Across The Borders Of Time (13/14)

[deeperwonderment]

Title: Across The Borders Of Time
Author: not_from_stars
Artist(s): danceswithgary and whuffle
Media Link: DancesWithGary and Whuffle
Word Count: 37,255
Fandom: Primeval
Genre: Angst; Het and Slash
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Abby Maitland/Hilary Becker, Danny Quinn/Connor Temple
Summary: Captain Becker was forced to watch as Abby, Danny and Connor went through an anomaly to prevent Helen Cutter from destroying mankind. After Connor is hurt, Danny sends Abby ahead of them to stop Helen no matter what she has to do. Unfortunately, after killing Helen, Abby returns to the site of the anomaly -- only to watch it close before she can go through it. This leaves Abby trapped in the Pleistocene with no way of getting back home, and with no way of letting the people who love her know that she's alive.
Warnings/Spoilers: This is an AU of the last episode of Series 3 and into Series 4.
Author’s Notes: This story has been a labor of love, emphasis on the labor part. I want to thank my beta and cheerleader, enochiansigils, for holding my hand through this and not letting me give up. danceswithgary made me an awesome wallpaper I use on my netbook and a matching icon and she was so infinitely patient with me as I struggled with this story, I want to make sure she gets her thanks for that. I want to thank whuffle for making me extra pretties to go with this and also want to thank whuffle and morrigans_eve for adding their encouragement to that of enochiansigils so that I could stick to writing this.









Four years. I've been trapped in the Pleistocene for a total of four years, now. While I've gathered untold amounts of information that I'm sure Sarah and others at the ARC would find invaluable, I'm no longer convinced that I'll be alive to give it to her. I've managed to stay alive and survive in such a place for four years, but I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep going. Sometimes when I look at my reflection in the rivers and lakes, I hardly recognize myself any longer. I know that shouldn't matter, but the changes on the outside do reflect the changes of a person on the inside. I've lost a lot of weight and I haven't exactly been keeping up with the nutrition from my time. Out here, you eat what you can. Berries, leaves, meat, fungus, fish. You eat what you can find or catch and you can't afford to be choosy. My cheeks are thin and you can see all of the bones in my face. I'm not sure what I think of how I look now. I don't resemble the person that went through the anomaly four years ago. There are times that I barely recognize myself. Oh, I know that it's me, but I look nothing like the Abby Maitland who went off on a mission to save the world with her best mates.

Part of me is afraid that if anyone I loved were to see me now, they wouldn't be able to look at me. I look like someone who got was on some kind of insane workout regime. My cheeks are hollow and my skin is brown from the sun and from the layers of grime that no amount of freezing baths in lakes or showers in waterfalls seem to ever be able to clean off of me and believe me, I have tried everything I could think of. Sand, pine needles, lots of leaves. Nothing gets me as clean as I want to be. My arms and legs are thinner than they used to be and it's obvious that my body is mostly muscle where there is weight on my bones. Four years in this environment and I had no choice but to do whatever I had to do in order to survive.

I understand now the different changes that I saw in Helen every time she made another appearance in our lives. She went through so many different anomalies and had to find a way to survive each time or era she was in. She did this for eleven years. I've been here for four years and I know I have lost a little of my sanity already. I can't imagine what living this life for eleven years would do to a mind. That doesn’t make any of what she did right, but I can understand why she might have thought it was. Living like this would screw anybody up.

I thought I could be stronger than I am. I thought I could get through anything here and not lose my mind. I thought I could survive for however long I needed to in order to get through this. But I'm not strong like I wanted to be and if the people I loved back home knew how weak I ended up being, they would never want me around them again. I'd have to find somewhere else to go. They wouldn't want me at the ARC when they found out what I had done. Jenny and Sarah would be so disappointed in me. Lester would be disappointed that I wasn't as strong as he thought I was. Connor would be sad and not understand how I could have done this. Danny would be angry and would never speak to me again. And Becker... oh god. Becker would be disappointed in me and feel betrayed over my actions. He would hate me so much for this.

But sometimes, you need an escape from the way you're being forced to live. Sometimes you need help getting through one more night where the only companions you have are the ones that are hunting you or the ones that you are hunting in return. Hallucinogenic mushrooms work as a crutch to get me through some nights.

I know now that I'm never going to get home again. It's been four years. If Sarah had been able to track us down, it would have happened a long time ago. They're not going to find me and no one had the device that Helen used to open the anomaly to this era after she passed through the Cretaceous Era. They may have been able to trace us from the future site and therefore find Danny and Connor and get them safely home. I hope they got to them before what has happened to me happened to them.

I don't feel like a human being any longer. I feel like I have become some mixture of animal and human -- and I'm not even sure if you could call me human at all. I don't remember so many things any longer. I can't talk in my own language because I don't remember the words I used to use. I make sounds that are supposed to be me communicating, but it's not the same as talking. I've learned several hand gestures and stomps from each time I stay with my Austrapolith family. I feel more like one of them now than I do a human being.

It may actually be a good thing that I will never get out of here. I don't want any one I love to see me like this.

Helen Cutter managed to hold on to some of her human concepts and reactions -- so how come I haven't been able to?

I think she may have been right about me. I may have been a lot like her -- but I guess I'm not as strong as she was because I don't think she would ever have ended up like I have after being in a place for only four years.

I'll never forget Becker or how much I love him. I'll never forget Danny or Connor, either. I just wish I had been more honest with how much they meant to me. That's one of my flaws in every relationship I have ever had -- friends or lovers. I don't let them know that they matter.

But I guess that it's all moot now...




It was winter and she was out hunting when she came across the wolves. Oh, she had known for years that there were several wolf packs out here and up until now she had avoided coming into any close contact with them. Whenever she heard their distinctive howls and barks, she always made sure that she was going in the opposite direction of wherever they were moving to. This time, though, she hadn’t expected them. There had been no warning growls or the joyful barking of a pack at hunt or at play. No, what she heard this time was a soft whimpering and a half-hearted attempt at a snarl.

She almost tripped over the dying wolf and the young cub that had stayed by his mother’s side.

Carefully, she crouched on the ground a few inches away to see if she could help the mother wolf in any way – and immediately realized that there was nothing she could do. Something had ripped into her pretty thoroughly and she didn’t think the wolf was going to survive for very much longer. The blood in the snow helped paint a very clear picture that this particular animal didn’t have long to live.

The cub, on the other hand…

Abby tilted her head as she looked from the mother to the cub. A baby. He wasn’t very old and in all probability couldn’t yet hunt on his own. In fact, he probably only had his milk teeth. He was small, but his eyes were open all of the way, which meant he was at least able to see and hear what was going on around him.

He would never be able to survive on his own right now. Of that, she was sure. Therefore, she couldn’t just leave him here for another predator to find – and they would find him. Already she could hear scavengers starting to approach due to the lure of his mother’s bleeding.

Decision made, she reached for the wolf cub and grabbed him, wrapping him up in one of the skins she had around her shoulders. She could feel his ribs through his fur and knew she needed to get food into him soon. She cuddled him close and looked down at his mother. She wished that she could do something to help her or to make sure she knew that her baby would be taken care of. She had no doubt in her mind that the wolf had been injured while trying to protect her baby. Wolves of any kind were very protective of their young.

Looking into the wolf’s eyes, she knew there was one thing that she could do for her. Abby backed away a few feet and put the wolf cub and the skin down on the ground. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her knife from the sheath at her side and approached the mother wolf again. She kneeled down next to her and reached to touch her head. The wolf snapped at her hand and Abby made a soft sound of pain as the teeth connected with her flesh.

What was one more injury on top of everything else? It wasn’t like she could fault the wolf for biting her. She was injured and now this strange creature had taken her baby from her side. If it was her, she probably would have bitten someone, too.

Of course, that meant that she now had to hurry even more. Her bleeding hand plus the wolf’s body would be a beacon to any predator in the area. She couldn’t fight right now – not with a fresh bite wound and a baby wolf that needed her care. Swallowing hard, Abby lifted her knife and then brought it down hard into the wolf’s body, puncturing the heart. The she-wolf didn’t even make a sound as she died. If she did, it wasn’t loud enough for Abby’s now sensitive ears to pick up on.

Abby stayed next to the body for a few moments, her hand resting on the fur as tears made their way down her cheeks. It had been so long since she had given in to tears that it felt strange to her. She had to get up and start moving, though. She had to get somewhere safe to clean out the bite and try to get the cub to eat something.

She pulled her knife out of the wolf’s heart and wiped it clean on her fur before putting it back in its sheath at her side. Taking another deep breath she got to her feet and went to where she had put the cub. It hadn’t moved from the skin and his bright eyes just stared up at her in curiosity. Sweeping him up, she held him close against her chest as she started to run.



It didn’t take her long to find her way to one of the rivers that she was used to following by now. She couldn’t say how many times she had followed these rivers as she migrated with the herds of plant eaters. Once she was there, she looked around for danger before she set the wolf cub down and then submerged her injured hand into the water. The icy water numbed the hand and Abby was able to probe it for dirt or the tips of any teeth. Once she was sure there was nothing in the wound to cause her even worse problems, she set about cleaning it thoroughly in the icy water. After she cleaned her hand, she rummaged in one of her packs until she came across the tattered remains of a t-shirt that she had long since started tearing up for bandages and rags. She wrapped the cloth carefully around her wound, using her teeth to tie off the knot firmly. When her wound was taken care of, she turned her attention to the cub she had rescued.

She carefully unwrapped him from the skin she had secured him in and examined him for wounds. To her relief, he didn’t seem to have any injuries. What was better is that he didn’t seem at all interested in biting her. In fact, he seemed quite content just to study her as intently as she was studying him.

The cub was dark gray but there were also streaks of red in his fur and she couldn’t help but to wonder at how he had gotten such coloring. She reached out to touch his fur and he just watched her. When she stroked his back gently, he made a little yip that sounded happy and Abby smiled at him as he licked her wrist.

It was the red in his fur and his intelligent blue eyes that made her start thinking of his name as Cutter. She had a feeling that her mentor wouldn’t have minded so much sharing his name if he could see the wolf she had saved.



…at least it wasn’t a dinosaur this time.

I hadn’t planned on keeping the wolf cub as my companion, but I guess he decided he had nowhere else he wanted to go. Believe me, I tried to get him to go back into the wild again after I fed him and got him to what should have been his normal weight for the age he was at. Well, the age I guessed he was at from the condition he was in when I found him and his mother. I tried taking him out and leaving him at different places after I made sure he was able to hunt – but he always found his way back to where I was staying. And even when I packed up and moved camp, he tracked me to wherever I went. He’s a very determined creature.

Just like his namesake.

He also doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t talk. I guess he doesn’t find it strange since he’s never been around humans enough to know that they are supposed to talk using actual words. He’s smart as hell, though. He understands the signals I give him and the sounds that I use to communicate with him and the Austropaliths that I’ve come across since finding him.

I had never seen Dire Wolves up close before – I always made sure to avoid them whenever I heard a pack hunting. However, I’m sure that I have never seen any wolf that is as beautiful as Cutter is and it’s not just because he seems to have become my constant companion. He’s got this amazing dark gray fur with red highlights in it and a red sock on one of his front legs. He’s getting so big, too. When he’s standing, he’s a little taller than my knees. I had always read in the books that Dire Wolves were long and stocky, but there was never any clear indication of their height that I can recall right now.

That’s bad, isn’t it? That I’m forgetting things? It’s happening more and more often that I realize I can’t remember things that used to come to my mind so effortlessly. Facts and figures that I used to just rattle off absently I know have to stop and think hard about and sometimes what I’m trying to recall just doesn’t come to my mind at all. That’s kind of frightening. Does that mean that I’m regressing to an evolutionary point before mankind had that kind of information? Did I not stop Helen in time and the Austropaliths that she did manage to murder did affect the future and this is what is happening to me as the future dies out?

That’s a rather disturbing thought, isn’t it? That I didn’t save the future and instead of dying I’m slowly going backward on the evolutionary scale. I’m not even sure that such a thing has been heard of. Nick would have known the answer to that. Evolutionary Biology was his specialty and he would be able to tell me if that was possible and if that was what was now happening to me.

Of course, the other side of the fact that Nick would be able to answer that question is the knowledge that if Helen hadn’t killed Nick, none of this would be happening. I sometimes wonder how differently things would have gone if Nick had survived what Helen did.

But, does that mean I never would have been able to count Danny as someone close to me? Yes, we met him before Nick died, but he only became a part of the ARC after Nick was killed.

I don’t even know why I’m trying to figure all of this out now. It doesn’t make any difference to my reality:

I’ve lost Danny just like I’ve lost Becker and Connor and all of the rest.

I AM NEVER GETTING HOME. NEVER.

I’ve tried so hard to hang on to hope that someone will find me or I’ll come across another anomaly, but it hasn’t happened. It’s been four years and I am no closer to finding my way home than I was the day that anomaly closed. I need to accept the fact that I’m going to live and die out here and nothing is going to change that.

If I had any common sense I would stop writing in these journals and just let myself forget and do whatever I have to in order to live and survive out here without continuing to believe that I’m ever going to see the people I love again. I should just stop writing and burn these damn things and forget about this desperate struggle to hold onto my sanity and any parts of a life that is no longer mine.

But I can’t. I can’t just destroy so much that could be considered field research in another time and place. The scientist in me balks at destroying all of this data. The human being in me just doesn’t know if she can keep doing this any longer.

Not that I know what will happen to all of this when I die. I guess I could dig a crevice in a cave wall somewhere and hide everything; and hope that nothing disturbs them and someone in the future finds them and can realize the importance of the knowledge. Maybe they could somehow find their way into the hands of the people I love. Let them know that no matter what happened to me, I never forgot about them or stopped caring about them.

Let them know that I believed their safety and well-being was so worth everything I lost and everything I’ve had to do since we went through that first anomaly with Danny and Connor.

How would that work? Could I hide something here in the past and make it marked for a specific person in the future? Would it be found and would whomever found it understand how important it was for them to make sure these things found their way into the hands of who they needed to? Would it prepare my loved ones in the future from having to go through the loss and the not knowing?

Would it give them a better chance of finding me if they had something to use to date where it was buried?

No, probably not that, but it would let them know what actually happened to me instead of being left to wonder. I know how much it has torn me apart not to know what happened to Danny and Connor after we separated. I know that it hurts not to know if I stopped Helen in time to save the people that mattered most to me in this life.

It hurts not to know how Becker is and if I managed to save at least him.




Chapter Twelve || Chapter Fourteen