Summary: Nick and Stephen talk in the wake of terrible events.
It was dark, and his head hurt. Nick lay still for a while, letting his eyes adjust until he could make out the familiar shapes of his own bedroom.
It wasn’t a hangover, he finally decided. His head was pounding in a way that was more consistent with taking a heavy blow. But he couldn’t remember what, or who, might have hit him. In fact, he began to realise, he couldn’t remember anything that might explain his current situation.
He looked to the side and the glowing digital clock told him it was 2.13 AM. It occurred to him that he wasn’t actually in bed. He was lying on top of the duvet, still mostly dressed; only his jacket and shoes seemed to be missing.
What the hell had happened?
Nick slowly sat up on the edge of the bed, and switched the lamp on. The sudden brightness hurt his eyes, and movement awoke numerous other aches and pains across his body. He looked down at himself and noticed dried blood was ground into his palms and under his fingernails. As if someone had tried to wipe it off but not made a very good job of it. He checked himself over, but found only bruises, no real cuts to speak of.
It was while he was carefully running his fingers over the bruised lump on the back of his head that he noticed the long, dark hair on the pillow.
Helen.
She had been here, she had slept here before they all went through to the Permian to find the future anomaly. What had happened next? Clearly they had got back again. He still didn’t remember that part, which was a little worrying. But then, he had woken up in his own bed at home, not in hospital. So how bad could it be?
Nick got up, found his shoes, and headed downstairs. The living room light was on, and he went to investigate.
Stephen was asleep on the couch. That, in and of itself, was not unusual. Stephen frequently came over and they would watch football, or just talk, and drink a few too many beers for him to drive home, and he would crash on the couch. What was unusual was that Stephen had a swollen black eye.
Nick carefully flexed the fingers of his right hand, and looked down at the bruises on his knuckles.
Then he remembered everything.
“Where’s Claudia Brown?” She was gone, and they were all looking at him like he was insane. As far as they were concerned, he possibly was.
“Something’s changed.”
Against the wall of blank stares and worried frowns, Nick had suddenly known what he had to do. Stephen had seen his intention, Stephen had always been able to read him too well. And when he tried to dive back through the anomaly Stephen had grabbed him and pulled him away.
“Wait, Cutter. You’re not making any sense.”
“Let go of me Stephen. I have to get her back.”
“Who? Who is she? Why is she so important?” Stephen had a tight hold on him, still trying to drag him away from the anomaly.
“Let go!”
“Nick. Listen to me. You need to calm down.”
That was the point where Nick snapped. He stopped struggling and glared at the younger man.
“Don’t you tell me what to do Stephen. You don’t have the right. Not any more.”
“Nick. I’m sorr-”
Nick punched Stephen in the face. Hard. Stephen stumbled back and ended up sitting on the ground with an expression so stunned it would have been comic in any other circumstance.
Of all people, it was Connor who had stopped him. A tentative hand on his sleeve, as if he expected he was going to be hit as well.
“Professor. You’re talking about a time paradox, aren’t you? Things are different to how you remember them.”
Nick stared at him, and for the first time since he had said Claudia’s name, he saw something other than disbelief in a face. Connor’s eyes held fear, wonder, but most importantly understanding.
“We’ve changed something in the past. I have to go back and fix the mistake. Get things back to how they were.”
“But, if you don’t know what you did that changed it in the first place, how do you know that you won’t make it worse by trying to change it back?”
That boy was too bloody smart for his own good sometimes.
A noise alerted him to the fact that one of Ryan’s men had got behind him. He didn’t get chance to look round and the blow was totally unexpected. He lost consciousness to the sound of Connor shouting a protest.
Nick watched Stephen sleeping for a moment, then walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. He remembered now why he had blood on his hands. As he started to wash it off he whispered a final thank you to Captain Ryan, the man who had spent the last few months trying to protect Nick and his team, the man who had died doing his duty.
“Cutter?”
He didn’t have to look round to know that Stephen was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Ryan died in my arms. I was the last person he spoke to.”
Stephen didn’t reply. There was nothing to say, really.
He realised after a while that the water was running clear down the drain, and he was only scrubbing at raw skin. The blood was gone. So was Ryan. So was Claudia.
Nick turned the tap off and leaned heavily on the sink, and stared out of the window into the darkness.
“I don’t think I ever even asked him what his first name was.” He finally turned to face Stephen. “Why are you still here?” he asked in a tired voice.
“I didn’t want to leave you alone after that knock to the head.”
The kettle finished boiling and switched itself off. Stephen was the last person he wanted to talk to right now, but he also knew they had to talk sooner or later. They owed each other that much, at least.
“If you’re staying, you’d better get another mug out. You know where they are.”
Stephen made two mugs of coffee while Nick dried his hands. They went back into the living room and Nick sat down in his big red chair. It wasn’t the most comfortable one in the room, but it meant that there was the coffee table between him and Stephen. He needed the distance.
“You had an affair with my wife.” May as well cut to the chase.
“No.” Stephen shook his head. “It wasn’t an affair.”
Nick made a disgusted noise. “Semantics. You slept with her.”
“Yes.”
At least he wasn’t trying to deny it. Not that there was much point after Helen’s little act.
“How many times?”
“What?” Stephen’s voice was heavy with disbelief.
“You heard me. How many?”
“Why?” Stephen threw his hands out in a frustrated gesture. “How will it help to know that? Will it hurt less if I say it was once? Or twice? Or twenty times?”
“How many?” Nick shouted.
“Once.”
Nick wanted to believe him. He really did. Because once could be explained as a mistake. A terrible, possibly even drunken mistake.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Eight years, Stephen?”
“Because she disappeared, and we needed each other.”
“You lied to me.”
“Get off the moral high ground, Nick.” There was anger in Stephen’s voice for the first time since they had started talking. “Things weren’t right with you and Helen for a long time before anything happened with me.”
“She told you that, did she?”
“You both told me. You both confided in me, and I was stuck in the middle watching two people I cared about self destruct. What the hell was I supposed to do?” Stephen got up and started walking around across the room. Nick noticed he was keeping a distance.
“You didn’t have to sleep with her.”
“What? And you’d have preferred it if I slept with you?”
They stared at each other in slightly stunned surprise for a moment. Then Stephen started pacing again.
“Sorry, that was flippant.”
Nick suddenly found the coffee cup very interesting, and couldn’t quite meet Stephen’s eye.
“Do you want to know the truth?” Stephen’s voice was suddenly hard. No flippancy, very little anger. Just hard.
Nick forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. “Yes.”
“I loved Helen.” Stephen let the fact stand alone for a moment before he continued. “I loved her, and I couldn’t do anything about that. I had to keep it hidden, because you got her first, and I valued the friendships I had, with you and with Helen, too much to jeopardise them on a stupid affair. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“But you did.”
Stephen paused, took a breath, and seemed to be considering his next words.
“Helen came to me.”
Nick waited a moment for the bottom to drop out of his world. It didn’t, and he wasn’t sure whether to find that comforting or not. He had expected to be surprised by the revelation. No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had hoped to be surprised. The fact that he wasn’t perhaps said more about the state of his marriage than anything else.
“Then she disappeared, and I wanted to grieve as well, but I wasn’t allowed to, because you took that privilege all yourself.” There was a bitterness to Stephen’s voice. “What was the point of saying something? You were already hurting, why make it worse? She was gone. We got over it, we moved on with our lives.”
“But she came back,” Nick managed to say.
“Yeah, she came back, and now it’s all gone to shit.”
Nick had to agree with that, at least. He didn’t know what to say any more. When he had demanded answers from Stephen, he had been angry, looking for ammunition to throw back at him, to hurt him.
He wanted to hate Stephen. But he couldn’t.
Knowing that Helen had been unfaithful made him angry. Knowing that it had been with Stephen made him feel… betrayed. It occurred to him that it was really supposed to be the other way around. And what did that say? That he valued his relationship with Stephen over that of his wife? That if he was forced to choose, right now he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to take back the manipulative bitch who had screwed them all. In every sense of the word.
No, that wasn’t entirely fair. Nick was aware there was blame to go round for everyone. He had spent eight years blaming himself for her going missing, wondering if they hadn’t argued perhaps she wouldn’t have gone alone. Stephen had been right about one thing - things hadn’t been right between him and Helen for a long time. But after she disappeared he had mentally papered over the cracks and lived with a rose tinted memory of her. Now she was back, and all the animosity and irreconcilable personality differences were back too, and a thousand times worse than before.
Against that, Stephen had been here, a constant friend and source of strength and comfort for the last eight years. The steadiest rock in Nick Cutter’s life. Even now, knowing how he would react, even after getting punched in the face, Stephen had stayed here tonight to make sure that he was okay.
Nick wanted to trust Stephen. But now he wasn’t certain he could do that either.
“Where the hell do we go from here?” he asked in a weary voice.
Stephen sat down again and rubbed his eyes, wincing as he touched the bruise. He looked exhausted, Nick noticed.
“I don’t know.”
Nick realised his coffee had gone cold, untouched. So had Stephen’s. He got up and went to the cabinet, and took out two shot glasses and a bottle of scotch. He guessed he probably shouldn’t mix alcohol with concussion, but he really didn’t care.
Stephen looked sceptical as Nick poured the drinks.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea with a head injury?”
Nick’s reply was to down his shot in one. The sudden shock to the system was enough to pull him out of the mire of indecision. Or at the very least, it was time to side step it for a while.
“So,” he said in a tone of voice very definitely meant he was changing the subject. “What happened after I got knocked out?”
Stephen looked momentarily surprised, then said, “Not a lot. Lester agreed with you that no one should go back through. The argument’s academic now anyway. The anomaly shut down.”
“It’s closed?” Nick’s stomach flipped and he felt sick.
Stephen nodded.
“Then she’s really gone.”
“There are other anomalies. She’ll be back sooner or later.”
“No. Not Helen. Claudia.”
The day’s events had shown that the anomaly to the Permian shifted around in time - on this, their latest trip into the past, they had arrived years before their first visit. And if the anomaly shifted every time it appeared, then he could not guarantee to get back to the exact point in time, the point where they had changed something, ever again, even if it re-opened. There was no way to rectify the change. No way back. He really had lost her.
Stephen leaned forward, fiddling with his still full glass.
“Tell me about Claudia Brown.”
He seemed to be entirely serious and interested, not incredulous. Nick wondered what had happened while he was unconscious that suddenly Stephen was ready to believe him. Maybe Connor had been trying to explain things. Though as often as not that just led to people being more confused, not less.
“She’s with the Home Office. She works for Lester, but she’s not like him. She’s on our side.” He paused, then added, “Mostly.”
“And she’s been working with us for months?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re the only one who remembers her.”
“Apparently so.”
“Connor was talking about temporal paradox and alternate timelines in the car on the way home.” Stephen sounded sceptical.
“Connor may actually be right,” Nick said, not quite believing it even as he said it.
“So why has she disappeared but not the rest of us?”
Nick sighed. “I have absolutely no idea.”
Stephen didn’t say anything for a while. When he did speak, it was slowly, as if he wasn’t sure how Nick would react.
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Nick said without hesitation. Then he remembered that in this timeline, this reality, Claudia had never been here, and they hadn’t all seen that kiss in front of the anomaly.
The irony was that Nick had been avoiding mentioning anything about his potential relationship with Claudia, mostly because he wasn’t even certain about the nature of their relationship. At least, not until that kiss. But he had been particularly unsure about telling Stephen because he suspected the younger man would consider it a betrayal of Helen.
Now that really was irony, he thought.
But at least the Stephen in his timeline would have known who he was talking about, and would have understood that this wasn’t some sudden development. It had been gradually building for months now - a look here, a flirting comment there, a growing trust and attraction that Nick had feared he might never feel again.
“Do you love her?”
Nick wondered if he heard a hint of accusation in Stephen’s voice. Then decided he was being paranoid. Helen had asked him the same question back in the Permian, but she obviously hadn’t believed that he did. The derisory tone of voice with which she had dismissed ‘that girl’ told him that Helen didn’t believe for a second that his feelings for Claudia could rival what they had had. When she had asked him if he loved her, it wasn’t a serious question in the slightest, more a taunt, a bait to provoke him into admitting how he really felt.
The truth was he wasn’t even sure himself how he did feel. He didn’t know if all he had with Claudia was playful flirtation, or if there was a deeper emotion behind their banter. He thought, he hoped, it was the latter. Now it looked like he would never find out either way. She was gone, and the sudden, intense feeling of loss came as a genuine surprise.
“Cutter?” Stephen prompted, and Nick realised he hadn’t replied.
“I think I was starting to,” he said honestly.
There was a flicker of something - surprise? - on Stephen’s face, but he covered it quickly.
“So why are you sitting here talking to me?”
“What?” Nick didn’t understand. Maybe he was just too tired. Or concussed.
“If she’s that important to you, why aren’t you out there trying to get her back?”
“She’s gone, Stephen. She’s been erased from history. What the hell can I do?”
“Something. Anything. I don’t know.” Stephen sounded annoyed. “All I know is that when Helen went missing you were out in the Forest of Dean for months, searching for any clue, any remote possibility, long after everyone else said it was hopeless.”
“We didn’t know about the anomalies then. I believed there had to be a rational explanation. People didn’t just disappear without a trace. This… this is completely different.”
“So you’re just going to give up on someone that you say you’re falling in love with? Maybe Connor was right, you are from a different timeline. Because you’re not the Nick Cutter I know.”
He was about to protest, to rail against Stephen and his unreasonable accusations. But then Nick hesitated. Stephen was right. And he had also given Nick an idea. There was a sudden glimmer of hope in what seemed like an otherwise desperate situation.
“Connor. You said he had a theory?”
Stephen nodded. “He had about a hundred. And that was just in the car on the way home. God knows what he’s come up with by now.”
Nick patted down his pockets, looking for his mobile. It finally occurred to him that it had last been in his jacket, and he vaguely remembered seeing that in a crumpled heap on the bedroom floor. Before he could get up, Stephen’s phone slid across the coffee table to him.
“It’s gone three in the morning, Cutter. He won’t be awake.” Stephen’s warning seemed a touch redundant after he had already passed the phone over.
Nick speed dialled Connor’s number anyway.
“He’s a student. Of course he’ll be awake,” Nick said.
“Stephen?” Connor’s voice was thick with sleep and sounded confused. Before Nick could respond, Connor suddenly became more alert and panicked. “Are you okay? Did he hit you again? I told you you should have let me stay as well.”
“It’s me, Cutter.” Without thinking, Nick made an expression of amused exasperation at Stephen, as if nothing had changed between them. Then he remembered, and tried to look elsewhere.
“Professor? Oh, sorry. I thought… the name came up as Stephen’s phone. Why are you calling me on Stephen’s phone? Why is it three o’clock?” Nick wondered how the boy could cycle through shocked, contrite, and confused so quickly.
“That doesn’t matter. And no, I haven’t bloody hit him again. Connor, I need to talk to you about temporal paradox.”
“What? Why? Whe…? Eh?”
He met Stephen’s eye again, and the younger man nodded his support. Nick suspected he was going to need it, and not just Stephen. He needed all the friends he could get to make this work. Because whatever else happened, this time he wasn’t going to stop until he found the woman he loved.
“We’re going to get Claudia Brown back.”
Title: Lost and Found
Author: Athene
Fandom: Primeval
Characters: Nick, Stephen
Pairings: Nick/Claudia (implied), Stephen/Helen (implied)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None (one very small swear word)
Spoilers: Episode 6
Disclaimer: Not mine, ITV and Impossible Pictures own them
Word count: Approx 3300
Summary: Nick and Stephen talk in the wake of terrible events.
It was dark, and his head hurt. Nick lay still for a while, letting his eyes adjust until he could make out the familiar shapes of his own bedroom.
It wasn’t a hangover, he finally decided. His head was pounding in a way that was more consistent with taking a heavy blow. But he couldn’t remember what, or who, might have hit him. In fact, he began to realise, he couldn’t remember anything that might explain his current situation.
He looked to the side and the glowing digital clock told him it was 2.13 AM. It occurred to him that he wasn’t actually in bed. He was lying on top of the duvet, still mostly dressed; only his jacket and shoes seemed to be missing.
What the hell had happened?
Nick slowly sat up on the edge of the bed, and switched the lamp on. The sudden brightness hurt his eyes, and movement awoke numerous other aches and pains across his body. He looked down at himself and noticed dried blood was ground into his palms and under his fingernails. As if someone had tried to wipe it off but not made a very good job of it. He checked himself over, but found only bruises, no real cuts to speak of.
It was while he was carefully running his fingers over the bruised lump on the back of his head that he noticed the long, dark hair on the pillow.
Helen.
She had been here, she had slept here before they all went through to the Permian to find the future anomaly. What had happened next? Clearly they had got back again. He still didn’t remember that part, which was a little worrying. But then, he had woken up in his own bed at home, not in hospital. So how bad could it be?
Nick got up, found his shoes, and headed downstairs. The living room light was on, and he went to investigate.
Stephen was asleep on the couch. That, in and of itself, was not unusual. Stephen frequently came over and they would watch football, or just talk, and drink a few too many beers for him to drive home, and he would crash on the couch. What was unusual was that Stephen had a swollen black eye.
Nick carefully flexed the fingers of his right hand, and looked down at the bruises on his knuckles.
Then he remembered everything.
“Where’s Claudia Brown?” She was gone, and they were all looking at him like he was insane. As far as they were concerned, he possibly was.
“Something’s changed.”
Against the wall of blank stares and worried frowns, Nick had suddenly known what he had to do. Stephen had seen his intention, Stephen had always been able to read him too well. And when he tried to dive back through the anomaly Stephen had grabbed him and pulled him away.
“Wait, Cutter. You’re not making any sense.”
“Let go of me Stephen. I have to get her back.”
“Who? Who is she? Why is she so important?” Stephen had a tight hold on him, still trying to drag him away from the anomaly.
“Let go!”
“Nick. Listen to me. You need to calm down.”
That was the point where Nick snapped. He stopped struggling and glared at the younger man.
“Don’t you tell me what to do Stephen. You don’t have the right. Not any more.”
“Nick. I’m sorr-”
Nick punched Stephen in the face. Hard. Stephen stumbled back and ended up sitting on the ground with an expression so stunned it would have been comic in any other circumstance.
Of all people, it was Connor who had stopped him. A tentative hand on his sleeve, as if he expected he was going to be hit as well.
“Professor. You’re talking about a time paradox, aren’t you? Things are different to how you remember them.”
Nick stared at him, and for the first time since he had said Claudia’s name, he saw something other than disbelief in a face. Connor’s eyes held fear, wonder, but most importantly understanding.
“We’ve changed something in the past. I have to go back and fix the mistake. Get things back to how they were.”
“But, if you don’t know what you did that changed it in the first place, how do you know that you won’t make it worse by trying to change it back?”
That boy was too bloody smart for his own good sometimes.
A noise alerted him to the fact that one of Ryan’s men had got behind him. He didn’t get chance to look round and the blow was totally unexpected. He lost consciousness to the sound of Connor shouting a protest.
Nick watched Stephen sleeping for a moment, then walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. He remembered now why he had blood on his hands. As he started to wash it off he whispered a final thank you to Captain Ryan, the man who had spent the last few months trying to protect Nick and his team, the man who had died doing his duty.
“Cutter?”
He didn’t have to look round to know that Stephen was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Ryan died in my arms. I was the last person he spoke to.”
Stephen didn’t reply. There was nothing to say, really.
He realised after a while that the water was running clear down the drain, and he was only scrubbing at raw skin. The blood was gone. So was Ryan. So was Claudia.
Nick turned the tap off and leaned heavily on the sink, and stared out of the window into the darkness.
“I don’t think I ever even asked him what his first name was.” He finally turned to face Stephen. “Why are you still here?” he asked in a tired voice.
“I didn’t want to leave you alone after that knock to the head.”
The kettle finished boiling and switched itself off. Stephen was the last person he wanted to talk to right now, but he also knew they had to talk sooner or later. They owed each other that much, at least.
“If you’re staying, you’d better get another mug out. You know where they are.”
Stephen made two mugs of coffee while Nick dried his hands. They went back into the living room and Nick sat down in his big red chair. It wasn’t the most comfortable one in the room, but it meant that there was the coffee table between him and Stephen. He needed the distance.
“You had an affair with my wife.” May as well cut to the chase.
“No.” Stephen shook his head. “It wasn’t an affair.”
Nick made a disgusted noise. “Semantics. You slept with her.”
“Yes.”
At least he wasn’t trying to deny it. Not that there was much point after Helen’s little act.
“How many times?”
“What?” Stephen’s voice was heavy with disbelief.
“You heard me. How many?”
“Why?” Stephen threw his hands out in a frustrated gesture. “How will it help to know that? Will it hurt less if I say it was once? Or twice? Or twenty times?”
“How many?” Nick shouted.
“Once.”
Nick wanted to believe him. He really did. Because once could be explained as a mistake. A terrible, possibly even drunken mistake.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Eight years, Stephen?”
“Because she disappeared, and we needed each other.”
“You lied to me.”
“Get off the moral high ground, Nick.” There was anger in Stephen’s voice for the first time since they had started talking. “Things weren’t right with you and Helen for a long time before anything happened with me.”
“She told you that, did she?”
“You both told me. You both confided in me, and I was stuck in the middle watching two people I cared about self destruct. What the hell was I supposed to do?” Stephen got up and started walking around across the room. Nick noticed he was keeping a distance.
“You didn’t have to sleep with her.”
“What? And you’d have preferred it if I slept with you?”
They stared at each other in slightly stunned surprise for a moment. Then Stephen started pacing again.
“Sorry, that was flippant.”
Nick suddenly found the coffee cup very interesting, and couldn’t quite meet Stephen’s eye.
“Do you want to know the truth?” Stephen’s voice was suddenly hard. No flippancy, very little anger. Just hard.
Nick forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. “Yes.”
“I loved Helen.” Stephen let the fact stand alone for a moment before he continued. “I loved her, and I couldn’t do anything about that. I had to keep it hidden, because you got her first, and I valued the friendships I had, with you and with Helen, too much to jeopardise them on a stupid affair. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“But you did.”
Stephen paused, took a breath, and seemed to be considering his next words.
“Helen came to me.”
Nick waited a moment for the bottom to drop out of his world. It didn’t, and he wasn’t sure whether to find that comforting or not. He had expected to be surprised by the revelation. No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had hoped to be surprised. The fact that he wasn’t perhaps said more about the state of his marriage than anything else.
“Then she disappeared, and I wanted to grieve as well, but I wasn’t allowed to, because you took that privilege all yourself.” There was a bitterness to Stephen’s voice. “What was the point of saying something? You were already hurting, why make it worse? She was gone. We got over it, we moved on with our lives.”
“But she came back,” Nick managed to say.
“Yeah, she came back, and now it’s all gone to shit.”
Nick had to agree with that, at least. He didn’t know what to say any more. When he had demanded answers from Stephen, he had been angry, looking for ammunition to throw back at him, to hurt him.
He wanted to hate Stephen. But he couldn’t.
Knowing that Helen had been unfaithful made him angry. Knowing that it had been with Stephen made him feel… betrayed. It occurred to him that it was really supposed to be the other way around. And what did that say? That he valued his relationship with Stephen over that of his wife? That if he was forced to choose, right now he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to take back the manipulative bitch who had screwed them all. In every sense of the word.
No, that wasn’t entirely fair. Nick was aware there was blame to go round for everyone. He had spent eight years blaming himself for her going missing, wondering if they hadn’t argued perhaps she wouldn’t have gone alone. Stephen had been right about one thing - things hadn’t been right between him and Helen for a long time. But after she disappeared he had mentally papered over the cracks and lived with a rose tinted memory of her. Now she was back, and all the animosity and irreconcilable personality differences were back too, and a thousand times worse than before.
Against that, Stephen had been here, a constant friend and source of strength and comfort for the last eight years. The steadiest rock in Nick Cutter’s life. Even now, knowing how he would react, even after getting punched in the face, Stephen had stayed here tonight to make sure that he was okay.
Nick wanted to trust Stephen. But now he wasn’t certain he could do that either.
“Where the hell do we go from here?” he asked in a weary voice.
Stephen sat down again and rubbed his eyes, wincing as he touched the bruise. He looked exhausted, Nick noticed.
“I don’t know.”
Nick realised his coffee had gone cold, untouched. So had Stephen’s. He got up and went to the cabinet, and took out two shot glasses and a bottle of scotch. He guessed he probably shouldn’t mix alcohol with concussion, but he really didn’t care.
Stephen looked sceptical as Nick poured the drinks.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea with a head injury?”
Nick’s reply was to down his shot in one. The sudden shock to the system was enough to pull him out of the mire of indecision. Or at the very least, it was time to side step it for a while.
“So,” he said in a tone of voice very definitely meant he was changing the subject. “What happened after I got knocked out?”
Stephen looked momentarily surprised, then said, “Not a lot. Lester agreed with you that no one should go back through. The argument’s academic now anyway. The anomaly shut down.”
“It’s closed?” Nick’s stomach flipped and he felt sick.
Stephen nodded.
“Then she’s really gone.”
“There are other anomalies. She’ll be back sooner or later.”
“No. Not Helen. Claudia.”
The day’s events had shown that the anomaly to the Permian shifted around in time - on this, their latest trip into the past, they had arrived years before their first visit. And if the anomaly shifted every time it appeared, then he could not guarantee to get back to the exact point in time, the point where they had changed something, ever again, even if it re-opened. There was no way to rectify the change. No way back. He really had lost her.
Stephen leaned forward, fiddling with his still full glass.
“Tell me about Claudia Brown.”
He seemed to be entirely serious and interested, not incredulous. Nick wondered what had happened while he was unconscious that suddenly Stephen was ready to believe him. Maybe Connor had been trying to explain things. Though as often as not that just led to people being more confused, not less.
“She’s with the Home Office. She works for Lester, but she’s not like him. She’s on our side.” He paused, then added, “Mostly.”
“And she’s been working with us for months?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re the only one who remembers her.”
“Apparently so.”
“Connor was talking about temporal paradox and alternate timelines in the car on the way home.” Stephen sounded sceptical.
“Connor may actually be right,” Nick said, not quite believing it even as he said it.
“So why has she disappeared but not the rest of us?”
Nick sighed. “I have absolutely no idea.”
Stephen didn’t say anything for a while. When he did speak, it was slowly, as if he wasn’t sure how Nick would react.
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Nick said without hesitation. Then he remembered that in this timeline, this reality, Claudia had never been here, and they hadn’t all seen that kiss in front of the anomaly.
The irony was that Nick had been avoiding mentioning anything about his potential relationship with Claudia, mostly because he wasn’t even certain about the nature of their relationship. At least, not until that kiss. But he had been particularly unsure about telling Stephen because he suspected the younger man would consider it a betrayal of Helen.
Now that really was irony, he thought.
But at least the Stephen in his timeline would have known who he was talking about, and would have understood that this wasn’t some sudden development. It had been gradually building for months now - a look here, a flirting comment there, a growing trust and attraction that Nick had feared he might never feel again.
“Do you love her?”
Nick wondered if he heard a hint of accusation in Stephen’s voice. Then decided he was being paranoid. Helen had asked him the same question back in the Permian, but she obviously hadn’t believed that he did. The derisory tone of voice with which she had dismissed ‘that girl’ told him that Helen didn’t believe for a second that his feelings for Claudia could rival what they had had. When she had asked him if he loved her, it wasn’t a serious question in the slightest, more a taunt, a bait to provoke him into admitting how he really felt.
The truth was he wasn’t even sure himself how he did feel. He didn’t know if all he had with Claudia was playful flirtation, or if there was a deeper emotion behind their banter. He thought, he hoped, it was the latter. Now it looked like he would never find out either way. She was gone, and the sudden, intense feeling of loss came as a genuine surprise.
“Cutter?” Stephen prompted, and Nick realised he hadn’t replied.
“I think I was starting to,” he said honestly.
There was a flicker of something - surprise? - on Stephen’s face, but he covered it quickly.
“So why are you sitting here talking to me?”
“What?” Nick didn’t understand. Maybe he was just too tired. Or concussed.
“If she’s that important to you, why aren’t you out there trying to get her back?”
“She’s gone, Stephen. She’s been erased from history. What the hell can I do?”
“Something. Anything. I don’t know.” Stephen sounded annoyed. “All I know is that when Helen went missing you were out in the Forest of Dean for months, searching for any clue, any remote possibility, long after everyone else said it was hopeless.”
“We didn’t know about the anomalies then. I believed there had to be a rational explanation. People didn’t just disappear without a trace. This… this is completely different.”
“So you’re just going to give up on someone that you say you’re falling in love with? Maybe Connor was right, you are from a different timeline. Because you’re not the Nick Cutter I know.”
He was about to protest, to rail against Stephen and his unreasonable accusations. But then Nick hesitated. Stephen was right. And he had also given Nick an idea. There was a sudden glimmer of hope in what seemed like an otherwise desperate situation.
“Connor. You said he had a theory?”
Stephen nodded. “He had about a hundred. And that was just in the car on the way home. God knows what he’s come up with by now.”
Nick patted down his pockets, looking for his mobile. It finally occurred to him that it had last been in his jacket, and he vaguely remembered seeing that in a crumpled heap on the bedroom floor. Before he could get up, Stephen’s phone slid across the coffee table to him.
“It’s gone three in the morning, Cutter. He won’t be awake.” Stephen’s warning seemed a touch redundant after he had already passed the phone over.
Nick speed dialled Connor’s number anyway.
“He’s a student. Of course he’ll be awake,” Nick said.
“Stephen?” Connor’s voice was thick with sleep and sounded confused. Before Nick could respond, Connor suddenly became more alert and panicked. “Are you okay? Did he hit you again? I told you you should have let me stay as well.”
“It’s me, Cutter.” Without thinking, Nick made an expression of amused exasperation at Stephen, as if nothing had changed between them. Then he remembered, and tried to look elsewhere.
“Professor? Oh, sorry. I thought… the name came up as Stephen’s phone. Why are you calling me on Stephen’s phone? Why is it three o’clock?” Nick wondered how the boy could cycle through shocked, contrite, and confused so quickly.
“That doesn’t matter. And no, I haven’t bloody hit him again. Connor, I need to talk to you about temporal paradox.”
“What? Why? Whe…? Eh?”
He met Stephen’s eye again, and the younger man nodded his support. Nick suspected he was going to need it, and not just Stephen. He needed all the friends he could get to make this work. Because whatever else happened, this time he wasn’t going to stop until he found the woman he loved.
“We’re going to get Claudia Brown back.”