TITLE: Fresh Scars

AUTHOR: Aelfgyfu

RATING: Teen (violence, occasional bad language, dubious humour)

CATEGORIES: Drama, angst, episode-related, hurt/comfort, attempts at humour; AU, fix-it

SUMMARY: This story takes a sharp right turn minutes before the end of episode 2.07 to put right what once went wrong. Now everyone has some healing to do—but some far more than others. 

SPOILERS: Everything through 2.07

WARNINGS: Some tasteless humour, some medical detail (although not too much, I hope), and rather a high word count

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not sure "hurt/comfort" is quite the right label; Brilliant Husband suggests "hurt/discomfort": some people just aren't very good at comfort. 

Many thanks to Brilliant Husband (dudethemath),  kristen_mara, hestia8, and lukadreaming, all of whom acted as betas and made many helpful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.

Fresh Scars

by Aelfgyfu

Nick couldn't watch. He felt he ought to, that he owed Stephen that much, not to break eye contact before Stephen did, but his legs gave way and he sank onto the cold floor. Alone. Helen had been gone for years and was gone again, and now he was losing Stephen, who'd stood by him the whole time he'd mourned....

"Stephen, I'm turning on the cages three seconds from my mark." Helen's voice suddenly washed over him, loud and with a faint echo. "Make certain you're inside one! Now: three, two—"

Nick never heard the last number as the slightly muted fire of a handgun erupted inside the room followed by shrieking; he pushed himself back up off the floor as fast as he could. Through the window, he could see sudden flashes, accompanied by sparks and spasms from living creatures. Screams and howls erupted as flames burst from bodies caught in the fields, and fur and skin began to smoke.

He couldn't see anyone standing inside the room. He couldn't see Stephen at all. 

He shouted Stephen's name, pounded at the door again, shouted for Helen to open the door, but she must have been calling over some kind of public address system or intercom. She couldn't hear him. No one could. He pounded, he pushed, he clawed at the broken door controls. Helen must be gone; there was no one to help him.

He'd heard two shots, maybe three. Stephen had been alive a moment before Helen turned the cages back on. Maybe she'd been in time. Through the window he could still see some animals moving, mostly those bat-like future predators; they seemed to be going after injured animals, but that led to some of them getting electrocuted as well. The clamour rose even louder; he doubted Stephen could hear him, even if he were unharmed.

Nick couldn't hit the door any more because he couldn't get enough force behind his battered hands. He started kicking it instead. And kept kicking. He wasn't sure how long he had been at it, banging away at the door by himself, when someone shouted, "Freeze!" and then another voice called his name. He took a moment to glance at the armed men, who were then lowering their weapons, and resumed kicking at the door. Only then did he realize that they were Lester's people, his people. 

"Stephen's in there! With all the creatures!" he managed to explain, waving a hand because he couldn't get his finger to point steadily. "He might have made it! Helen turned the cages back on...."

Soldiers shoved him out of the way, and he tried to push his way back to the window.

"Can't see anything human in there."

"We need someone in the control room."

"Pierce? Still got Temple out there? We need him to the control room."

"Who knows where the control room is? Schmidt, have you—"

More and more voices added to the cacophony and Nick couldn't follow until someone grabbed him by the chin and he winced. Stephen had hit him there. Stephen.

"Sir? Sir, are you with me? Professor Cutter?" A pale, freckled face hovered directly in front of his own.

"What?" he said to the man looking at him from too close for comfort.

"Professor, we need to know what's in there!"

"I don't know any more! She turned the cages back on, and the creatures in the way were killed, I think." Something finally registered. "You said Temple; did he get out safely?"

"Yes! Temple, Ms. Maitland, Ms. Lewis, and some woman I don't know; they're all safe. But sir, I need to know: what's in there? And is there someone else in there with Hart? You said 'she.'"

Nick tried to remember details; they might be important. "More future predators than I could count. A scorpion—maybe more than one. Giant scorpion. I think there were some raptors. A smilodon...." He felt dizzy. Couldn't give up now; he had to remember. Stephen's life might depend on it. He might be still alive. He must be; he'd heard the gunshots....

"Professor? Anything else?"

He couldn't think. Did he even know this big man with the red hair?

"Who is this 'she' you mentioned?"

He could hardly bring himself to say her name. "Helen."

"Helen Cutter?" The man asked in surprise. "Sorry, sir. But...is she in there?"

Someone touched the shoulder of the man questioning him. "We're getting Temple to the controls. I think we're going in any minute. We need to get the Professor out of here. Now."

"If you'll come with me, sir...."

"But Stephen's in there! I have to—"

The second man took over. "We can't open the door until you're clear, Professor."

"You can open the door?" Nick asked in shock. 

"Temple should have control upstairs soon, we're told."

"Then Helen could have—"

"Is she in there?" the big ginger man asked again.

"No, she's gone—no, wait!"

They'd given up waiting for his consent and were dragging him away, two of them; he looked back and saw more soldiers getting into position by the door. 

"No, I have—"

"You have to leave, sir," said one of the men hauling him by the arm, "because we can't get to Hart with you nearby."

They kept propelling him further and further from Stephen. He could still be alive. If he managed to get himself squarely in a cage before Helen turned the power on, and nothing else was fully inside the cage at the time—but if something else had made it into the cage with him, he'd probably be dead. Yet he'd been shooting, maybe to keep his own cage clear. 

Nick heard firing from behind him, lots and lots of gunfire. The soldiers towing him flinched for just a moment. 

"We'll know soon, sir," the man who had been talking to him the most reassured him. He had a surprisingly kind face for a soldier.

Soon wouldn't be soon enough. This man might understand, but who was in charge? Nick wasn't even sure who was running the operation; he hadn't really got on much with the military men since they'd lost Ryan. Stephen would know; he talked to all of them. Stephen.

Nick stumbled, and the soldiers moved from pushing him to supporting him.

"You all right, sir?" the polite man spoke again. 

"I...." I could get back there, Nick realized. He took another stumbling step, they shifted their grip on him, and he broke and began running back the way they'd come before they quite realized what was happening. He was slow, he was too slow, Stephen always laughed at how slowly he ran—and yet he seemed to be outpacing these soldiers, in their heavy gear. They yelled, but of course they didn't raise a weapon towards him.

He rounded a corner by slamming into where the walls joined and shoving off again, but he still had a slight lead. The room should be right in front of him. The firing had decreased, just a few rounds at a time now. There was the room, with a soldier on his knees in front of it....

The solider vomited all over the floor. He raised his face and turned towards Nick, who stumbled to a halt. The men pursuing him grabbed his arms. The one on the floor sat there with his mouth open, staring, horror all over his face as he looked at Nick. There was blood on the soldier, a fair amount of blood, but no one seemed to be assisting him; soldiers just behind him kept their guns trained on the doors, and some were still shooting, single shots now. A terrible stench filled Nick's nostrils, a smell of blood and burning that must have come from that room.

The soldier on the floor wiped his mouth on his sleeve as Nick tried to ask about Stephen, but though he could make his mouth move, he couldn't get any words out. The soldier looked at the floor. 

Nick sagged back into the men who held his arms. He never remembered exiting the building.

***

James Lester was not a man who liked surprises, and he'd had far too many of them over the past twenty-four hours. The phone call from Jenny Lewis he'd just received did not qualify as a good surprise. Yes, it was positive news that she and two of the others had freed themselves—or three, since they seemed to have picked up some kind of stray in Leek's prison. But they didn't have Cutter, and hearing that the creatures had broken containment made his blood run cold. 

James's chest ached and stung. After the fruitless foray for Leek earlier, he had decided to sit this one out at the ARC and handle it by phone and radio. He was starting to regret his decision. He didn't like waiting, and at least if he'd gone, the motion would have given him the illusion of action.

The phone rang again; Lorraine was patching through a sergeant from the operation . "We've got Ms. Lewis, Ms. Maitland, and Mr. Temple safe and sound, together with a Ms. Caroline Steel," a rough voice with a lower-class London accent told him. "They have a...creature with them, sir. It appears to be a dinosaur. It's not very big. They're insisting it's safe, it's a pet, and—"

"I don't care about the damned pet! Have your men reached the building?" Good Lord; had they lost all the competent military types when they lost Ryan?

"They're moving in now, sir. I'll let you know as soon as I have news, but I'm not in contact with Captain Robinson at the moment."

Perhaps Captain Robinson was competent; he knew enough not to listen to this man's blabbering. "Erm, sir, if you don't mind, sir," the sergeant continued, "our medic is checking over the civilians now, but what do you want us to do with the pet? It seems to be wounded."

James restrained himself from telling the man to put the damned dinosaur out of its misery—or his own. That would be bad for morale. "Have you found Cutter yet?" 

"No, sir."

There was a long pause while the sergeant no doubt considered whether he could more tactfully ask for help with the dinosaur, since he seemed incapable of any initiative on his own. James was debating whether he should actually ask how big was "not very big" for a dinosaur when the man told him they'd just found Cutter, and that Cutter seemed to have got the animals confined but was screaming about Stephen Hart.

"What's Hart done now?" James asked, rolling his eyes even though no one could see it.

"Erm, well, sir, it appears—"

It couldn't be that important since Hart hadn't even been on the scene. It was probably just Cutter having his inevitable breakdown at last. But then the soldier finally managed to finish hemming and hawing and got to the point: "Mr. Hart seems to be locked in the room with the creatures."

James hadn't realized he'd been tilting his chair until the front wheels crashed back to the floor. "Dear God." 

***

The next thing Nick could remember was a doctor at the ARC asking him to follow her finger as she waved it back and forth in front of his face. Wasn't she supposed to do that slowly? He closed his eyes. What did it matter anyway? He had a concussion. He'd get over it. Stephen.... He didn't think he'd ever get over that. Couldn't she just leave him alone with his grief?

"Professor Cutter, please," the woman urged him again. 

He opened his eyes. It was easier than talking.

"Professor, I need you to speak to me," she said, clearly keeping her frustration in check. "Do you know what day it is?"

"Tuesday?" he guessed. It was still Tuesday, wasn't it?

"That will do," she said with a small smile. Why the hell was she smiling? "The year?"

"2007? 2007." He was surer of that one.

"Good. I've been concerned that you haven't been speaking; the men who brought you back said you wouldn't talk at all on your way here."

Nick shrugged and then regretted it. His shoulders ached. Everything ached.

"You did give me your name," she coaxed him; "I don't suppose you remember mine?"

He focused on her. She had short black hair, dark skin, and looked to be about his age. She looked familiar. He'd probably met her.

"I have no idea," he confessed.

"Devi Gupta," she said with a small smile. "I'm not sure forgetting that indicates much of anything, though, since you've forgotten it before." She chattered on, and Nick tuned her out. 

"Professor Cutter! Nick." The smile was gone from her face. "All right. I understand that you are not in a mood for small talk after all you've been through. I do, however, need you to work with me. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said grudgingly.

"No nausea?"

"None," he said flatly. That sick feeling in the pit of his stomach didn't really count, surely. That wasn't nausea but regret mixed with guilt and the dregs of fear.

Doctor Gupta nodded curtly and told him what x-rays and scans they would run. "If you begin to feel dizzy or nauseous, I want you to let the nurse know right away."

There was a man standing nearby, he realized, dressed in scrubs. When did he arrive?

That man was wheeling him out before he thought to ask. "The soldiers told me the others were all right—Jenny, Connor, Abby...." He nearly added one more name out of habit, and his stomach turned over. He swallowed and breathed carefully.

"Yes, I understand they had nothing worse than bruises. I'll have someone check on them, if you like." She hesitated a moment, and he closed his eyes. She was about to say something about Stephen. He didn't want sympathy. He didn't deserve sympathy. 

"And as soon as I know anything about Mr. Hart, I promise, I'll let you know."

His eyes flew open in surprise, and there was that damned look of sympathy. She must mean about the body, or the funeral, or something. Efficient, weren't they?

"They did expect the surgery would take hours, so it's not a bad sign that we haven't heard anything yet," she went on.

"What?" She'd said they were fine, just bruises. Connor had been helping the soldiers, so it must be one of the women, Abby, or Clau-Jenny?

She repeated the what she'd just said.

"What surgery? You said they were fine!" Anger pulsed through him. "What haven't you told me?"

Gupta covered her mouth with her fingers. "Didn't anyone tell you?" she said. "Mr. Hart—he's in surgery. It looks—I'm afraid it doesn't look very good. I'm sorry. Someone should have told you." 

The room lurched around Nick.

"Professor Cutter? Are you all right?" she asked him.

No, he wasn't all right. He had no idea what was happening, and he couldn't seem to pull in enough air to ask. But that was all right, since he couldn't think of words for the question either.

Next thing Nick knew, his head was being lowered and a blanket put over him.

"No," he said, pushing the blanket away. "Just tell me what's happening. I thought Stephen was—dead." He forced the word out.

"Dead?" she repeated, like a damned parrot. "No, no, not dead, not last I knew—who told you he was dead?"

Nick groped through his confused memories. Had he just thought Stephen was dead? That man, that soldier outside the room, he was covered in blood and then vomit. Oh, God. He'd just assumed, from the look on that man's face, but that look could have meant anything. He'd done it again, just assumed everything, and he had it all wrong. "He's not dead?" he asked idiotically.

"No. Badly, badly hurt, though," she told him, looking sympathetic again, but this time, he didn't care. "He lost a great deal of blood. He had severe injuries." She went on to say something about getting Stephen to the nearest hospital, about the surgical staff there, but it was more than Nick could take in. She left with assurances that she'd update him, and the man waiting nearby took him to have the scans done.

Doctor Gupta didn't waste time, he'd give her that. As soon as they'd finished the x-rays, before they could even do the CT scan, she was in the room, telling him personally that she'd spoken with Jenny and that she, Abby, and Connor were fine. They were at the hospital, waiting for news about Stephen, but it looked there would be a long wait still. "At this point," she told him, clearly trying to make a reassuring face but not quite achieving it, "no news is good news. As long as they haven't called, they're still operating." She didn't say, and he hasn't died on the table, but Nick had pulled himself together enough to take her meaning.

While the nurse was positioning him for some other silly scans, it occurred to Nick that he ought to have thanked her for the news.

It seemed much later that they finally cleared him of everything but a concussion and badly bruised hands.

"So I can go?" he asked, hopping down already from the bed they'd given him and trying not to show that he regretted moving so fast. 

"No! Of course not! 'Under observation' means staying here overnight!" Doctor Gupta said, grabbing his upper arms. 

Nick tried not to look like he actually appreciated her steadying him. 

"But Stephen's in a hospital," he said in his most reasonable tone. "So if anything goes wrong, I'll be at the hospital, surrounded by medical professionals!" He thought it was a pretty damned good argument.

"I don't even want you riding in a moving vehicle!" the doctor exclaimed.

Nick could have sworn he could outlast any doctor. Stephen had commented on his stubbornness more than once; Lester had as well, with less humour and more acid. Apparently, though, this doctor was made of sterner stuff than most. He found himself confined to the ARC for the night, with promises that he'd be awakened every two hours and updated once he'd passed his checks. He managed to extort a further pledge to wake him sooner if there was any news between times, but in return he had to eat something. He didn't even know what it was. It then sat in his stomach like those horrible meatballs Helen's aunt had cooked for them one holiday.

Nick thought he would never sleep and was horrified to find that he fell asleep right away. The second time the doctor woke him he was alarmed enough to ask, and he discovered those tablets Gupta had told him were for the nausea (which he'd never actually admitted he had) helped him sleep too. He tried objecting that people with head injuries shouldn't be drugged to sleep, but she had the gall to laugh at him.

The third time she woke him, she told him right away that Stephen was out of surgery and in recovery. He had a broken wrist, apparently from falling on it; he also had lacerations to his upper leg. Most seriously, something had slashed his abdomen quite badly. 

"He was lucky," the doctor said. "One of the soldiers told me that if any of the creatures still in the electric field had been touching him, Stephen would have been electrocuted as well. Some were quite close to him, but they weren't in physical contact with him."

That didn't really sound lucky to Nick.

"He's still in critical condition," she told him, unfazed by Nick's failure to celebrate this all as good news. "We'll know more in the morning." 

"I thought it was morning," Nick said groggily, fumbling for his watch to see how late it actually was. She'd made him take it off and put on scrubs and get in a bed in the medical unit. 

"I don't think half past midnight qualifies," she said with a smile.

Only the next morning did Nick realize that Gupta had never gone off duty. She ate breakfast with him and then drove him to the hospital, shrugging off his awkward thanks by pointing out that she wasn't clearing him to drive yet. 

She told him in the car that they'd looked up Stephen's paperwork, and Nick was named as his next of kin and given medical power of attorney. He was stunned. Apparently some time ago, after one near-miss or another, Stephen had done the paperwork so that if he was incapacitated, the doctors would keep Nick informed—and let him make choices for Stephen. Nick remembered none of it; it hadn't happened in his timeline. He didn't even know who Stephen's next of kin had been in his original timeline.

"This is excellent!" the doctor insisted, seeing but not understanding why Nick was less than happy. "I'm sure Mr. Lester has ways of getting information, but this way the doctors will talk directly to us!"

He couldn't very well say that he didn't want full information, or that he was sure it was only an oversight that Stephen hadn't revoked all this legal work.

When they reached the hospital Gupta went off to locate doctors after showing him to the others: Jenny, Abby, and Connor were in a small waiting room on the second floor, practically huddled together all on one couch, not asleep but not speaking either. Jenny brought him over to a chair next to her side of the couch. Abby looked bruised and scraped, but she gave Nick the tiniest of smiles. Connor simply looked haunted and wouldn't meet his eyes. They'd brought Connor to the control room; they'd said there were cameras. What had he seen?

But Nick barely had time to talk to them before the doctor was back, whisking him off to meet with one of the hospital's doctors, for which she naturally stayed.

Nick had had concussions before. He didn't tend to throw up, despite what Gupta had feared the night before. After a few minutes listening to Stephen's doctor, however, he had to have a long sit-down on the floor of the nearest toilets. He did stay in control long enough to authorize Gupta to talk to all the doctors in his stead. He managed to keep his breakfast in, but barely. 

"Professor?" Connor pushed the door open a few minutes later. Nick looked up at him. Connor looked like he felt—terrible shadows under his eyes, hair dishevelled, clothes a mess, just a little unsteady on his feet.

Connor plunked himself down on the cold tiles, back against the wall, next to Nick. "Doctor Gupta asked me to check on you."

"I'm...fine. I just—God, never, ever ask a doctor for details about thoracic surgery."

"Can you give me the, erm," Connor waved a hand as if he expected to fish the word out of the air—"executive summary?"

Nick took a deep breath. "A predator ripped Stephen's belly open, and they took a few bits out and sewed the rest back together."

Connor nodded, taking this surprisingly well. "And they sewed him back together okay?"

"I think so. I couldn't...couldn't follow after the couple of minutes. As soon as our doctor asked a question, the other one answered in medicalese, and I...." Nick swallowed. He'd comprehended just enough to need to come in here. 

Connor half turned to face him. "He's gonna make it, right?"

Nick swallowed again. He had to pull himself together. He wasn't the only one having a hard time here. And he'd hadn't had the guts—bad term—hadn't had the balls to look into that room himself at the crucial moments. But Connor had seen something over the cameras. He must have done, to be so unsurprised.

He couldn't lie to Connor, though. "The first thing the doctor said was that they're cautiously optimistic. They've got a whole team of medical personnel assigned to Stephen." That sounded upbeat without being misleading.

"That bad, huh?"

So much for upbeat.

They sat there quietly a few more seconds, then Nick said, "Hadn't you better tell the doctor I'm all right?"

"Are you?" Connor asked.

"I'm not throwing up."

Something that might have been a chuckle came from Connor. "Our standards have fallen, haven't they?" Connor hugged his knees tightly. "I saw, you know. Not—not when it happened, but after."

Nick braced himself. 

Connor continued without looking at him; he just stared at the floor in front of him. "I couldn't tell Abby; she feels terrible. She's saying she should have said something different last time she saw him, he might not have been trapped there, but I was telling her we didn't even know how he got there! Oh, and Lester's gonna want to ask you about that, because none of us could work it out."

"He wasn't trapped," Nick said briefly. "He came—he thought we were dead and Helen was in trouble." He'd better start getting his story straight in his head, because he'd probably be telling it a lot in the next few days, and there was no way in hell he was going to let Stephen be the bad guy in this. Stephen had been stupid, incredibly stupid, but he'd also been unbelievably brave, and generous, and—Nick had fired him, hadn't he? Oh, damn.

"How?" Connor was asking.

Nick sketched out what he knew as briefly as possible, then waited for Connor to get back to his story. Connor dithered a bit, telling him about their escape, and about the soldiers bringing him back to help with the computers, but he kept circling around the same thing. 

Connor's voice was just a whisper when he said, "When I got the right camera, and focused on him, we thought he was dead. I mean, he was in a pool of blood, and we could tell most of it was his. But one of the SFs kept insisting he'd seen men lose more blood and live, and he was lying right in the middle of a big cage, so I could turn the cages off and on again really fast and zap some more animals before they sent the men into the room.

"And then they shot everything that moved, but Stephen never moved, so...." Connor's voice cracked, and Nick realized Connor was wiping at his eyes, and he put his arm awkwardly around the boy's shoulders. Young man, he corrected himself. Connor certainly wasn't a boy any more; yesterday had probably wiped the last vestiges of that from him. "They had to clear the whole room, there were still creatures alive, but somebody checked him for a pulse, and then they were pressing all these bandages against him and he still didn't move...."

Nick pulled Connor close to his side and let him cry. He didn't know what to say.

"And I was supposed to be making sure you were all right," Connor sniffled, and then he jumped up to get some to wipe his nose. They'd just finished getting Connor cleaned up and were heading for the door when an annoyed Lester appeared: not only had he come to the hospital, but apparently the women had also finally become worried enough to send him in after them.

***

They weren't letting Cutter in to see Hart yet, so after he'd managed to retrieve both Cutter and Temple from the washroom, James steered Cutter into the tiny, optimistically named "conference room" that Jenny had managed to secure for a preliminary debriefing. He had heard from Jenny, Connor, and Abby. He remained completely in the dark about how Stephen had managed not only to turn up at the scene but also to lock himself in a room full of predators from various eras. That man had a singular talent for self-destruction. 

Gupta had told him that Cutter's concussion had not been too serious and he should be up to questioning, but he still looked like he was in a state of shock. Would the information he got from Cutter be any use?

James supplied him with bottled water, which he ignored, and started with the easy questions. He asked Cutter about events he'd already heard recounted by three other people. Caroline Steel had been taken back to the ARC and would be held there until he could question her himself. Cutter's memories seemed to tally reasonably well with theirs. He recounted his story largely in a monotone, and he was more curt than usual, so that James had to keep pressing him. He didn't refuse to answer anything, though.

Cutter even remained calm about facing a future predator ordered—or was it simply allowed?—to kill him. He remembered his brief video conversation with James surprisingly well for a man who'd thought he was about to die. While he didn't much like Cutter, he did have to admire him—especially now that he knew what it was like to face one of those creatures. 

"Thank you for not giving in to Leek," Cutter said, to his great surprise. 

James gave him a thin smile. "It was the least I could do." He got few enough thanks on the job; he'd never expected to be thanked for allowing someone to be killed.

"No, I mean it. God, the havoc he could have wreaked...." He thought Cutter would say more, and he allowed him time, but nothing more came out.

James expected that when they got to Stephen, Nick would get more animated, but he continued in the same monotone, telling him about his surprise at finding Stephen, and Stephen's apparently equal surprise at finding him alive, with no hint of emotion whatsoever.

"So he thought I was behind the conspiracy?" Lester asked, trying to sound unsurprised himself.

Cutter nodded.

Well, that did explain the bizarre phone conversation he'd had with Stephen about the scorpion on the beach. James had wondered why he insisted he be left completely alone, but he had chalked it up to the other man's growing eccentricity; he'd been unusually hostile to James of late, and distant even from the rest of his team, as far as James knew. 

Perhaps James hadn't handled that call in the best possible way.

He had never had to manage people before this job; his role was usually getting rid of them. He prided himself on reading people well. He could generally ascertain their weaknesses quickly, ordinarily to use those weaknesses against them. He'd never had to try to work around weaknesses or keep a team together until he landed this post, through no fault of his own.

Cutter showed no inclination to continue after telling him that Stephen suspected he was involved in the conspiracy, so James asked, "How on earth did he reach that brilliant conclusion?"

"Helen told him," Nick said bluntly.

"Helen?" She'd been awfully busy for a dead woman.

"Oh, yes. In fact, while I was standing right there, she told Stephen you were trying to kill her."

James had never been bothered by people acting with self-control before, but Cutter's blandness was so unlike him that it was downright disturbing. He looked haggard; when had he last had any proper sleep?

"And Stephen reacted how?"

"Oh, I blew that tale out of the water, and of course he believed me."

Was that an "of course"? He and Stephen had been on poor terms of late, hadn't they? James didn't ask. If he stuck to the point, he had a better chance of getting out of this with useful information, and a team leader who could still function, more or less. He'd seen people behave perfectly rationally right before they abruptly shattered, and he was just a little worried that he was about to see it again. Once the thought might have entertained him, but it didn't today.

The professor then told James about one of the dinosaurs grabbing his ex-wife while the two men fought to pull her out of the room. This information wasn't a surprise either; he'd already heard from the soldiers going over the footage from inside the cage room. A seasoned combat veteran had turned green describing what he'd seen later on the video.

"Given the circumstances, I think you would have been more than justified in leaving her," James couldn't help saying.

That put a spark back in Cutter's eyes. Anger flared briefly, and it was almost a relief to see it. "I couldn't just let her die, not when we could stop it...." Then he trailed off again.

"What?" James asked.

"I...I broke the door mechanism because it was closing on Helen. Stephen pulled his gun, he shot the creature; it let go just long enough to get her out, but then we couldn't close the door properly from outside."

Oh. Oh. So that was how Stephen Hart ended up on the wrong side of the door.

James must have shown something in his face or posture, because Nick nodded. "We realized quickly that one of us would have to go back in."

"So of course Hart volunteered."

Nick snorted, but it wasn't really an amused sound. "Actually, we both looked at Helen."

"And I can imagine how she took that," James said.

"Yeah, that lasted a good two seconds at best."

"And then Stephen decided—"

"And then I, bloody idiot that I am," Nick said with emphasis, "decided I'd be the hero, only I made the error of declaring my intentions. And slowing down...." 

Again James waited for him to complete the thought, but Cutter shook his head and started a new sentence, staring at the wall behind James. "Stephen hit me. Knocked me down. He was in the room with the door shut before I could get back on my feet."

"Of course." Stephen had a history of taking stupid risks; now that James thought about them, he realized it was a history of taking stupid risks where Cutter was involved. Occasionally Hart took boneheaded chances for others, but the moves that seemed destined to earn a Darwin Award usually involved Cutter. There was the incident in the underground with the centipede, more than one charging dinosaur, swimming through a space barely large enough for a robot sub—and those were just the ones James remembered offhand.

Cutter had probably also just explained the bruise on his jaw. James had been trying to decide whether he should ask about it.

"And then what happened?" James prompted.

Cutter continued not to look at him and seemed to be thinking much too hard.

"May I remind you that even if this is a preliminary debriefing, it is still an official investigation, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't edit your account before giving it to me."

Cutter glowered at him. "Stephen said a few things. None of them were addressed to you."

Ah. Apologies, no doubt. 

"Why don't you let me judge what's relevant?" James said smoothly.

Nick sighed loudly, returning more to his natural melodramatic state. "I yelled at him to open the door. He refused. He said to tell Abby and Connor...to be careful." 

It occurred to James to observe how suited Stephen might or might not be to give such advice, but he didn't actually feel like voicing the sentiment.

Nick seemed to realize for the first time that there was a bottle of water on the table in front of him. He opened the cap with a crack and took a long gulp. He set it down.

"And then?" James asked quietly.

Cutter's eyes remained on the table. "And then the creatures moved in, and I—I couldn't look...."

"He still had that gun, didn't he?" James asked; he knew from the soldiers that Hart had used it.

The professor looked up at him again. "But it wouldn't be any use alone against a room full of predators—just delay the inevitable. That must have been what he was thinking."

"And yet here we are, in a hospital and not a morgue," James said, but then he realized that might have been a little blunt given the circumstances.

"Then Helen came over a loudspeaker or something and told Stephen to make sure he was in a cage, that she was going to turn them back on. Then he fired." Cutter's face just slightly looked less grim.

"We've got video from inside the room," James told him. "What we don't have is video of some of the other areas, especially the control centre; we don't know where Helen went from there. Did she come back to where you were?"

Cutter shook his head. "Never saw her again." He paused for a moment. "I suppose I might have missed her if she came up behind me and then went away again. I was trying to get in. But the soldiers will have told you the rest, I'm sure. I couldn't do anything from out there. I couldn't even see Stephen."

Yes, that much had been clear from the second-hand reports. 

"In fact, I thought he was dead until Doctor Gupta told me long after I was brought back to the ARC!" 

James found the new flare of anger reassuring, even if it was aimed at him. 

Doctor Gupta had made Cutter's misunderstanding abundantly clear as well, as if it were somehow his fault that Cutter hadn't been told. And she was normally so soft-spoken.

James nodded; there wasn't much he could say. "Do you have anything else to add?"

Cutter seemed to take the question seriously, but in the end he added nothing.

James turned off the recording device. "How long before you saw her at Leek's menagerie did you know Helen was with Stephen?" It was the only thing that made sense of Cutter suddenly announcing he was firing Hart. James hadn't taken it seriously at the time, and so he hadn't bothered to ask questions.

"Since she showed up with him just after we'd managed to capture the mammoth." That was the same answer Abby and Connor had given.

"He brought her to the scene?" That seemed to be completely irrational, and explaining it had been quite beyond the two junior members of the team.

"He seemed convinced she knew more about the conspiracy, and that I should listen to her." 

So Hart's behaviour defied even Cutter's understanding. "So Helen came back with some story about a conspiracy, and none of you told me anything about it," James said slowly, wondering how much could have been averted if he'd had full information.

Nick nodded.

Lester realized he was fidgeting with the recording machine; he stopped and put it back in a pocket, making sure it was still off. He didn't want any of this on the record. He was trying to consider his words carefully, but how did one ask this? "Did it occur to any of you"—he bit back the word "geniuses"—"to ask how Helen knew of a conspiracy inside the ARC?"

Nick frowned and then leaned heavily on his forearms, which rested on the table. James thought for a moment he would let his head sink onto the table as well. He looked even paler than before.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Lester said, drumming his fingers briefly on the table before catching himself and forcing his hand flat. James could see that the professor had understood the full weight of his question: Helen should know far less of the ARC than they did, and clearly she had an inside source that none of them had asked about, unless Hart had done so. 

Despite James's frequent remarks at their expense, he knew none of them were actually stupid. How could they have missed such an obvious flaw in Helen's story? Of course she'd have come up with some lie if asked, but if they'd kept pressing, they might have learned something. At the least, they ought to have suspected she was part of the bloody conspiracy, a conspiracy that had them so worried they wouldn't tell him anything!

James let the thought go. "At some point there will be a more formal debriefing. When you've had some decent sleep. Speaking of which—when was the last time you got a good night's sleep?"

Nick raised his head just enough to stare at him.

"That long, eh?" James sighed and tapped the table again. "The same for your team, I expect?" At Nick's nod, he went on, "You're all on sick leave, effective yesterday, and our doctors will evaluate when each of you can return. I'm not even going to think about bringing you back for three or four days; your two junior assistants look to be in marginally better shape than you. Perhaps if you weren't so sleep-deprived, we might have avoided this whole fiasco." 

Cutter looked like he was trying to decide whether to argue.

James stood up. "I won't expect your report for a few days; I'll allow you to wait until you're back from leave, particularly since it looks like you won't be doing any typing any time soon."

Nick looked down at his swollen hands as if he'd forgotten about them. James decided that was an opportune moment to take his leave. What a waste. If his superiors had given him leave and funds to hire more experts as he'd requested when Cutter and Hart took their brief vacation on the wrong side of an anomaly, perhaps they wouldn't have been stretched so thin. They were a messy bunch at best, but with more sleep, they coped much better—and their mistakes, while annoying, weren't monumental. Maybe James could spin this disaster to get the support the ARC needed. 

***

There was some awful noise, terrible but distant. Stephen wasn't sure how far away. Nor what it was. Then a human voice overlaid it, and Stephen realized the roaring was in his ears. If he concentrated, he could push it back. He didn't really want to concentrate, but he had to. He couldn't remember why. He blinked a little, but the world was too bright. His concentration slipped.

He tried again, he wasn't sure how much later. The voice was female, but he couldn't place it. A sense of urgency overtook him. He had to do something. He'd forgotten what. It was important. Crucial. Life or death. He tried to listen. Maybe the voice would tell him. Then another voice cut in, male and familiar. Nick. Wait. Nick wasn't supposed to be in here! A loud, inhuman noise broke his concentration again, and he was lost.

Later the noise seemed fainter and yet more annoying. Eventually it resolved into beeping. Alarm clock? Phone? He might have to open his eyes. He tried to blink his eyes open, but he couldn't focus. Bright. Everything was bright and smelled wrong. Plastic. Last thing he remembered smelling was blood. And animals—burning flesh, burning fur. Helen. Helen had been there.... 

Nick? He struggled to open his eyes again, and Nick was there, leaning over him. That couldn't be right. Why didn't anything make sense? Helen! Helen had done something....

Stephen fought to concentrate, to latch onto Nick's voice. Nick kept repeating something; he caught the word "safe." When Stephen managed to focus a little better, though, Nick looked frightened. He struggled to remember. The creatures in the room. He'd gone in the room so that Nick wouldn't. What was Nick doing here? What had Helen done to them? And what were those god awful noises now?

***

Nick left the room rubbing at his face. He didn't go back to the others right away this time. What could he tell them? Stephen had managed to gasp out one recognizable word, and it was "Helen." Damned idiot. He was worried about Helen after all this? He went to splash water on his face, just to give him something to do other than pace. Of course, Nick reflected that it hadn't really sounded like he was asking for Helen. He might not even have been asking about Helen. Maybe it was meant as a warning. Well, Nick wasn't the one who needed a warning about her! After all this, perhaps even Stephen would see reason. 

God, a better question might be why Nick still cared about Helen or whether Stephen asked for her. Not even twenty-four hours ago, he'd thought they'd lost Stephen. Why should he care about Helen now? Stephen was just caught in some memory. He'd told Nick a while back to forget the past, for once. He'd been right. She wasn't worth losing Stephen; once she had been, but not this person she had become. Helen now wasn't even worth losing Stephen's friendship. Why hadn't he worked that out sooner? God, he'd accused Stephen of sleeping with her, but why on Earth would Stephen have brought her to see him, of all people, if they'd renewed their affair? Nick had judged too quickly.

He examined his face in the mirror. He looked, as his mother used to say, like the Wrath of God. He couldn't remember the last time he'd shaved. What day was today, anyway? The bags under his eyes were so big he almost seemed to be recovering from two black eyes. Stephen looked far worse, though. Paler than he'd been after the arthropleura bite, and with more tubes in him now than Cutter had seen coming out of a human being since his own father had died, as well as one wrist in a cast. The break was the least of his worries, though. It was the injuries hidden under the sheet and hospital gown, and doubtless under layers of plasters, that were the problem.

Nick ran his fingers through his hair, but it didn't make him look any better. Of course, at this point it could hardly make him look worse, either. He should find the others. Maybe now they'd go home. He walked slowly to the waiting room.

The three of them jumped to their feet as they had the couple of other times he'd come back from his moments at Stephen's bedside. "He woke up this time, more or less," Nick told them. 

"Did he say anything?" Of course Connor would ask that.

"Yeah. 'Helen.'" Nick said, unable to keep the sourness out of his voice.

The women frowned.

Connor looked bewildered. "What—is he afraid she's here?"

He hadn't thought of that. It was even plausible, given the obvious spike in Stephen's heart rate. "Maybe. I think he saw me. He might even have recognized me. He...wasn't up to talking, really, and then the nurse threw me out again." No need to tell them of the various other sounds Stephen had been making, the whimpers and moans. He wished he could forget. "Look, you've all been here, what, twenty-four hours now?"

Connor checked his watch and opened his mouth, but Nick cut him off. "Go home. All of you. I'll call you if anything changes, I promise."

"We can't leave you here alone!" Abby objected instantly.

They finally compromised: the others would take it in shifts. Jenny announced she was in the best shape of any of them, and the other two really weren't in any condition to argue. She summoned a driver; Lester had apparently left someone waiting for them at the hospital, and it didn't take long.

Nick sat down to wait some more. He wasn't leaving until they threw him out. He was so damned tired at this point that he wasn't sure if he was staying because he owed Stephen for what the man had done for him the previous day, because of the years of friendship they'd had, or out of pure inertia. He didn't care enough to probe his own reasons, either.

"So," Jenny said when the other two had left, "if you're delusional about this Claudia Brown person who happens to look like me, then it's a shared delusion."

Nick couldn't help harrumphing a little. "Helen may be delusional, but not about you. And I'm not delusional." He remembered for a moment that Lester did have a point about his failure to ask how Helen knew of the conspiracy. It wasn't as if Stephen could have told her about it, because he knew less than any of them. And that was precisely—no, he wasn't going down that road now. Jenny had asked about Claudia. After the events of the last day or two, that pain had dulled considerably. 

So he started telling Jenny about Claudia, and she listened this time. When he told her about meeting Claudia for the first time, with a sudden kiss, Jenny snorted and exclaimed, "Well, I'd never have done that!"

"You had a fiancé," Cutter pointed out, before realizing how illogical that sounded.

Mostly, however, Jenny listened quietly, or just asked a question. By the time he'd recounted his return from the Permian, she clearly believed him.

"So you weren't just dealing with Stephen's betrayal; you'd lost someone else you really cared about," she said. Her mouth curved sympathetically, and it reminded him of Claudia with just the tiniest pang. 

Nick shrugged. "It was a lot to take in. I thought I was handling it." But he wasn't. He'd told Stephen not long after Helen's scene that they were all right, and he'd meant it at the time. He really did think that Stephen's refusal to go with Helen through the anomaly, and then his obvious willingness to keep risking his own life for Nick, mattered far more than a betrayal back when Stephen had been a student. But then he couldn't let it go, and because he'd said it was all right, he couldn't bring it up again either.

"What are you thinking?" Jenny asked quietly. 

He shook his head.

"It's not your fault."

Nick turned sharply to face her fully. "What's not my fault? Stephen having no idea we'd uncovered the conspiracy, so that he continued to believe Helen's lies? Stephen being faster than me and locking himself in the room so that he lost nearly half his blood volume and is now connected to more equipment than I have in my entire house? Or me having a psychopathic ex-wife who doesn't care who lives and who dies, as long as she can save her own skin?"

Jenny looked shocked for just a moment, but then she slipped her professional face on; she probably wasn't even aware she was doing it, but Nick could recognize it by now. He didn't want her professional face, because she was a professional liar. And yes, that was harsh, but damn it, he didn't want lies, and he'd just been remembering Claudia, and he did want sleep.

"All of the above. None of it's your fault." He started to object, but she added, "You haven't had enough sleep."

"You know, people keep telling me that!" He managed not to say, at least you're being honest now.

"Perhaps you should get some now," she said, moving off the couch to a nearby chair. Then she softened a little. "I'm curious—there are still things I'd like to know about Claudia. How could she look like me but not even have the same last name? But we can talk about that later."

Good. Not that he could answer later, but he might not bite her head off. He stretched out on the couch as best he could.

***

Stephen was relieved to see Cutter's face again this time when he woke up. He vaguely remembered waking up a couple of times without the familiar face there and panicking. He'd eventually realized he was in hospital, and he'd finally managed to ask after Nick. They'd assured him that his friend was fine. That wasn't the same as seeing Nick, though.

Nick seemed to be examining his face carefully. Maybe he was trying to work out whether Stephen was really alert this time. Maybe he was trying to decide whether he should just leave.

Stephen finally got his voice and his lips working at the same time. "Cutter? You...okay?" His voice sounded odd, and there was some pain somewhere. He felt hot and cold at the same time. 

Nick huffed loudly. "Me? I'm fine! I'm not the one in the hospital bed with—" He cut himself off abruptly.

Something plastic was around Stephen's nose. It felt strange, and the smell irritated him. He couldn't lift an arm to move it, though.

"Connor? Abby?" It took effort to form the words, but he had to be sure.

"They're fine. They'd already made it out." Nick seemed really upset.

"Still angry at me?" Oh, God—he hadn't meant to say that out loud. And it hurt, too. 

Cutter gave him one of his Are you insane? looks. "Pissed off as hell, actually. But that can wait for another time."

He managed not to say "oh" out loud. If each word was going to cost him, he'd better choose them carefully. "Sorry." 

Now Nick looked disgusted. "No, you're not! You might be sorry you ended up here," he said, shaking the bed rail slightly, which caused an unpleasant motion Stephen could feel all through his body. "You'd be even sorrier if you were dead. But if you think I believe you wouldn't do the same thing again in a heartbeat, you must think I'm even stupider...." 

Stephen was glad he trailed off, because it gave him a moment to try to replay the words in his head. And again. And still they didn't make any more sense than they had done the first time. He closed his eyes. Nick thought he'd choose to be Helen's dupe again?

"Stephen?" Nick sounded worried, so he forced his eyes open again. "Look, it's not that I'm not grateful; I just think you ought to take a little more care with your own life!" 

No. Still not making sense. Although he did suppose it was pretty suicidal to believe Helen.

"What? Are you in pain? Do you need a nurse?" 

A translator, more like. Stephen was pretty sure he was missing something. Cutter's hand floated over Stephen as if he wanted to touch him, but it kept hovering and never landed.

Yes, he was in pain, but he was in hospital, and pain was to be expected. "I'm all right," he managed.

Cutter made a loud noise. "Funny definition you have of 'all right'!" He leaned back a little, withdrawing his hand. "How are you feeling?"

Confused, most of all. Hurt. And very, very stupid. That wasn't just the medication. He could remember the last couple of days well enough to be mortified, and to wonder why Cutter was even here. 

Was the room supposed to be this temperature? Nothing felt right.

Nick let out a sigh. "It's not an exam question, Stephen! God, how much medication do they have you on? Do you even understand what I'm saying?"

"Little bit." Damn. He'd said that out loud, too. Hadn't been worth the effort.

Nick chuckled. "I take it that's you understand 'a little bit,' not 'a little bit of medication.'"

Stephen tried nodding instead of speaking, but it made him dizzy, and he closed his eyes again. He tensed when he felt something on his shoulder, and that was a mistake. The pain got worse, and the dizziness....

The pain receded, and Stephen opened his eyes to find a nurse on his left and Cutter still on his right, gripping the bed rail by his arm. 

"Better?" someone asked.

"Yeah," he breathed, and they seemed to understand him.

"I'd better go," Nick said. He reached over, apparently about to touch Stephen's arm, but then pulled his hand back. "You need a lot of rest. I'll be back." He leaned in. "And thanks. For taking my place, and.... Even if I am pissed off about it, I.... Just rest and let the nurses take care of you, okay? I'll be back," he repeated.

Bewildered, Stephen let himself slide into sleep again.

***

God, he was tired, Nick thought as he dragged himself back to the waiting room he had begun to loathe. They'd sent him home last night, made him sleep in his own bed. Or tried to. He wouldn't take any more of Dr. Gupta's tablets, and his sleep was very broken. He'd finally turned a lamp on to keep at bay the terrible images he saw in the dark.

Connor looked up when he entered the waiting room. The young man had checked on Caroline in the morning; Lester had questioned her and let her go, and then Connor had come here, replacing Jenny. 

At first, Nick had resented the fact that they felt the need to have someone with him at all times. He realized the tension in his young teammate's face, however, that Connor needed to be here too. Connor had done a hell of a lot more for Stephen than he had, actually. It was also a relief not to be left entirely to his own thoughts, truth be told.

Nick tried to answer Connor's queries as gently as possible, but he could only allay his fears so much. "Look, he's now in stable condition; the antibiotics seem to be fighting the infection. He's just weak from the...weak from everything that's happened, and they're still adjusting his medication. The nurse said they might even let you in to see him tomorrow." The nurse had said that before his little chat with Stephen, not after, but at the moment he felt he should offer Connor any optimism he could.

"Really?" Connor seemed so pleased at the possibility that Nick felt for possibly misleading him.

"They'll have to see how he's doing. But he's strong. He came back from that...bite he got...in the underground...much faster than they expected." Today they didn't have the waiting room to themselves and had to watch their words.

Connor nodded happily. "Nothing keeps Stephen down for long."

A morbid voice in Nick's head supplied, nothing yet. He wished he could silence that voice. He kept hearing it. 

Abby walked into the room. She still looked exhausted. She hadn't even put on make-up, he realized.

"Ah: shift change!" Nick said with all the humour he could muster. It wasn't much, but it brought a small smile to her face too. Too bad he'd mucked it all up so badly in the first place. How the hell could things have turned so bad that Stephen's first coherent words were to ask him if he was angry? And Nick had been fool enough to say that he was, thinking only about how upset he was that Stephen had hit him and taken his place. He realized too late that Stephen's "still" implied that he expected Cutter to be angry about the same things he'd been angry about before—probably Helen, possibly the secrecy issue.

Connor didn't leave; Abby simply sat down next to him, and he went back to typing on his laptop. Connor hadn't said anything about what he'd seen since the tears in the loo, but he must have been badly affected. If Nick was having nightmares without having seen the worst, what was Connor going through?

Nick eventually accepted one of the novels Connor had brought to keep him occupied, but he kept having to flip back to earlier bits because he was forgetting what he'd read. By the time he was allowed to see Stephen again, hours had passed. 

Stephen was already awake this time when the nurse showed him in, and he smiled ever so slightly.

"Feeling a little better now?" Nick asked cautiously as he slid into the seat next to the bed.

"Yeah," Stephen said. His voice still sounded weak and strained, and he was far too pale, but his eyes seemed clearer than before.

"Look, I'm sorry," Nick plunged in. "I shouldn't have said I was angry at you. I meant—it's just hard to accept that you nearly died in my place. You understand?"

Stephen seemed to mull this over, and he didn't seem to like it. "But we can't lose you," he said slowly. A few moments later, he added, "I had the gun. You'd have died." 

He made it sound so simple, as if he'd calculated the risks before he went in there. But Nick had seen his eyes as Stephen backed away from the door. He'd had no intention of using the gun. He went in there to die, with no more expectation of rescue than Nick had had. 

At least his mind must be fairly clear now if he could come up with that justification.

Stephen was still frowning. "What happened?" he asked eventually. "After...? Did they kill...?"

He hardly knew where to start. "You remember Helen speaking over some sort of PA?"

Stephen started to nod but froze after a slight movement. His mouth formed "Yeah," though Nick couldn't quite hear it.

He shifted a bit in the chair. "Apparently you got...into a cage, and Helen turned them on." Stephen was watching him with no sign of fear in his eyes, just curiosity. Was it the medication, or did it really not frighten him to remember? It scared the hell out of Nick, but he kept talking, because Stephen wanted to know.

It was only when he got to Connor's role in the proceedings that Stephen's eyes grew big. "They shouldn't...." he objected quietly when Nick paused in his account.

"They had to get control of the room quickly, and they knew Connor could do that." 

Stephen closed his eyes and didn't open them again for several seconds. Nick wasn't sure if that meant pain, exhaustion, or just an attempt to process what he was hearing. He shouldn't have mentioned Connor. Stephen didn't need this much detail now.

"He's been in the waiting room most of the day," Nick added. "They might let him in to see you tomorrow."

Stephen seemed to relax a little at that, his forehead smoothing out and the tightness leaving his mouth somewhat.

"Tell him I said hi," Stephen said in a near-whisper. "Abby too." Soon he was asleep.

***

James Lester checked his watch. He could decently leave the office now, if he wanted. He just hoped the anomaly detector would stay quiet for a few more days, until he had some semblance of a team back. Jenny reported that Abby seemed ready to come back to work, and Connor had already submitted his report on the whole ordeal. James would have one of the doctors check them both over before he let them back again. Gupta had actually stood up to Cutter, although standing up to a concussed, shocky Cutter might not be as much of a challenge as facing off against ordinary Cutter. He would put her in charge of the evaluations.

James still hoped he could head off an inquiry into his own conduct if he was thorough enough in his investigations of Oliver Leek and the events of the past several days. It seemed that Leek had been at it for quite some time; they were still looking into how long. The most galling part was that he'd funded his venture largely by diverting money from the ARC. He'd been very clever about it, too; James had had to bring in an auditor to find what Leek had done. The oily little man had put his own men on the ARC payroll, which covered a huge portion of his expenses; he'd also managed to work some complicated shell game that James couldn't entirely follow to rent the building where he'd kept the creatures and then captured Cutter and Company. Leek seemed to have brought in some money from outside as well. The auditor should be able to clarify it all in the next few days. It made James's head ache, but at least it didn't bother other parts of him. His chest still hurt.

His stomach didn't feel much better; it was telling him not to finish reading Connor's report tonight. He'd been through Jenny's and through the transcripts of all the debriefings he'd done. He'd worked in government for half his life now, and he'd always managed to avoid getting attached to people, to places, to jobs. He should have known. Starting to think fondly of a mammoth was the kind of crack that led to more, the kind that let everything in, and he couldn't afford that. The ARC couldn't afford that. He knew that sending Temple in to take over the control room had been the right decision. Stephen Hart would probably be dead if they hadn't done it; he'd nearly bled out as it was. The surviving animals might have found a way out of that room before the military got in, had Connor not been able to get the doors open for them. They'd had to do it. The soldiers on the scene had all been too uncertain about the controls.

But when James Lester found himself wondering if Stephen Hart would give him that annoying look of incredulity, believing that no one in his right mind could disagree; or if Connor would still skateboard down the ramp in the ARC when he thought Lester wasn't around—then James realized he was getting soft. He had always been anything but soft. He'd been here too long.

***

The next day or two passed in a haze for Stephen. Doctors were trying to find medication that would ease the pain but leave him coherent, and he felt hot and cold by turns, or worse, at the same time. It was a hit-and-miss process. When they finally let Connor in to see him, Stephen was able to recognize him, but not a lot more. He could, however, see that Connor looked very happy to see him. He wasn't sure why. He felt sure he'd known once but had forgotten. He hoped Connor could tell he was glad to see him. Connor was talking so fast that Stephen couldn't really follow enough to reply much.

Cutter kept coming back. Stephen lost count of his visits early on. He looked haunted. Stephen felt guilty about that. He wasn't sure exactly how much of it was his fault, but he'd hurt Nick, repeatedly, unforgivably. Cutter kept coming anyway. That must mean something.

Abby visited too, but she was hard to read. Her smile looked forced. If she really hated him, though, she wouldn't have come to see him, would she? And she spoke quietly, and slowly, so that Stephen could follow what she was saying. She told him that he'd be all right, and that she was glad he was safe and healing. She'd been worried. He smiled back. She didn't look reassured. She told him that he and Nick were both idiots, and she hoped this had knocked some sense into the two of them. She told him he should look at the second chance as a gift. Apparently he didn't say the right things back, and she rolled her eyes. She told him Rex had been hurt, though Stephen had trouble following how; Rex was apparently recovering about as well as he was. Maybe better.

Even more surprising were the additional visitors. Stephen hadn't kept up with his friends outside the ARC. He'd turned down a few too many invitations, and he never asked anyone over in return any more, or went out to a game or the pub. Alison probably didn't even know he was in hospital again. That was just as well. But Jenny came, though they'd never talked much beyond what was necessary, and she thanked him for keeping the creatures from getting out. He didn't deserve the thanks. He'd had no other choice, since letting Nick die in front of him wasn't really an option.

Some of the soldiers came, too. He didn't know any of them as well as he had Tom Ryan, but he'd chatted with them at times. He was surprised at how glad he was to see them.

Mostly, though, Cutter kept him company, both in the ICU and after they'd moved him to a private room. He wasn't entirely sure why. Nick didn't say a whole lot, really; he talked, but not about anything important. Stephen often couldn't remember what he'd been saying after he left. But Nick kept coming back. Stephen hoped it wasn't some misplaced guilt. 

Even when they started adjusting the medication so that Stephen could think a little more clearly, he couldn't work out how to ask Nick why he kept visiting, or how long he would continue to visit. Stephen knew he had a long convalescence ahead of him, and he didn't want to spend it alone.

*** 

Nick camped out in the waiting room between his own visits with Stephen. One of the others was there too; he wasn't sure if they were keeping tabs on him, Stephen, or both.

Stephen had been moved from the ICU to a normal room, one with less of the frightening equipment, and he no longer wore a cannula under his nose. He seemed increasingly alert, but he still didn't talk much. So Nick had to carry the conversation, which turned out to be harder than he thought. He could hardly bring up anything serious. He talked about sports, and about how Rex was healing from his injuries, although apparently Abby had been doing the same. He even stooped to recounting the weather. Lester had arranged a private room for Stephen, apparently so that he didn't start babbling secrets in front of a roommate or a roommate's visitors. There wasn't a lot they could do about the hospital staff, but then, Lester had said, hospital staff were used to hearing injured people say completely ludicrous things.

Nick started to tell Stephen that Helen had brought up Claudia, that he wasn't imagining her, but Stephen shivered when he mentioned Helen, and he left that topic for another time.

Stephen was going to recover. That was the important thing. Apparently the antibiotics they were giving him had sufficed to beat off whatever had been on those creatures' teeth or claws. He hadn't lost any vital organs. Stephen would survive. Nick just had trouble believing it at some times—especially at night. He dreamed of a funeral one of those awful nights. It was Stephen's; they were burying Stephen. He woke up in a cold sweat and never got back to sleep that night. He went back to the hospital the next morning determined to rebuild the friendship they'd had. Assuming that was what Stephen wanted. He wasn't sure how to ask.

***

James wasn't certain at first if the odd look Stephen was giving him was because he was still suspicious of him or simply the result of medication.

"Why are you here?" Stephen asked, and his voice offered no further clues to what he was thinking. The delay between his initial stare and the question, however, suggested that he wasn't thinking much at all. That he began humming before he even received an answer settled the issue.

James let the recording device slide back into his pocket without ever taking it fully out. Jenny was right: Stephen couldn't manage even an informal interview just yet.

"Don't worry, it's nothing personal," James hastened to assure him. "Part of my job, really: visit the injured employee. Keeps up morale among the troops." If he let on he was there to ask questions, Stephen would probably insist he could answer them, and God alone knew where that might end.

Stephen frowned as if he were thinking hard. "But I'm not an employee."

Had he taken a blow to his head among all his other injuries? James would have to ask a nurse. "Really? I'd hate to think I'm wasting my time here."

"I was fired."

He'd actually forgotten, in all the commotion. Cutter had said something about having fired him, but that had been days ago. James had planned to give the man some cooling-off time so he didn't have to rehire Hart later. Then everything had gone to hell, again, and he'd never asked Cutter if he'd meant it. He wasn't about to admit it had just slipped his mind. "Oh, that—verbal termination doesn't really count. Cutter couldn't be bothered to do the paperwork."

"I'm not fired because Cutter didn't do his paperwork?" The man didn't seem at all offended; his tone was perfectly matter-of-fact. Offended would probably require considerably less sedation.

James replied in kind. "As it turns out."

"Then my job is safe forever," Stephen answered in the same slow, calm voice.

"Beg pardon?"

"Cutter never finishes his paperwork. I've completed most of his reports. I think Abby does the rest. I do most of the requisitions."

James accepted this new information in silence. He should probably have realized that. He already knew that Stephen and the two junior members of the team did all the forms that needed completing. He'd noticed that Cutter and Hart had very much the same writing style, but he'd put it down to Hart being Cutter's student. And in fact they often spoke in the same way; or glared at James or Leek or Jenny in the same way and often at the same time; or smirked at each other, enjoying some private joke no one else got. He'd seen a lot less of the latter lately.

The medication had clearly put Stephen in confessional mode. James could take advantage of this, he realized. He could probably find out anything he wanted to know. 

There were only two problems. The first was that the information wasn't terribly reliable. The second, and far more important, was that he already knew more about Hart and his teammates than he'd ever wanted to know in the first place.

***

Stephen's main nurse, a middle-aged woman with short, dark hair curling about her round face, caught Nick right outside the door of Stephen's room; she was holding a clipboard and a pile of files. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

Nick stopped, fearful. "About Stephen?"

"Yes. We're concerned there may be gaps in his medical records, and, well, he said you might remember things that he didn't."

What? Stephen honestly thought he would know Stephen's medical history? God, he didn't even remember his own terribly well. At least the nurse's question didn't sound too dire. Her soft face showed some concern, but not a lot. 

"What kind of things?" Nick asked, wondering if Stephen in this timeline had been through the same events as the Stephen he'd originally known.

"Well, we're specifically concerned with head injuries. We're not sure if some of the...effects we're seeing are results of the medication he's on, or past neural trauma."

"Past neural trauma?" Cutter repeated, a little alarmed again. "Look, why don't we just go in and see if maybe I can jog Stephen's memory? I'm not going to stand out here and talk about him." Maybe if he'd done more talking to Stephen and a little less about him, they wouldn't be here right now. 

The nurse nodded, and they went in. Stephen greeted him with a slightly goofy smile. Oh, good Lord. No wonder the nurse wanted to talk to Nick. They seemed to have got past the problem of not using enough medication.

"So," Nick said briskly. "We're counting head injuries, are we?"

"Just the ones in the past year," Stephen offered in a low but cheerful tone. 

"Well, that narrows it down a bit." There was only one chair next to the bed. Cutter felt awkward sitting while the nurse was standing, so he waved her towards it.

"Oh, no," she said. "I'll just be—"

"But you stand most of the day," Stephen said slowly. Not completely unobservant, at least, but definitely not quite grounded.

"Well, I suppose for just a moment." She sat down and held the clipboard in front of her.

"What have you got so far?" Nick asked.

"About eight months ago he hit his head against a tree and briefly lost consciousness," the nurse read.

"I don't remember that," Nick said before he remembered that eight months ago to him, he'd been in another timeline. He didn't think it had happened there. He could hardly ask Stephen for more details now.

"The dimetrodon that caught me with its tail," Stephen supplied helpfully.

Dimetrodon? Nick definitely hadn't been there; he hemmed and hawed a little to cover his surprise. The nurse didn't seem at all disturbed by the fact that Stephen had just named a long extinct synapsid; she must not know what the name meant. She seemed to be looking to Nick for more details, or perhaps corroboration, and Nick had no idea what to say.

It was Stephen, surprisingly, who got him off the hook. "Oh! Just remembered another one." At the nurse's querying look, he added, "Gorgonopsid." 

So much for off the hook. Nick gave him a stern frown, but it was hard to mouth "Official Secrets Act" with the nurse right there.

"I'm not sure you knew, actually," Stephen said. "You weren't around at the time. It was when—"

"Stephen, our work is classified," Nick interrupted, wondering frantically how he could back out of this conversation when he was the one who'd dragged the nurse into the room in the first place.

"Oh, right! Anyway, it was at the school. I, well, erm—the fire doors were locked...."

"Fire doors were locked? That's a violation of safety laws! And at a school?" The nurse looked scandalized.

Stephen was undeterred. "Anyway, the, erm...." He paused for so long Nick wondered if he'd forgotten the question, but then he began again. "The doors were knocked open, and I fell and hit my head. On the pavement outside," he finished with a slight air of triumph, whether because he remembered what had happened or remembered not to name the dinosaur again, Cutter wasn't sure.

"Did you tell me this?" Cutter asked neutrally, not sure if he should be angry at Stephen for concealing an injury, or if it hadn't happened in his timeline.

Stephen frowned. "I don't think so. It didn't seem important. I'm not certain."

The nurse looked at them incredulously. "Did you take time off to recover from it?"

"No," Stephen said happily as the frown left his face. "Didn't need any."

"That's debatable," Nick growled. The nurse glared at him.

"You need time to recover from head injuries!" she exclaimed, but she was looking at Nick rather than Stephen.

"And I might have given him some time off, had I known!" Nick tried glaring at Stephen in turn, but it didn't seem to register.

"And when was that?" the nurse asked.

"A little less than a year ago," Nick started to answer—at the same time as Stephen said clearly, "Oh, wait—that was well over a year ago. Must be two now."

Right. Here, the anomalies had started earlier. The nurse was giving Nick an odd look.

"It seems much more recent," Nick said lamely. 

The nurse gave him a dirty look before she began erasing the notations she'd just made, as if it was somehow his fault that Stephen had remembered a two-year-old injury. 

"What else have you got?" Nick asked. Maybe he could redeem himself by helping.

The nurse spared him half a glance while she wiped eraser shavings off the page. "Just the one from eight months ago. But we thought he might have forgotten some—what with being on medication and all." She looked at Stephen with deep sympathy. Stephen didn't seem to notice; he was looking off into space.

Trying to remember other head injuries, or struggling to remember what they were talking about?

"Wait, what about the...the toxin? That wasn't a head injury, but that did...involve the central nervous system," Nick said. He knew Stephen had been bitten by an arthropleura in this timeline too, though he wasn't certain when.

"What toxin?" Stephen looked completely lost.

"The, erm, that bite you got. Venom, I suppose I should call it."

"Snake?" the nurse asked, with interest.

Unfortunately, Stephen remembered at the same moment. "Oh! The arthropleura!"

"Arthropleura?" She looked from one man to another.

"It's a code name!" Nick improvised.

"Very big centipede," Stephen said, waving his good arm in the air and getting it tangled in the process. Something started to beep annoyingly, covering Nick's sigh at Stephen's lack of discretion.

"Oh, you've kinked your IV again." The nurse jumped to fix it, and the beeping stopped.

"And when was that incident? The arthra, the big centipede?" she asked.

Nick rummaged around his memories for a bit but gave up. He hadn't really paid attention to the dates when he read the reports from this timeline. "It should be in his medical records," Nick said with an apologetic smile. 

The nurse whipped out the files she'd been holding under the clipboard—wait, it wasn't a stack of files, it was just the one file. She flipped it open. She was afraid there were gaps in that medical record? From the size of it, it ought to have every hangnail Stephen had ever had. Didn't they keep those things on computers nowadays? 

When he thought about it further, though, he could see why she was asking instead of just going through the records. That could take days.

She flipped page after page. 

Stephen asked Nick, "So...how is work?" 

Nick shoved his hands in his pockets. "Oh, the usual. No crises the last couple of days, thank God."

Stephen nodded. And started humming. Nothing recognizable, at least not to Cutter; he was just humming.

Nick thought there must be a way out of this before it got worse. He was pretty sure it would get worse, the state Stephen was in. Maybe he should focus on remembering any other possible head injuries so that he could head off Stephen's recollections.

The nurse was too fast for him. "Got it," she announced, making a note on the clipboard. "It seems you did get some time to recuperate then." 

Stephen met her eyes and smiled vaguely.

She smiled back. "Any others?"

Stephen looked thoughtful again—maybe.

"What about..." Nick struggled to find words he could use in front of the nurse. "In the mall...you were...grappling...."

"Oh, right!" Stephen looked pleased that he'd remembered. "The raptor!"

Nick shut his eyes in despair for a moment.

"No, I don't think I hit my head."

"Are you sure? Because you were acting like it," Nick said, remembering how Stephen didn't believe him that the gun had jammed. And later, he could have sworn Stephen had had a gun, but then he suddenly didn't. Then there was a raptor on top of them, and they'd had to rely on Connor to rescue them, for God's sake.

"Pretty sure." Stephen frowned. "But I could be wrong."

The nurse was just staring at them.

"Raptor is a code word," Cutter explained, falling back on his earlier excuse. "Our work is classified, you know."

The nurse was now frowning too. "I'll put that down as a maybe. And when was that?"

"What—two, three months ago?" Stephen guessed.

"Oh, it must be four, at least!" 

"That's recent, in terms of a head injury," the nurse noted. "Did you take some time off to recover from it?"

"I don't think I hit my head," Stephen said carefully.

"And you thought he did, but you didn't give him time off?" the nurse asked Nick accusingly.

"Well, no! I didn't think so at the time; it's just in retrospect, some things make more sense if...." he trailed off. He couldn't win this one.

"I did get dropped on my head," Stephen announced unexpectedly.

"When?" Nick asked, completely flummoxed. As a baby? Maybe this timeline's Stephen had been damaged early in life, explaining why he seemed a lot denser after Claudia's disappearance than Nick could ever remember him being before.

"The scorpion," Stephen said with an air of patience, as if Nick were being slow, but Stephen was feeling magnanimous.

"Scorpion?" the nurse asked, narrowing her eyes—but again at Nick, not at Stephen.

"Another code name," Nick said, managing to cut off whatever Stephen was about to say. It involved more arm-waving, so it was probably also going to be about size, but Stephen let his arm drop before he tangled the IV this time. 

"Yes, I'd forgotten. He hit his head, but it was on sand—on a beach," Nick added falsely, for all the good it might do.

"I think I took the brunt of it on my shoulder, but I'm pretty sure I hit my head, too. Fell from a bit of a height," Stephen said, as if Nick hadn't said anything. "Maybe...four meters? What would you say, Cutter?"

"I'd say if you remember the height better than I did, there probably wasn't significant damage!" He bit back his frustration. No point getting annoyed at Stephen. He should just be glad Stephen was alive, and he could hardly grudge him the medication. This whole conversation, in fact, might be rather funny in retrospect.

"Sand can be as hard as brick if you hit it from a height," the nurse said grimly as she wrote. "Any others?" 

Nick imagined Lester's reaction to finding out Stephen had referred to dimetrodons, gorgonopsids, and giant centipedes and scorpions in front of the nurse. Now that was funny; it was too bad Stephen wouldn't be at the ARC to witness the resulting explosion. And Lester wouldn't even be able to blame Cutter—assuming Nick told it all properly. He certainly couldn't blame Stephen, either. There was actually very little risk their secrets would get out this way; the nurse wasn't asking those sorts of questions. Lester just proved so easy to bait sometimes. Nick found himself already looking forward to it.

"Any more?" the nurse prompted again, looking to him instead of to her patient, who now seemed fascinated by the edges of the cast around the fingers on his right hand.

"I think that's all." Oh, hell. He couldn't help grimacing; he'd missed one. "Except for the time I hit him."

The nurse gasped. "You hit him? You hit him?" she repeated, apparently not inventive enough to vary the question.

"Oh, right!" Stephen chipped in. "That was, what, just a couple of days ago?"

"That was nearly a week ago!" His guilt at having thrown the punch, and thereby set in motion some of the events that had landed Stephen in hospital, warred with completely inappropriate amusement at the nurse gaping at them. "I don't think that really counts as a head injury, though," he added hopefully.

"No. The punch didn't even leave a bruise," Stephen said without any recrimination in his voice. "It was where I hit my face on the counter when I went down...." He touched his cheek carefully, as if he thought it would still be tender.

Of course Stephen's sense of time was shot; he'd already made that abundantly clear. Not that Nick's was a whole lot better. "That bruise is pretty well gone," he said, perhaps a little too gruffly. 

"You hit him?" the nurse repeated yet again. She turned to Stephen. "Should I have him banned from visiting you?"

Stephen's eyes got huge. His pupils seemed larger than normal, Nick realized. "Why?" Stephen asked, but he looked at Nick, clearly appealing for help.

"Because he hit you!" the nurse pulled herself to her feet, but she wasn't looking at Stephen now. She was a good four inches shorter than Nick, but he found himself stepping back. 

"So?" Stephen asked innocently. He really didn't seem to be playing with the nurse. He just wasn't following.

"Does it help that he hit me the next day?" Nick asked, resisting the urge to laugh. "Or was that later the same day? I lost track."

The nurse's mouth opened and closed again.

"Oh," said Stephen. "Are we listing your head injuries now? You didn't lose consciousness, right?"

The nurse's eyes narrowed, and she turned to see Stephen, still somehow managing to keep the clipboard between herself and Nick. For self-defence? he wondered.

"I'm not the patient," Nick pointed out happily. 

"But she said you need time to recover from head injuries," Stephen told him earnestly. "What other ones have you had?"

Nick did have to wonder if his own run-ins with Leek's henchmen had impaired his judgement. Now that he stopped to think about it, even using the word "henchmen" might be a sign of impaired judgement. But perhaps it was simply a sign of spending too much time with Connor.

The nurse managed to flash a smile at Stephen and then a glare at Nick while saying, "Our concern is you, Mr. Hart, not your Mister...." 

"Professor. Professor Cutter," he said, automatically putting out a hand to her, now that he was finally introducing himself.

She looked at it like it might be holding a knife.

He shoved the hand back into his pocket. "Sorry. I think we've exhausted all of Stephen's head injuries. The ones I know about, anyway."

"And the two of you are in the habit of hitting each other?" the nurse asked, clearly not mollified.

"Never hit him before in all the years I've known him," Stephen said with surprise, as if he'd just realized it. "No matter how much he deserved it."

"I promise not to hit him while he's in hospital," Cutter said, almost keeping a straight face. "And I don't think he can reach me right now."

The nurse abruptly left the room. She was wearing soft shoes that seemed designed not to make a lot of noise—so that what might otherwise have been stomping turned into squeaking out of the room.

Cutter took the recently-vacated seat. "Good medication?" he asked.

Stephen raised his eyebrows. "I suppose," he said after a moment. "Hadn't really thought about it." 

***

Stephen had fallen into a routine already. They'd started letting him eat, so he began the day with a breakfast of soft foods, then medication and a doze before Cutter came. Nick visited every morning, as soon as visiting hours began. Usually some more sleep before a little light physio, followed by reading or staring at the wall. Abby usually came by during what passed for lunch. Afternoon seemed to last forever. Connor had borrowed his keys and brought him his iPod and some books from his flat, as well as a few of his own that he thought Stephen might like. But he could only sleep so much, he could only read so long, he had trouble getting his right earbud in at the correct angle without using his right hand, and the telly annoyed him more than anything else. Connor usually came late it the afternoon. Sometimes Abby came with him. Soldiers dropped in sometimes, and Jenny once or twice, in the evening. Connor had given Stephen a new mobile, too, and he had a new phone number that hardly anyone knew. Helen wouldn't be calling him again.

The visits and calls kept him sane. If he hadn't had friends coming by, he'd have gone mad. Pretty much all his visitors came from the ARC. Thank God he hadn't permanently alienated them all, though he wasn't sure why not, after all he'd done. It was humbling to realize most of the SFs really seemed to care, though by now they surely all knew about him and Helen. He couldn't believe Nick kept coming after everything. Stephen could remember being angry at him, but he no longer felt it; Cutter's attempt to be the one to lock himself in the room with all those predators had burned all the anger out at one go. Nick's visits meant the most to him.

Stephen did know his mind wasn't quite working right yet the morning he completely stuck his foot in it. They had changed the medication again and the fog had cleared some; he'd gone back to feeling very little pain—very little of anything, really. That's probably why it seemed like such a good idea to tell Cutter what he'd done the first time it came up.

Nick had asked him some questions about what had happened, very carefully, as if Stephen might shatter at remembering what had happened. That might come later, he reflected as he answered then, but right now it all seemed distant, almost as if it had happened to someone else, and he had merely watched. It was when Nick started apologizing that he really thought he ought to come clean. 

"I shouldn't have assumed that you and Helen..." Nick said, shifting around in the chair. "It's just, when you showed up with Helen.... I naturally—well, I suppose it wasn't 'naturally'—I shouldn't have done it, and I feel just...."

"Don't apologize," Stephen urged. It wouldn't be right to have the man he'd betrayed repeatedly, in multiple ways, apologizing to him. "I'm sorry." That was a lot easier to say from his hospital bed, with the IV dripping medication into his arm; was that cheating? Shouldn't it hurt worse to admit how wrong he'd been? "Look, you should know...you weren't entirely wrong. I hadn't slept with Helen when I brought her to talk to you, but after you fired me, and then hit me...." Oh, damn—he hadn't meant to make it sound like he blamed Nick.

For just a moment, looking at Cutter's face, Stephen wondered how the hell he was going to duck when he was propped up in bed. But Cutter didn't move towards him; he stood up, stepping back a little from the bed and the chair.

"You did sleep with her again?"

Stephen nearly started to say that Nick had made it clear enough that he didn't consider Helen his wife any longer. Or that he'd cut all ties to Stephen. Any of the things Stephen had told himself to justify betraying Nick again in the first place. He didn't believe any of those now, though, and he hadn't really believed them then. 

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I...." He groped for something else to say and settled for the simple truth. "I have no excuse," he offered weakly.

Nick looked furious. He shoved his hands into his pockets, hard, muttering, "And to think that I've been feeling guilty, for days..." more to himself than to Stephen. He stalked to the far wall, and Stephen couldn't make out the words any longer.

Stephen hadn't quite expected this kind of reaction; he rather thought that since Nick had assumed he'd been sleeping with Helen, and had only concluded otherwise out of guilt, finding out that Stephen had slept with her again wouldn't be so bad. He'd been wrong. Again. Worse, he had no idea how to put things to rights.

Nick did seem to be making some effort, taking deep breaths that even Stephen could hear. He turned back around. "And you decided to tell me this now because...?" he asked with obvious efforts at self-control.

"Because you told the nurse you wouldn't hit me while I was in hospital?" Stephen tried.

Nick closed his eyes and looked like he was praying for strength. Okay, humour was definitely not the way to go.

"Because I didn't want you to apologize to me when I did actually...." He couldn't say it. "Just the once—I know that doesn't really make it any better. And I...." He broke off. What was the point in promising not to sleep with her again? Cutter would never believe him. And if he did believe him, he'd think it was because of what Helen had done. And he'd be right. 

It wasn't for himself that Stephen couldn't forgive her, though. She was perfectly willing to let Nick go in there, to let her own husband die fixing her mistakes. Maybe she'd already had the idea of running to the control room to try to save him, but it was too risky— Nick hadn't even had a gun. She'd made it clear Nick was still her first choice, the one she wanted to come with her through the anomalies. Yet she'd have let him suffer one of the most horrible deaths Stephen could imagine. And how could she let him go that way when Stephen couldn't? 

He wasn't much better himself, though. He already knew when she came back that she didn't really want him, that he was a distant second choice. She used him to get at Nick. And when he slept with her again, wasn't he really just getting back at Nick for taking away his work—and his friendship? He told himself at the time that he'd lost everything but Helen, so he might as well have Helen. He knew even then he'd never have Helen; he didn't even want Helen, deep down. He'd just been hurt and struck out in a way he'd been able to justify to himself at the time. 

If Helen was a bitch for using him to get at Nick, what did that make Stephen?

It was only when Nick cleared his throat that Stephen realized he'd drifted completely out of whatever conversation they'd been having.

"I have no idea what to say to you now," Nick said, his voice tight. "So I think I'd better go."

Stephen felt his own throat closing up as Nick turned towards the door. "Cutter?" he said. "Look, if.... I'd better say.... I'm sorry, and you didn't deserve...you deserved way better than...." He had no idea what to say either, he realized with increasing panic, but he took a slow breath to steady himself, and he made himself look Nick in the eye, because the man had the decency to turn back towards him. Nick had his mouth open, but Stephen rushed to finish before Nick spoke and he forgot the few words he could come up with. "Thanks for coming by, and thanks for everything over the years, and.... I'm sorry. Take care of yourself, okay? You take too many risks." He almost started to laugh at the end, when he realized he wasn't in any position to be giving advice about taking chances. But he knew it would hurt to laugh, so he just closed his eyes. The medication didn't seem to be helping with the pain so much now. Maybe he could blame the babbling on the medication. Not that it mattered where he put the blame. He'd put the final nail in the coffin, he'd—

"You are a complete idiot," Cutter broke into his thoughts. He still looked angry when Stephen opened his eyes again, but there was something else in his face. "I'm leaving now, as in...as in I don't want to have this conversation right now! I didn't mean I'm not coming back!" Cutter shoved a hand back through his hair, leaving it even more of a mess than it had been. "What the hell have they got you on?" He shook his head. "Look, I really wish you hadn't slept with her again, but...God, you're an idiot." 

Stephen couldn't speak. He couldn't tell if the pain in his gut was real or in his head. Probably both. Did that mean he had pain in his gut and his head? Wasn't the medication supposed to be working fully right now? It had been a few minutes ago.

"Can I leave now, or are you going to completely self-destruct if I leave you like this?" Cutter seemed more to be talking to himself again than to Stephen, but then he came closer, examining Stephen closely. "Should I get a nurse?" 

Stephen looked up at him, and his guts twinged again, and he shivered though he wasn't cold. "Maybe," he said with a nod. No, wait. That wasn't right. He was just taking the easy way out, letting Cutter feel sorry for him when he was the one who'd messed everything up. "No. I'm...fine." Cutter looked at him incredulously. "Really," he tried to reassure him. "Been much worse...."

Cutter stormed out of the room, muttering again, leaving Stephen utterly unsure what had just happened or whether he would see Cutter again.

Maybe Nick would just wait until he was out of the hospital to hit him. After all, he had promised that nurse, hadn't he? But then Nick pulled his nurse in, and he watched for a few moments as she started to check Stephen over. He would come back, Stephen hoped as Cutter left, muttering, again.

***

Unbelievable. Doctor Gupta had at last cleared Cutter to come back to work full-time—and now he sat at his desk thinking about Stephen instead of finishing his damned reports. Was it the medication that made Stephen confess? Nick really wasn't sure he wanted to know what Stephen and Helen had been up to!

Now that Stephen had said something, perversely, Nick itched to know more. If Stephen said he hadn't slept with Helen until Nick had hit him, then it was true, right? Stephen didn't outright lie to Nick's face; he omitted things, important things, but he didn't blatantly lie. 

So he'd only slept with her again once Nick had accused him of it—so did he feel like since he was in trouble for it, he might as well do it? That was the logic of a child, wasn't it? What the hell was wrong with the man? 

Nick vividly recalled Stephen with Helen, getting out of the car as if it were perfectly normal for him to miss a mission and show up with another man's wife, his wife. Stephen had completely missed dealing with the mammoth. Connor could have been killed, or that the woman trapped in the car, or the child, for God's sake! Anger flared in him, burning in his chest as it had when the two of them had arrived that day. Then, of course, he remembered Stephen in...that room, refusing to open the door, apologizing with his body, with his life, in a way he never could with words. This in turn brought back images from the hospital, Stephen as he never thought he'd see him—and then Stephen's latest confession, and his mind would go round again. It nauseated him, but he couldn't seem to stop.

"And how are those reports coming along?" 

Nick jumped, and he was annoyed to see satisfaction on Lester's face when he turned to look. He hadn't even heard the door opening.

"That's what I thought," Lester said with a nod towards the screen, which was pretty damned cheeky, considering that his report was actually on the screen in front of him. Of course, his hands were nowhere near the keyboard.

"I'm editing," Nick said with emphasis. "I...want to make sure I haven't left anything out." That might have been more convincing if he'd said it more smoothly. And it even happened to be the truth, more or less. He was making his last pass on his report about Leek and the disaster he'd created. But he was as worried about what he put in as what he left out.

"Of course," Lester replied. "So it shouldn't be long before I have the completed version."

Nick glared. "I don't know why you need it anyway; you've got everything on tape. Read the damned transcript."

"Just want to make sure you didn't leave anything out," Lester shot back at him with an undue amount of cheer. "You had, after all, just suffered not one but two blows to the head before I debriefed you, and you were still under observation for concussion."

"And then we did a fuller debrief later," Nick practically growled. Lester might go away sooner if he didn't argue, but somehow he couldn't help himself. "Why is everyone so concerned about head injuries lately? It's not like anybody paid any attention when Leek's thug hit me, or when Stephen got dropped on his head by the scorpion."

Lester raised an eyebrow. "Stephen was dropped on his head by the scorpion? When the two of you went after that little girl? That explains a lot. Funny, though: I don't recall reading about this injury in any of the reports." Lester then made a flicking gesture with his fingers, as if shooing Nick away, when he was already in his own damned office! 

"Be sure you don't forget anything," Lester singsonged one last time before he left.

The man got off on driving him crazy, Nick was sure of it. If only he could properly return the favour. He hadn't got enough of a rise out of Lester over Stephen's blurting out names of long-dead creatures in front of the nurse to be worth the effort. 

He'd better finish the report. He could worry about how to deal with Stephen later.

***

"You told him what?" Abby asked incredulously.

Stephen hadn't meant to tell her; the last thing he wanted to do was further embarrass Nick. But she'd been asking pointed questions, because apparently Nick had returned to the ARC in a bad mood—no surprise there. Maybe he should just refuse to talk to people until they'd got his medications properly adjusted? No, they'd—

"Are you out of your mind?" Abby asked. Now she was angry too.

"Apparently," Stephen said sadly.

Her hands went up in the air and fell again. Well, maybe Connor would still speak to him. If the other two didn't talk him out of visiting. No, they wouldn't do that. Cutter had even said he'd visit again. At least Stephen was pretty sure he'd said that. He didn't know if it would be any time soon, though. They'd just had this conversation this morning, right? He kept losing track of time.

A hand on his face caught his attention; Abby's face was rather close to his. If only this had been under different circumstances. No, that was impossible; she knew what he was, and—

"Stephen!" she said from inches away. "Listen to me!" 

He blinked, trying to clear his head.

"Okay, you've told him," she said, releasing his jaw and sitting back in the chair by his bed. "And maybe that's a good thing. Is there anything else you need to confess?" Did she just roll her eyes again?

"I think that's everything," Stephen said, while trying frantically to make sure it was everything. He hadn't told him how many visits Helen had made. He should probably cover that. That shouldn't be a problem, though; it had all been innocent, or at least not that guilty, until after Cutter had hit him. He knew Nick would take it badly, which was why he hadn't told him originally, years ago. After Cutter found out, he said things were all right between them, that the important thing was that Stephen hadn't left with Helen. But then things clearly weren't all right—

"You're hopeless!" Abby said, dropping her head back to stare at the ceiling. "You can't manage to keep up a proper conversation!"

"They're decreasing my medication to make me less...loopy," he told her.

"Good," she said, her chin moving down and her face coming back into view. Although she did have a very nice chin.

"So now that everything's out in the open, let's keep it that way," she admonished, leaning forward again.

"Right. No more secrets," Stephen said, trying to impress it upon his memory so that he wouldn't forget regardless of the medication.

"Nick's been through a lot," she said, and he nodded. "And he's really, really trying. He feels just...." Stephen nodded again. She didn't need to say it. "Look, I don't know if I should tell you this," she said quietly, still leaning forward, "but there was a misunderstanding after...after the cavalry got there. He thought you were dead; he didn't know that Helen's little stunt had actually worked. I don't know how long it was before someone set him straight."

Nick hadn't mentioned that.

"He was...I only saw him after he knew you'd come through surgery, but he was still just a wreck! We didn't know at that point if you'd make it, and he insisted on coming here though they wanted him to rest because of his concussion."

Stephen nodded. Cutter really should have stayed put. Head injuries could be serious, and people needed rest after them.

"He cares about you, he really does! You know that, right?" 

Stephen nodded again. All this nodding was making him slightly dizzy, even though he was trying not to move his head too much or too fast.

"So he's been trying, and I know he doesn't want to fight with you. It's just hard to stop himself, you see?"

He nodded one more time. He was still counting himself lucky Nick hadn't hit him again.

"And he confirmed for once and for all that his wife really is a lying, scheming bitch who doesn't care about anybody but herself and who will endanger anyone and everyone to pursue her insane theories." He'd never heard such venom in Abby's voice before, not even directed at him.

Stephen should have realized that Helen was playing him for a fool. He knew she lied. He knew when she refused to take him to meet that reporter that she was lying to him then. He just couldn't work out why she was lying or what to do about it. It had also never crossed his mind that she'd put other people in danger. After all, she'd helped them against the future predator.

"Still with me?" Abby asked.

He nodded.

"So he found out what his wife is really like, and you've got to admit, you've been pretty horrid to him lately...." 

That was true, even if Nick had been horrid to him. At least Nick had some excuse. Stephen didn't have much. Any, really.

Abby kept talking, asking him to make an extra effort, because Nick deserved it.

Stephen frowned a moment. "Of course. I'd do anything for Nick." Hadn't he just shown that? "But I'm not sure what you're asking me to do."

Abby sighed loudly. "Just...bend a little, okay? Don't argue with him. Let him be right—because you know he usually is! Don't be so critical of him!"

Stephen frowned some more, though it seemed to make him dizzier, so he tried to relax his face. He couldn't recall any recent fights, though. Cutter had become angry at him, but Stephen hadn't meant to upset him. "I haven't been arguing with him."

Abby snorted. "Drugged this much? I don't doubt it." Did that mean she did or didn't believe him? "I mean, as you come down off the medication, I know, you're going to hurt. But think of how he's hurting, and don't start fighting about whether we should go public."

Oh, God, that. He hadn't really thought of that in...since.... He'd rather not think about it right now, actually. Surely he had earned a few more days off worrying about whether they were doing the right thing.

"You know Helen just told you she wanted to go public because she knew it was what you wanted to hear."

Yes. Yes, he'd sussed that out at last. Even though the medication were slowing him down, he could still think, and there wasn't a lot else he could do. He had lots of time free for thinking. 

"So I want you to meet him more than halfway. Just for a while. Because relationships take effort. And even friendships are relationships. In fact, friendships can be the most important relationships you have."

Stephen couldn't help it; he knew what she was saying was true, but he didn't really feel like he needed to listen. He'd already decided he needed to patch things up with Nick; he was willing to do the work. What he didn't know was how. 

He watched Abby. She was getting into her little speech here, her voice getting animated, her eyes lighting up, and she was beautiful. Not that he'd ever say that to her again. 

"And it's clear that you do care about him; I mean, these last few days have made that abundantly clear," she finished smoothly. 

"I get it," he told her, hoping she could hear in his voice how much he meant it. "I will make an effort. I'm trying." He was trying right now, rather desperately, though he hoped it didn't look desperate. "I...really appreciate you coming to talk to me. And I'm sorry. About Nick." He nearly said he hadn't meant to hurt him, but of course he had, when he slept with Helen again. That was done forever now, though.

Abby breathed a sigh of relief. "Good," she said. "I mean, it's not like either of you can afford to lose friends." Her eyes widened. "I mean—I didn't mean...."

Stephen almost laughed, but a twinge somewhere around where he used to have an appendix stopped him before he really got started.

Abby squeezed his arm gently. "I didn't mean that you don't have friends. I meant...."

"No, you meant I don't have many friends, and I can't afford to lose any. And you're right." She didn't look reassured. "I'm not doing very well at this, am I?"

"At least you have the excuse of medication," Abby said with a little sniffle. Was she coming down with something? "I come here and badger you and then tell you that you don't have enough friends."

"Well, someone has to do it," Stephen told her, "and I wouldn't believe Lester if he said it." He probably had said it; Stephen just couldn't remember. He didn't usually pay that much attention to Lester.

At least he'd made Abby laugh, so it wasn't important if he wasn't sure why she was laughing. And she surprised him by giving him a quick kiss on the forehead before she left.

***

Nick didn't know whether to be relieved that he wasn't going to be able to go back to visit Stephen this evening to have a more rational talk with him, or pissed off that he couldn't get it over with. The ADD had gone off just as he was leaving the building for the day. Stephen didn't really need a second visit in one day from him. Yet he wanted to clear the air between them. Maybe then he could put everything behind him, the betrayals and the atonement. 

He suspected, though, that Stephen would have rushed into that room anyway, even if he'd never betrayed Nick. He was too careless of his own life, while appointing himself guardian of everyone else's.

Lester had apparently decided they'd all become too careless. The new procedures he'd instituted included the team as well as their military escort getting into proper gear for each call, so at least Nick wasn't slogging through the rain in his regular clothes as they looked for the anomaly. Someone else would have to wash these outfits. He really didn't think a bunch of people working in the dark dressed in black was a very good idea when most of them had guns, however.

Nor would proper gear have made any damned difference when they went looking for Caroline, since they hadn't been going to check on an anomaly that time. Stephen hadn't even been working for the ARC; he'd been trying to save Helen from fabricated persecution.

"Light! That way!" Abby called, and they all squelched through the mud some more as he began to see a light that definitely shouldn't be there. At least this anomaly had opened in a wooded area, not in a building or a residential area.

"Hold it!" called out one of the military men, and they all froze. Cutter found himself tightening his grip on the tranq gun. He and Lester had gone several rounds about that, but Cutter didn't want to be carrying something lethal into the field before even knowing what they were facing. Of course, they could only make wild guesses at the tranquillizer dosage until they knew what animals they were facing. Lester didn't seem to have realized that little problem, and Abby had shown no inclination to enlighten him.

After they stood still for a couple of minutes, Cutter began moving forward, slowly. "What is it?" he asked impatiently, but he did keep his voice down.

"The sergeant thinks he's got some tracks," an enlisted man said.

"In this rain?" Abby asked sceptically.

Cutter worked his way up and found a couple of men, apparently including the sergeant, bent over a muddy patch in front of the anomaly. "So what have we got?"

Two discouraged faces turned up towards him. "Frankly, sir? We have no idea. The grass has been partly stripped away, so we know something came through here, presumably since the rain started," said one of the soldiers. "But it's too muddy to tell what."

"Can you tell how many of them?"

The man shook his head.

Nick waited a moment. "Well, what can you tell? How big? How heavy?"

"Not enough to go on, sir." The young man pressed his lips together. 

Nick didn't manage to catch himself before he huffed out loud. "Which way it went?"

The man cast his light around from side to side. "Not really, sir."

By now everyone had knotted up behind him, and a brief glance at Abby and Connor's miserable faces told him they were thinking about Stephen, too. Well, they needed to get over it. Stephen wouldn't be back for weeks. They'd have to make do for a while without him, and just be grateful they'd get him back on the team eventually. And they would. Nick wouldn't believe otherwise.

They spent several more minutes standing still and playing torches around in the rain trying to look around without walking and thereby destroying tracks. Nick was about ready to call it a night and leave some SFs to alert them if anything did come through when a voice called, "I think I have something."

Of course, everyone started towards the man at once, until Abby's voice rang out clearly: "Let Cutter through, and nobody else move!" Thank God someone had a good head on her shoulders.

Nick found a young black man bent over some low bushes. "I found the mud had been messed about here, and it looks like something may have been eating the bushes, sir." He indicated some ragged patches in the bushes and the muck in the area in front of them, which honestly didn't look like a lot to Nick.

"You have some training in tracking?"

"A little," the man said. "I'm afraid it's all in tracking humans, though. Search and rescue school, then SERE. I was just assigned to the ARC three weeks ago." He trailed off, standing, and played his torch over the other side of the bushes. "Grass is torn up over there, too," he added. 

"Right. I'll follow you."

Actually, it turned out that he wouldn't. This new man—Miller was the young soldier's name—seemed to need time and space to try to pick up the trail of whatever it was, which was eminently sensible. At least all indications so far were that whatever had come through was herbivorous. Of course, there might be more than one creature, so he insisted Miller take an enlisted man, at least.

Nick splashed back through the rain and mud to find Connor. Maybe he could send his moon rover through, at least determine what era they were dealing with. 

Soldiers seemed to be just standing about, looking around as if they thought a T. Rex might jump out of the trees at any moment. Well, that's what soldiers were for, he supposed. Abby was still playing her torch across the ground near the anomaly, but it looked even muddier there than it had before; too many people about. Connor was lugging the rover towards the anomaly. Nick brought them up to speed while Connor prepared to send his creation through.

"So how does this man work out herbivore?" Abby asked with some interest, uncrossing her arms.

"Signs it was eating bushes." He pointed in the general direction of the lieutenant.

"And if it was eating, it probably wasn't being pursued at the time," she said with a nod. 

"True." Cutter smiled. Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad.

Of course, that wasn't what he was thinking three hours later, after Connor's rover had found an even worse storm on the other side and come to a halt in the rain, a success it followed by losing the signal completely. Finally Nick let two of the military men go through to retrieve it, since no animals had been seen on the other side, but he had to endure Connor's puppy eyes as the young man alternately apologized for the technical failure and begged to be sent after it himself. Fortunately the retrieval only took a few minutes.

While tromping through the muck, Nick tried to keep his mind on his job, but he found it hard not to think about Stephen. At least with Stephen he could have shared a laugh about this mess. Well, once he could have. Not so much the last few months. And that was a damned shame, wasn't it?

It wasn't as if Stephen had made the only errors. For months, Nick had found it difficult to get over the fact that Stephen had never come clean about the affair—but now he was finding it nearly as difficult to get over the fact that he hadn't told Stephen there was a conspiracy until Stephen had found hard evidence of it himself. He couldn't think why he hadn't told Stephen. It wasn't that he thought Stephen was involved; that was a possibility he had considered only to dismiss. He'd been going to tell Stephen, a couple of times, and then something had happened, and it had slipped his mind. Maybe he just wanted to forget, as if he could make the conspiracy cease to exist by pretending it didn't.

Instead, he'd left Stephen to look for answers himself, and Stephen had gone to someone who would give him answers. Or, rather, she had come to him. The answers were lies, but Stephen hadn't known that. Maybe he should have known, but Nick hadn't left him anywhere else to turn, had he? Instead, Nick had shut him down the moment he saw Helen, thought the worst of him until Stephen finally confirmed it by doing what Nick had assumed. 

If he hadn't accused Stephen of sleeping with Helen again and fired him on the spot, Stephen would still have been on the team. Hell, Stephen had gone back to ARC despite being fired publicly and only left again when Nick had hit him.

So Stephen might have been with them when they all went to go get Rex, and God knew where that might have ended. But then he'd have been inside with Nick, and maybe they could have freed themselves sooner, before it was too late. Or maybe he wouldn't have gone for Rex; maybe he'd have stayed at the ARC, in case of a new anomaly. He tended to do responsible things like that, with the glaring exception of coming late in the case of the mammoth. Even then, though, he thought he was doing something important, bringing some answers to the whole team.

If Stephen had stayed at the ARC, or if Jenny had stayed because it was getting to be too much of a crowd, someone could have told Lester where they had gone. When he couldn't reach them, he would have sent soldiers.

Nick knew that what-ifs were nothing but trouble. He'd had enough of them since Helen's original disappearance. What if he hadn't said this or that to set her off? What if he'd been more attentive? They only made him feel worse, never better.

Knowing that some thoughts were no good and stopping yourself from thinking them, however, were two vastly different things.

They then had the joy of locating a pair of small hadrosaurs and trying to capture them in the drizzle that wouldn't quite go away. They arrived back at the anomaly site to find that it had just closed. By the time they headed back to the ARC around 5 am with two sedated dinosaurs in the truck, Nick had resigned himself to getting nothing better than a quick shower and a quick nap back at their base. The night was already pretty well shot, and with the lost sleep his hopes that this day would be any better receded.

***

This time Stephen did seem to be lucid enough for an interview, James noted with relief before he sat down and pulled out his recording device.

"We'll do a full and proper debrief later," James assured him, "but for now I'd like to be sure we've got the basics covered, to make sure we know everything crucial before any more time goes by." He didn't add that they'd all been far too sloppy already, and he wasn't going to make that mistake again. He prided himself on not repeating mistakes.

Stephen nodded silently. He seemed less loquacious now that they'd lowered the dosage of painkillers.

The interview went smoothly enough; since Cutter had already told him that Hart was convinced Lester was behind the conspiracy, there weren't any big surprises. Stephen chose his words carefully at times, and Lester knew he was keeping things back, but he didn't press until the end of the interview.

"Anything you'd like to add? Anything we might have omitted?" Lester asked. 

Stephen thought for a moment before shaking his head. "I think we've covered it all."

"Good." He read the time off his watch and shut off the recording device. "Now that we're off the record, you can tell me when you started sleeping with Helen Cutter again."

Stephen's start was slight, but he was otherwise so still that it was quite noticeable, and might have been evident even to someone without James's observational skills. 

"What?" he blustered.

"When did you start sleeping with her again?" James repeated.

Stephen paused, clearly considering whether to deny it or not. "I don't see that it's any of your business," he said stiffly at last, his eyes drifting away from James's face.

"And two weeks ago, I'd have agreed," James retorted, "but that was before I realized just how badly personal issues have been interfering with everyone's judgement." He looked straight at Stephen.

"I won't do it again," Stephen said, briefly returning his gaze. "That's done forever."

"Does Cutter know? Or is he going to go ballistic all over again?"

Stephen let out a breath. "I told him everything."

Would that it were that simple. "And he forgave you?" 

Stephen didn't answer, instead studying the fingers at the end of the injured arm as he moved them gingerly.

"Well, that's not good," James said. "And this is exactly why I need to know. Because even when Cutter says he can work things out, we both know—hell, the whole ARC knows!—he doesn't, and they come back to bite us all later. So I need to know the situation so that I can deal with it." His interest was purely professional. He wasn't a gossip. You didn't get to be where he was by sharing what you knew. 

He also needed to know just how badly messed up this man was before he had him working anywhere again, let alone on Cutter's team. Helen would be back, and James had to be certain of how Stephen would react. In fact, it would help to know how he'd react even before he got back to work, in case Helen did manage to slip past the undercover guards he'd managed to post in and around the hospital.

When Stephen still said nothing, he added in exasperation, "You must have worked out by now that I'm not the enemy! We're on the same side here!" No one said he had to like the people he worked with; life was generally easier if he didn't like them. Open hostility, however, benefited no one.

Stephen looked directly at him and held his gaze this time. "Yeah, that's why you decided to mock us publicly when Helen took it upon herself to destroy Nick and me."

Well, maybe it wouldn't make the highlights reel for personnel management, but for God's sake, that wasn't really his forte. "With ammunition you handed her!"

"Nearly a decade before." Stephen kept his voice low and measured, not angry, but a great deal of bitterness lurked in there.

"So I hurt your feelings, and you think that makes me a conspirator?"

"I think you don't give a damn about any of us," Stephen returned coolly. Before James could answer, he continued, "And it's not a matter of my feelings. Yeah, maybe I deserved whatever you could dish out, but she stood there trying to destroy Nick in front of everyone, and you helped her."

"You have an awfully peculiar way of showing your loyalty to Cutter," James returned. Stephen still didn't break his gaze, a little to his surprise. So he was ready to play rough? Good. If he wanted any more part of this business, he couldn't keep whining, and James would be damned if he was going to let him hide behind injuries or medication. 

"No, don't tell me," he said, pretending to muse for a moment. "Let me guess. You didn't sleep with her until Cutter fired you, at which point you decided you owed him nothing." Stephen gave that little start again, and his gaze started to drift away, but he forced it back to James's face. "You thought it wasn't a betrayal at that point."

Stephen opened his mouth slightly and closed it again. James shifted slightly in the chair, pushing his legs out a little more, relaxing his posture to signal that he'd wait. Let the man stew for a bit; he'd say something.

"Nick knows what I did, and when," Stephen said, apparently unfazed. "And that it won't ever happen again."

"I'm sure that's what you said last time."

There was a tightening in Stephen's face, but he didn't answer. He just stared back at James. Maybe the man was smarter than he'd been acting lately, and thank God if that were the case.

A minute went on, then a little more.

Stephen frowned. "So you're going to sit there staring at me until...when?"

James smiled. "You mean you've finally worked out that frequently you're better off not speaking?"

That earned him a concerted glare. Stephen shifted a little, winced slightly—and picked up the book from his bedside table with a little more wincing and proceeded to open it. 

James waited a little longer, but Stephen seemed intent on ignoring him. He leaned forward to see the book's spine. "Michael Crichton? You're reading Crichton?" 

Stephen smiled. "Well, I've read the Jurassic Park books before, and Connor recommended this one." He turned the cover towards James so he could see the title: The Thirteenth Warrior. "You can borrow it when I'm done." The smile turned a little too sweet.

Now this was the man he'd known before Helen dropped her bombshell, the man who annoyed him nearly as much as Cutter. Maybe they could actually get past this god awful mess, and he could put together a functioning team again. Hart wouldn't be out in the field for some time yet. It might be a lot easier to get Cutter to accept someone they all knew wasn't permanently replacing Hart, even if Cutter hadn't yet decided whether he wanted Stephen back on the team or not.

"Thanks, but I think my kids are a little young for it still," James said as he stood.

A slight frown passed over Stephen's face at the insult, but he didn't try to retort. "Say hi to the others for me," he said dismissively, holding the book open awkwardly against his chest with his good hand. 

James rolled his eyes, even if Hart wasn't looking. "I'm sure they'll be here soon enough," he said.

***

Stephen didn't know what to make of Lester's visits. He was surprised the man hadn't sent someone else, but then, he did want to be the one asking the questions. He seemed far too smug about figuring out what Stephen had done with Helen—and even what he'd been thinking. He supposed stupidity wasn't that hard to work out. And maybe Lester needed to feel smarter than someone, since Leek had so nearly killed him, according to Connor.

Leek must have been insane to be messing about with future predators like that, Stephen mused. But then, anyone who conspired with Helen had to be either mad or stupid. Possibly both. He probably fitted into the latter category. He hadn't meant to conspire with her, but he'd kept her presence secret long enough for her to work with Leek and get all those creatures, from various eras. Was the ADD not detecting all the anomalies? He'd have to ask Connor.

He still couldn't believe he'd trusted Helen about Lester and never noticed anything odd about Leek. He'd never much liked Leek; the man seemed too fawning, too eager to please. Beyond that, however, Leek hadn't made any particular impression on Stephen. He didn't talk a whole lot with him. Still, it seemed there ought to have been some clue.

Nick Cutter's arrival put an end to Stephen's musings.

Stephen smiled at seeing Cutter but then realized maybe he shouldn't be smiling. Not after what he'd said the day before. Besides, Cutter looked a little rough. He seemed to have skipped shaving again. He was much later than usual; Lester said they'd come back not long before sunrise.

"Stephen," Nick greeted him neutrally, sliding in to the chair.

"Cutter," he replied in the same tone. He really ought to let Cutter speak first. That reduced the chances of him saying anything stupid. What was it Lester had said? The less he spoke, the better?

"I just...." Cutter shifted around in the chair, apparently trying to get comfortable. That would probably fail. "I had convinced myself that you hadn't slept with her again, after you...after you ran off and nearly got yourself killed for me, and I wasn't prepared to hear that you had."

Stephen wasn't sure whether he was supposed to speak now or not.

Apparently not. Cutter gave up on the chair and stood, beginning to pace. "And maybe if we'd had this out back when...back when I first found out, we'd have got past all this, and you wouldn't have done it again."

Stephen had tried to have it out, actually, but Nick wouldn't talk about it. He couldn't really say that, though, could he? They had decreased his medication. His mind felt a little clearer, but he wasn't sure he was a good judge. The dull ache he'd had in his leg and abdomen seemed a little worse since they'd cut the medication....

"I thought I was okay with it," Nick said, walking away from him towards the opposite wall. Then, of course, he had to turn already. "I told you that it didn't matter. But I suppose it did. Only I'd already told you that it didn't matter, so then I couldn't say anything more, could I?"

That was definitely a rhetorical question. Right?

Nick had reached the wall by Stephen's head and pivoted again. "But I can't stop thinking about it. I mean, even now...." He took a hand out of his pocket and ran it through hair. It was still blond after all these years. A miracle it hadn't gone grey or fallen out, the way things had been going.

Nick came to a halt about midway down the bed and turned to look at Stephen again. 

Now he definitely expected Stephen to speak. apologize again? Couldn't hurt. He was genuinely sorry. Maybe he hadn't been sorry enough before; he hadn't managed to say it. "I am sorry," he said. 

"Why?" Nick asked.

"Because I hurt you! Because I betrayed you, because...." 

Nick was shaking his head. "I meant, why did you sleep with her in the first place? You knew she was married; you even knew to whom!"

Stephen thought back. He'd really tried hard not to think back to what he'd done for years. He'd been relieved when Cutter hadn't pressed him for any details, truth be told. "It didn't start out that way. She was my tutor; she told me...she complimented me. A lot. All for my work, at first."

Cutter ran his hand through his hair again impatiently. Right, cut to the chase.

"Then it started getting more personal, and then we were both looking at a paper together, and—I don't even know who started it, Nick, to be honest. I was kissing her."

Nick nodded silently.

"One thing led to another. I didn't...I know it's not an excuse, but I didn't really know you then. I hadn't worked with you yet." He sounded pathetic. He was pretty pathetic. He knew who Nick was. He just didn't know Nick. That didn't change the fact that he was sleeping with someone else's wife.

"I see," Nick said eventually.

There was a long silence. Stephen wasn't sure how much to say. He'd promised Abby there'd be no more secrets, but he had already learned far too well that one could tell too much of the truth, or tell it badly.

At least Nick took a deep breath. "So: did you use my bed?"

"God, no!" That hurt. Maybe he should be less forceful when he spoke. Or maybe he just deserved it.

"The spare room?"

"No! No, Cutter, I've never even been in your house when you weren't there." He bit his lip. The dull ache in his guts was sharpening.

Nick nodded curtly. 

Stephen tried not to sigh. "What else do you want to know?" He wanted to warn Nick not to ask anything he'd regret knowing the answer to, but he was in no position to ask that—and of course it wouldn't do any good.

"How long?"

"A couple of months." He tried to remember more precisely, but it was a blur now. 

"Who broke it off?"

"She did."

Nick nodded knowingly. "Got tired of you."

"No, I—" Oh, hell. Once he started talking, he never did know when to shut up. 

"You what?"

"Erm, I...."

"No secrets any more, remember? That's how she got leverage over you in the first place."

Stephen took a deep breath and hoped Nick would honour his promise not to hit him while he was in hospital. And that this wouldn't be the last visit he'd ever make. "I...she dumped me because I said I wanted to marry her."

A lot of possibilities had occurred to him, but Nick laughing his head off wasn't one of them. 

"You wanted to marry her? You are daft! She was married, you know, at the time! Still is, as far as she's concerned, I think," he added in an undertone. Then he looked more serious for a moment. "You wanted her to leave me?"

"To be honest," Stephen admitted, "I wasn't thinking of you at all. We'd had a row, we'd made up, I was feeling...I was...." In love with her, or so he'd thought. "I just blurted it out, I hadn't planned it. I think for a moment I had even forgotten she was married." He couldn't remember. That was one of the times he wanted most to blot out of his mind, and he'd done a fairly good job. If you thought about something else the moment a certain thing came into your head, every time, and did it for years, you really could forget. Some of it, anyway.

Nick had the ghost of a smile on his face. "You were besotted."

"Yes."

Nick laughed again, but not so hard, and maybe not unkindly. "And she took this how?"

Well, if opening all of Stephen's old wounds made Nick feel better, it might be worth it. Talking felt like it was opening the newer ones too, but he could hardly protest. Meet Nick more than halfway, Abby had said, and she was right, of course. 

"She...she...pitched a fit," he finally managed. "Said I was too possessive, that she'd thought I was different but I was really like everyone else, that I didn't respect her.... She told me she could lose her position if I compromised her in any way...." He knew now, and he should have known then, exactly what she was doing.

He saw a surprising sympathy in Nick's face. "And then she dumped you."

Stephen almost laughed, but he stopped himself in time. "No, then I apologized—grovelled, really. I told her I'd do anything for her."

"Yes, I seem to recall her saying something to that effect," Nick said drily. 

Stephen took a breath—not a deep one—and went on. "I promised I'd never tell anyone, because I thought she was genuinely worried she'd get sacked if the dean found out."

Cutter snorted. "Like Matthews?"

Matthews had slept with one postgraduate student after another. Everyone knew. No one did anything. Everyone detested Matthews, though, and Stephen hadn't wanted that to happen to Helen. 

"It would have been different for Helen," Stephen said, before realizing that he was defending her. What he'd said was actually true, though; there had been lots of Matthewses over the years, at CMU and more prestigious schools, and they weren't all detested. But they were all men.

Now, though, Stephen wondered if she'd even really feared their relationship coming out, or if she just wanted to see if he'd promise.

"So you grovelled and she still dumped you?" Nick asked. There was a slight note of satisfaction in his voice.

"Not right away. We made up again, she let me think...but it wasn't more than a couple of weeks." Stephen realized he was panting slightly. He rested his head back against his pillow, trying not to let his eyes close.

"And that was it, until...."

"Until the day—the day before, I suppose—I ended up here." He gathered his breath. "And I know I betrayed you, Cutter, and I betrayed the whole team, but you most of all...."

Cutter stepped closer, and he flinched back just slightly, sucking in a breath when the movement hurt his abdomen too much. Nick froze and asked, "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Stephen answered.

Nick's snort told Stephen clearly enough that he didn't believe him, but he let it go. "Look, Stephen, I...oh, hell, I'm rubbish at this!" He rubbed a hand over his face, then the other hand. "Abby said I should talk to you," he murmured from behind his palms.

"I know," Stephen said with relief that they seemed to be moving onto safer ground. "I got a lecture too."

"Oh, really?" Nick's hands came down. "The one I got was about how you were in pain and on medication that mess with your head and I really have to go the extra mile and tell you the things I just kind of assume you already know."

"She told me you'd been through so much that I ought to meet you more than halfway."

Nick smiled himself. "Abby fancies herself some kind of counsellor."

That reminded Stephen that he'd be meeting with his counsellor today: a psychiatrist, vetted by Jenny and Lester. It was probably best not to mention that right now.

"She's right," Stephen told Cutter. "At least, I think she is," he added more cautiously. "Is it helping?"

Nick thought for a moment, pursing his lips. "I think it is, actually." He grinned wickedly. "So you wanted to make an honest woman of my wife?"

Stephen winced at pain more mental than physical.

"I think probably I should be upset about this, and I'm not promising I won't get mad later," Cutter said, sliding at last back into the chair. "But it does seem awfully funny, especially from where I'm sitting."

So Stephen was now providing amusement for Cutter.

"She practically proposed to me, you know," Nick told him. "Kept starting sentences with 'when we're married' until I finally took her to a jeweller's and let her pick out the ring she liked best." Nick smiled—Stephen would have thought of the look as "fond" before, but now he wasn't sure.

Stephen shook his head carefully. He'd never given a thought about who had proposed to whom, or anything about their marriage, until he'd really come to know Nick. Then it was too late to undo what he'd done, and telling him about an affair that had already ended would not only break his promise but hurt Nick—and possibly ruin their friendship. Once she had disappeared, he wasn't sure if he was bound by the promise or not, but he did know telling could only cause more hurt. He'd never quite believed she was dead. He told Nick she was, because Nick needed to hear it, or he'd have kept looking forever.

"So after she dumped you, you never...?"

"Tried to get her back?" Stephen exhaled slowly. "I might have, except that was right before term started up again, and...."

"That was the year you became my student," Nick said more seriously. "I thought you were awfully shy at first. Well, that clears up some things." 

Helen had begun pursuing more and more outlandish theories—about evolutionary leaps and overlaps and throwbacks. She'd been publishing less and less, and she cast off her students. Stephen had been neither the first nor the last to go. A couple of times she'd teased him by walking up to him at a department function and whispering something filthy in his ear to see if she could make him react in front of Nick, which he thought odd given her fears of being caught. Other than those two instances, he might as well have imagined the whole affair, for all she showed of it before her disappearance. He'd kept his promise and not told anyone about the affair.

Some promises were better broken. He'd come to that conclusion awfully late.

Nick was shifting in the chair again. "You'd think they could get more comfortable chairs," he grumbled. 

"The nurse doesn't want you keeping me up too long," Stephen said with relief that Nick had come to the end of his questions. "She'll probably be along any moment now to tell you to let me rest."

Nick nodded decisively. "Then I'd better tell you before I get tossed out on my ear. I'm not happy—and I can't forget. I'm trying. I think I can forgive, but...I'm still working on that bit."

Stephen turned his head too sharply, startled, and sucked in a breath, but Nick didn't seem to notice.

"It might take me a while. But there's too damned much between us to let Helen screw us over. You've saved my life so many times I can't even count."

"But you've saved mine," Stephen protested.

"Not at this kind of cost," Nick said, glancing around, his eyes going to the stick they now let Stephen use to walk a little—mostly to the toilet.

Stephen protested, "You would have—" Nick very nearly did get to the room before him, and if he hadn't paused to give Stephen a quick hug, he'd probably have been able to get in and lock the door.

Nick cut him off. "Doesn't matter. You did. And besides that, we've got over a decade of friendship—years of awful department parties where we stood to the side and mocked the others. Years of paperwork you helped me through, and grants I got to keep you on. And now two years, or nearer three, I s'pose, of fighting to keep the past and future where they belong. I'm gonna keep working on this forgiveness thing. I'm not very good at it, as you might have noticed. But you deserve it. And damn it, so do I. I've been making myself miserable, too." 

Stephen couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled like this. His face was starting to ache, too, but it made a nice counterpoint to the other pains. "And you've only just realized that?"

Cutter made a face. "Abby rather drove it home."

The nurse did turn up then, and Nick said goodbye and left. Stephen was alone again until physio. God, he was getting sick of this hospital room; he was looking forward to being moved to the rehab facility, where they'd let him out more. 

Nick had been civil. He'd been more than civil. He would come back.

***

"So now we're feeding a mammoth and two...what are they called again?" James asked his assistant, just to see whether she'd know. He'd been making an effort to pay attention since a few stray facts about future predators (hunt primarily by sound) and mammoths (sharp tusks) had saved his life. 

"Hadrosaurs," Lorraine supplied correctly. Good to know she was paying attention.

"My God, we should have fired Hart; they're probably eating something roughly equal to his salary!"

Lorraine did not look amused as she supplied him the actual works and left. Was she fond of him too? The women did seem to go for Stephen. Of course, the military men seemed to like him too, which didn't bear much thinking about. So many of the soldiers seemed intent on visiting him that James had had to order them to go only in civilian clothes. Jenny's cover story involving traders in restricted wildlife had been pretty thin to start; if that was the best she could do, she must have needed sick leave as much as Cutter's whole team did. Numerous visiting soldiers would not help the cover story.

No one could tell that all these athletic men with short haircuts were military as long as they weren't in their gear, right? James wished he could put himself on sick leave, but he'd had to settle for leaving earlier than usual a few nights. His wife quite liked having him home more, but he knew it couldn't last.

Of course, once all the reports were in and read, James might find himself with a lot of free time. This could become the first job from which he'd ever been fired. He shouldn't mind. He'd been saying for as long as he could remember that it was more trouble than it was worth. He'd land on his feet; his skills were too useful to leave him out of work for long.

James did find, though, that the thought of leaving here now held no appeal.

Cutter finally arrived, and James pulled his lead team into a meeting to go over the usual details. They'd been doing necropsies on what was left of the various creatures that Leek and Helen Cutter had kept in their menagerie, but a number of them had been too mangled, by humans or other predators or both, for much study at all. Still, he was keeping busy the veterinarians he'd finally been able to hire, and Abby and Cutter assisted with the necropsies and kept the team and James informed.

Connor reported no new advances on the ADD. If Helen had been slipping back and forth through anomalies since it had come online, it either wasn't working right, or she must have been getting in and out before they got there—which prompted the question of how she managed that. Connor had a theory that she had stolen a future version of the ADD, which sounded rather science fictional to James, but, then again, a Columbian mammoth had saved him from something out of Alien, so he couldn't really complain.

Connor had been making progress on the rover, working with their new electronics expert, which was something, anyway. 

"I can also make a more limited model we could just stick in while holding onto it," Connor enthused. "MALP on a stick!"

Abby made the mistake of asking, "What?" and off he went on some tangent about Star Wars or Star Trek or Star Gate; he wasn't even sure Connor could keep them all those Stars straight. 

Cutter managed to interrupt, once again living up to his name. "What we really need is a quick way to tell which era we're looking at," he said. "At this point, we've got a mammoth and two hadrosaurs to repatriate; we can't just stick them through the next anomaly to open up."

"We're working on a more sophisticated environment sampling system," Connor began, and then he was off to the races once more. Cutter seemed to understand him at least, but Abby showed signs of her eyes glazing over, and Jenny had begun flipping through a folder and scribbling notes to herself. He didn't believe for a second they were about Connor's ideas.

James longed for the days when he could just send them off to work out the details themselves, but he'd recently learned how crucial details could be. He also needed to keep an eye on how his people were doing. Cutter looked perpetually tired still. Abby and Connor seemed to have bounced back reasonably well, except that he'd caught them both with haunted looks on their faces when they didn't know anyone was observing. Jenny alone seemed fairly untouched—but now she insisted on being in on all the meetings, so perhaps she wasn't. Hart himself actually seemed in reasonably good spirits—possibly unreasonably good spirits, with some chemical assistance.

Connor and Cutter finally finished their conversation, Cutter with looks around the table as if he was just realizing everyone else had tuned out. Connor just jotted some things down and failed to notice anyone else.

"Jenny, what have you got for us today?" James asked the table.

Jenny spread out her notes more noticeably. "We've finished redoing security checks on all personnel. Leek definitely doctored the results of the first checks on six men; another four were questionable, but he hired them anyway. Four of the ten who worked for him died from injuries inflicted by animals, two by gunshot wounds"—she didn't mention that she'd made one of those kills herself—"two were caught by our security forces, and two remain at large. The Home Office have identified them as suspected terrorists, and all levels of local and national law enforcement are watching for them, as are most of our allies."

James couldn't help his eye roll. "How is it we can manage to kill future predators, dinosaurs, sabretooth tigers, and God knows what else, and still capture two men and kill two, while the entire rest of the world can't manage to find the remaining two?"

"Maybe they've gone through an anomaly," Connor said seriously.

"That assumes some of them aren't registering on the ADD," Cutter said, almost in a growl. 

"The Home Office have also identified Helen as a suspected terrorist," Jenny added with her eyes on Cutter.

"'Suspected terrorist' doesn't begin to cover it," Cutter muttered, and from the fierce looks on their faces, everyone else agreed.

James thought with some satisfaction as he looked around the table that he wouldn't want to be Helen Cutter if she did manage to run into this team. "We want her alive," he reminded them, just in case.

"We should have put a tracker in her when we had her prisoner," Connor said bluntly.

Abby started and leaned towards him. "Connor, that's...."

Cutter just stared, perhaps not happy with how cynicism looked on the youngest member of the team. James had to admit he didn't much care for it himself.

Connor looked at the pages in front of him. He didn't seem to notice the others' reactions, and he didn't seem to be joking.

Jenny pursed her lips and shuffled some papers. "In other matters, we've got security clearance for a respected psychiatrist who will now be available—"

She was cut short by a snort from Cutter. That seemed to surprise her, and she said, a little defensively, "Well, Stephen has begun seeing him!"

"Stephen doesn't need a psychiatrist!" Cutter barked.

Everyone froze. James had an almost irresistible urge to laugh, but he didn't want to be the reason Cutter finally snapped. Abby and Connor appeared to have stopped breathing and were now both looking studiously at the table. Jenny simply regarded Cutter with amazement.

Cutter turned his glare from Jenny to James, and James couldn't help himself. His lips twitched. He decided that he would not bring up replacing Hart, even temporarily, at this particular meeting.

Cutter made a noise of disgust. "Although perhaps some others could use counselling." Then he pushed back from the table and demanded, "Is this meeting over?"

James nodded, not trusting his voice.

He'd never seen the room empty so fast.

***

Nick tried to put the damned meeting out of his mind while he reviewed necropsy finding on the future predators. They needed a better name than "giant bat-things," but he'd like to give them a proper scientific name, and he wanted to understand their evolutionary place to decide what it should be.

They had a good deal of post-mortem evidence about their brains now. That they had highly developed areas related to hearing made sense; what he really wanted to know but couldn't work out with the damned things dead was whether they had language. How intelligent were they? Was there any hope of reasoning with them?

The electronics people and Connor had been all over the control devices used on the creatures, but apparently they'd been pretty well fried; the ARC couldn't get them to work at all. The experts knew enough to agree that the technology seemed far in advance of anything available now, which meant Helen had been to the future, but they already knew that, didn't they? It didn't tell them a damned thing about the creatures—but it did tell them that some intelligent race in the future probably had opposable thumbs, and perhaps an understanding of electronics that grew out of contemporary humans'. 

Nick had to wonder what kind of people would make control devices for these things. Was that so they didn't have to kill or be killed, which seemed his team's only option? Then why were some of the creatures running around free?

Or were the devices used as Leek had used them? And perhaps Helen? How much of the plan had been hers? Did future people use the creatures as weapons against other people? What had Helen intended for them, and why had she ever allied with Leek?

It made his head hurt. He didn't want to think that Helen would use these creatures to hurt people; after all, she'd helped them track down the one she knew had slipped into their own time. Perhaps he should think of it as his time, rather; Helen didn't seem to owe too much allegiance to it any longer. Or the people who lived in it, himself included. She didn't care whether it was Nick or Stephen who went into that room with the creatures, as long as it wasn't her. He'd never realized she could be so cold. She'd said that people died, that species died. Yet she'd risked her life to save Claudia, and later she'd done it again to get rid of the risk of the bat-creatures. 

Had she changed since then? Perhaps with her extra trips through anomalies, she'd seen more timeline alterations than just Claudia's disappearance and Jenny's appearance in more or less the same place. Then again, she seemed fascinated by Jenny, as if she'd never seen such a change before. 

Jenny hadn't pressed him about Claudia since that day she asked him in hospital. She'd looked at him a few times with an odd expression, and he'd thought she was about to ask, but then each time something had interrupted.

Maybe he should talk to her about it. But what more could he say? He'd told her the important things.

Then Nick remembered something he hadn't thought about in weeks. He checked his wallet. The photo was still there.

He went to find Jenny. She had her own little office, private like his; he'd never actually been in there before. She usually found him, or they met in a conference room or Lester's office.

She greeted him with a smile. "Reconsidering the offer of a psychiatrist?"

He scowled at her but then decided her words were ironically appropriate. "Actually, I have proof I'm not crazy. You might think Helen and I shared a delusion, but this, this you'll find hard to deny. May I?" He gestured to one of the comfortable chairs by a small round table rather than the chair on the opposite side of the desk from where she sat. 

"By all means." Jenny came around the desk herself and sat in one of the other three chairs.

"This," he said, flourishing the photo, "is Claudia." 

Jenny took the picture in silence, frowning deeply when she saw it.

He explained how he'd dropped round that evening just after she'd started working at the ARC, to show her the photo—until Jenny's fiancé had appeared.

"She looks just like me!" Jenny said, glancing at him only for a moment. "I mean, she doesn't use makeup to her best advantage, and she could certainly dress better, but…anyone could mistake her for me." She held the photo close to her eyes, turning it slightly as if different light might reveal something more.

Nick preferred Claudia's more judicious use of makeup, actually, but he didn't think announcing that would win him any points.

"Why didn't you show this to me sooner?" Jenny asked, not taking her eyes from the photo. "I understand why you didn't that evening, but…."

"Why did I let you think I was crazy?" Nick wondered that now himself. "I…I thought it would just complicate matters more if I did show you. You were here, and Claudia was gone, and I needed to get my head around this new reality, I suppose." That sounded reasonable, but the truth was that he didn't really understand himself why he hadn't brought the picture out again between then and now.

"But why not show it to your team, at least?" Jenny said, slowly handing the photo back as if she'd rather hang onto it herself.

"Well, Connor actually believed me…."

"I know," Jenny said. "I've been talking to him about alternate realities and timeline and all these science-fiction-sounding things…." She flashed a nervous smile.

Connor had believed him all along—but Stephen hadn't. He never actually said he didn't believe Nick, but Nick could see it in his eyes and his bearing. He could have shown Stephen the proof, but he supposed he'd wanted Stephen to believe him based on his word alone. After all, Nick had told himself, he had never lied to Stephen. Stephen was the liar. So Nick didn't need to justify himself, didn't need to prove himself. 

Nick had let the differing timelines become one more wedge between them. Abby had been concerned about him too, maybe even more than Stephen had been, and Nick had just brushed her worry aside. He didn't know why.

"You've drifted off again," Jenny complained. "Just like Stephen, but without the medication!"

"Sorry, I…."

"What?" She seemed genuinely interested.

"I don't know why I didn't show anyone else this," he admitted. "Everything just seems to have gone wrong since…." Since Helen stuck her verbal knife in his back. Only it wasn't his back. She'd done it right to his face. And in front of everyone.

"James thinks we've all been so sleep-deprived as to become irrational," Jenny told him with a cautious smile, as if to take the sting from the words.

"Does he include himself?" Nick couldn't keep the acid out of his voice entirely.

Jenny laughed. "He doesn't say so, but I think he does."

"It's no excuse," Nick said, poking at a bit of dust or lint on his shirt angrily. He should have had more sleep—if he could have slept. He'd lain awake far too many nights. Wondering what he should have done differently: should he have noticed something about Helen? But when? He didn't even know when the affair had been. Should he have realized Stephen was keeping something from him? Doubtless. But he wasn't married to Stephen. Helen—how could he not have realized? He loved her! He knew things weren't right between them, and he'd been trying to make it better.

"For him, or for you?" Jenny sighed, obviously realizing he hadn't been paying enough attention. "Lack of sleep is no excuse for you, or for James?" she repeated.

Nick huffed. "Either. Both."

"Well, you're caught up now, right?" The question seemed innocent, but the look was a little too piercing.

"What do you think?" he asked with annoyance. 

Jenny straightened her back a little. "I think you're still not getting enough, and that's why you're so touchy."

Touchy? Of course he was touchy! What did they expect from him? In the past week, he'd fired his best friend, who'd slept with his ex-wife again, and then been captured by the ex-wife and another psychopath—

Of course, everyone else had plenty of reason to be sensitive too. Jenny had perhaps most of all. PR jobs weren't supposed to be life-endangering. Or to require killing. Perhaps if he gave a little more thought to what other people might be thinking or feeling….

He made himself smile and told her he appreciated her concern. 

When he thought about it, he really did appreciate the concern. He just didn't know how to cope with it right now. He was no longer sure why he'd come to her office, and he excused himself and rose.

Jenny stood as well. "Nick?" she said tentatively, putting a hand gently on his arm. "Thanks. For showing me. It's...disturbing to know that...." She frowned again as she sought words, something that usually took little effort.

"I know," Nick assured her. "Hard to get your head around." He admitted, "I'm not even sure why I showed you."

Jenny clasped her hands in front of her. "The timelines can change, and Helen knows it. We need to remember it as well."

"Cheerful thought," he said with a snort.

Jenny smiled. It was the sort of smile that made Nick think he didn't want to cross her. "The cheerful thought is that we can work together. We haven't always done it so well, but we can do it. Whatever Helen had planned, we stopped her."

Nick started to say, "This time," but he managed to smile himself and say instead, "That's true." He went back to his office not certain how reassured he was, but he felt oddly lighter for having finally shared that photograph with someone. 

***

Stephen had been very good about not pressing Connor on the subject of Abby. He had no right to speak of anything related to romance, or even women. He kept hoping Connor would bring it up, but Connor mostly talked about what he was working on with his ADD and rover.

So finally Stephen asked, "Have you said anything to Abby?"

Connor seemed to fold in on himself, pulling his hands together in his lap and bending his shoulders as he hunched slightly. "About...?"

Connor knew what he meant, or he wouldn't have reacted like that. Stephen knew now what the answer would be, but he went ahead with the question. "Have you asked her out? Now that Caroline's out of the picture?"

Connor tucked his chin closer. He looked like he might just go into fetal position right there in the uncomfortable chair all the non-military visitors complained about. "I don't think that's such a good idea at the moment."

"Why not?"

"Well, Rex is still getting over everything, and—"

"She's not still pissed off with you for that?"

"She says she isn't."

Oh. Maybe like Cutter, Abby was still working on forgiveness. Maybe Connor was right not to press his luck.

Connor smiled a little. "We've got time."

"But that's the thing!" Stephen surprised himself with the exclamation. "You don't know how much time you've got!"

It was completely the wrong thing to say; he knew it while the words were still leaving his mouth, but he couldn't seem to stop them. Connor's mouth shut tightly, and he turned his face away. Stephen cursed himself silently.

Well, screw it. He only knew that Connor had seen something on Leek's security systems because Cutter had told him. He wasn't even sure what Connor had seen. He wasn't going to keep avoiding the entire subject of what had happened to him. He didn't have to tread quite as lightly with Connor as with the others; Connor was almost as likely as he to say stupid things, and quicker to forgive. He might as well jump in with both feet.

"I suppose it's different for you, though." Stephen made himself sound cheerful. "Neither of you is idiot enough to end up on the wrong side of a locked door."

That did at least bring Connor's eyes, now wide open, back to his face.

Stephen continued, "You and Abby don't pull anywhere near as many stupid stunts, so you can probably afford to take things a little slower."

"You saved Cutter's life! You saved everybody! If those creatures had escaped—" Connor's body unwound so fast he threatened to fall out of the chair.

"If those creatures had escaped," Stephen answered, "the Special Forces boys who were already on their way would have had a whole lot more mess to clean up, and maybe, maybe some more people would have died. But don't make me out to be a hero. I didn't save the world. Nick would have done it himself. I only saved Cutter, and barely that."

"But you did!" Connor argued heatedly, leaning towards Stephen. "You saved him, and you saved us, because we were still awfully close to the building, and we only had the one gun! We'd have all—"

"You wouldn't have," Stephen insisted, "because Nick would have done it if I hadn't stopped him. He was nearly in already; I was almost too slow."

Connor frowned fiercely. "But you did save everyone," he insisted. 

Stephen held up his good hand. "Fine. Have it your way," he said, making it clear enough that he didn't believe Connor but wasn't going to argue any more. 

But Connor wouldn't quit. "I know what you did," he said more quietly. "I saw it."

"And you shouldn't have," Stephen replied, and he was finally able to say, "I'm sorry."

Connor shook his head. "I'm not. You think it wasn't bad enough for Abby? She never saw anything, but she was here at the hospital wondering—waiting to hear, for hours and hours, like I was. At least I knew I'd done...." 

"You'd done all you could," Stephen said with sudden understanding. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for Connor to have been involved after all. He'd seen Valerie's death. He'd watched Tom die. Seeing Stephen couldn't be half as bad, at least not since Stephen was still around to talk about it.

Connor nodded. "I wish it hadn't happened, mate, but at least I could do something. The girls...."

"They're okay now, aren't they?" Stephen asked. He thought they seemed their usual selves, but recent events had shown him not to be the best judge of people.

"I think so. I mean, Caroline—I haven't talked to her since Lester let her go. I made sure she was okay, but...."

Stephen nodded.

"Abby—Abby's all right." Connor grinned suddenly. "She lectures you and she lectures the professor, and I think she's getting it all out of her system."

Stephen grinned. "And we deserve it."

Connor's smile faded. "You're not the only one—"

Stephen raised his hand again. "No way. I know you feel bad about Caroline. But you were breaking up with her. You did the right thing."

Connor looked horrified. "You didn't hear how I broke up with her? And why she took Rex?"

Stephen was confused. "I knew she took Rex, but I thought that was Leek's doing?"

Connor told him with some shame about the breakup by text message, and Stephen said nothing. He'd done far worse than that himself.

"Caroline wasn't upset that you dumped her, I think," Stephen said cautiously. He'd never met the woman, so he couldn't be sure. And he didn't honestly care if what he was saying was true or not, though perhaps he ought to care. He cared more about how Connor felt. "She'd lost her pay check, and she took Rex to try to get more out of Leek, right?"

Connor straightened a little. "Yeah! I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. "I mean, I apologized to Abby, but we don't...we don't talk about it. It's still a little bit of a sore spot," he said, dropping his voice confidingly.

"I know what you mean," Stephen said. "Yeah, you're right. Give her some time. And yourself," he added.

Connor nodded. "I think we all need it," he said a little too pointedly.

Stephen wasn't really in a position to turn down advice from anyone at this time.

***

Nick had nearly finished with his reports from the necropsies on the giant bat creatures, though he still hadn't settled on a name; he was fairly sure chiroptera did not still apply. Well, there was a problem he could safely put off until another day. He clicked save yet again on his computer. Now he'd just put it aside for Stephen to proofread and—

Oh, damn. He couldn't believe he'd just done that. How could he forget? He was just so used to Stephen reading over things for him, tying up loose ends, untangling his convoluted sentences, fixing the format.... Of course, he'd had Abby do more and more of that lately, because he hadn't wanted to ask Stephen for anything. Abby was perhaps a little less critical than Stephen, less willing to tamper with Nick's words, but.... He'd thought it was better than feeling he owed something to the man who'd slept with his wife. Of course, he owed that man his life, but he'd saved Stephen's life a few times too. For some reason it was asking for the little things that bothered him.

Asking Stephen to help with little things might mean they were still friends, after all. He thought he'd forgiven Stephen, but then he'd remember, and the knowledge of what Stephen had done, and concealed for so many years, would rankle. He wouldn't ask for favours. Stephen must have noticed, and maybe that was part of why Stephen got so pissed off: it probably looked like Nick didn't trust him.

The insane part was that Nick did trust him, with his life, and with his team. He had trusted him not to reveal the anomalies, as much as he wanted to, and he trusted him to protect the public. He just didn't trust Stephen with his wife. Maybe he didn't trust him with anything personal, for a time there, and his work, his words, were too personal to put into Stephen's hands. Knowing that Stephen had slept with Helen once again did hurt, when Stephen had confessed it, and it actually still hurt now. How could Stephen do that to him? Even if the marriage was over, surely it was a betrayal. And to come late when the mammoth appeared, endangering everyone....

But of course Stephen thought the conspiracy endangered everyone, and he was right. Leek would have killed them all—except Stephen, who had been fired by that time and wasn't among Leek's targets. 

Yet Stephen had been the one who came closest to dying. 

Nick meant what he'd told Stephen. He'd had enough of being miserable; shutting Stephen out hadn't made him feel better in the long run. If he was perfectly honest, he'd admit it felt good at moments, delivering a cutting remark; actually hitting Stephen had felt deeply satisfying for, oh, several seconds altogether! He'd found some satisfaction in knowing that people were badmouthing Stephen over the affair, even if the rumours made him look as gullible as Stephen looked guilty. 

Any pleasure he'd taken in Stephen's discomfiture curdled in his stomach every time he visited him in hospital, or even thought of how he looked now.

A few days before, a walking stick that branched into four feet near its base had appeared by Stephen's bedside. Nick saw it on walking into the room, and all he could think was that old people used it, not young people like Stephen. Stephen must have read it in his face, and he had said something cheerful and made him sit down and tried to distract him. Nick had asked about it, and Stephen answered rather off-handedly his left leg wasn't quite up to taking his weight, and that he should have had crutches but that was clearly out, waving the cast-encased wrist a little inside his sling.

In the end, he must have been successful at distracting Nick, because Nick had accepted his reassurances that walking with a stick was a definite improvement, and he hadn't asked for more details. He had never actually seen Stephen using the stick, however; he'd never even seen him out of his hospital bed.

***

James went to Cutter's office at the end of the day, when the others had all gone and no one would interrupt them. Usually he preferred to call people to his own office, but Cutter might feel more comfortable on his home territory, so to speak. He knew the professor wouldn't like what he had to say, but everything would be much easier if Cutter would cooperate.

"After last night's excitement, Cutter, I think it's time to talk about adding someone to your team," Lester said with no further preamble, carefully adjusting his well-tailored trousers so that he could perch on the edge of the desk without creasing them too much. He could have sat in one of Cutter's chairs, but if he was going to talk to the man on his home turf, he wouldn't be on the other side of a desk from him, like one of Cutter's students.

The man just stared at him for a moment. "We're not replacing Stephen," he answered bluntly.

"Did I say 'replace'?" Lester asked rhetorically. "I thought I said 'add'."

"As long as it's understood that Stephen will have a place when he's ready."

Lester's eyebrows went up ever so slightly. "I think we'll discuss that nearer the time—"

"No discussion. You told me the verbal sacking didn't count, and in any case, I withdraw it. Stephen's on my team."

Lester nodded slowly. "Assuming the medical team will clear him for a return to the field...."

Nick was clearly getting exasperated. "Of course they will! He's going to make a full recovery!"

Damn. He considered his words very carefully. "Have you spoken with his doctors recently?" 

Cutter stiffened. "No." James had been afraid of this. Since the doctors judged Hart fully competent to make his own medical decisions again—though James did not have that much confidence in Hart's decision-making abilities himself—the doctors didn't need to consult Cutter, and Cutter probably didn't want to talk with them. 

"I think the phrase they're using is 'will be able to resume a normal life,'" James said.

"That's the same thing, isn't it?" Cutter asked, an unmistakable edge to his voice.

James normally preferred to be blunt, but he found himself reluctant tonight. "Not...necessarily."

"Then what's the difference?" Nick asked, leaning back in his chair heavily.

"Muscle damage that severe...doesn't entirely heal, as I understand it. Haven't you talked to Stephen about this?" Lester asked, shifting a little on the desk.

"He told me he's making good progress," Nick said, his eyes darting around as if he was trying to replay their conversations in his head.

James explained with a patience he rarely needed that Stephen might well lead a normal life after his recovery, but he hadn't been leading a normal life up to that point, and he might not be able to perform all his duties as he had before. Running in particular might be a problem.

"Running?" Nick asked with a voice full of dread.

He nodded. "Special Forces have told me he was pretty damned fast, so even if he's slowed down a little he might possibly still able to do his job. But...." Lester spread out his hands, feeling oddly helpless. "We're still waiting to see how it all sorts out."

Nick shook his head. 

"I don't know if Hart has talked about it with anyone, to be honest," James continued. Gupta was keeping tabs on him, and she kept James informed.

"I hope he'll be back," he concluded, which made Nick start a little. Oh, for God's sake, given how much leeway Lester had given everyone to visit Hart, including while they ought to be working, that sentiment should hardly come as a surprise.

James continued, "But it will be weeks, at a minimum, and we've already had one anomaly. I'm surprised we haven't had more. Three on a team is too small; you can't split into pairs, you can't cover each other effectively." He could focus on the practical aspects now; he felt more comfortable with those. "None of you is fully trained on a weapon. I think what we really need is one of the military people. I wasn't sure if you had any particular preference; I can just assign one. An officer would surely be best, but I can't give you Robinson: he's in charge of the whole military side of the operation." 

Nick nodded. Thank God, James thought, he seemed to be getting it: Cutter couldn't risk the rest of the team to protect Stephen's feelings—or his own. 

"Do you need an answer this evening, or can I have a few days?" 

That hadn't gone so badly, so James felt generous. "I think I can give you a day or two to consider and review personnel files. If there's another anomaly, I'll just assign someone temporarily." He stood.

"I thought the whole assignment was temporary!" Nick objected at once. "We only need someone until Stephen's back." 

He smiled. "No reason we can't have more than four. Four's a minimum, I'd say." He wished Nick a good evening before he left. He almost felt sorry for the professor; the poor man looked gob smacked at James's pleasantry. 

God, he hoped Cutter and Hart worked out a way to talk to each other properly soon. He'd hoped they'd worked through this problem. Now he was actually looking back fondly on the days when the two of them would finish each other's sentences or worse, just exchange looks, and go off understanding each other and leaving James silently fuming. He'd better head home; he must need sleep himself.

***

Stephen seemed quite interested in news from the ARC, and it was a safe topic, so Nick found himself recounting the previous day's meeting when he made his usual visit. He was working up to asking Stephen about his recovery—and its limits. He rather hoped Stephen would volunteer the information.

"So they're making you see a shrink?" he added.

Stephen frowned. "What?"

"A psychiatrist! They're making you see a psychiatrist?" Nick repeated. "And Jenny even mentioned it at the meeting, apparently thinking that would inspire the rest of us to go see one! Of all the bloody cheek! I told her, of course, that you didn't need one."

Stephen gave a short laugh and then started to double over, clutching his abdomen. Nick automatically grabbed his shoulders, pushing him gently back to the bed as he gasped in pain. 

"Should I call a nurse?" Nick asked urgently.

All that came out of Stephen was something suspiciously like a giggle.

"What the hell are you doing?" He suddenly felt a hand press against his chest, pushing him away, and he let go of Stephen in surprise. 

It was the same damned nurse who'd threatened to have him banned from the room when it came out that he'd hit Stephen. She put herself between him and Stephen.

"He was—"

She jabbed a finger at him. "That's it! I'm calling security!" 

Stephen was wheezing now. 

"Wait!" he shouted after the retreating nurse. "I think he needs medication or something!"

Stephen sounded quite desperate. He wasn't getting air in. Ignoring the imminent arrival of security, Nick pushed him back against the bed again and tried to talk him through breathing slowly and shallowly.

"Sorry," Stephen gasped after several long moments. He giggled again. That was definitely a giggle.

"Okay, so I was wrong," Nick huffed. "Apparently you do need a psychiatrist."

Of course, that was when security decided to arrive, in the person of a large, poorly-shaven man who looked like he could moonlight as a bouncer. He put a hand on Nick's upper arm.

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," Nick tried in his most placating tone, unsure whether this huge man had heard his last remark.

The bouncer looked from him to Stephen, so Nick looked back at his friend. A couple of tears were trickling down Stephen's face. This could not end well.

"No," gasped Stephen, "he was...helping me." 

"Helping you what?" the bouncer asked in an American accent, which only added to Nick's impression of an uncultured brute.

Another man rushed into the room, this one wearing a maintenance uniform. He was wiry and armed with a broom.

"Who the hell are you?" demanded the bouncer.

"Is there a problem?" the new arrival asked, looking around the room, taking in the whole scene. 

This must be one of the men Lester had stationed around the hospital. Good job, Lester or Jenny; too bad they'd just blown the man's cover.

Nick took a deep breath and ignored the gulps from the bed as best he could, though they got worse when the nurse re-entered the room.

"Stephen was in pain and doubled over," Nick recited calmly, thinking it best to pass over the laugh in silence. "I was trying—"

"You don't belong here," the security guard said to the other man, ignoring Nick. "What are you even doing here?"

"Saw security run in here, thought you might need help," he said with a shrug.

"I think I can take care of a domestic disturbance," the guard replied. "Get out!" The man left immediately.

Stephen sputtered slightly and gasped some more. 

"Domestic?" Cutter managed to spit out. "As in...."

"As in domestic disturbance," the guard repeated. 

The nurse joined in, shoving a finger in Nick's face. "You are banned from the hospital—"

Stephen finally managed to get out a coherent objection. "He really was...helping me," he managed. "I curled up...couldn't straighten back...." He offered his most winning smile, or tried to; the result looked quite pained.

Was Stephen flirting with the nurse? Or the twenty-stone behemoth? He seemed to be dividing his attempted smile between them.

The guard looked flummoxed. Nick reflexively tried to look non-threatening, before he realized that might give—or reinforce—the wrong impression.

"Please don't ban him," Stephen said very quietly, wincing as he tried to lie as flat as he could against the bed with its head raised. 

The guard frowned. The nurse rushed to his side. 

"You just took your medication less than two hours ago, dear," she said, pushing gently down on his shoulders—exactly as Nick had done, though he thought it better not to point that out. God, she'd completely melted. At least Stephen was putting his charm to good use.

Stephen breathed audibly. "Right," he said gratefully. "Just need to relax, and...."

"You, out!" the nurse said, turning and pointing to the door in case Nick didn't understand plain English.

Nick started to object, and Stephen joined in.

"Not permanently," the nurse relented. "But if there's one more incident...."

Nick left with what shreds of dignity he still retained. As he walked out of the hospital, he thought, I'll kill Stephen, and then, of course, he felt terribly guilty for even letting the thought cross his mind. Still: domestic. What the hell were they thinking? 

Well, he had to admit, it must seem obvious enough. Stephen had named him next of kin in his paperwork. Nick visited daily. And he would never change their minds. He shouldn't worry about it. It didn't matter what the nurse or the guard thought of him.

He was back at his car when his mobile rang. Stephen? He answered at once.

"Sorry about that," said a still slightly breathless voice. "Didn't mean...."

No, of course he hadn't meant any of it. For all it seemed to amuse Stephen, it looked like it also hurt like hell.

"suppose I should have warned you...."

"Warned me about what?" Nick asked grudgingly, unsure how hard a time to give him. 

"I realized a couple of days ago—with you and Connor and sometimes even Lester and then all the soldiers visiting, I think...." Stephen took a few more breaths. "I think the staff have decided I'm gay."

Yes, Stephen truly was a master of observation. "Oh, more than just the one nurse?" Nick asked. He supposed it didn't really matter how many people thought he was gay. He had nothing against gay men. He had friends and colleagues who were gay, but being mistaken for gay himself was entirely new to him.

"Can I help it if I'm constantly visited...by good-looking men?" Stephen got out, and then there were some odd breathing sounds, as he no doubt tried not to laugh.

"Does that include Connor?"

After a long, breathy pause, Stephen said, "He's rather iffy."

"You're taking this pretty well," Nick said. "It doesn't bother you...?"

"To be mistaken for gay?" Stephen drew in a breath sharply. "Beats the hell out of everyone knowing what I'm really like." 

Bugger. It always came back to Helen. Nick changed the subject deliberately. "Is the nurse going to bust you for phone use when you're supposed to be resting?"

"Point," Stephen said. "Wanted to tell you, though.... They didn't make me see a psychiatrist.... I chose." He rang off abruptly. 

Nick was starting to get the idea they wanted him to see a psychiatrist, too. Gupta had said something about it when she'd certified his return to work. Then Jenny, now Stephen—was it a conspiracy? No, Stephen wouldn't do that, and he'd obviously been taken by surprise at Nick's reaction to the whole matter; no one had told him about the exchange at the end of the meeting.

Of course, he hadn't managed to talk to Stephen at all about how his recovery was coming, but again, that wasn't Stephen's fault. The whole thing had been a comedy of errors.

"Oh, God," Nick said to himself. He'd just realized: if that man who'd appeared in the room was indeed a plant, he was certain to report to Lester. Stephen getting out of hospital wouldn't be enough to end it. He would never hear the last of this.

***

Jenny came by that afternoon, earlier than Stephen had expected any visitors, and he dropped the novel he was reading in surprise. Perhaps the psychiatrist was right, and he was a little jumpy. 

He wasn't sure why Jenny was visiting him at all. She'd wasted very little time on him before he ended up in hospital, and he couldn't blame her.

She seemed quite cheerful this afternoon and inquired immediately about how Stephen was feeling. It soon came out that the entire ARC knew about the morning's incident; apparently Lester had taken a phone call from the hospital while Lorraine was in his office, and Lorraine had told Abby and Connor in the hearing of others....

"All James has to do is smile at Cutter and he starts cursing under his breath," Jenny told him in a confiding tone. 

Stephen could well imagine it. It took effort not to laugh again. 

The conversation lapsed a bit after that, and Stephen decided he had nothing to lose. "Why are you here? Visiting me? I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate it." He certainly did. "I'm just sure you have better things to do with your time."

Jenny shook her head a little. "I've been working with you for months, and I hardly knew anything of you, except that you slept with Helen Cutter but otherwise seem to have an aversion to secrecy."

Ouch. Well, she wasn't trying to put some kind of spin on her words, at least.

"Then you nearly died saving us all—"

"No," Stephen interrupted. How many times did he have to go through this? He explained yet again that there was nothing heroic about what he'd done. Nick would have saved everyone. The only difference he could make was in saving Nick.

Jenny looked appraisingly at him while he spoke.

"It's not false modesty," he protested. "It's simple, really. I'm a selfish bastard, and I'd already lost nearly everything. I never really had Helen, and I was about to lose Nick. I didn't want to be alone, having lost or alienated everyone I really cared about and unable to make things right. I thought it would all be over quickly." He'd been so nearly right about that. 

Any day now, it was really going to hit him how long he'd been in hospital already and how much further he had to go, and he wasn't looking forward to that. So far, he was still managing to be grateful to be alive—mostly because his friends had survived too, and because they kept coming to see him. He owed it to them to be upbeat, and the effort actually seemed to keep his own spirits up.

Jenny was still looking at him as if she was measuring him, and he didn't know against what. He managed not to squirm. Squirming tended to make him even less comfortable.

"When I first started working here," Jenny said at last, "James asked me to evaluate team morale, and specifically whether you and Nick could continue to work together."

"Oh" was all Stephen could say; he'd never realized.

"I knew that Nick wanted to keep working with you. I didn't understand why."

He waited for her to continue, but she didn't, so he smiled as warmly as he could and asked, "Did you ever work it out?"

She laughed. "You mean you haven't?"

Damn. He hadn't realized he was that transparent.

"You two are frighteningly alike, you know."

Was that supposed to be an answer? They'd cut his medication back far enough now that any failure to understand people was...his own failure.

"Why did you want to keep working with Nick, after he knew?" she asked, and he knew that she was trying to lead him somewhere, as Abby kept doing. He could usually work out where Abby was headed, though.

Stephen shrugged; he'd become good at the one-sided shrug that didn't jar his injured wrist. He seemed to do it a lot. "Why wouldn't I? I was the one who screwed up, not him." 

"Why work with him at all? He's not exactly the easiest personality, and when he gets cross at you, well, we've all seen it." She laughed. "I've had him angry at me more than enough, and I don't even work that closely with him much of the time."

"He gets over it," Stephen said a little defensively. She surely hadn't come here to criticise Nick to him. "He puts up with me—well, most of the time. I put up with him; we do fine." He hoped this wasn't another lecture on the value of friendship and the importance of working at it. He'd had enough of those from Abby.

"So you're friends because no one else will put up with either of you?" Jenny asked, obviously amused.

Because there was no possible answer, Stephen just rolled his eyes. It was good to be able to roll his eyes again without getting dizzy.

"I've decided Nick Cutter is an acquired taste," she continued, still with a smile at some private joke he didn't get. "So I thought perhaps you are too, and I thought I might get to know you a bit before you finally do manage to get yourself killed heroically."

Actually, this adventure had greatly reduced the chances he'd ever again be in a position to die heroically. That was also something he didn't want to face at the moment, so he managed to steer the conversation back to Nick. Jenny seemed genuinely interested in Nick, in a way Stephen had never noticed before. Had something changed while he was laid up, or had he been missing important clues all along?

He had been increasingly suspecting the latter lately, and not just where Jenny was concerned. He seemed to have missed all kinds of important signals. He'd already resolved to pay better attention to the people around him. He just hoped it wasn't too late to straighten out his life.

***

Nick returned the next day and launched into the questions he'd meant to ask the day before at once, before Stephen could divert him.

"I didn't mean to keep anything from you," Stephen said, not quite meeting his eyes. "I've talked to so many people, it's kind of hard to keep track—"

"You are such a terrible liar!" Nick was torn between laughing at his friend and getting even more cross; the laughter won out. "How could I not have noticed all these years?"

"Well, maybe that's because I hardly ever lied to you. I mean, actively lied," Stephen said, this time meeting his gaze. A slight flush crept up his neck. "I didn't...okay, I didn't tell you I might not make a full recovery because...because I'm still hoping that I will." He looked at Nick pleadingly. 

Nick wanted to ask if he'd talked to the others about it, but that sounded too childish and insecure. 

Stephen sighed a little and looked away. "I'm sorry. I really wasn't trying...." His left hand played with the sheet; the fingers of his right curled around the cast. Finally he mumbled something that sounded like "I didn't mean to let you down again."

"What?" Nick asked, but Stephen continued picking at the sheet, and he didn't answer right away. 

Nick struggled to work out exactly what was going through Stephen's head. "Let me down? By not telling me, or by not healing better and faster?" 

"Well, by not telling you," Stephen said in a tone of voice that seemed clearly to imply the other alternative would be stupid. That didn't mean he wasn't thinking it, at some level. "I am trying to be honest."

"Just not used to it?" Nick retorted, regretting the words before the sounds faded from his ears. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No, you're right—"

"For God's sake, don't interrupt!" Nick snapped. How could Stephen try his patience so badly when he was doing all he could to mend things between them, and he knew Stephen was trying too?

Stephen's mouth quirked up a little, and he met Nick's eyes again.

Nick braced himself. "I've decided to say something, and you'd better let me say it, because it took long enough to work up to this. I realized I haven't been entirely honest either."

It was hard to explain why he hadn't told Stephen about the conspiracy, especially since he still wasn't sure why himself. As he stumbled through his tale of interrupted and missed opportunities, though, plus the moments when he just plain hadn't wanted to talk to Stephen—sometimes hadn't wanted to talk to anyone—Stephen seemed to understand. Stephen was so damned understanding and even forgiving, in fact, that it started to annoy him. 

Nick finally said so: "For God's sake, Stephen, you've never agreed with me this much in your life!"

"I have when Lester's involved," Stephen said with a smile that Nick didn't quite believe.

Nick just looked at him. He'd said his piece. It was Stephen's turn.

Stephen shrugged a little and shook his head. "It's not like I have any right to judge."

"You slept with my wife and didn't tell me. Hurt like hell, sometimes still does, but I didn't tell you about a conspiracy that nearly killed you. I don't think you need a right to judge. How can you not be upset?"

"I was upset, okay?" Stephen said with some feeling. "But you were willing to die to put it right. You've been here every day! You've more than made up for it!" 

That seemed fair enough, except that Nick hadn't allowed anything Stephen had done to make up for the original affair. And, God, he'd only been a student when it began. Connor's age. Connor had fallen hook, line, and sinker for Caroline, and Nick wouldn't dream of blaming Connor. 

The difference, of course, was Helen. Connor hadn't gone anywhere Nick's wife. And thank God for that.

Stephen ran his tongue around his teeth nervously. "As long as we're clearing the air...."

Not knowing what was coming, Nick braced himself. "Say it. Whatever it is." 

"It wasn't just...we were arguing about other things, besides...Helen. I mean, we might not have argued so badly but for Helen, but...."

"You'd have argued for going public anyway," Nick said, not sure how he'd worked that out from Stephen's mangled sentences, but Stephen's nod confirmed it. "You still feel that way?"

Stephen shrugged again, awkwardly. "I don't know, honestly. I want to tell people—I think people need to know what can happen."

Nick shook his head. "And I did too, at first," he said. 

Stephen nodded. 

"But now I simply don't believe we can safely do it," Nick continued.

And then they talked about it until the physiotherapist showed up, to their great surprise; Nick was horrified to find that it was 10:00, and Lester hadn't even called to find out where he'd been. He checked as he left to make sure his mobile was on. He had been trying to be good about it since that night in the rain.

The mobile was on and charged, so Nick slipped it back in his pocket.

He did seem to be convincing Stephen that they needed to keep up the secrecy. He was afraid, though, that Stephen just wanted to be convinced at this point; it was surely easier to go along with Nick, to fight one less battle while he healed. He didn't want Stephen just to go along with him now and then regret it later.

Still, Stephen had said that what Leek did with his knowledge of the anomalies boded ill for making them public. Like Nick, he worried that sport hunters and athletes and just plain nutters would decide to go looking for anomalies, and going through them, once it all came out. Of course, he was also concerned that there would be more Valeries and more Taylors. Nick had concluded some time before that nothing they had done would have made any difference with Valerie: a woman who buried her boyfriend in the woods to protect her sabretooth pet hardly cared whether they had created it in the lab or wanted to return it to the past, and she wasn't likely to believe them in any case, no matter what they said.

Stephen didn't seem to have thought of that until Nick suggested it. Moreover, Nick learned that while he'd thought that Stephen blamed him for Valerie's death, Stephen had been afraid Nick was blaming Stephen for it. He'd had no idea. 

Of course, Taylor was an entirely different problem. That people could just walk into anomalies with no idea of what they were getting into—children, even—Nick was so deep in his thoughts that he didn't notice someone was by his car until she spoke to him.

"Hello, Nick." Helen had the gall to smile at him.

Nick's hand went first to his mobile. No, by the time he called, she'd be gone. Maybe if he could keep her here long enough, one of Lester's people would happen by. He was already late to the ARC; Lester might call any moment. If Nick didn't answer, surely he'd send someone looking for him.... Nick turned off his mobile. 

Helen moved towards him at once.

"Just switching off my mobile," he said, displaying it with a fake smile of his own. "I think we're long overdue for a conversation, and I wouldn't want anyone to interrupt." 

Helen's face stayed tense with suspicion for a moment, but then she dropped her shoulders a little. Of course she didn't suspect him. He'd never been the one who was good at subterfuge, had he? 

"So how is our boy? I haven't had a chance to see him yet."

Nick fought not to grit his teeth. If she realized just how deep his anger at her ran, she might get suspicious. She'd always been a little paranoid, even before she decided to abandon modern living—and humanity as a whole. "Stephen is making a good recovery. Little thanks to you."

"I'm the reason he's alive," Helen said mildly. She stepped even closer, putting herself uncomfortably near Nick. He could smell her shampoo. Helen clearly hadn't just come from the Permian or any other prehistoric era. She was wearing far more conservative clothing than the last time he'd seen her; even if he hadn't been lost in his thoughts, he might not have recognized her until he got really close. Trousers, court shoes, a blouse, even a fashionable scarf wound loosely about her neck: she looked every inch the professional woman, and not at all the sort who'd go running off through anomalies—or hauling killers back through them.

"I suppose you must get some credit," Nick said, realizing he was hesitating too long. "But you didn't help get him out. He very nearly bled to death before...." 

Helen put on a sad face; he might even have fallen for it a few months ago, but now he didn't believe anything from her. "I certainly didn't want that to happen! I did all I could safely do for him—"

"You ran. You left Stephen to bleed to death fixing your mistake." He hadn't been certain his love for her was entirely gone until this moment. Now he knew. "You'd have let me die, and I surely would have, if it had been me in there." Maybe he should grab her himself. She could go at any moment, after all. No, he ought to leave it to the professionals. She was a hell of a fighter, and he didn't even know if she was armed. The last he knew, she travelled with a knife.

"Those were Leek's mistakes," she said, a little impatiently. "If I'd been running that operation—"

"And you thought you were!" He found great satisfaction in the words. "You thought you could use him, and then you found out he was using you! How does it feel?"

She slapped him. She actually slapped him; it stung, but clearly she wasn't trying to hurt him physically.

Nick laughed at her. "Not used to being on the receiving end, eh?"

If looks could burn, Nick would have been charred.

"I came to find out about Stephen," Helen replied in clipped tones. "I see I'll have to get my information some other way. You might think I don't care, but I do. About both of you." She softened a little even while she started to turn her body to go, putting on the hint of a smile again. "And I think it's awfully sweet of you to keep visiting him, even after he resumed our relationship—"

Nick wasn't sure if it was her words or the fact that she was leaving and no one else had appeared to help that made him act, but he lunged at her. He managed to get his arms around her and thought he could bring them both to the ground, at least use his weight to advantage, but somehow she twisted.

A sharp pain in his groin was succeeded by a worse one in his knee as it hit the pavement—followed by the rest of his body, including his face. He didn't quite black out, but the edges of his vision certainly greyed out, and he his ears rang. He didn't hear Helen running away, but by the time he managed to lift his head, he couldn't see her at all.

He used the car to push himself up. God, his knee hurt. He fumbled for his mobile. It was, of course, switched off. It only took a moment to decide that even as slow as the thing was powering up, it would be faster than going after Helen, or looking for someone to go after her, on foot. 

Nick mostly talked over Lester's questions and orders as he limped back into the hospital, and he rang off as quickly as he could, if only so the man wouldn't hear him grunt in pain. Within a few minutes he was in a cubicle, being made to change into a hospital gown, while at least four men ran around outside looking for Helen. He knew they wouldn't find her. Damn it! Of all the days for Lester to choose not to make a fuss about what time he showed up for work!

When the porter wheeled Nick back to his cubicle from x-ray, in the wheelchair they insisted he use until the x-rays had been read, he found Stephen waiting for him there, also in a wheelchair. Stephen ended a call on his mobile as soon as he saw Nick.

"Welcome to the club," Stephen greeted him with a bent smile. "How do you feel?"

"Like an idiot," Nick growled. He climbed from the wheelchair to the exam table himself, refusing any help from the porter, who left after giving him an ice pack for his knee. He'd already given back the one they offered him one for his crotch, after trying it for a couple of minutes outside x-ray.

"You can join that club, too," Stephen said, the wry smile widening just a little. "I think I'm president for life. I believe we might have an opening for secretary, though."

Nick laughed in spite of himself. "Any other members?"

Stephen's face grew thoughtful. "Connor keeps trying to get in, but I've told him he doesn't really qualify."

Nick shook his head. "I don't imagine he believes you."

"Hey, if Abby let down her guard enough to give Caroline free access to their apartment, this Caroline person must have been a pro," Stephen said. "And Connor didn't do anything wrong." 

Actually, Abby was still kicking herself over her failure to see through Caroline last Nick knew, but he didn't feel like getting into it, any more than he wanted to analyse Stephen's last statement.

"Lester wants to make sure you know your cover story," Stephen told him. "Mugged, never got a good look at your attackers. Jenny's at the front desk here already. Along with Connor and Abby. They're trying to get back here to see you, but for some reason the hospital staff want them to wait until your doctor has seen you." Stephen looked smug.

"So how'd you get back here?"

"I started 'back here.' And bribed a porter."

"What the hell did you bribe a porter with?"

"Just today's dessert. He likes me." Now he was outright smirking. Nick couldn't tell if Stephen was having him on or not. "Seriously, though: is your eye all right?"

Nick touched the bruised side of his face gingerly. "They think so. The tech told me it looked okay."

Stephen was telling him how much the black eye would impress the SFs when they heard people approaching. "They got past the front desk," Stephen said.

Sure enough, Jenny was in the cubicle in a moment, followed by Connor and Abby. The little space hadn't been made for this many people, and it actually had walls on three sides and not just curtains. Nick began to feel just a little claustrophobic as the three of them all fussed over him. Stephen smirked again as Nick tried to reassure them—as soon as he'd pulled a drape over his mostly bare legs.

Jenny began to tell Nick his cover story again, but he interrupted her.

Lester interrupted them both: "Surely it's not as if anyone's believing the original cover story any longer anyway." Nick had been so busy with the people right in front of him that he wasn't even sure when Lester had arrived. 

"My main day nurse believes it completely," Stephen responded. "She's an animal lover."

"Which explains why she's so protective of you," Lester replied.

Abby tensed and opened her mouth, but Nick thought it better to keep everyone on track. And maybe he could get them out of there soon. As nice as it was to see everyone's concern for him, he'd rather lick his wounds in private.

"I take it you didn't catch her?" he asked quickly.

"Of course not," Lester sighed. "And now all my undercover men have blown their cover chasing after her."

"Try some undercover women?" Abby suggested, but no one seemed to hear her besides Nick.

"It's all right," Stephen told Lester. "I doubt she'll come back for a day or two at least, and they think I'll be ready for rehab day after tomorrow."

"That's great!" enthused Abby, reaching over the end of Cutter's exam table to squeeze his shoulder.

"Do we really all need to be here?" Lester asked. 

He was obviously about to say more, but Stephen cut in. "Can't exactly take myself back." He raised his good arm. "I just go in circles."

Connor laughed a little too hard, but no one actually moved.

"Rehab?" Nick finally managed to ask. Clearly there was more he hadn't been told.

Stephen looked surprised and perhaps a little guilty. "Sorry—thought I'd told you. Honest. I'll need some rehab before they let me go back home; we just didn't know how soon. And we're still not sure for how long."

"We've got all those medical facilities at the ARC," Nick protested. "Why can't you just come back there?"

Stephen frowned and started a spiel on the importance of trained therapists, but Lester cut him off.

"We haven't the right sort of pool at the ARC," Lester declared authoritatively. "He needs hydro therapy."

Stephen turned. "Why, Lester! I didn't know you cared!"

Lester gave him a look of disgust. "The sooner we get you properly back on your feet, the sooner half the staff stops taking off whenever they please to visit you. And if you were in the ARC, they'd never get any work done."

Abby and Connor grinned at Lester, which only deepened his scowl.

"Speaking of which, we aren't paying you to stand around in an overcrowded A&E cubicle!" Lester waved his hands. "God help us if Health and Safety should inspect the facilities right now. I don't even want to know how you all got here before me." 

No one moved. 

"And I could use a moment alone with Cutter!" 

"Sure, we'll give you some privacy," Stephen said with a wink at Nick. God, were they monkeying with his medication again? Or was he just trying to distract Nick? Probably the latter. 

Then, despite what he'd said before, Stephen proceeded to wheel himself perfectly competently out of the cubicle one-handed as the women stepped out to let him through.

"I'll help," Connor said, moving to take the handles of the chair. "Wouldn't want that nurse to see you driving yourself."

"Wait." Stephen turned back to Nick. "Take care, and call me if it is serious. Maybe we can be roommates."

God forbid. Being with Stephen, he could maybe handle at this point. But that damned nurse had it in for him! Nick shook his head. "I don't think so. Bruised knee, black eye—that's all."

Stephen frowned. "And...the other injury?"

Nick stared. "How the hell did you know about that?" he blurted before he'd even considered denying it. His posture? His movements?

"I know Helen," Stephen said with a humorous look that didn't quite make it into his voice. "She goes for the balls."

A moment of frozen silence descended, until Stephen nodded again at Nick and moved the wheelchair out of sight. Connor's hands had slipped from the wheelchair, but he ran after Stephen a moment later—and then Abby made an awkward apology and went after them both. Probably wise.

Jenny didn't leave, however. She seemed to be trying awfully hard to keep her eyes on Nick's face. 

"I'm fine," Nick announced to the two who remained.

Lester snorted. "Did you teach that response to Hart, or pick it up from him? You look like you went three rounds with George Foreman."

"Only three?" Jenny said gamely.

They went over his damned cover story again, though Nick protested that it hardly mattered; the hospital staff weren't likely to think he'd been mugged on a sunny morning in the car park, especially not after several men who'd recently begun working or visiting there had run out at about the same time Nick came back in.

Jenny pointed out that they didn't have to believe it; they were perfectly free to think the attack on him was related to the illegal wildlife scheme that Stephen had been injured breaking up, and a flimsy cover story for this event would only strengthen the more important cover story.

Nick was glad Stephen had left before he heard that little gem, or saw the satisfied looks on Jenny and Lester's faces. Then they got down to debriefing him properly.

***

"I can't believe you said that," Connor marvelled as the three of them got into the lift. 

Abby wanted to know how he knew, so Stephen confessed he'd had his porter sneak a peek at Cutter's admissions information. What Stephen couldn't believe was that the porter had done it—and told him what he'd found.

"I still can't believe you said it," Connor repeated, with a slightly embarrassed grin.

"Lester would have in a moment. I had to beat him to it," Stephen said, but he couldn't hide his own smile. He was rather proud of getting one up on Lester, because he was certain the man would have said something if Stephen hadn't beaten him to it. He hoped Nick wasn't furious with him, but he didn't think so. No, Nick was angry at Helen—and maybe a little at himself.

"You're incorrigible!" Abby chided. She was not smiling. "I thought you two were patching things up!"

"Well, that's why they can make jokes again! Right, Stephen?" Connor had always been his staunchest defender. Connor also happened to be correct, at least in this case. Or so Stephen hoped.

When they arrived at his room, Connor and Abby showed no signs of leaving, and Connor offered him a hand getting back into bed despite Abby standing right there. He'd been careful not to let Abby or Jenny see him getting in or out of bed. So much for that. He supposed he shouldn't have enough pride to worry about it much any more. Abby looked sympathetic, at least, as he awkwardly got his legs back under the covers. The abdominal injuries pulled with those kinds of movements. Most kinds of movements, actually. At least the gown was long enough to hide even the scar on his leg. He'd just had the stitches out, and it still looked dreadful. It didn't hurt as much as his gut did, but the leg was pretty weak.

Connor perched on the side of his bed, and Abby made herself as at home as one could be in that lousy chair. This would probably be both their visits for the day, then. Lester had been unbelievably generous so far in letting people take time to come visit him. It had to end soon.

After some chat, Stephen asked the question he was afraid to ask Nick. "So have they done anything yet about putting anyone else on the team?"

"We'd never replace you!" Abby insisted, looking pained.

"Haven't even talked about it," Connor said without guile. The reassurance was a bit undercut by the sharp turn of Abby's head to look at Connor.

Stephen broke the news to him: "I'm sure Lester's talking to Cutter about it. And Nick's resisting." 

"How come they haven't mentioned it, then?" Connor seemed to honestly believe they weren't talking about it. Stephen tried to remember being that young. He was glad recent events hadn't entirely hardened Connor.

Abby wasn't so naive, and from the look on her face, she hadn't realized that Connor was. 

"Look, you have to make a decision," Stephen told them, "and maybe right now, because if Nick's off his feet for a while, the two of you are senior on the team!"

"We can't make the decision!" Abby protested.

Stephen shook his head. "If Nick won't, Lester will. Or maybe Jenny—he seems to entrust a lot of the personnel decisions to her now. But do you want them to choose who's going into the field with you? I think we should choose."

"'We'?" Abby quoted back in surprise, but then she smiled. "Nick might actually listen to you, if you put a word in." Actually, he was counting more on Nick listening to the other two, but he probably couldn't hold out against all three of them.

So they put their heads together. If only Tom Ryan were still around.... Stephen liked many of the soldiers, but none really stood out as particularly effective at tracking as well as shooting. Several new people had been brought in over the last few weeks; the anomalies seemed to be coming more and more frequently, and Lester had managed to bring in a couple of physicists, a couple of engineers to work on Connor's projects with him, and some additional SFs. The scientists and engineers, however, had none of Stephen's skills. Worse, they didn't have any field training. While Connor had a point that he hadn't had field training when he'd started, he now had a couple of years of experience in the field. He had also started his weapons and self-defence training at last.

Stephen was a little uncomfortable putting someone he didn't know well on the team, but he tried to keep that to himself. It wasn't really his team any more anyway. When Abby spoke highly of a Lieutenant Miller who'd helped them with the last anomaly, and Connor nodded, he felt that this might be the one. Stephen thought he remembered meeting him, but he wasn't certain. Abby had confidence in him, and that was enough. Of all of them, she was the best judge of character—and she'd also seen him trying to track hadrosaurs in the rain. Stephen wasn't sure he could have done much better than Miller had. They'd caught two, in the end, and if any others had escaped, they'd probably have known by now.

They dropped their discussions immediately when they heard a rap on the door. Since the door was open, knocking was merely a courtesy, and Stephen was surprised when it turned out to be Lester.

"Cutter's knee is merely bruised, and his orbital and nose are intact," Lester told them, "despite how it looks. I thought you'd want to know." He went on to tell them that Jenny was seeing Cutter home, with a few added remarks about men who couldn't even make it through the car park safely. He'd probably heard at least a little of their conversation, but he didn't let on.

Stephen wasn't really surprised to learn they had a couple of men watching Cutter's house as well as the hospital. Now Helen would probably turn up and apologize for hurting Nick; it would be just like her. She had enough sense to wait a few days, though.

Lester finished by dragging the other two back to work, acting very put-upon. But now Stephen knew it was an act. Why did the man want to appear to be an arse? Maybe it wasn't an act when he'd started. He did seem different lately. Abby had told Stephen that facing down a predator himself had apparently done Lester a world of good.

***

James brought the Munchkins back to the ARC with him in his own car; they'd apparently come with Jenny. At least this way he could make certain they got back and did some actual work, of which there was plenty still left from last week's mess. He sat in front with the driver. The two of them seemed oblivious to his own dark mood and chattered happily in the rear about Cutter's close call and Stephen going to rehab. When Connor started to do a bad imitation of Amy Winehouse, James was forced to intervene. He threatened to chuck Connor out into the street.

Naturally, he got a hurt look from Connor and an angry one from Abby, and he felt a moment of satisfaction that his reputation might yet remain intact. Wouldn't do to have people thinking he was a soft touch. 

Oh, who was he fooling? He'd joked about adopting a mammoth, he let people leave any damned time they felt like it to pay social calls at the hospital, and he was letting Cutter take his own sweet time deciding on a replacement for Hart.

James had bigger worries than what people thought of him, though. What was Helen Cutter up to? Her husband insisted she had her own agenda, that she wasn't interested in power or revenge, as Leek was. James wasn't at all certain. She seemed pretty damned interested in revenge, from what he could see. She was just less deadly in her methods. She'd rather rip Cutter and Hart to shreds verbally and let them live. 

She had surely abandoned her hopes that either of them would join her. Or had she? She'd managed to worm her way into Hart's bed again, and apparently she'd even convinced the fool that his whole team had been killed—by James. If Cutter had been faster at getting himself out of that hellhole, Stephen would never have seen him, and he might well have run off with Helen to some other time, thinking he'd lost everyone. And possibly bent on revenge. Stephen hadn't mentioned it in debriefings, but Cutter said he'd refused to come with Helen even before he saw the professor because he wanted James to pay for those fictional crimes. 

No, Stephen wouldn't have gone with her, but Helen had probably thought he would. She must know better now. And if she'd had any doubts about Cutter's attitude towards her, his ill-advised attempt to catch her that morning had no doubt relieved her of them.

At least most of the team was talking about a replacement. That Stephen was among them would surely help. Now he just had to work on Cutter. Of course Cutter had mucked up the timing by having to go home to recuperate.

He wouldn't let on that he'd heard their discussions, of course.

***

Stephen hadn't realized how much hope he'd pinned moving to the rehab centre until he got there and found that its inpatient wing was very much like the hospital. At first glance, in fact, it seemed worse. The ambulance transported him on a grey morning to a low concrete building that seemed rather grey itself inside, walls and carpet all a neutral colour. They wheeled his chair to a room where he was horrified to find a roommate. Now that he wasn't on strong medication, they apparently weren't worried he'd leak something, and an older man had the bed by the window. The window looked out on the car park anyway.

At least he was allowed to wear clothes again, even if they were just sweats. Those still beat hospital gowns. He had his books, he had his iPod, and he had his walking stick. Surely they'd let him take more walks now.

A chipper young woman little bigger than Abby introduced herself as Maria, his physiotherapist, and showed him his schedule. She was dark where Abby was fair, and she had her hair pulled back into a ponytail that made her look even younger than she probably was. It took some negotiation to convince her he was ready for the pool. They'd wanted to wait longer, but he felt comfortable in water, and he couldn't wait to get back into it, even if she did give him serious looks and tell him he was absolutely not to think about swimming for weeks yet.

Weeks? His own smile faltered at that, and he dared to ask how long he might be there.

"Only until you can move around well on your own," she assured him with a smile that didn't flag. "You may still need the stick a little, but we want you to have no need of the wheelchair by the time you leave here." 

"So how long will that be, do you think?" he asked with an effort to smile again.

"Oh, no idea! We'll find out together!" 

She was probably about Abby's age too, but without the sharp edges and the wit that made Abby fun. Maria seemed honestly enthusiastic to be working with him. He wished he could feel the same.

Of course, if she mostly worked with people like his roommate, it was no wonder. She left Stephen to settle his few belongings on the bedside table next to his bed and went to have a shouted conversation with his hard-of-hearing roommate. He tried not to eavesdrop, but it was hard not to notice that the man's mouth wasn't working right. A quick glance revealed that half the man's face didn't seem right. A stroke, perhaps.

A good reminder that some people were worse off than him, Stephen thought, as he attempted to transfer himself from the wheelchair to the bed, only to have someone half his weight rush to assist him. To assist him cheerfully. 

Well, maybe he could share a laugh with Nick about it later.

***

"I should have stayed at home," Nick muttered again. No one was listening any more, but he felt better for saying it. 

They were wandering around a set of council flats—or limping, in his case—trying to look inconspicuous while all dressed in black, with most of them armed. Jenny had managed to get the place evacuated, claiming a gas leak, but naturally all the residents had locked their doors, and people were no doubt watching from the tall office building nearby.

The ADD had actually told them about the anomaly before any panicked reports of creatures had come in, but they could only arrive so fast. The anomaly turned out to be in an open stairwell, of all places, so anything that had come through could be anywhere. Connor was still trying to get useful information from his rover, once they'd finally succeeded in getting it safely up the stairs and then into the anomaly, but it hadn't shown much besides what looked like a dark beach, so Nick had elected to go in search of creatures with the others, leaving guards with Connor.

Abby had grabbed that lieutenant who had helped them find the hadrosaurs and was making him lead them through the complex even as the poor man pointed out that he couldn't find any tracks on the concrete. Hell, Nick could find tracks on the concrete. They weren't creature tracks, so that's probably what the soldier meant. Miller. Miller was his name. Abby kept repeating it. She seemed to be up to something. Nick wasn't sure what.

"Professor!" Nick's radio crackled as an excited voice came over. "I think we've got it; I got the air sampling working!"

Nick prayed for patience and held his tongue as more details came across before Connor got to the point.

"Silurian! I can't get the exact era fixed yet...."

"So we could be looking at more bloody insects?" 

"Well, arthropods, yeah."

"How big?" 

"Dunno yet; none have wandered in range of the camera, and I don't want to send it too far from the anomaly. Last thing we want is to lose it. Well, no, last thing we want is for something to hitch a ride back...."

Abby had come back from whatever she was looking at, or for, and was now smiling at Connor rattling on.

"I don't suppose they're likely to leave any kind of trail?" Nick asked. They hadn't seen anything near the anomaly, but maybe if they could refocus the camera and see if there were tracks on that side, they might have some reason to think that nothing had come through. 

After too long a pause, Connor said, "Tracking's not my field, sorry."

Nick sighed. "You helped us find the centipede that bit Stephen!"

"I did?"

Oh, damn—he must have got it wrong again—

"Oh, yeah, I suppose I did!" He could hear the smile on Connor's face. "I didn't track it, though."

"Should we be looking for burrows?" Abby took over the questioning.

"Yeah, probably a good idea, I suppose...." Connor didn't sound too sure of himself. Nick had heard that tone far too often lately. Connor's confidence had been shaken by Caroline, but surely that shouldn't affect his view of his professional skills!

"We'll head down then, right?" Abby said. It was more of a statement than a question, really.

"I hate bugs," Nick said as they went back to the stairs. His knee was still a little swollen, but Gupta had cleared him first thing. He couldn't even visit Stephen this morning, since Stephen had been scheduled to move to the rehab centre. He hoped that was going well.

***

When Jenny had suggested counselling, Stephen had thought it a good idea. He'd screwed up his own life, and, worse, other people's, in more ways than he could count. He could only do better by getting professional help.

Now he wasn't so sure. Doctor Jacobs had offered some useful suggestions at first. They'd talked through things, especially how Stephen dealt with other people. Well, especially how Stephen treated his friends, and what he'd realized was an inability to read them properly at times. He'd thought he always understood Nick, but it had become clear enough lately that he didn't—and that his certainty that he knew what Nick was thinking was part of the problem. 

Stephen had begun concentrating more on trying to understand where other people were coming from. It gave him a lot to think about: not how he'd react in his friends' various positions, but why they reacted as they did, and how that was sometimes different than how he'd react. It seemed obvious when someone reminded him that other people had different values and different priorities than he did. In the heat of the moment, though, he often forgot to consider their perspectives. He'd been working hard on practising that skill these last few days.

After all, he had plenty of time in hospital. He still wasn't allowed even a laptop lest he fall asleep with sensitive materials on the screen. So he read, and he thought, and he tried very hard not to focus on the things he couldn't do. He'd have given nearly anything to be able to go for a run.

He could even begin to think what Helen might have been up to, although he found he shied away from thinking about that too much. He hadn't come to any conclusions.

So counselling had been useful in some ways. But Jacobs had apparently just been warming him up, or getting him to let down his guard, or something. Jacobs had decided that Stephen was self-destructive, and now he was visiting Stephen in his room at rehab while his roommate was out at some therapy somewhere, and they were just going in circles.

"Let's back up a bit from life-and-death situations, shall we?" Jacobs hid his exasperation well. In fact, Stephen might only be imagining the exasperation. He'd spent a lot of time around people with short fuses—well, one academic in particular. "We'll come back to your tendency to be the first into danger later."

Shouldn't a psychiatrist not feel the need to have the last word? Stephen had already made it clear he was hardly ever the first into danger. Besides, it was his job to protect people. He was the marksman on the team. He was, in the end, expendable. The others were out there right now without him; Connor had called to tell him briefly.

Stephen held his tongue and waited for the other man to say something.

"You had an affair with a woman who was not only your mentor, but the wife of a potential mentor. How did you think that would end?"

A fair question. Stephen debated whether to say he didn't think much at all, or that he hadn't been thinking with his actual brain, or that he didn't think it would end. Each had been true. Each made him look pretty stupid. 

The silence dragged on, and he'd promised Abby and Jenny both that he'd make a real effort at the counselling, so he finally admitted to a lack of foresight. 

That, of course, led to a rehashing of many of the things that Stephen had worked so hard to forget over the years. He'd rather have done another session of stretching; it hurt less. Maybe he deserved this, too. He slipped into saying so out loud.

"So you think you deserve the bad things that happen to you?" Jacobs asked, showing exactly the same amount of interest he did in everything Stephen said, no more and no less, but Stephen knew he was in for it now. He said a quick prayer under his breath that his roommate would return soon.

***

"Spider!" Abby yelled before belatedly lowering her voice to ask, "Shouldn't we have nets?"

The creature in question had scuttled across the mechanical room as soon as they turned on the lights, and now Nick couldn't see it at all. He only had the vaguest impression as it was.

Miller, who had preceded them into the room, stepped back out and bellowed, "Nets! Get some from the truck! Now!" to the enlisted men who waited as backup outside the cluttered room. 

Abby turned out the light, sensibly, if a bit late. She radioed Connor and told him what she'd seen in a low voice.

"Trigonotarbid!" he replied too loudly and too happily. "That sounds just about right! How big?"

"Bigger than my hand," Abby replied. "And please keep it down."

"Wow," Connor enthused in a hushed voice. "That's bigger than they're supposed to get! Can you get it alive? How many have you got?"

"Are the nets going to have holes too big, so it will just go through?" Miller wondered out loud. He had his hands on his weapon, some sort of automatic affair. Stephen could name it in an instant, and he'd laugh if he knew Nick had forgotten again. Nick preferred the tranq guns, when he had to carry one at all.

"I think we have some fine enough," Abby whispered.

Miller stepped out of the room, apparently to contact his people again.

"It's not poisonous, is it, Connor?" Nick asked.

Connor assured them that it wasn't. Of course, outside of the ARC, no one would believe that a giant centipede could carry venom fatal to grown men. 

"Professor, are you sure you should be here, sir?" Miller asked, returning to the room and eyeing Nick, who had decided leaning against the wall couldn't hurt.

"I'm fine," Nick insisted. He couldn't miss Abby rolling her eyes, even in the dimness of a room full of practically antique equipment blocking most of the few, small windows. 

The nets arrived, and they had some indeed fine enough to catch the spider. Abby took one, and Miller insisted on taking the other, leaving Nick to wave his torch about and feel useless. The room was packed with things—switch boxes on the walls, some grounds equipment haphazardly piled, ladders, and broken things Connor might be able to identify. 

As Abby gamely picked her way through the mess towards where they'd last seen the creature, Nick decided that feeling useless might not be so bad after all.

That was when something fell on Miller. The broad-shouldered lieutenant, who must have been six feet tall, jumped higher and farther than a man that big should be able to jump—bringing down a ladder with a crash.

Nick played his torch on the thing Miller had shaken off himself. Broken bits of plaster lay on the floor; a corresponding hole seemed to have appeared in the ceiling. It was, at least, roughly trigonotarbid-shaped and -sized.

Abby held a hand over her mouth. Miller might have mistaken the look for horror; Nick rather hoped he did. Abby was making a truly valiant effort not to laugh, and she quickly turned back to the corner she was trying to reach. "Oh!" she announced suddenly. "Connor says it's not likely to be venomous!"

Oh, God, he might have mentioned that himself; Miller had been outside the room, hadn't he? The soldier's face was so carefully schooled that Nick could only guess what he was thinking. In Miller's shoes, he'd have let out a few choice words. 

God, it had been a long day already, and it was still only afternoon. 

***

James looked at the mound of paperwork in front of him and tried not to despair. Much as he'd despised Leek, the man did some things very well. Of course, that included diverting government resources to his own personal plot to take over the world—had his underling watched too many early Bond films?—but he was starting to think that he'd rather face another future predator than do battle with all of this.

He set the auditors' latest results to one side to review with Jenny and Lorraine. Lorraine had a surprisingly good head for numbers and could help him understand the results without making it look like...he didn't understand some of the results. Jenny could help write some statements of policy and procedure to make sure nothing like this could ever happen again.

He took one last look at the assembled packet of reports and transcripts. They still didn't have a report from Hart, but given that the man could only type with one hand and was in nothing resembling a secure facility, they'd just have to do without for now. He'd send Hart's report on later. The minister wanted these materials yesterday. James hoped the packet he had finally finished was thorough enough not to excite any suspicion about things not fully covered, such as procedures that had become a little too loose, and responsibilities allowed to fall a little too heavily on one (megalomaniac) bureaucrat's shoulders, while being still complete enough to show that the ARC needed more of everything. They needed more military personnel, more latitude to close off areas that might be dangerous to the public, more scientists, and more money (which would not be misappropriated). Despite what Cutter and some of the others seemed to think of him, James had no desire to see anyone die. He still regretted the loss of Captain Ryan and wished they could have avoided it, but even in hindsight he didn't know what else they could have done.

Perhaps most of all, James hoped the packet wouldn't cost him his job. He'd been thinking for the past couple of years now that life was easier when he owed no one any real loyalty, when he moved from one mess to another and had the satisfaction of cleaning up without the mundane details of making sure everything stayed clean. Only in the last ten days or so had he begun to see advantages in having people who might have some loyalty to him, outside of his own family. There was even something to be said for working with the same people over time. Yes, they learned how to needle you where it hurt and annoy you where it chafed; they could disappoint you; and they could certainly betray you.

They could also surprise you, sometimes pleasantly, with generosity or genius or an unexpected kind word or deed. Most of the latter weren't directed at him, but he really didn't feel the need for complements. And he'd saved his own life, thank you very much, so he didn't need others making heroic sacrifices on his behalf. Still, James seemed to have reached a kind of understanding with them. Maybe they wouldn't fight him every step of the way now.

Plus, there was the entertainment to be found in knowing the others well enough to needle them most effectively. He'd always been quick that way, but his wit found new challenges even after years with the same crew.

***

Abby giggled quietly when Lieutenant Miller knocked over some decrepit piece of equipment as he belly-flopped across it, but her giggles stopped when the man climbed slowly but triumphantly to his feet.

He displayed to Nick, with a surprisingly shy smile, a net held tightly with both hands, a small, plated creature sticking its legs through the holes but unable to emerge. 

"Wonderful!" Nick said, taking two whole steps before his knee reminded him it didn't like him. "Let's get this one back to the anomaly!" He took it gently and carefully from the lieutenant. He couldn't believe they'd spent most of the day catching this beastie.

"We'll stay here and see if there are others," Abby said. "If the heat and smell of this place attracted one, it could have attracted more."

When Nick looked back at Miller, a look of resolution had replaced the smile.

"Good work," he said as he left the room to limp his way back to the stairs. Damn, the stairs. He should have sent Miller to take the net.

***

Stephen lay on his back on the bed and turned his iPod up still further to block out the noise of the telly, which was going to drive him insane. He must have imagined he'd survived the room full of predators. He must be dead, because he was in hell.

The psychiatrist had given way to the perky physiotherapist. He'd done some physio at the hospital, before they'd let him back on his feet at all, but apparently they were more serious about it here. It wasn't as if Stephen had never done physio before, but he'd never been trapped in a rehab facility before. He could always leave after an hour or so. Maria was pretty and cheerful and relentless. The ultrasound was fine, the electrostimulation they were using on his muscles was all right, but he hadn't expected the stretches and balancing exercises to take so much out of him. 

He'd told himself it was necessary. He'd told himself he would make his way back on the team—assuming Cutter would still have him, as seemed more likely with each visit. He'd told himself that Maria would only get him for an hour.

Then she reminded him that it was an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Then he came back to find that his roommate truly was a half-deaf addict of bad television shows. 

He must ask Maria if they could get headphones for his roommate to hear the programmes. But that would require movement, and after he'd made it back into bed, he'd lost his ability to sit up again; none of his abdominal muscles worked at all any more. 

***

Tossing the spider—no, trigonotarbid—back into the anomaly proved a little harder than anticipated. Connor, unafraid of the creature, grabbed a corner of the net and gave the rest a flick into the anomaly, pulling it back slowly—only to find the creature still attached. Nick finally prevailed upon him to toss the whole net, promising to reimburse the ARC if Lester complained. Lester must have been browbeating him about expenses; Nick couldn't honestly understand being worried about a net.

He was starting down the stairs when a sudden yell brought him back up in time to see the military personnel undecided whether to run towards or away from the anomaly. Connor, of course, ran towards. 

"Got it!" he called cheerfully, picking up a trigonotarbid in his hands. He only wore fingerless gloves, for God's sake!

"Connor, throw it back!" Nick shouted. "It could be poisonous! We just don't know!"

Of course, before Connor could toss it back, it had run for safety.

Connor was not so cheerful when it ran up his arm. Fortunately, the gear Lester insisted they all wear now kept it from getting inside his clothes, and a private nailed the creature before it reached his neck. She tackled Connor to the wall in the process, but soon enough the thing was back through the anomaly.

"D'you think that was the same one?" Connor asked in excitement, peeling himself off the bricks. "Maybe it likes the higher oxygen ratio? Hey, do you think we have less oxygen right here because it's bleeding back through the anomaly?" He was up and checking his recovered rover before Nick even manage to ask his own question.

"It didn't bite you, did it?" Nick asked breathlessly, trying and failing to sound casual.

It hadn't, but they began to set up nets all around the anomaly to prevent anything else from slipping past them. The sun was setting by the time Nick felt comfortable with the security of the area itself. Jenny checked on them from time to time, obviously hoping they could let the residents back soon; when he couldn't help, though, she just nodded and went away again.

He sat shakily down on some steps farther away from the anomaly to check in with Abby. They hadn't found any more in the mechanical room and had left the soldiers to put things back while she and Miller moved on to see if they could find anything else. 

Connor could have been bitten. It was smaller than the thing that had bitten Stephen, much smaller, but God only knew what it could be carrying. Venom, bacteria, tiny parasites. They were never going to be safe, were they?

He checked his watch and pulled out his phone. It wasn't too late to call Stephen and tell him they were all safe, so he did. Stephen seemed oddly evasive about rehab and finally confessed to being exhausted, but he seemed glad enough of the call.

Now if the damned anomaly would just close, and they could feel fairly sure they hadn't missed anything....

***

Today Stephen was certain he was in hell. Nick and the others had been out until all hours at an anomaly at some council flats; it was Lester who called to tell him that it had finally closed and he'd sent them all home to sleep. Jenny and the soldiers had all been similarly busy, and he'd probably get no visits today, either. They might even think that now he had more to occupy him, so he didn't need visitors so much any more.

At least for today, and maybe longer, Stephen had nothing to distract him from the noisy telly, the merciless physio, and the generally depressive atmosphere. He'd tried to make conversation with a couple of people he'd met, but he couldn't seem to connect with anyone. Most of them were a lot older than he was, and a lot slower, and they seemed only interested in television and card games—the ones who showed any interests at all.

Now here he was this afternoon in the long-awaited pool. His cast was wrapped, despite the fact that the water was barely chest deep and his sling had been tightened to keep the broken wrist uncomfortably close to his neck. He discovered as they started the exercises that he couldn't stand on his left leg alone for much more than a second even with the water to buoy him up. He found himself recalling Maria's warning not even to think of swimming, this time only because it reminded him that he was laughably far from being able to swim ever again.

"You'll get better," she encouraged him yet again. "Let's try lifting the leg now."

Stephen wanted to ask how he could get better when he did so few reps for so little time, but attempting to lift his leg pulled at both the leg injury and his abs, and he didn't have enough breath left. Besides, she really did seem nice. He didn't want to unload his anger at her. None of this was her fault.

Really, if anyone was to blame, it was Leek, Helen, and himself, in that order. Or maybe himself before Helen, because so many years of travelling through anomalies could surely drive anyone mad. Connor thought she might even have been gone longer than she had been missing from their timeline. The changes in her, both physically and mentally, seemed much greater than they should have been; was it the hard living conditions, or were there some extra years in there?

Helen wasn't quite sane. He could only blame her so much. She seemed to think that whatever she was doing was so important that even Nick could be sacrificed for it.

Oliver Leek. Now there was a man whom he could really blame. He could almost hate him, except that he'd worked out years ago hate did him more harm than good. In any case, Leek was gone, so he offered no outlet.

And Lester, who had been a convenient outlet even if he hadn't been a conspirator in the end, had turned out to be a basically decent human being.

Which pretty much left Stephen back at blaming himself.

Well, he was paying for his mistakes now, he thought as he continued his damned exercises. He really thought he'd be further along by now. He hadn't realized how much he'd lost until he'd started here.

One of the other therapists working with an older man in the whirlpool called out to Maria to cover for her. Maria asked Stephen if he'd be all right for a few moments, and of course he said yes. Next thing he knew, the first therapist was out the door, Maria was over by the whirlpool—and Nick Cutter was walking in the still swinging door.

It was four in the bloody afternoon. Nick never visited at this time. Visitors weren't allowed in therapy areas. Then again, Nick wasn't very good at following rules. Usually Stephen liked that about him; it had done them both good many times. Now was surely not one of these times.

Nick had seen him and was limping over to him before Stephen could even think to duck or turn away or otherwise attempt to hide. His shirt lay on the back of his wheelchair, parked near the shallow end of the pool. His towels were with the chair too. And to think he'd been annoyed that he probably wouldn't get any visitors today.

"Hullo, Stephen," Nick said, crouching down by the side of the pool. "Sorry I couldn't come sooner, but we had a call come in yesterday, and we were out late. Nothing much came of it, but you know how it goes." Nick sighed.

Stephen stepped right up to inside wall, keeping his scarred belly as close to it as he could without touching. He really wasn't ready to share that with Cutter. He looked with envy at how Cutter was squatting on his heels despite a bruised knee. If Stephen even tried that, he'd just fall over before he got halfway down, and it would hurt like hell. He could barely even shift from the wheelchair to his bed sometimes, for God's sake, and even with the walking stick, sitting down before his leg and his gut muscles gave out proved tricky when he got tired.

A moment later he flopped into a loose cross-legged position, saying, "Knee hurts," apparently not noticing that Stephen hadn't said anything yet.

"Sir?" Maria called from beside the whirlpool. "Sir, you're not supposed to be in here!"

"Oh, it's all right," Cutter assured her maddeningly. "I'm just visiting Stephen here." 

That was apparently enough to stop Maria completely, although Stephen didn't turn to look, because he didn't want to upset his balance now that he'd got himself fairly set at the side of the pool.

Stephen gritted his teeth and remembered the horrible lurching in his gut when Nick nearly made it to that room full of creatures before him. He wasn't going to get angry at Nick. They still had too much work to do repairing their friendship. He wasn't going to say anything mean. 

"I saw you weren't in your room, and I saw from the schedule on your door that you were supposed to be here," Nick continued conversationally, looking now not at Stephen but around the room. "Nice place."

"Pretty nice facilities, yeah," he managed. They kept the schedules posted on the door so that the staff could make sure everyone got where they were supposed to be. That had obviously worked out well.

"So, better than the hospital, right?" Nick asked, but he didn't really seem to expect an answer.

"Well, if you don't mind the roommate with the addiction to loud television, the bad food, the even more regimented schedule, and the torture." He'd meant it as a joke, but it came out a little too bitter.

Nick frowned. "Is it really that bad?" 

Nick's left eye was completely blackened, and his other eye didn't look a whole lot better. He obviously hadn't had enough sleep after the previous day's mission. 

Stephen sighed and tried to get himself under better control. Nick didn't deserve his frustration any more than Maria did. "No, of course not. It's just...not what I'd hoped."

"Sorry to hear that." 

Cutter showed no signs of getting up, though with that knee, maybe he just didn't want to have to move again. Stephen could sympathize with that, he really could. He'd like to flop down on the floor himself right now. Though not in Nick's position. He couldn't lean back against his right wrist at all, and his stomach muscles, or what was left of them, would probably object to leaning that far back while still holding him up.

"Sir, you really should go," Maria called out. Her voice sounded a little strained, and Stephen managed to turn just enough to see that she was starting to help her other charge out of the whirlpool.

"I will," Cutter assured her without moving. "So do you get to swim?"

Stephen closed his eyes. He wasn't going to get mad. Nick had no way of knowing how much it hurt to hear him say that. Maybe he should do what Abby and even Jacobs said and "be a little more forthcoming."

"I wish I could," he answered, opening his eyes. "That's a long way off still."

"Really?" Cutter frowned and sat up straighter. "How long?"

Stephen picked up his left hand to run it over his face but nearly lost his balance, even with both feet flat on the floor of the pool, well spaced. He slammed his arm back down onto the tiles edging the pool.

"Are you all right?" 

"Look, Maria will get me out of the pool as soon as she's done with...with that man over there, and I'll see you in a few minutes, okay?" he said, hoping he didn't sound like he was begging.

"You can't get out of the pool?" Cutter's frown was replaced by a look of pure disbelief. "They've got guardrails right there!" He pointed over Stephen's shoulder.

Was Nick trying to make this painful? Maybe he was. Maybe it was part of his never-ending punishment for Helen. Maybe he did deserve it. But maybe he didn't, and he'd really had about enough.

"I have to get to the guardrails, and I'm not supposed to overdo," he said, clenching his teeth to keep from saying anything more.

"But you're right at the side of the pool." Cutter simply looked mystified now. 

There was a splash. Stephen turned too slowly to see it, but apparently the other patient hadn't successfully made it out of the whirlpool. Maria was smiling, and the man looked surprised but not hurt. He was barely middle-aged. He hadn't had a stroke, surely? Maybe some kind of accident?

Nick was looking past Stephen to the other man too, but he hastily looked back to Stephen. "Anything I can do to help?"

Stephen had had enough of civility. "You can leave," he said a little too bitterly.

"I thought you were telling me how you were doing," Nick said in a low voice tinged with reproof, or maybe hurt. "You didn't tell me you couldn't even get in and out of a pool by yourself!" 

"You didn't ask!" Stephen retorted equally quietly. "Shouldn't you go now? You're not supposed to be here, remember! You don't want to get thrown out of two hospitals, do you?"

Nick stared at him. "Are you the one who told Lester?"

"I didn't tell Lester anything!" Stephen hissed. "Not about you!" His arm was starting to tremble from holding him upright, even flat against the floor as he had it.

Worse, when he looked at it, Cutter did too. "Shouldn't you get out of the pool?" he whispered. He shifted to his knees, moving even closer to Stephen, as if he might reach out to steady him.

"I can't get out of the damned pool until she's done with him!" Stephen hissed back. He could keep himself stable. He didn't need Cutter's help. Why the hell wouldn't he leave? He didn't look like he was enjoying this, and yet he wouldn't go so that Stephen could be humiliated only in front of the physio.

Cutter leaned forward.

"What? Are you trying to get a peek at my scars?" Stephen almost snarled. "Just leave!"

"Why would I want to see your scars?" Could Cutter really be that dense? He couldn't. Not really. So maybe he did want to see.

"Maybe to see if I've suffered enough for what I did?" Stephen hissed before he thought better of it. Where the hell was Maria, and why didn't she get rid of Cutter?

The other therapist came running back into the room behind Cutter, totally ignoring him, of course. She couldn't see his face, after all; Stephen could. Cutter looked bewildered. Stephen really didn't care any more. His leg ached, his right arm hurt from the unnatural position, his gut felt like it had been ripped open again, and his even his left arm hurt from keeping him steady. 

A sudden change in Cutter's face and a splash behind him alerted Stephen that Maria was back in the pool. 

"You're really not supposed to be here," she said to Cutter with all the severity of Abby chiding Rex. "Even if it's all right with Stephen, Mr. Johanssen has a right ...."

Stephen didn't hear the rest because he was muttering, "It's not all right with Stephen" into the pool. He felt more than saw Cutter backing off.

Maria had a hand on his arm. "Let's get you out of the pool! I'm sorry to have left you so long; Mr. Johanssen is rather tall, and I had a bit of difficulty getting him back into his chair. I think he's as tall as you!" She kept chattering as she took his arm and towed him gently away from the wall. Stephen let himself to be drawn into shallower water and then to the steps. Earlier he'd felt good that he didn't need the special lift they had to get patients in and out of the pool. God, but it would have been easier.

She helped him get his left hand on the rail and then moved quickly around him to get an arm around his waist as he hobbled out of the pool. He felt cold immediately, and once he'd bent over the rail, he couldn't straighten. She helped him into the chair, which was covered with towels, and gave his upper body a quick wipe with an extra towel.

Cutter had made it to the door but hadn't made it out and was staring back at him with a look of what could only be shock. Then Maria blocked Stephen's view while she helped him pull his shirt on. Well, he helped her; she did most of the work. Nick was gone by the time he had a view of the doors again.

"I'll find your friend as soon as we've got you back in decent clothes," she assured him as she wheeled him from the room. Was she completely oblivious to what had just happened?

A few moments later, she said, "Oh, that's him in the lounge!" The wheelchair slowed as she took a hand off to wave; Stephen kept his eyes on the towels in his lap. "We'll get you dressed and have you back out here in a couple of minutes."

Stephen had felt a moment of satisfaction in his anger. He'd even believed for a few moments that Cutter really did want to see how badly he'd been hurt. All that was gone now. This time he didn't have to will himself to think of how close Cutter had come to being the one in the room instead of him; he couldn't not think it. But Nick wouldn't be in rehab now. Nick would be dead. He'd had no gun, and he just wasn't as strong as Stephen was: ten to twelve years older, a little overweight, a little out of shape. He wouldn't have made it. If Stephen hadn't taken his place, he'd have been at Nick's funeral instead of the hospital. Anything was better than that.

And he'd accused Nick of wanting to see him hurt. Stephen was the one who'd been keeping the extent of his injuries secret; if Cutter was curious, Stephen had no right to blame him. He hadn't meant to keep it a secret, but Nick looked so obviously pained when he saw the walking stick Stephen was using that Stephen couldn't bear to tell him how little he was allowed to use it or let him see how slow he was. He just did his best to ensure that outside hospital staff, no one but Connor got to see him using the stick, or struggling in and out of the wheelchair. Connor was happy to wheel him around; he didn't give him looks of pity or guilt. 

Not only had Stephen undone days of trying to convince himself and Cutter that he wasn't doing too badly, he'd thrown it all in Nick's face, as if it was somehow his fault.

Why anyone still bothered with Stephen was a mystery to him at the moment. And maybe they wouldn't, after this.

He let Maria wrestle him onto the bed, but he did make some efforts to finish drying himself. He had a little pride left after all, it seemed. Maybe too much. He didn't know how he was going to apologize to Nick this time.

***

Nick hadn't meant to look back. If Stephen was sensitive about his scars, that was his right. He couldn't really think that Nick wanted to see him hurt because of Helen, even with the latest betrayal. Stephen had taken his place and had nearly died because of it. He hadn't even been that angry when Nick told him what he knew of the conspiracy and when.

Stephen had always prided himself on his appearance, so Nick had clamped down on the anger and the hurt that flared at Stephen's accusation and started out of the room. But he'd automatically turned his head at some noise, just in time to see the nurse help Stephen into the wheelchair.

She wheeled Stephen past the room Nick had found to collapse in and even paused to wave. Stephen didn't look at him. Maybe he should just leave now.

Once they'd passed, Nick put his face in his hands. He'd known Stephen had been badly hurt. He'd known there were scars on his abdomen and his leg. But knowing was nothing like seeing. The wounds weren't even really scars yet; they seemed too new to be uncovered. They criss-crossed Stephen's abdomen from one side to the other. The swim trunks Stephen was wearing had covered most of the scar on his leg, but Nick had seen the puckering that started just below the edge of the trunks. 

Stephen always been fit; now he was simply thin. It hadn't been that long since he'd told Nick that they were finally letting him add some solid foods back into his diet. He should have realized. Stephen had lost weight, and of course he'd lost a hell of a lot of muscle tone; he normally ran miles every day, and he'd been confined to the hospital for nearly two weeks. Nick realized with a shock he'd never actually seen Stephen walking since...since he'd walked into that room. He'd seen the stick; he'd never seen Stephen using it. He'd just assumed Stephen was getting on all right, or they wouldn't transfer him here.

How could they release him from hospital in his condition? 

No wonder Lester thought Nick too optimistic in referring to "when" Stephen rejoined the team. Why didn't Stephen tell him? 

Pride, he supposed. He had enough of it himself; he couldn't really blame Stephen, could he? He rubbed at his eyes angrily. And just how long was he going to wait here?

Well, the nurse had seen him. Maybe she'd come back and tell him Stephen was too tired for company or something like that. Maybe he could ask her how.... No, he'd already violated Stephen's privacy plenty. God knew Stephen had little enough of that left. No wonder they didn't want visitors in the pool room. 

Nick really shouldn't have come. He'd hardly slept since getting home at the crack of dawn. When he'd come to the facility and found Stephen wasn't in his room, he'd gone looking for him without much thought; he was still shaken from Connor's close encounter with a creature they didn't know enough about, and he wanted to see that Stephen was all right. Well, Stephen was not all right.

The nurse wheeling Stephen into the room took Nick completely by surprise. Stephen wore a tracksuit, and he was back to his normal sling, his arm lower across his chest. He still seemed a little hunched forward, curled over his abdomen, and there was too much colour in his face. Nick wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment, exertion, or both.

He jumped to his feet a bit belatedly and greeted Stephen.

"Maybe we could...you could take me outside?" Stephen asked, almost timidly, his eyes darting around the room. "We could talk...outside." 

Several other people were in the room, and Nick quickly agreed. The nurse released Stephen into his care, apparently unsuspicious of him, though she chided him gently and he promised never to enter a treatment room again. How ironic: just when a nurse really ought to be suspicious of him, because he had done harm, he got one who seemed to think the best of him.

She insisted on giving Stephen a blanket before he went outside, which he accepted quietly. The room had doors giving onto a garden, with chairs and benches spread widely throughout, and Nick took them to the farthest corner and sat down.

"I'm sorry," he said without preamble, as Stephen started stumbling over his own words. "I was stupid and thoughtless, and I should have left when the nurse first told me."

"Therapist," Stephen corrected absently, picking at the edges of the rough blanket. "She's a trained physiotherapist."

"Is that better than a nurse?" Nick asked, just to say something.

Stephen chuckled a little, following up with the inevitable little gasp for breath. "Depends on what you're looking for." He looked up at Nick. "I should apologize. What I said was...." A shudder ran through him.

"You sure you don't want that blanket around your shoulders?" Nick asked, trying not to sound anxious. It wasn't that warm.

"I'm not—" Stephen started a little hotly, but he broke off. "I suppose I am an invalid," he said a lot quieter. He looked at edge of the bench. "I don't intend to stay an invalid," he added.

Nick nodded, hard, but Stephen wasn't looking at him.

"Look, I didn't mean what I said," Stephen said, fidgeting with the blanket again. "I just....I've looked forward to going to rehab, I couldn't wait to get out of the hospital, and I feel...I'm not getting...." He let out a long, slow breath and looked at Nick again. "I know I'm getting better. But I thought I'd get better faster. Bones take time to heal, even sprains...but I've never had anything like this before." He gave a hint of a smile. "And I was already pissed off at everyone and everything when you walked in, and Maria's too damned nice to unload on."

Nick laughed, more in relief than anything else. "Whereas the crotchety old Scot can handle it."

Stephen grinned back. "Apparently so." 

Nick thought of letting it go, but when he tried to let things go, he usually found out that they were still hanging on somehow. Better to settle it now. "You don't really think I want you to...." He couldn't finish the sentence. Maybe without quite realizing it he really had wanted Stephen to hurt. He'd been terribly hurt by Stephen's betrayals. 

Stephen shook his head quickly. "Of course not. I was just...angry, like I said." Yet he wasn't quite making eye contact.

Nick sighed. "You want to try that again, and this time aim a little more towards the truth?"

Stephen blinked rapidly. He must not be used to getting caught out. Well, Nick wasn't used to catching him out, but once he'd started paying attention, it was pretty simple. If Stephen ever began to maintain normal posture and eye contact while lying, they'd be screwed again, but Nick didn't think that was going to happen any time soon.

"You did seem to enjoy the things I told you about Helen and how she dumped me," he said cautiously, his face still turned down somewhat but his eyes seeking out Nick's.

"Misery loves company," Nick replied easily. 

Stephen sat and waited, Nick wasn't sure for what. 

"All right, I did rather enjoy hearing that it wasn't all hearts and roses between you and my wife." 

A pained look flickered across Stephen's face and his eyes closed for a moment.

"What man would?" Nick continued. "For God's sake, if you have to have an affair, then, no, I'd rather you didn't enjoy it too much!"

"'Enjoy' is really not the word I'd use," Stephen said, a little dry humour creeping into his voice.

Nick thought of asking what word he would use, but as neither of them was enjoying this conversation either, there wasn't much point. "You know what? I'd rather not talk about Helen."

Stephen straightened up a little in his chair. "Fine," he said quickly, as if it were an offer he was afraid Nick might withdraw, and he asked about the most recent anomaly.

Nick told him all that had happened, noting that Stephen hunched again when hearing about the trigonotarbid running up Connor's arm. He relaxed only slowly, straightening a little but still not quite upright by the time Nick had finished the story.

"So this Miller guy seems all right," Stephen asked far too casually.

Nick frowned. First Abby, now Stephen; what was going on? "You know him? He didn't even come to the ARC until a couple of weeks before...." He didn't even know how to finish the sentence. Before I fired you? Before you nearly got killed?

Stephen gave a non-committal look. "Not well. But Abby mentioned he was a help with the hadrosaurs, and you sent him along with her this time."

"More like Abby dragged him along. You should have seen him when he thought a giant spider had landed on him!" Nick snickered.

Stephen didn't. "Has Lester talked yet about putting someone else on the team?"

So that's what this was about. "We're not replacing you. You're still on the team, you're just...."

"On the disabled list for some weeks to come. Three people isn't enough. You need someone who can shoot. Have you seen Miller's range marks?" Stephen held a level gaze with him. He didn't seem distressed at the idea of adding someone to the team at all; he seemed to be pushing for it.

Nick was a bit taken aback. "His range marks?"

"How good are his shooting skills? What weapons has he rated on?" Stephen pressed.

Maybe he really had pushed too far that afternoon. "Do you want to be replaced?"

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Yes, Nick, I threw myself into a room full of hungry predators because I was so desperate to be off the team. I thought just being fired wasn't enough."

Nick couldn't believe he'd just said that. "You've been hanging around Lester too much!" he finally responded.

"Can't help it. He comes to me, and I've nowhere to go." Stephen's eyes narrowed. "Seriously, Nick, putting someone else on the team is not replacing me; it's making sure I have a team still alive when I'm ready to come back!"

Was this some kind of test, to see if he really did want to keep Stephen on? Stephen didn't usually play these kinds of games. Then again, a year ago Nick would never have thought that Stephen would have an affair with a married woman, let alone his wife.

"Have you even talked to Abby and Connor?" Stephen was clearly exasperated. "And if Lester hasn't talked to you about it, he's not doing his job! You need at least one more person on the team—two, if you can't get a marksman who can also track. But Abby said Miller's done some tracking."

"Humans. He did some kind of search-and-rescue school. Or evade and avoid, something like that." 

Stephen rolled his eyes again. "Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract?"

"I said 'something like that.'" Nick tried to remember if he knew any more about the man, but he was surprised he even remembered the lieutenant saying that much. He didn't even know the man's Christian name, for heaven's sake. So he hadn't kept his word to Lester to think about a replacement—no, an addition to the team. He'd been busy.

"Cutter, you're not betraying me by adding someone to the team," Stephen said earnestly. "I'll worry less once I know you have someone on the team watching your backs."

"Oh, blackmail now, is it?"

Stephen smiled. "Whatever it takes. If you get killed after what I did for you, I'll be really pissed off." 

Oh, God, he meant it, despite the smile.

"I'll try to hold off on my death a bit longer." Nick took a deep breath. "I suppose I'd better check out this Miller fellow, then."

Stephen nodded and then proceeded to tell Nick what he should be looking for in Miller's record.

"You do know that it's not as if I've never hired anyone or chosen anyone for a team before," Nick couldn't help saying. "I seem to have done pretty well, if I may say so!"

"Present company included, or excluded?" Stephen asked with a smile that vanished as he finished. "Don't answer that—it was meant to be—"

"Oh, for God's sake, Stephen, if I can't tell a joke from you when I hear it, I might as well be dead! Maybe it's time we stopped tiptoeing around each other like one of us might break if we say the wrong thing!" 

Stephen's eyebrows shot up.

"We've known each other for over ten years. We've said lots of wrong things, including just a little while ago. Hell, we've done plenty of wrong things! And yet we're still both here, talking to each other, probably as badly as ever, but...I'm not going to leave because you shot your mouth off once too often!"

Said mouth was hanging slightly open, Nick noticed with some satisfaction.

"And you're not going to leave because of what I say, are you?" he continued, "if only because you can't get very far very fast right now."

Stephen grinned. 

"Look, you're not fired, you're not even off the team. As soon as you're fit to work at all, we'll get you back in the office, at least."

"Because I'm so good at office work."

"Because you'll go completely mental otherwise."

"As opposed to the well-balanced individual I am now." Nick was tempted to ask how things were going with the psychiatrist, but Stephen continued, "How did my trying to get you to add someone to the team turn into you reassuring me I still had a job? I appreciate it, but I'm not sure I need the reassurance."

Well, perhaps Stephen really wasn't the one who needed it right now. Nick's attempts to sleep today had been shattered at first by the jarring memory of the spider-like beastie running up Connor's arm—and his initial fears that the young man had been bitten, or stung. That led to memories of Stephen unconscious and convulsing from the arthropleura bite, and of course that led to memories of...of what Nick didn't even want to name. Of a room full of monsters where Stephen's only recourse was to get himself into a cage, where Stephen had nearly bled out while Nick stood useless outside and then began to mourn a man who hadn't actually died.

"Cutter? Hey, Nick? Are you all right?" Stephen was leaning forward in his chair, rather perilously, to put his hand on Nick's arm. 

"Too many close calls," he answered, putting his hands gently on Stephen's shoulders and pushing him ever so slightly back. "If you fall out of that wheelchair, that nurse will have my head."

"She's a therapist, Nick, and I'm not going to fall out," Stephen said, but he sat back. "I'm going to be all right. Really."

"The scars...." Nick cursed inwardly and bit his lip. He wasn't going to bring that up. 

Stephen looked away. "They look like hell, don't they?" he asked distantly. 

"They'll...you're still healing, right? They'll get better."

Stephen snorted. "Yeah: there's always plastic surgery. I'm sure Lester can squeeze that out of the budget."

Nick shook his head. "What was I just saying about talking badly?"

"It's all right. I'd better get over it: we don't have private showers at the ARC." That sounded more like Stephen.

"And you have a habit of stripping your shirt off."

"What are you talking about?" Stephen protested.

"You had to go into the pool to look for that...that alligator-thing that carried off the swimmer...."

"Right. I don't usually wear my shirt to swim, although today made me reconsider that," Stephen shot back.

"What about the time you decided we should use your undershirt as a flag to attract the pterodactyl?" 

"I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Well, it was my idea, really, but it was Claudia's shirt I asked for...." he trailed off. Claudia didn't exist here, and Leek sure as hell hadn't gone out on a mission.

"Claudia?" Stephen's face fell. "The mysterious Claudia Brown again?"

At least he remembered her last name. He couldn't have thought Nick was completely raving, or—

"Wait. I've been meaning to show you this." Nick pulled out his wallet and fumbled for the picture, cursing himself for forgetting again. He'd meant to show it to Stephen ever since he'd shown Jenny. "I was carrying this when I went through that damned anomaly where everything changed, where Captain Ryan died and after which"—he pulled the photo out with a flourish—"Claudia Brown ceased to exist."

Stephen took the photo and frowned. Like Jenny, he turned it slightly, trying to see different angles. "It looks like Jenny Lewis," he said hesitantly. "But when...?"

"It's not Jenny Lewis, as she'll tell you herself. And Helen—when Helen met Jenny at Leek's..." chamber of horrors... "menagerie, she remarked herself on how like Claudia Jenny was."

That brought Stephen's head up with a snap. "So Helen remembers Claudia too?"

"She was in the anomaly with me when everything changed, so she retained the memories of the other timeline too."

Stephen studied the photo some more. "So you and she were...close?"

Nick shifted a little on his bench. "I don't know that I'd say that." They weren't close. They could have been, perhaps, if he hadn't lost her.

A little smile pulled at the corners of Stephen's mouth. "Really? Yet you carry a photo of her in your wallet?"

"I...you know how Connor is. Starts snapping photos randomly and then prints some out. He gave it to me at one point—while we were in the field, because that was obviously the best time to do something like that—and I stuck it in my wallet and forgot about it."

"Until now?"

"Well, no; I found it sometime after I'd got back, after.... I went to show it to Jenny, but her fiancé was there, and I put it away and only...only got round to it a few days ago."

Stephen gave the picture a last look before handing it carefully back. "But now she doesn't exist."

"No. Connor thinks Jenny has the same mother but a different father than Claudia had; Jenny says she favours her mother."

"What did Claudia...?"

"I never asked her." Nick put the photo carefully away in his wallet. He wasn't sure why he had it any more. Claudia Brown was gone, and she wouldn't be back. This world had Jenny Lewis.

"That's...that's just amazing. Does Connor have any other theories?" Stephen seemed genuinely interested, and Nick felt a little sting at the thought that they could have had this conversation quite some time ago, if he hadn't been so stubborn, keeping his distance from Stephen even after he'd said they were all right. 

But they could have the conversation now, and they talked. They talked about how there could be different universes side by side, or just one timeline that had had some bits erased and pencilled in differently. They talked about differences between Nick's memories and Stephen's, and Nick found that while some incidents in his life had played out very differently, most apparently hadn't—and what he knew of Stephen's life seemed largely unchanged. 

They talked until Stephen's therapist bounced out and told them the day had really turned too cool and Stephen needed rest, and Nick promised he would visit the next day.

***

It had been more than two weeks now since that awful day when James had nearly lost his entire lead team; it was time to put his foot down. "Stephen Hart is in rehab and doing well. I think it's time we stopped visiting him during work hours," he announced at the morning meeting, having already passed word to the soldiers and staff. In fact, only Cutter was surprised, because only Cutter had come in after 10 am again.

"Right," Cutter said with unexpected cheer. "So I'll only visit Stephen after work hours."

Abby and Connor looked aghast, of course. Jenny looked suspicious. James just sat quietly and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Of course, I'll only visit anomalies during work hours."

The Munchkins both smirked.

"Cutter—" James tried.

"On balance, I think the exchange should work out quite well. For us, I mean, not for the ARC. And while I'm at it, I think I'm due some vacation time."

"Cutter," he began again.

Jenny was smiling too. Wasn't she supposed to be on his side?

"I'll have to look it up and see how much it is; I admit I haven't kept very good track—"

"Cutter!"

"Lester," Cutter replied amiably, "I've been putting in more than forty-hour weeks."

"Except for those days on sick leave. Have we processed those yet, does anyone know? I can call in Lorraine and see if she can change those to vacation days."

"You can't," Connor spoke up. "Doctor Gupta approved them as sick leave and then checked us all back in." He had the gall to smile openly. He and Abby all but gave each other high-fives, or fist bumps, or whatever kids these days were doing. When did Connor start arguing with him? Did he feel the need to pick up the slack in Hart's absence?

James really should have seen this coming. He was getting sloppy as well as sentimental.

He cast his eyes heavenward for a moment, but the effect was probably lost amid all the congratulatory glances everyone else at the table seemed to be sharing. "I really think it not unreasonable at this point to ask you to devote full time to your full-time job. And certain things remain to be done: we haven't even got all the reports on the necropsies! Reports on the latest anomaly are not complete, including incident reports and results of the new equipment on the rover. We still have two hadrosaurs and a mammoth to repatriate—"

"And as soon as I work out how to control the anomalies, I'll make sure they'll get back to the right eras," Cutter said. God, he was in a good mood this morning. It was annoying. James couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the man this happy.

Well, maybe it would help ease the blow of making the order public this time. "And a slot on the team to be filled. Professor Cutter, I believe you promised me—"

"Right." Cutter slapped both hands lightly on the conference table. "I think the rest of the team and I have a personnel file to review today before we announce our choice."

Abby and Connor managed to swivel their heads simultaneously. Maybe they should try synchronized swimming, James thought idly.

Wait—Cutter said a file. "You have someone in mind?"

The man across the table smiled. "I think we do."

"Oh." Well, that was a good thing. "Then let's get to it."

James still couldn't believe it when Cutter came to him not long after with one name. He didn't himself know Noel Miller from Adam, but Cutter apparently did, and the personnel jacket looked fine: a newly-minted officer with excellent shooting marks and some field experience, as well as search-and-rescue and SERE school. James summoned Lieutenant Miller and then left him to Cutter's tender mercies.

The professor really wasn't handling the matter as James had expected; he'd been prepared to drag someone onto the team with Cutter kicking and screaming. He briefly considered whether Cutter was cooperating merely to keep him off balance, but he honestly didn't think Cutter gave him that much thought most of the time.

James hadn't heard anything from above, but they probably hadn't read through the whole package of reports and transcripts yet. At least they couldn't shut down the ARC, whatever they thought of the debacle. It was too damned important for so many reasons; no one could deny that now.

He remained a little worried he might lose his job, and it was a new feeling. A year ago—hell, as recently as a few weeks ago—he'd have been thrilled to lose this job. He'd have been annoyed about looking bad, concerned for his reputation, but for a long time he couldn't wait to shake the dust of the place from his usually spotless shoes. Now he found he wanted to stay. He wasn't sure what was coming next, and that rather frightened him—not that he'd tell anyone, not even his wife—but he wanted to be a part of it.

James wasn't too worried that he'd lose the job, though. He'd survived a monomaniac who'd tried to kill him using Batman's steroid-abusing evil twin. He could survive Whitehall. 

***

Stephen was more than a little surprised that the whole team visited him together shortly before dinner. Cutter had already been round that morning. He hoped it wasn't bad news. He didn't see them coming; he could finally concentrate well enough, and hold books and journals well enough, to do some serious reading again.

"We wanted to tell you before you heard it from anyone else," Abby started. She sat at the foot of his bed.

"Like Lester," Connor put in, throwing himself on the floor, hugging his raised knees.

Abby continued seamlessly, "Nick took our advice and asked Lieutenant Miller to be on the team."

"He said yes," Connor finished.

Nick actually took the one guest chair. "It's only temporary."

"Or not." Stephen shrugged, reminding himself that this replacement had been his idea as much as anyone else's. "No reason you can't have five on a team." No need to dwell on the fact that he still didn't know if he'd ever be in good enough shape to come back to the team. Nick looked happy, and he wasn't going to say something to bring him down right now. Abby and Connor looked happy too.

"Have you been talking to Lester?" Nick asked suspiciously. "Because he said the same thing about five on a team."

"Can't split into pairs, but two and three can be good." He didn't realize Lester had been thinking that strategically. Mostly, Lester thought about the press and the public, and how to keep everything from them.

"Lester says we're not to visit you during work hours any more," Connor said apologetically.

Stephen found that oddly hopeful: Connor's clear disappointment, and the visit of all three of them together, surely meant they wouldn't stop coming.

"I tried to agree only if we'd only work during work hours," Nick added, "but he didn't go for it."

"Well, it will keep you from showing up while I'm in therapy," Stephen said with a smirk.

Abby gave him a sharp look. "Did I miss something?"

"Only Stephen in his swim trunks," Nick said with forced cheer.

"I've seen Stephen in his swim trunks," Abby said, brow furrowed.

Stephen couldn't control a wince. "Yeah—just remember how I used to look, then."

"Oh—oh." Abby blushed a little. "Well, scars are...scars are interesting," she fumbled.

"I should be very interesting then," Stephen said, trying to let her off the hook.

"Are the therapists cute?" Connor asked, looking around as if he might see one in the corner. Not exactly the way to win Abby over, was it?

The therapists seemed surprisingly young, all of them. Maybe he was just getting old. He decided not to mention that. "The therapists are slave-drivers, and I don't think they go out with their patients." 

Abby looked pointedly at the bed usually occupied by Stephen's roommate (who was, thank God, off at dinner already). "Can't imagine why not. One might, of course, decide to make a rare exception."

Given his track record and current appearance, Stephen really wasn't looking for anyone right now, and he was surprised Abby would even think about that. Somehow, though, he got a warm feeling from the thought that his younger teammates still thought he might be attractive to the opposite sex.

"I really don't think that's a good idea," he said, casting Nick a look that he hoped would get him to change the topic.

"So how is physio going?" Nick asked. Stephen silently blessed him, even if he had been a little obvious.

"A little better, actually. I'm getting more used to the routine." He was telling the truth. They were alternating more difficult days with lighter ones, and they were actually promising to give him Sunday off his regular exercises and let him just take walks (with the stick, of course). "And they've ordered headphones for my fellow inmate over there." He tipped his head towards the other bed. "Should be in tomorrow."

"We're not—we're not leaving you out of the loop," Nick said in a low voice. "Lester has agreed that Noel should drop in and pick up some pointers from you."

And they all looked at him like this was a perfectly reasonable idea.

"Noel who?"

"Noel Miller. Lieutenant Miller," Abby explained.

"Ah. But I don't think I can teach tracking while I'm sitting in a wheelchair at a rehab facility," Stephen answered.

"I'm sure you'll find something to tell him," Abby said with a confidence he certainly didn't feel.

"And we brought you something!" Nick gestured to Connor, who reached into his bag and pulled out...a laptop. It looked an awful lot like Stephen's laptop.

"We got Lester to agree you could have this. I've set it to log out after three minutes of non-use, so if you fall asleep or anything, no one can get in. You have to log in every time you wake it up, but...."

Stephen didn't fall asleep without warning any more, but it would still be convenient to be able simply to put the machine to sleep if he needed to go to therapy or a meal.

"Bad news is he wants you to write up an actual report on....the incident." Nick looked pained. He still hesitated every time he had to name—well, Stephen didn't even have a name for it himself, so he couldn't blame him. 

"Good news is that I've put software on so you can follow the rover in real-time!" Connor's voice started to go up, and Abby waved a hand until he quieted down again. "You can see what we're seeing from...you know."

Wow. He wondered if they'd managed to get that concession out of Lester in exchange for adding someone to the team, or if Lester too had exalted ideas of what he could do for the ARC while he was still in rehab.

"If there were any private rooms here, we'd get you one," Nick muttered. "But there aren't. If a space opens up, though, your roommate is moving, and that bed stays empty."

"You can do that?" Stephen asked in surprise. It was a silly question, really. Of course they could do that. Lester could do damned near anything he wanted, which was one of the reasons why Stephen had been so suspicious of him.

Abby laughed at him, which made the whole bed shake. It felt nice, actually. 

"We talked about moving you to another facility, but Lorraine and Jenny researched it. There aren't a lot of rehab places with a residential wing in the area, and they said this is the best," Connor told him quietly but with feeling.

"God, I'd hate to see the worst," Stephen muttered, and Abby laughed again.

"It's not so bad, surely!" she said.

"It has to beat the hospital," Nick said. 

"Well, at least with the car park right outside, I can see if anyone mugs you again." Never mind that he hadn't even caught sight of the three of them coming in today. 

Nick started to touch his still rather impressive-looking eye, and Stephen reached out to stop his hand. 

"Don't poke at it; it'll heal slower!" he hissed.

Nick looked amused. Stephen wasn't sure why.

Then Connor started up the laptop, showing him the security features and how to get live feeds when they had a rover actually running, all in a stage-whisper, apparently in case of passers-by in the hallway. Stephen could hear most of the residents coming for minutes before they ever came within sight, and the staff weren't awfully quiet, come to that.

"How long is he in for, anyway?" Cutter asked when Connor stopped for a breath at last, with a nod towards the second bed.

"Don't know," Stephen replied.

"Why do you keep talking about this like it's a prison?" Abby asked, out loud again.

"Because it is like a prison," Stephen said.

"Oh, really?" Nick gave him a superior look—and pulled car keys out of his pocket. "Time for a little jail break, then."

"What?" 

"You didn't know you're allowed out on trips?" Abby said, getting to her feet. "We're taking you out to dinner."

"You can do that?" 

"Yeah!" Connor pulled a length of cable out of his bag and set about securing the laptop to the bed frame. "Just as soon as I get this secured—"

"No, it's not long enough to do it that way," Abby interrupted. "He'll never be able to put it on the bedside table! You've got to secure it here." Soon they were both fumbling about the bed frame while Nick beamed above their heads.

It took a few moments to sink in that they were really taking him out to dinner. Then Stephen felt a sudden stinging in his eyes.

"You've been cooped up too long," Nick said. "After we get you in, we put the wheelchair in the back of the truck, and off we go. The Italian place near the University's fully accessible." He tossed the keys and caught them again. "Assuming we ever get the laptop tied down."

"We checked with the dietician." Abby straightened up and pulled something out of her own bag with a smile. "We've got a list of your dietary restrictions so that we can make sure you order something you can safely eat." The sheaf of papers in her hands looked rather thick.

"Professor? I just thought of something," Connor hissed. "What if they have some serious cable cutters? Or steal the whole bed?"

Connor provided just enough distraction for Stephen to wipe his eyes.

Stephen couldn't remember the last time all they'd eaten together. They used to do it often at the ARC, and sometimes even go out for a meal. Since Helen revealed the affair, he'd only shared meals with them if they happened to be working together and managed to fit in some food.

Abby not only brought out the dietician's papers at the restaurant, she all but took Stephen's menu away and ordered for him. He couldn't bring himself to mind. He'd have eaten day-old toast with them, if that was all they'd let him have (despite the fact that he suspected he'd had day-old toast for breakfast already that day and would have it again tomorrow).

They didn't stay out late, but by the time they brought him back, Stephen was worn out. He had to let Nick help him from the car to the wheelchair and then back to the bed, but he did insist on getting an aide to help him with his clothes. He had to have some standards.

Even exhausted, he felt better than he had in ages.

***

As Nick finally climbed into bed that night, he thought maybe he'd finally be able to turn out the lights and not have to worry about what memories would surface in the dark. That probably wasn't true. After all, nothing seemed fully resolved. Leek was dead, but Helen was still on the loose, and they had only the vaguest notion of her plans. They had a new team member to break in; even if he was just temporary, Miller would have to learn the ropes, and that might mean unlearning some of his military training. Worst, he couldn't be sure Stephen would ever really be on the team again. The nightmares and waking dreams would doubtless visit Nick again.

But maybe not tonight. Stephen's face at dinner had been something to see. Nick couldn't remember him being that happy since before Helen made her revelation. No, maybe once. After those god awful worms had blown up and they'd pulled all the suckers off them and just had to laugh at the incredible mess around them, and at Jenny in her good clothes and high heels who'd got filthy right along with them. Jenny didn't see the humour in it so much, and it was no good trying to explain; you either got it, or you didn't. Stephen got it.

Stephen usually did.

Of course, Jenny had proved more adaptable than they'd thought, and she was getting it more and more. And Abby and Connor? He could always count on them.

Maybe this timeline, or universe, or reality, wasn't arranged exactly as Nick Cutter would have wanted. It did seem to be where he belonged now, though. And he wasn't alone. 

Stephen wasn't either, and Nick had seen him finally realize it this evening. They'd get through this together. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be worthwhile.

FIN

I love feedback! Please leave comments at my entry for this story on Aelfgyfu_Mead's LJ or e-mail me at: Aelfgyfu (at) gmail (dot) com or

Return to The Mead Hall