Getting The Chance To Make Amends
Feb. 13th, 2011 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deeperwondermentTitle: Getting The Chance To Make Amends
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
not_from_stars
Fandom: Primeval/Charmed
Pairing/Characters: Stephen Hart, Cole Turner, Becker, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple
Rating/Category: PG-13
Summary: Stephen Hart wants to make amends to the woman who loved him and had been hurt by him. Cole Turner knows just the thing.
Words: 10,296
Notes: Thank you toenochiansigils for being my beta on this -- and for listening to me bitch when I couldn't focus on anything but this fic. Also, thank you to kajivar for the Stephen and Cole icon! I am not even sure where this idea came from, but it arrived and I had to write it.
"Are you sure this is good idea?" Stephen Hart questioned as he and another man materialized outside a flat in a nice area of London.
"Of course I'm sure. You're not going to stop being such a pain in the ass about her until you see she's okay and get a chance to talk to her."
"You're a fine one to talk about being a pain in the ass about someone, Cole. Every other sentence out of your mouth is about Phoebe and how Phoebe was the only woman you ever loved and you will never stop loving her or trying to find a way to get back to her."
"Phoebe was my soul mate and we went through hell together. You never even wised up and asked this Abby girl except when you thought you were dying from poison." He snorted. "What was it, a spider?"
"A giant centipede," his companion muttered. "A really big, pissed off centipede."
"Not the best way to win a girl and her love. You ask her out while you're dying, then, after she has stayed by your side through all of that, you break her heart by telling her you already have a girlfriend." Cole shook his head. "That really was stupid of you."
"Says the guy who got killed by his wife and her two sisters." Stephen pointed out.
"There were extenuating circumstances in that."
"So you've said. Ad nauseum."
"I was possessed by the Source of All Evil! You were fooled by some crazy ass bitch who had already proven she couldn't be trusted."
Stephen muttered something under his breath that was very nasty.
"Oh, and let's not forget that she had you convinced that Abby, Connor and Nick had all been killed by Lester." Cole shook his head. "Then, when you found out the truth, you sacrificed yourself to a bunch of vicious predators when you should have tossed Helen into feed them so you could rescue everyone." He shrugged. "If someone I loved were in danger that bitch would have been dinosaur food... or tossed into the nearest fiery hell pit I could get to." Or, really, he would have just immolated her himself and saved everyone around him a shit ton of heartache and trouble.
"Why am I with you, again?"
"Because I'm your best chance at being able to see your beloved Abby again."
"You don't have to be such a smug bastard about it."
Cole gave him a grin and this time Stephen shook his head. That only made Cole grin even more. "It's not every day that I get to be the one reuniting lovers. Usually that's Drake and I'm trying to figure out a way to get back to Phoebe."
"How's that going, by the way?" Stephen asked.
"Bastard."
Stephen sighed and looked back to the flat. "Are you sure this is going to work? I don't want to disrupt her life any more than it already has been."
"The real question is whether or not you're going to be able to handle the fact that she's happy and has found love again."
"Of course I am!" Stephen snapped. "That was the whole point of this, right? I need to see that she's safe and happy."
Cole shrugged and looked down at his hands. "Even though it's with someone who is not you? Or even if it's two someones?"
Stephen glared at him, taking a step forward. "Don't talk badly about Abby."
Cole held up his hands. "I'm not." He smirked. "Besides, what are you going to do, kill me?"
"I'll figure out something to do to you," Stephen replied. "Abby is --"
"Involved with two men."
Stephen just stared at him for a long moment. "What?"
"Oh, don't be an idiot," Cole sighed. "She has two boyfriends -- and they both love her very much." He looked at Stephen seriously. "If you can't accept that, then you're not going to see her or speak to her. She's finally happy again, Stephen, and from what my buddy, Drake, tells me, she's been through hell. She deserves this. I have no problems shimmering you right out if I even think you're going to upset her." He shook his head. "Not even for someone like you will I risk dealing with Drake over some poor girl's heart being scarred again."
"What happened to her?" His concern for Abby was evident in his voice.
"That's something she'll have to tell you," Cole said in a kinder voice. "You don't want to hear that from me. What I can tell you is that one of her guys is someone you knew very well."
Stephen didn't even have to think about that. The answer to who was obvious in his head. "Connor? Well, hell, it's about time. He's always had a thing for her, so I know she's well loved." He hesitated. "Who is the other guy?"
Cole looked at him. "Maybe we should wait and you should see for yourself."
"Cole."
"His name is Becker."
Stephen's eyes widened and then he laughed a little. Becker was the man Lester had hired to protect the team after his death.
"At least I know that she'll be well protected." Stephen's voice was soft. "Connor adores her, but he's not really a fighting type of guy. That's not his style."
Cole gave him a funny look. "I think you're going to be in for a surprise, Stephen," he said.
"Why?"
Cole shook his head again. "Look, I don't have all of the details. Drake wouldn't tell me. You'd think he was worried I'd do something reckless if he gave me all of the details about what your girl has gone through."
"Reckless? You? Now what would ever give him an idea like that?"
Cole gave him a dirty look. "I can still throw fireballs at you."
"Which will do nothing to harm me, but will look like a pretty nice movie effect."
Cole hated it when someone besides him was right. "Your girl," he said, getting back to the subject at hand. "She's changed, Stephen. She's not a lot like what you've described to me. Drake says there is still some of that at her core, but she went through some really bad stuff."
"You keep dancing around that issue and it's getting beyond annoying. Just come out with it so I know what to do."
"I can't," Cole said quietly. "I promised. Just be aware." He looked back to the building. "Are you doing this or not?"
Stephen nodded, taking a step towards the flat. "I am."
Cole stepped up and put his hand on his shoulder. "Your way takes too long," he said as he shimmered them off the street and into the building.
It wasn't uncommon for Abby to wake up before the sun rose. It was a habit that she hadn't yet been able to break since coming back to this time. For a year, she and Connor had taken turns keeping watch. Even with Becker now, they still had that so deeply ingrained in their subconscious that it would probably be quite awhile before the habit died out. She lay there with the boys for a few moments longer, but soon admitted that no matter how comfortable and relaxed she was, she wasn't going to get back to sleep. Since it would be mean to wake the boys before they needed to get up, she carefully detangled herself from them and got out of the bed.
She quickly got showered and then dressed quietly, still trying not to wake up the boys. She couldn't help but stand by the bed for a few moments and just smile. She still didn't know how she had gotten so lucky -- and sometimes she was afraid this was all a dream -- but she was really glad that the three of them were together. The love that was between her, Connor and Becker was something she had never realized existed.
Still smiling, she headed down the hall to make tea. She figured she had time for a cup or two before the boys...
Abby froze, her smile sliding away and being replaced by a frown. Something wasn't right in the flat. Her instincts from the year in the Cretaceous flared to life and she crept back to the bedroom. Not wanting to disturb the boys, she quietly opened her dresser drawer and grabbed the gun that was there for emergencies. She slipped off her shoes in the hall and made her way back toward the kitchen.
When she came around the corner, she was ready for whatever might be in the living room of their flat. Except, this was one of those times where she really wasn't prepared at all. If her training from being involved with the ARC wasn't better, she would probably have dropped her gun in shock. However, the training from Becker and one other was too good for her to lose sight of her weapons so quickly.
No matter how surprising the situation was that she found herself in.
She stared for a few moments at the man standing in their flat and she had to struggle a moment in order to get her voice.
"Stephen?"
He had been in the flat only a few minutes before Abby had found him and he was already aware of how much things had changed with her. For one thing, there wasn't a reptile case in sight and that made him sad. For as long as he had known Abby, reptiles had been her passion. The other thing that struck him was that Rex wasn't around. Now, it could have been that he was in the bedroom with Abby and the guys, but he didn't think so.
When she first came around the corner, he had to hide his shock. She was thinner than he remembered, and her hair was a great deal longer. It was her eyes that told him that something had happened that he didn't know about, though. It used to be that her eyes were always full of cheerfulness and expression. Her eyes were one of the first things he had noticed about her -- no matter how much she tried to hide her emotions, her eyes always revealed them. Now though, her eyes were shuttered, except for the wariness as she came in with the gun. It was only when she saw him that a bit of that old Abby peeked through.
"Hello, Abby," he said quietly, not wanting to do anything that would make her bolt. "You look good." She looked better than good, if he was honest with himself. It was something he had gotten better with since he died. He didn't lie to himself quite as much when he thought about things.
She didn't drop the gun, but she at least moved it to her side. "You look pretty good for a dead man."
He shrugged, trying to make it look like he wasn't full of so many things standing there and actually seeing her for the first time in so long. "I guess it's one of the benefits of being dead. I don't have to work out quite as much to keep in shape."
She swallowed, her thoughts racing as she tried to process all of this. "So, you're a dead man, in my flat? Are you a ghost or..." Her eyes widened. "No. Do not tell me that bitch did clone you before her death and you came through an anomaly to get revenge due to your programming or whatever."
Stephen blinked in shock. Of all of the reactions he had expected from her when he appeared like this, an assumption that he was a clone hadn't even occurred to him. He was suddenly reminded of Cole's earlier warning. She's been through hell.
"A clone?" He looked at her face. "You're seriously asking me if I'm a clone?"
"Yeah, a clone. You know, like the army of those cleaner guys that Helen used..." She shook her head, her empty hand coming up to rub her temple. "Never mind. You wouldn't have known about them. That happened a few months after you died."
He shook his head, stepping towards her, and then stopping when he saw her tense and take a step back. The last thing he wanted for her to be afraid of him.
"No, Abby," his voice was gentle, like he would have used with a spooked animal. "I'm not a clone."
He was so focused on Abby, that it took him a moment to register the click he heard and what it meant. His eyes turned to the shadows of the hall behind Abby.
"Then suppose you tell us what exactly you are, mate."
He had known when Abby left the shower, but he hadn't gotten up because he thought that perhaps she needed a few minutes to herself. He knew that there were times that she couldn't sleep -- hell, he had woken up enough times to find her sitting up and keeping watch over the two of them to know that. He could tell she was in a good mood this morning and she seemed at peace, so he had stayed in bed curled up with Connor.
His senses went on hyper alert when he heard Abby creep back into the room a few moments later. He watched her through narrowed eyes as she retrieved her gun. That was not good. He gently nudged Connor in the ribs and wasn't surprised when the other man's eyes opened immediately.
"There's someone or something in the flat," he said in a hushed whisper.
"Abby?" His eyes went to the door before Becker could answer him. "She's out there with whatever," Connor answered himself quietly as he left from the bed and pulled on the first trousers he found.
They grabbed weapons and slipped into the shadows of the hall. Becker heard Abby's voice, but there was no fear in it. He did register sadness and shock that was in her voice, but there was also the tinge of anger there as well. He looked at Connor, but his companion's face was also registering shock.
So it was someone that both Abby and Connor knew -- and had never expected to see again.
He held up a hand to make sure Connor stayed behind him and he moved closer to the living room of the flat. He saw the stranger take a step towards Abby, and he registered how she stepped back just as quickly.
"I'm not a clone," the stranger said.
That was when Becker stepped into the main room from the hall and pulled back the hammer of the sidearm that he was pointing at the other man.
"Then suppose you tell us exactly what you are, mate," he ordered, his voice cold. "And you can step away from Abby while you're doing it."
The other man looked at him and the small smile that had been on his face as he looked at Abby faltered. "You must be Becker," he acknowledged quietly.
"That I am. You are?" He kept his gun up as he came to stand beside Abby.
"Stephen," Connor said quietly from where he had come up on Abby's other side. "He looks like Stephen."
"Stephen?" Becker questioned, not taking his eyes off the other man.
"Stephen Hart," Connor responded. "He died before Lester hired you."
"If I recall correctly, I'm the reason you were hired," Stephen said. His eyes had flickered over Connor, registering the changes in his friend, before turning back to the most dangerous of the three. It didn't take a genius to realize that if this man thought he was a danger he wouldn't be allowed to stay and say the things he needed to say.
"That doesn't explain why a man who is supposed to be dead is standing in our flat," Becker bit out.
"I've come to talk to Abby. I'm not going to hurt anyone -- not that your guns would do anything to me if I decided I was going to."
"How is this even possible, Stephen?" Abby asked, looking at him in confusion. "You died. Cutter saw it."
"You're right, Abby. I am dead. That part didn't change. I just happened to have met some interesting people in the afterlife. Two of them decided that we needed to talk." He eyed Becker who was still tense and holding a gun on him, and then looked back at Abby and Connor. "What happened to the two of you?"
The three people in front of him looked uncomfortable for a few moments, and then it was Connor that spoke. "There's a lot to tell, mate." His hand reached out to curl around Abby's. "It'd probably be better for all of us to sit down if we're going to have story time."
Becker looked at Connor and Abby. "Are the two of you sure about this? You don't have to let him stay."
Abby laid her hand on Becker's arm and gave him a pained smile. "It's Stephen. I know that a lot of things changed, but Stephen would never have hurt us."
"But he did hurt you," Becker said quietly. Oh he had a good memory and he remembered how she had looked when he met her after Stephen was killed. Hearing other stories about what had happened from people hadn't exactly made him think well of the man outside of his professional skills.
Connor gave a shrug. "He'd never attack either of us, though. He was our friend, even if he was a stupid git at the end."
"I'm standing right here, Connor."
Connor's smile was unrepentant. "You have to admit, though, that I'm right. You did act like an idiot."
Becker searched Abby's eyes and then did the same thing with Connor. "All right, but I'm not leaving."
Abby frowned. "We would never expect you to," she said. "This is your home, and whatever is said concerns you, too."
Stephen didn't necessarily agree with that, but he realized he couldn't say anything if he wanted this chance to talk to Abby. As much as he truly wanted her to be happy, he hadn't realized how difficult it would be to see her with someone else. And from her body language, she definitely was with someone else.
Once they were all seated -- Abby on the sofa between Connor and Becker -- and Stephen in a chair across from them, Becker spoke first.
"So you're not a clone?"
Stephen shook his head. "Why do you guys keep asking me that?"
"Helen created clones of people," Abby said, looking at him with a measuring gaze. "She made one of Cutter."
Stephen could feel the shock cross his face. "She did what?"
"Created a clone of Cutter," Abby repeated. "He was really angry about it and told her that he hoped she hadn't done such a thing to you."
Stephen shook his head. "That --"
"Crazy bitch?" Connor supplied helpfully.
Stephen stared at him for a moment and then nodded. "Yeah, I guess that is a fitting way to describe her. That suits her more than any other words that could be said."
"I can think of several things to call her." Abby's voice was soft, but he still heard the lingering emotions in her words. There was something close to hatred in Abby's voice when Helen was mentioned, and he had never imagined her hating anyone.
What else had Helen done?
"So something I wanted to ask before but thought you'd clobber me if I did --"
Stephen raised an eyebrow at Connor. He was pretty sure he had an idea about what Connor was going to say and he didn't like that it was going to be one of those things he never wanted to have to say in front of an audience of people. He did notice that Becker's hand clenched almost automatically at the idea of him hitting Connor.
"What is the question, Connor," he finally said. He felt both tense and tired. Wasn't being dead supposed to remove things like that? He was pretty sure that the dead weren't supposed to be as tired as he was feeling right now.
"Why were you shagging Helen when you could have been with Abby?"
"Connor!"
"I mean, were you really that blind and stupid?"
"Connor, don't!"
"No, Abby, I really think he needs to answer the question. You would have done anything to make him happy and he decided to be with the bitch that would cause his death and kill Cutter."
Stephen was surprised by the bite in Connor's words. When he had known him, he had never heard the younger man get angry at all -- no matter how many times he could have. The fact that Connor's eyes had changed to a really dark brown when asking the questions was a good indication that Connor had quite a few opinions on everything. His eyes flicked over Abby's tight face and then over the anger clearly shining in Becker's eyes. There was no way he was getting out of explaining this in a more public fashion than he had planned.
"What do you mean, she killed Cutter?" He wasn't really stalling, just that information had him knocked off guard a little.
"She broke into the ARC with her army of clones," Becker supplied. "One of those clones was of Cutter. He held a gun on Lester. One of those clones tried to hurt Connor when he came up with a way to get control of the ARC back."
Abby had tensed up at this reminder and he watched Connor's hand settle on her leg -- as well as the reassuring smile she gave him.
"She tried to blow up the ARC," Abby said quietly. "When that didn't work, she shot Cutter in the chest, killing him. It was Connor that found him and carried him outside to the rest of us."
Stephen winced visibly. "I know that saying I'm sorry seems so empty, but I am sorry. No matter what I believed at the end, Nick didn't deserve that."
"He didn't deserve a lot of things that happened," Connor said pointedly. "None of us deserved a lot of what happened because of Helen Cutter. But Cutter was your friend and you were like a brother to him. How? How could you do that to him? How could you do that to any of us?!"
"Connor --" Stephen wasn't sure where all of this anger was coming from, but it was uncomfortable to have Connor this angry at him. He had never realized that the easy going man could get this angry.
"You were our friend, Stephen! At least you were supposed to be. Why couldn't you have just been honest with us and told us what she was telling you? If you had leveled with us, we could have worked together and put the pieces in place. We could have worked to stop her together and we wouldn't have lost Cutter, or Danny! Jenny wouldn't have quit and Sarah wouldn't have died because of us. If you had acted like a friend instead of her pet, then we could have prevented her insane ideas to wipe all humanity out of existence and Abby and I wouldn't have been trapped in the bloody Cretaceous for over a year!"
Connor had jumped to his feet during his tirade and for the longest moment, all Stephen could do was stare up at him. His brain was working to process all of the information that was being thrown at him. It wasn't often that he was at a loss for words or caught off guard like this. However, Connor's words had blindsided him.
Abby got to her feet and came to stand in front of Connor. She turned her back to Stephen and wrapped her arms around his waist, putting her head on his chest. Connor's arms immediately came around her and he buried his face in her hair.
"It's okay, Conn, it's okay. We're home and we're safe. I'm here with you and you're here with me. She can't hurt us any longer, not here."
Gradually Abby's words seemed to work to calm him down and the other man's shaking subsided. She got him to sit back down on the sofa, but he pulled her down onto his lap, holding onto her. Stephen watched all of this, once more remembering the warning he had been given. Apparently, Abby's hell had been a shared one and she and Connor hadn't come out of it unscathed.
"Perhaps you'd better go back to wherever you came from, mate," Becker suggested quietly. His eyes were not at all friendly. "I'd say you've upset my lovers more than enough."
Stephen didn't miss the possessive way that Becker spoke of Abby and Connor, and he knew he was being given a warning. Becker wouldn't hesitate to try to kill him if he thought that he was a danger to anything but their memory. He could see that in the way he was sitting, like he was trying protect them both from him. Had circumstances been different, he and Becker would probably have been good friends. They seemed to be a lot alike when it came to the people they cared about and what they were willing to do for them.
"I'm not going to leave them like this," Stephen warned him. "I came to talk to Abby -- and I guess you and Connor, too. I just didn't realize that there was so much I didn't know." He managed to give the other man a careless smirk, even though the pain in his heart for Abby and Connor made it anything but easy. "You could try to shoot me, of course, but it won't work. I'm already dead."
"You're hurting them, Hart, and I can't have that." There was a threat underlying his words and any normal man would have been wary about it. Stephen wasn't a normal man when he had been alive and being dead didn't change the way he reacted to being threatened.
"Maybe you should stop talking about the two of them like they're not sitting in this same room with you, Becker."
He watched as Becker's jaw clenched. The other man looked like he was going to say something even more threatening, but he then relaxed a little and leaned back. It didn't take long for Stephen to notice that one of Connor's hands had moved from being tightly wrapped around Abby to gripping Becker's leg.
"Becker looks out for us," Connor said, a lot of the anger from moments before gone from his voice. "With everything we've all been through, all three of us, he has the right to say what's on his mind." Unlike you, was what his eyes and words implied.
His eyes searched Connor's eyes and then he looked at Abby who was offering him comfort by just holding him. "What happened to you two?" He finally asked.
He was off kilter and he didn't like it. He didn't know what to make of these new, rougher versions of his two young friends. He also didn't like that he could tell there was something that was broken inside both of them -- something that had only seemed to be beginning to heal. His hand clenched at his side. The idea of someone hurting Abby -- and okay, Connor, too -- in such a fashion made him want to tear someone apart. The small quirk of Becker's lips told him that the other man knew exactly what he was thinking.
"You first," Abby said. "Just tell us why? We trusted you and believed in you right up until the end, Stephen. It hurt so much when you died, but there was confusion there as well because we didn't understand."
"It gutted Cutter," Connor added.
Stephen winced and then sighed. "I can honestly say that I never intended to hurt anyone. Back then, everything seemed so clear when it was happening. The anomalies were dangerous and we were dealing with them. But it scraped at me for some reason that we were keeping it so secretive when people outside of the ARC had been affected by them."
"We were trying to protect people," Abby said angrily. "If we had tried telling people, there would have been a panic -- or more people like Helen, who would try to use them to play god and make the world in their own image."
The venom coming from Abby hurt more than it should have a right to.
"I know that now," he said quietly. And he did. He had realized how wrong he had been before he hit Nick and locked himself in the room with the predators. "But back then, it just bothered me so much and I can't even explain why. Then Helen started appearing at random intervals to tell me how wrong the world was going and that Lester was manipulating Cutter, and therefore all of us."
Abby shook her head and he could see the anger filling her eyes. "Lester never lied to us. He was bluntly, irritatingly honest. We may not always have liked what he said, but he was doing what the Minister and everyone thought was for the best."
"I didn't think you particularly cared about Lester --" he began, but Connor's eyes pinned him to the back of his chair.
"Don't. Don't talk badly about Lester. Not here, and especially not now."
"Lester never gave up on them while they were lost," Becker finally said by way of explanation. Stephen could see that he really didn't want to explain anything to him. "No matter how many days or months passed, Lester believed they were alive and would come back. He packed up their belongings at expense to himself and wouldn't let anyone touch their lockers, either. So if I were you, I wouldn't try to paint him with a brush wielded by Helen to them." His eyes locked with Stephen's. "Especially if you want them to listen to anything you have to say."
Stephen was really getting tired of Becker's veiled and not so veiled threats. Then again, when he looked at Abby and Connor, he couldn't honestly tell himself that he wouldn't have done the same thing if he was in Becker's place.
"I had been in love with her at one time," he finally opted for in the explanation. "I thought she loved me." Abby snorted. "That all aside, she did seem to be really upset about whatever it was she had seen through her travels. She seemed so sincere about wanting to make things better or different."
"Yeah, by wiping out the entire human race," Connor muttered.
Stephen's eyebrow lifted at that, but Connor waved him on.
"That last day, Helen called me. She sounded so scared." He ignored whatever it was that Abby chose to mutter under her breath at that point. "She told me that Lester had killed the two of you and Nick. She said that all of you were dead and she had been kidnapped."
"She told you we were dead?" Abby demanded. "And you believed her?!"
"Bloody marvelous," Connor shook his head. "So you died because she told you we were dead. Wonderful on the guilt right there."
"There's no reason for either of you to feel guilty," Becker said tightly. "It's not your fault he was gullible enough to fall for that."
"Especially since you already knew and had proof of what kind of manipulator she could be," Abby pointed out.
"I have no excuse for that, Abs," he said quietly. "I don't know why I believed in her at that time, but I did, and it looks like you suffered for it." He slumped in the chair. "When I realized that she had been lying to me the whole time, I was so angry. I knew I had so much that I needed to make up to Nick, but then those creatures were loose and the only way to secure them back was for one of us to go into that room with them and lock the door from the inside. Nick was going to, I could see that in his eyes. It was so like something he would do, sacrifice himself for everyone else to live." He sighed. "So, I stopped him and took his place."
"You should have just tossed Helen in there and been done with it." Becker contributed harshly. "It certainly would have made things a lot easier for those of us left to clean up after you."
Stephen was beyond tired of Becker and his comments. "You weren't there and don't know what was going on, so I'd thank you to keep your opinions to yourself."
"You can shove your wishes up your arse," Becker bit out. "You died on them and left that bitch alive. I'm the one that put them back together after that and after Cutter was killed. I'm the one that watched out for them on every excursion we ended up going on, and I'm the one that tried for a year to find them and bring them home while you were off being a stupid git of a ghost! If you had killed her when you had the chance and knew the truth none of the hell that they've gone through would have happened!"
Stephen jumped to his feet. "Why the hell are you blaming me for all of this? I was dead, you idiot. I would never have done anything to hurt them or cause whatever happened to happen."
Becker was also on his feet. "Because Helen is the reason they were trapped in the past for a bloody year! It was something that could have been prevented if you had used your brain when you had a chance and stopped her before everything went to hell!"
Stephen wondered if a ghost could punch someone and make it hurt, because he was itching to plant his fist in Becker's face. Becker must have seen something of that desire in his eyes, because his stance took on one of challenge.
"That's enough." Connor's voice was cold as he held Abby on his lap, running his hand up and down her back. "You came here to talk, not to get your arse thrown through a wall by our boyfriend."
It wasn't until Becker moved back to the sofa and took a protective stance next to Connor and Abby that Stephen sat back down. He looked at Abby and visibly flinched at the tears he saw shining in her eyes.
"What does he mean, Abby?" Stephen's voice was gentle. "What did Helen do to you?"
"Cutter was working on an anomaly mapping project where he was charting possibly anomaly openings in the past and in the present. He and Sarah figured out that some documentations about mythological creatures in the past were possibly caused by creature incursions." She swallowed. "He came into possession of a strange artifact which turned out to be from the future. He was trying to unlock the mystery of it when Helen turned up again. Helen wanted him to give it to her and when he wouldn't hand it over to her, she shot him."
"After everyone was out of the building and Cutter still hadn't come out, I went looking for him." Connor's eyes welled and he closed them tightly for a long moment. When he opened them again, Stephen was struck by the pain in his eyes. "I was with Cutter when he died. He gave me the artifact and asked me to carry on his work and keep the knowledge safe from Helen."
"Danny Quinn came on board shortly after that," Becker said. "There was an incident and Jenny left. Between losing Cutter and almost dying, it was too much for her. Danny became the new team leader."
"He was a lot different than Cutter," Abby said quietly. "But he got the job done and he cared about all of us. We became like a family and everything started running smoothly for a little while. Then Helen showed up again."
"Only we didn't know she was Helen. She had some kind of technology from the future where she was able to disguise herself. She took someone hostage until I agreed to give her the artifact. Only, she killed the person, too. She shoved her through an anomaly that led to the place of the future predators." Connor was looking down as he talked about that and Becker's hand clasped his shoulder.
"We've been to the future. Horrid, dead place. Those future predators and some kind of killer bugs are all over the place," Becker contributed.
"We decided that we couldn't leave the artifact in Helen's hands and we couldn't let her destroy everything we had worked so hard for. More importantly, we couldn't let her kill anyone else," Abby took back up the narration. "Me, Connor and Danny decided that we were going to follow her and stop her -- no matter what we had to do."
"Why didn't he go with you?"
"He had no choice but to stay behind and make sure to keep everyone else safe from another attack from Helen." Becker's eyes were full of anger and something else that Stephen couldn't quite decipher. However, it was obvious that the other man hadn't liked being left behind and held himself responsible for whatever had happened.
"We found Helen in what looked like a control center in the future. Apparently, it was the ARC. She keyed some things into a computer console and tried to destroy the artifact. It looked to us like she shattered it when she threw it on the floor before disappearing into another anomaly." She shook her head. "Connor, though, he was clever as usual and was able to figure out the coordinates she had keyed in and we managed to re-open the anomaly she went through."
"Of course, like all evil villains in the movies, Helen just had to tell us what she was planning to do," Connor frowned into the distance. "She was going to go back into the past and wipe out mankind by killing the first humans."
Stephen blinked and then shook his head once. Then he blinked again. "She what?"
"Planned to go back to the beginning of history and wipe us all out," Becker said evenly. "Of course, she waited to tell anyone that until she thought she had Abby, Connor, and Danny trapped where she wanted them to be."
"Yeah, give us all of the information and leave us unable to do anything to stop us. She shouldn't have written us off so easily."
"We followed her to the Cretaceous, but the three of us were attacked by raptors and Connor was hurt." Abby took a deep breath. "I couldn't leave him behind, so I told Danny to go after Helen without us. The anomaly closed and we..." Abby swallowed hard again, but she seemed unable to get the words out.
"We were trapped there," Connor said, burying his face in Abby's hair again. "For over a year."
"The worst part was not knowing if Danny had survived and if he had stopped Helen," Abby wiped tears away. "We didn't know if the people we loved were still alive. We kept hoping that something would happen and we would get home, but it never did. We learned how to survive and how to keep ourselves alive. I tried to hold on, but I finally was just unable to keep myself hoping that we would get back home."
"Abby --" The sobs that we coming from her tore at his heart. The things that he saw in her eyes before she turned and buried her face in Connor's chest made the pain even worse. When he saw that Connor had his own tears sliding down his face, Stephen didn't know what to say. "Connor --"
"I think you need to leave," Becker said quietly. "Now."
"I'm not leaving." He couldn't take his eyes off of where Connor and Abby were wrapped around each other.
"Yes you are," Becker growled, coming to stand between Stephen and the others. "Don't you get it, mate? The two of them lived through a nightmare that was worse than you or I could ever imagine. They were alone and scared and at the mercy of killers that they had no weapons to fight off. They were there, trapped, for over a year, because of your bloody girlfriend!"
"She wasn't my girlfriend!"
"Okay, so the bitch you were shagging then. She cost them more than a year of their lives and two close friends because she wanted to control the world. We still don't know where Danny is or whether he's even alive. You could have prevented all of this if you had just kept it in your pants and dealt with her when you had the chance!"
"Damn it, Becker, you weren't there and you don't know what was going on."
"I saw what happened afterward. I saw the destruction that your affair with Helen caused."
"You bloody bastard, I saved Cutter's life!"
"And why was he in that situation to begin with? Because you were keeping secrets!"
"If you're going to throw blame around, then why in the hell didn't you go after them and get them back?! If you love them so much and are so bloody protective, why did you leave them in that hell for so long?"
"Damn you, I tried!" The raw anguish in Becker's tone had Stephen stepping back in surprise. "We sent several missions and tried to find the exact time they were in. I went on every mission that was sent, just trying to get them home, but we couldn't find them!. I lost some good men and our friend Sarah was killed on a mission looking for them."
Stephen hadn't expected any of this and now he found himself floundering. He had wanted to come back and talk to Abby and try to make amends to her for being such a git. But now he found the issues were so much worse than he had realized.
"Becker," his voice was quieter. "I didn't know."
"Just go," the other man said.
Stephen was going to protest, and that was when Cole appeared in the room. He put his hand on Stephen's shoulder. Stephen tried to shrug him off, but Cole hung on.
"Come on, buddy," Cole said evenly. "We need to go."
"I'm not going anywhere, yet," Stephen argued.
"Yes, you are." Cole's tone brooked no argument, but Stephen was ready to put up a fight about it.
Becker didn't even watch as the two ghosts left the flat. He was busy putting his arms around Abby and Connor and trying to give them what comfort he could.
Bloody ghosts.
When Stephen found himself in a wooded area that was most certainly not Abby's flat, he rounded on Cole.
"What the hell are you doing, Cole? I wasn't ready to leave!"
"You all needed a break," Cole said calmly. "That Becker guy was ready to hit you."
"He wouldn't have been able to hurt me," Stephen cursed. "I'm already dead, remember?"
"God, you can be so fucking stupid sometimes," Cole snapped. "Dead or not, how do you think Abby would have felt if she saw the two of you trying to hurt each other?"
That stopped Stephen cold and he groaned. "Abby." He ran his hands through his hair and gave Cole an accusing look. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I did try to warn you."
"She's been through hell isn't a warning, Cole! It's the beginning sentence of a really bad film summary."
Cole sighed. "What the hell was I supposed to say, Stephen? Your lost love was broken because she and her boyfriend were trapped with dinosaurs and poisonous plants in Jurassic Park for a year?" He glared at him. "I told you that she was with someone new and that they loved each other and you still tried to have a prick waving dick fight with him!"
"Cretaceous."
"What?"
"They were trapped in the Cretaceous Era, not the Jurassic."
"That's not the point."
"And you didn't ever get into fights with any of Phoebe's guys when she moved on?"
Cole laughed at him. "Hardly, since I'm the one that sent her the man she fell in love with later."
Stephen fought not to let his jaw drop. "You're lying. From everything you've said about her, I highly doubt you would have quietly helped set her up with some other guy."
"Drake wasn't just some other guy," Cole said in a warning tone. "He was a good man and I knew he would give Phoebe back her faith in love again."
"And yet, you're still trying to find a way to get back together with her? So you'll break up the relationship you put together just so you can have her back." Stephen shook his head. "And people say I screwed up."
"Drake died," Cole frowned. "She's been alone since then."
Stephen winced. "Damn."
Cole sighed. "She's a Charmed One. It's pretty much meant it's hard for her to get a happily ever after."
"She doesn't sound like her life is too charmed, Cole."
"It's her --" He shook his head. "Never mind. We're trying to help you make amends with Abby, not discuss my love life."
"Your love life is less depressing."
"Shut up." Cole sighed. "You really know how to make a mess of things, you do realize that, right?"
"I didn't intend to." Stephen paced in front of him. "I went there to fix things with Abby, and damn it. I never expected any of that." He stopped and glared at Cole. "Did you know about that?"
"About what?"
"About everything they've gone through since I died!"
Cole sighed quietly. "I knew about some of it. Drake gave me enough details for me to know that it hasn't been an easy few years for any of them. I didn't know that Helen was responsible for all of it, though. It does make Drake's opinion about someone he's never met easier to understand."
"His opinion?"
Cole smirked faintly. "You have to be someone pretty awful to get Drake to come close to hating you. He is about the most forgiving demon or man that I have ever met. He had no such tolerance for Helen."
Stephen leaned against a tree. "I can see why. I figured out she was treacherous, but I had no idea how bad she was."
"Drake said that she was demon spawn without the distinction of having the demon blood."
"A hearty insult coming from a demon, I suppose." Stephen looked down at the ground. "I screwed up so much more than I ever realized," he finally said to his shoes.
"But those are screw-ups that can be rectified, Stephen," Cole said quietly as he started into the distance.
"I don't think anything will make up for what they've gone through because of me."
"Look, you screwed up and you screwed up badly. However, that Becker guy had it all wrong -- even if his heart is in the right place where they're concerned. Everything that happened wasn't completely your fault. Yes, had you made certain changes, some things could probably have been avoided. You can't beat yourself up for things that you had no control over -- after all, you were dead. Had you not died, would Abby have been safe and would she not have lost people? There are only a few people in this existence who can answer that, and we are not going to find out."
He knew he shouldn't ask, but he couldn't help it. "Why not?"
"Because we are not going to play It's A Wonderful Life or Christmas Carol any time soon. Those movies are damned depressing and I don't think we need any more depression hanging around right now." He frowned. "Besides, we don't want go near the Demon of Time or any kind of seer. It's not a good idea for a ghost to get on the wrong side of a seer."
Stephen let the back of his head hit the tree he had come to a stop beneath as Cole was talking. "So what you're saying is that you have no idea what I can do to show Abby that I did love her and that I'm so sorry for everything that happened."
"Now, see that's where you are wrong."
A small back box suddenly appeared in the air in front of Stephen. Stephen reached out to grab it, but when he opened it, he gave Cole a look of confusion. "What is this?"
"Put it on," he said gruffly. "That ring is your key to making up for all of the shit you think you caused."
Abby didn't go to the ARC that day for work. In fact, after crying herself out -- again -- she had fallen into a deep sleep and when it was time to go to work, the boys hadn't wanted to wake her. Neither one of them liked leaving her alone, but she needed rest and they needed to go in and see if there was anything in the databanks about how to prevent ghosts from visiting when they weren't invited. Lester would be surprised that Abby didn't come in, but Connor and Becker were convinced that they could get him not to worry too much about her.
Not that they would call it worry, no. They both knew better.
When Abby woke up much, much later, it was to find herself alone in the bed. There was a note propped up on the night stand in Connor's handwriting. They had gone in to work and she was not to come in. They wanted her to stay in the flat and rest.
She briefly considered ignoring their request and going in, anyway, but then she quickly changed her mind. There were a lot of things that she needed to deal with in her own mind -- and going to work to cling to Connor and Becker wasn't going to help with anything.
After taking a shower to ease her aching head and neck -- where she carried all of her stress -- she got dressed and went into the kitchen for a cup of tea. She needed the tea and she needed to gather her thoughts.
Stephen.
She had never expected to see him again he died. Even with all of the anomalies and time lines and everything else, dead was dead. Stephen Hart had died and they had all tried to move on.
Key word being tried. There had been so many unanswered questions from back then and she hadn't realized how not having the answers had hurt.
While she agreed with Becker that some things could have been prevented if Stephen had leveled with them in the first place, she had seen Stephen's stricken look when Becker blamed him for everything that had happened to her and Connor. There were some things that could have been stopped, perhaps, but it wasn't Stephen's fault that she and Connor had been trapped in the Cretaceous for over a year. It had been unlucky chance that the anomalies closed too soon -- and that they didn't have access to the devices Helen did.
After making herself a large cup of tea, Abby went out onto the balcony. It had been the one request she had made when they were looking for a new place. She wanted space to make a small garden and a place to go out and watch the sky if she felt like it.
"You shouldn't be here," she said a few minutes later when she felt someone else watching her on the balcony. "Becker would love to see just what kind of weapon he can alter to work on a ghost."
Stephen's chuckle didn't have a trace of humor in it. "Yeah? I guess I have a little bit of time to make sure I'm prepared for anything, then." He moved up beside her and ran his hand again her cheek. "I'm not going to stay very long, at least not this time."
Abby turned to look at him. "This time?"
"I'm sorry, Abby," he said softly. "I really am. I never meant to hurt you and I hate that I did -- in so many ways. If I could go back and undo everything --"
"Don't." Her voice was even as she cut him off. "Don't even talk about doing something to change time and the events that happened. That was what Helen wanted to do and you don't want to sound like her."
"I came here to try to make things up to you, and instead I made you cry. I didn't know," he said quietly. "I swear to you that I didn't know."
"About?"
"Helen." Abby snorted. "Let me finish." When she didn't say anything, he took that as a good sign. "I knew that she wasn't quite sane and I realized at the end that she did have another agenda. But I really didn't realize how far gone she had been."
"Would it have changed anything, Stephen? If you had know how barmy she really was, would you have done anything different? Would have talked to us or would you have still shut us out?"
That was the real question, wasn't it?
"I don't know," he finally admitted. "It might have, or I still might have kept things to myself in some kind of failed attempt to protect all of you from the things she was saying she had seen happen."
"It killed Cutter, you know," she said, taking a drink from her cup. "Oh, not that you were shagging Helen again, but that you didn't trust him -- didn't trust any of us."
"I trusted you and Connor."
"Not enough to tell us the truth, though." She turned to look at him. "He blamed himself for your death, right up until he was killed. He blamed himself for Helen getting her claws into you and for manipulating you into your death like she did. He never got over it -- and Connor has never gotten over his death, either." She frowned slightly.
"You love him a lot, don't you?"
"Connor? Yeah. I love Connor a lot, Stephen. I love Becker, too. The two of them are more important to me than anything else in this world. I'd do my best to protect them from anything."
The "even you" wasn't said, but Stephen knew it was there. He looked down at his hand, at the silver ring he was now wearing.
"I love you, Abby --"
"Stephen. Don't." Abby's words were both a plea and a command.
"I love you and I'm sorry that I didn't value the trust and the love you had for me."
Abby shook her head. She didn't want to hear any of this. "The past --"
"Is the past, I know. But that doesn't stop how I feel. I promise you, that I'm not going to do anything to endanger what you have with Connor and Becker, but I'm not disappearing completely, either."
Abby's eyes had darkened with suspicion and Stephen had to fight down the flash of hurt. He supposed that he deserved her suspicions, but it didn't make them any easier to face.
"Someone told me that you have a wonderful future ahead of you and then this important thing that you'll be doing when you die." He reached out to touch her hand. "I'm going to be sticking around to make sure you get that chance."
"The anomalies aren't --"
"I'm not talking about anything that's been seen or discovered because of the anomalies, Abby." He gave her a faint smile. "I know you, and I know that your first instinct will always be to take care of others before yourself. I know that you would die for Connor -- and for Becker. I'm going to be around to make sure that you never have to do that."
"You're not making any sense."
He laughed softly. "I know. None of this made sense to me, either. But, as of right now, Abby, you have yourself your very own guardian angel."
"You're mad."
"No. For the first time in a long time, I'm thinking clearly. You don't love me anymore, and that's fine. I'm the one who caused that. You have something wonderful with Connor and Becker. I can see your love and your happiness with the two of them." His smile faded a little bit. "You worry about the two of them more than you do yourself, and from now on I'm going to do my best to make sure you don't have to worry as much."
Abby just stared at him, her blue eyes full of confusion.
"I'm your assigned guardian angel, love," he said quietly. "And, well, that's going to stretch to cover your boyfriends, too."
"Stephen --"
He shook his head. "Consider it my way of making amends to you, love. I have a lot of things to make up for."
"I don't hold you responsible --"
"Maybe not for all of it, but there are things I'm responsible for, Abby. There are things that I need to atone for, and this is the way I'm going to be able to do it." He gave her one of his usual smiles. "It won't be so bad, you know, having a guardian angel. They wanted to give you one, any way, and I just happened to have two friends who pulled some strings to get me here."
"This is insane!"
"No more insane than going through anomalies that lead to different times," he pointed out. "I love you, Abby. Let me do this to make amends. I'm going to do it, any way. It's just easier if I don't have to argue with you every time I show up to help."
He could see the struggle going on in Abby's face as she searched for the words she wanted to say. He wasn't going to give her the chance. He leaned in close and brushed his lips gently over hers.
Cole was waiting for Stephen in the same wooded area that they had been in before. He looked at Stephen's hand and then gave a smile and a nod when he saw the ring the other man was still wearing.
"No fighting?"
"No fighting," Stephen said quietly. "I don't think I really gave her much of a chance to argue about it."
"Did you do something stupid and tell her about what happens after she dies?"
"No, just that she would be doing something incredibly important after that. She thinks I'm insane."
"Most of them do until they see things for themselves. It took Paige a little while to be convinced of the sanity of her sisters."
"So what now?"
"Now?"
"What happens now? Do I just stay here and haunt her building or what? How else will I know when one of them is about to get into trouble and needs help?"
Cole laughed at him. "You've watched too many movies -- and there's no need for you to become any kind of spiritual stalker." Cole had tried that, himself, once. Nothing good ever came from it. "I don't know how it all works, but you don't need to spy on them. Don't become a voyeur. You'll just know when one of them needs you -- or more specifically when Abby needs you. It will be through her that you'll know when one of her boys is in trouble." He pointed to the ring. "Don't lose that. It's the one thing that guarantees you'll always know when she's in trouble."
"You do realize that Abby isn't a witch, right?"
"You don't have to be a witch to become a whitelighter. Her dedication to the creatures from all time periods and her capacity for love is what drew her to the attention of the Elders."
Stephen shook his head. "This still sounds like some bloody film plot."
"It's not, as you should know by now. You were dead, and now you're still dead, but have been prompted to a guardian angel."
"Because of you and Drake."
"Maybe, maybe you would have been tapped, anyway. What's important is that you were tapped and now you get to make sure your beloved Abby is taken care of." He paused. "But be careful. I wouldn't put it past that Becker guy to figure out a way to shoot you or hit you after what happened today."
"Cole, can you answer me a question?"
"If I feel like it."
"Bastard." Stephen frowned. "Does he really love them? Does Becker really love them or is this just some passing thing with him?"
"Don't worry, Stephen. He really does love them. He's not going to leave them or do anything to break their hearts. Cupid assured us of that."
Stephen shook his head and then sighed. "And this Cupid is reliable?"
"He got you that ring didn't he?" Cole laughed and hit his shoulder. "Let's go. I want to go check on Phoebe."
"You have got a one-track mind, you know that?"
"It's what makes me fun," Cole said as they disappeared from view.
Author:
not_from_starsFandom: Primeval/Charmed
Pairing/Characters: Stephen Hart, Cole Turner, Becker, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple
Rating/Category: PG-13
Summary: Stephen Hart wants to make amends to the woman who loved him and had been hurt by him. Cole Turner knows just the thing.
Words: 10,296
Notes: Thank you to
enochiansigils for being my beta on this -- and for listening to me bitch when I couldn't focus on anything but this fic. Also, thank you to kajivar for the Stephen and Cole icon! I am not even sure where this idea came from, but it arrived and I had to write it."Are you sure this is good idea?" Stephen Hart questioned as he and another man materialized outside a flat in a nice area of London.
"Of course I'm sure. You're not going to stop being such a pain in the ass about her until you see she's okay and get a chance to talk to her."
"You're a fine one to talk about being a pain in the ass about someone, Cole. Every other sentence out of your mouth is about Phoebe and how Phoebe was the only woman you ever loved and you will never stop loving her or trying to find a way to get back to her."
"Phoebe was my soul mate and we went through hell together. You never even wised up and asked this Abby girl except when you thought you were dying from poison." He snorted. "What was it, a spider?"
"A giant centipede," his companion muttered. "A really big, pissed off centipede."
"Not the best way to win a girl and her love. You ask her out while you're dying, then, after she has stayed by your side through all of that, you break her heart by telling her you already have a girlfriend." Cole shook his head. "That really was stupid of you."
"Says the guy who got killed by his wife and her two sisters." Stephen pointed out.
"There were extenuating circumstances in that."
"So you've said. Ad nauseum."
"I was possessed by the Source of All Evil! You were fooled by some crazy ass bitch who had already proven she couldn't be trusted."
Stephen muttered something under his breath that was very nasty.
"Oh, and let's not forget that she had you convinced that Abby, Connor and Nick had all been killed by Lester." Cole shook his head. "Then, when you found out the truth, you sacrificed yourself to a bunch of vicious predators when you should have tossed Helen into feed them so you could rescue everyone." He shrugged. "If someone I loved were in danger that bitch would have been dinosaur food... or tossed into the nearest fiery hell pit I could get to." Or, really, he would have just immolated her himself and saved everyone around him a shit ton of heartache and trouble.
"Why am I with you, again?"
"Because I'm your best chance at being able to see your beloved Abby again."
"You don't have to be such a smug bastard about it."
Cole gave him a grin and this time Stephen shook his head. That only made Cole grin even more. "It's not every day that I get to be the one reuniting lovers. Usually that's Drake and I'm trying to figure out a way to get back to Phoebe."
"How's that going, by the way?" Stephen asked.
"Bastard."
Stephen sighed and looked back to the flat. "Are you sure this is going to work? I don't want to disrupt her life any more than it already has been."
"The real question is whether or not you're going to be able to handle the fact that she's happy and has found love again."
"Of course I am!" Stephen snapped. "That was the whole point of this, right? I need to see that she's safe and happy."
Cole shrugged and looked down at his hands. "Even though it's with someone who is not you? Or even if it's two someones?"
Stephen glared at him, taking a step forward. "Don't talk badly about Abby."
Cole held up his hands. "I'm not." He smirked. "Besides, what are you going to do, kill me?"
"I'll figure out something to do to you," Stephen replied. "Abby is --"
"Involved with two men."
Stephen just stared at him for a long moment. "What?"
"Oh, don't be an idiot," Cole sighed. "She has two boyfriends -- and they both love her very much." He looked at Stephen seriously. "If you can't accept that, then you're not going to see her or speak to her. She's finally happy again, Stephen, and from what my buddy, Drake, tells me, she's been through hell. She deserves this. I have no problems shimmering you right out if I even think you're going to upset her." He shook his head. "Not even for someone like you will I risk dealing with Drake over some poor girl's heart being scarred again."
"What happened to her?" His concern for Abby was evident in his voice.
"That's something she'll have to tell you," Cole said in a kinder voice. "You don't want to hear that from me. What I can tell you is that one of her guys is someone you knew very well."
Stephen didn't even have to think about that. The answer to who was obvious in his head. "Connor? Well, hell, it's about time. He's always had a thing for her, so I know she's well loved." He hesitated. "Who is the other guy?"
Cole looked at him. "Maybe we should wait and you should see for yourself."
"Cole."
"His name is Becker."
Stephen's eyes widened and then he laughed a little. Becker was the man Lester had hired to protect the team after his death.
"At least I know that she'll be well protected." Stephen's voice was soft. "Connor adores her, but he's not really a fighting type of guy. That's not his style."
Cole gave him a funny look. "I think you're going to be in for a surprise, Stephen," he said.
"Why?"
Cole shook his head again. "Look, I don't have all of the details. Drake wouldn't tell me. You'd think he was worried I'd do something reckless if he gave me all of the details about what your girl has gone through."
"Reckless? You? Now what would ever give him an idea like that?"
Cole gave him a dirty look. "I can still throw fireballs at you."
"Which will do nothing to harm me, but will look like a pretty nice movie effect."
Cole hated it when someone besides him was right. "Your girl," he said, getting back to the subject at hand. "She's changed, Stephen. She's not a lot like what you've described to me. Drake says there is still some of that at her core, but she went through some really bad stuff."
"You keep dancing around that issue and it's getting beyond annoying. Just come out with it so I know what to do."
"I can't," Cole said quietly. "I promised. Just be aware." He looked back to the building. "Are you doing this or not?"
Stephen nodded, taking a step towards the flat. "I am."
Cole stepped up and put his hand on his shoulder. "Your way takes too long," he said as he shimmered them off the street and into the building.
It wasn't uncommon for Abby to wake up before the sun rose. It was a habit that she hadn't yet been able to break since coming back to this time. For a year, she and Connor had taken turns keeping watch. Even with Becker now, they still had that so deeply ingrained in their subconscious that it would probably be quite awhile before the habit died out. She lay there with the boys for a few moments longer, but soon admitted that no matter how comfortable and relaxed she was, she wasn't going to get back to sleep. Since it would be mean to wake the boys before they needed to get up, she carefully detangled herself from them and got out of the bed.
She quickly got showered and then dressed quietly, still trying not to wake up the boys. She couldn't help but stand by the bed for a few moments and just smile. She still didn't know how she had gotten so lucky -- and sometimes she was afraid this was all a dream -- but she was really glad that the three of them were together. The love that was between her, Connor and Becker was something she had never realized existed.
Still smiling, she headed down the hall to make tea. She figured she had time for a cup or two before the boys...
Abby froze, her smile sliding away and being replaced by a frown. Something wasn't right in the flat. Her instincts from the year in the Cretaceous flared to life and she crept back to the bedroom. Not wanting to disturb the boys, she quietly opened her dresser drawer and grabbed the gun that was there for emergencies. She slipped off her shoes in the hall and made her way back toward the kitchen.
When she came around the corner, she was ready for whatever might be in the living room of their flat. Except, this was one of those times where she really wasn't prepared at all. If her training from being involved with the ARC wasn't better, she would probably have dropped her gun in shock. However, the training from Becker and one other was too good for her to lose sight of her weapons so quickly.
No matter how surprising the situation was that she found herself in.
She stared for a few moments at the man standing in their flat and she had to struggle a moment in order to get her voice.
"Stephen?"
He had been in the flat only a few minutes before Abby had found him and he was already aware of how much things had changed with her. For one thing, there wasn't a reptile case in sight and that made him sad. For as long as he had known Abby, reptiles had been her passion. The other thing that struck him was that Rex wasn't around. Now, it could have been that he was in the bedroom with Abby and the guys, but he didn't think so.
When she first came around the corner, he had to hide his shock. She was thinner than he remembered, and her hair was a great deal longer. It was her eyes that told him that something had happened that he didn't know about, though. It used to be that her eyes were always full of cheerfulness and expression. Her eyes were one of the first things he had noticed about her -- no matter how much she tried to hide her emotions, her eyes always revealed them. Now though, her eyes were shuttered, except for the wariness as she came in with the gun. It was only when she saw him that a bit of that old Abby peeked through.
"Hello, Abby," he said quietly, not wanting to do anything that would make her bolt. "You look good." She looked better than good, if he was honest with himself. It was something he had gotten better with since he died. He didn't lie to himself quite as much when he thought about things.
She didn't drop the gun, but she at least moved it to her side. "You look pretty good for a dead man."
He shrugged, trying to make it look like he wasn't full of so many things standing there and actually seeing her for the first time in so long. "I guess it's one of the benefits of being dead. I don't have to work out quite as much to keep in shape."
She swallowed, her thoughts racing as she tried to process all of this. "So, you're a dead man, in my flat? Are you a ghost or..." Her eyes widened. "No. Do not tell me that bitch did clone you before her death and you came through an anomaly to get revenge due to your programming or whatever."
Stephen blinked in shock. Of all of the reactions he had expected from her when he appeared like this, an assumption that he was a clone hadn't even occurred to him. He was suddenly reminded of Cole's earlier warning. She's been through hell.
"A clone?" He looked at her face. "You're seriously asking me if I'm a clone?"
"Yeah, a clone. You know, like the army of those cleaner guys that Helen used..." She shook her head, her empty hand coming up to rub her temple. "Never mind. You wouldn't have known about them. That happened a few months after you died."
He shook his head, stepping towards her, and then stopping when he saw her tense and take a step back. The last thing he wanted for her to be afraid of him.
"No, Abby," his voice was gentle, like he would have used with a spooked animal. "I'm not a clone."
He was so focused on Abby, that it took him a moment to register the click he heard and what it meant. His eyes turned to the shadows of the hall behind Abby.
"Then suppose you tell us what exactly you are, mate."
He had known when Abby left the shower, but he hadn't gotten up because he thought that perhaps she needed a few minutes to herself. He knew that there were times that she couldn't sleep -- hell, he had woken up enough times to find her sitting up and keeping watch over the two of them to know that. He could tell she was in a good mood this morning and she seemed at peace, so he had stayed in bed curled up with Connor.
His senses went on hyper alert when he heard Abby creep back into the room a few moments later. He watched her through narrowed eyes as she retrieved her gun. That was not good. He gently nudged Connor in the ribs and wasn't surprised when the other man's eyes opened immediately.
"There's someone or something in the flat," he said in a hushed whisper.
"Abby?" His eyes went to the door before Becker could answer him. "She's out there with whatever," Connor answered himself quietly as he left from the bed and pulled on the first trousers he found.
They grabbed weapons and slipped into the shadows of the hall. Becker heard Abby's voice, but there was no fear in it. He did register sadness and shock that was in her voice, but there was also the tinge of anger there as well. He looked at Connor, but his companion's face was also registering shock.
So it was someone that both Abby and Connor knew -- and had never expected to see again.
He held up a hand to make sure Connor stayed behind him and he moved closer to the living room of the flat. He saw the stranger take a step towards Abby, and he registered how she stepped back just as quickly.
"I'm not a clone," the stranger said.
That was when Becker stepped into the main room from the hall and pulled back the hammer of the sidearm that he was pointing at the other man.
"Then suppose you tell us exactly what you are, mate," he ordered, his voice cold. "And you can step away from Abby while you're doing it."
The other man looked at him and the small smile that had been on his face as he looked at Abby faltered. "You must be Becker," he acknowledged quietly.
"That I am. You are?" He kept his gun up as he came to stand beside Abby.
"Stephen," Connor said quietly from where he had come up on Abby's other side. "He looks like Stephen."
"Stephen?" Becker questioned, not taking his eyes off the other man.
"Stephen Hart," Connor responded. "He died before Lester hired you."
"If I recall correctly, I'm the reason you were hired," Stephen said. His eyes had flickered over Connor, registering the changes in his friend, before turning back to the most dangerous of the three. It didn't take a genius to realize that if this man thought he was a danger he wouldn't be allowed to stay and say the things he needed to say.
"That doesn't explain why a man who is supposed to be dead is standing in our flat," Becker bit out.
"I've come to talk to Abby. I'm not going to hurt anyone -- not that your guns would do anything to me if I decided I was going to."
"How is this even possible, Stephen?" Abby asked, looking at him in confusion. "You died. Cutter saw it."
"You're right, Abby. I am dead. That part didn't change. I just happened to have met some interesting people in the afterlife. Two of them decided that we needed to talk." He eyed Becker who was still tense and holding a gun on him, and then looked back at Abby and Connor. "What happened to the two of you?"
The three people in front of him looked uncomfortable for a few moments, and then it was Connor that spoke. "There's a lot to tell, mate." His hand reached out to curl around Abby's. "It'd probably be better for all of us to sit down if we're going to have story time."
Becker looked at Connor and Abby. "Are the two of you sure about this? You don't have to let him stay."
Abby laid her hand on Becker's arm and gave him a pained smile. "It's Stephen. I know that a lot of things changed, but Stephen would never have hurt us."
"But he did hurt you," Becker said quietly. Oh he had a good memory and he remembered how she had looked when he met her after Stephen was killed. Hearing other stories about what had happened from people hadn't exactly made him think well of the man outside of his professional skills.
Connor gave a shrug. "He'd never attack either of us, though. He was our friend, even if he was a stupid git at the end."
"I'm standing right here, Connor."
Connor's smile was unrepentant. "You have to admit, though, that I'm right. You did act like an idiot."
Becker searched Abby's eyes and then did the same thing with Connor. "All right, but I'm not leaving."
Abby frowned. "We would never expect you to," she said. "This is your home, and whatever is said concerns you, too."
Stephen didn't necessarily agree with that, but he realized he couldn't say anything if he wanted this chance to talk to Abby. As much as he truly wanted her to be happy, he hadn't realized how difficult it would be to see her with someone else. And from her body language, she definitely was with someone else.
Once they were all seated -- Abby on the sofa between Connor and Becker -- and Stephen in a chair across from them, Becker spoke first.
"So you're not a clone?"
Stephen shook his head. "Why do you guys keep asking me that?"
"Helen created clones of people," Abby said, looking at him with a measuring gaze. "She made one of Cutter."
Stephen could feel the shock cross his face. "She did what?"
"Created a clone of Cutter," Abby repeated. "He was really angry about it and told her that he hoped she hadn't done such a thing to you."
Stephen shook his head. "That --"
"Crazy bitch?" Connor supplied helpfully.
Stephen stared at him for a moment and then nodded. "Yeah, I guess that is a fitting way to describe her. That suits her more than any other words that could be said."
"I can think of several things to call her." Abby's voice was soft, but he still heard the lingering emotions in her words. There was something close to hatred in Abby's voice when Helen was mentioned, and he had never imagined her hating anyone.
What else had Helen done?
"So something I wanted to ask before but thought you'd clobber me if I did --"
Stephen raised an eyebrow at Connor. He was pretty sure he had an idea about what Connor was going to say and he didn't like that it was going to be one of those things he never wanted to have to say in front of an audience of people. He did notice that Becker's hand clenched almost automatically at the idea of him hitting Connor.
"What is the question, Connor," he finally said. He felt both tense and tired. Wasn't being dead supposed to remove things like that? He was pretty sure that the dead weren't supposed to be as tired as he was feeling right now.
"Why were you shagging Helen when you could have been with Abby?"
"Connor!"
"I mean, were you really that blind and stupid?"
"Connor, don't!"
"No, Abby, I really think he needs to answer the question. You would have done anything to make him happy and he decided to be with the bitch that would cause his death and kill Cutter."
Stephen was surprised by the bite in Connor's words. When he had known him, he had never heard the younger man get angry at all -- no matter how many times he could have. The fact that Connor's eyes had changed to a really dark brown when asking the questions was a good indication that Connor had quite a few opinions on everything. His eyes flicked over Abby's tight face and then over the anger clearly shining in Becker's eyes. There was no way he was getting out of explaining this in a more public fashion than he had planned.
"What do you mean, she killed Cutter?" He wasn't really stalling, just that information had him knocked off guard a little.
"She broke into the ARC with her army of clones," Becker supplied. "One of those clones was of Cutter. He held a gun on Lester. One of those clones tried to hurt Connor when he came up with a way to get control of the ARC back."
Abby had tensed up at this reminder and he watched Connor's hand settle on her leg -- as well as the reassuring smile she gave him.
"She tried to blow up the ARC," Abby said quietly. "When that didn't work, she shot Cutter in the chest, killing him. It was Connor that found him and carried him outside to the rest of us."
Stephen winced visibly. "I know that saying I'm sorry seems so empty, but I am sorry. No matter what I believed at the end, Nick didn't deserve that."
"He didn't deserve a lot of things that happened," Connor said pointedly. "None of us deserved a lot of what happened because of Helen Cutter. But Cutter was your friend and you were like a brother to him. How? How could you do that to him? How could you do that to any of us?!"
"Connor --" Stephen wasn't sure where all of this anger was coming from, but it was uncomfortable to have Connor this angry at him. He had never realized that the easy going man could get this angry.
"You were our friend, Stephen! At least you were supposed to be. Why couldn't you have just been honest with us and told us what she was telling you? If you had leveled with us, we could have worked together and put the pieces in place. We could have worked to stop her together and we wouldn't have lost Cutter, or Danny! Jenny wouldn't have quit and Sarah wouldn't have died because of us. If you had acted like a friend instead of her pet, then we could have prevented her insane ideas to wipe all humanity out of existence and Abby and I wouldn't have been trapped in the bloody Cretaceous for over a year!"
Connor had jumped to his feet during his tirade and for the longest moment, all Stephen could do was stare up at him. His brain was working to process all of the information that was being thrown at him. It wasn't often that he was at a loss for words or caught off guard like this. However, Connor's words had blindsided him.
Abby got to her feet and came to stand in front of Connor. She turned her back to Stephen and wrapped her arms around his waist, putting her head on his chest. Connor's arms immediately came around her and he buried his face in her hair.
"It's okay, Conn, it's okay. We're home and we're safe. I'm here with you and you're here with me. She can't hurt us any longer, not here."
Gradually Abby's words seemed to work to calm him down and the other man's shaking subsided. She got him to sit back down on the sofa, but he pulled her down onto his lap, holding onto her. Stephen watched all of this, once more remembering the warning he had been given. Apparently, Abby's hell had been a shared one and she and Connor hadn't come out of it unscathed.
"Perhaps you'd better go back to wherever you came from, mate," Becker suggested quietly. His eyes were not at all friendly. "I'd say you've upset my lovers more than enough."
Stephen didn't miss the possessive way that Becker spoke of Abby and Connor, and he knew he was being given a warning. Becker wouldn't hesitate to try to kill him if he thought that he was a danger to anything but their memory. He could see that in the way he was sitting, like he was trying protect them both from him. Had circumstances been different, he and Becker would probably have been good friends. They seemed to be a lot alike when it came to the people they cared about and what they were willing to do for them.
"I'm not going to leave them like this," Stephen warned him. "I came to talk to Abby -- and I guess you and Connor, too. I just didn't realize that there was so much I didn't know." He managed to give the other man a careless smirk, even though the pain in his heart for Abby and Connor made it anything but easy. "You could try to shoot me, of course, but it won't work. I'm already dead."
"You're hurting them, Hart, and I can't have that." There was a threat underlying his words and any normal man would have been wary about it. Stephen wasn't a normal man when he had been alive and being dead didn't change the way he reacted to being threatened.
"Maybe you should stop talking about the two of them like they're not sitting in this same room with you, Becker."
He watched as Becker's jaw clenched. The other man looked like he was going to say something even more threatening, but he then relaxed a little and leaned back. It didn't take long for Stephen to notice that one of Connor's hands had moved from being tightly wrapped around Abby to gripping Becker's leg.
"Becker looks out for us," Connor said, a lot of the anger from moments before gone from his voice. "With everything we've all been through, all three of us, he has the right to say what's on his mind." Unlike you, was what his eyes and words implied.
His eyes searched Connor's eyes and then he looked at Abby who was offering him comfort by just holding him. "What happened to you two?" He finally asked.
He was off kilter and he didn't like it. He didn't know what to make of these new, rougher versions of his two young friends. He also didn't like that he could tell there was something that was broken inside both of them -- something that had only seemed to be beginning to heal. His hand clenched at his side. The idea of someone hurting Abby -- and okay, Connor, too -- in such a fashion made him want to tear someone apart. The small quirk of Becker's lips told him that the other man knew exactly what he was thinking.
"You first," Abby said. "Just tell us why? We trusted you and believed in you right up until the end, Stephen. It hurt so much when you died, but there was confusion there as well because we didn't understand."
"It gutted Cutter," Connor added.
Stephen winced and then sighed. "I can honestly say that I never intended to hurt anyone. Back then, everything seemed so clear when it was happening. The anomalies were dangerous and we were dealing with them. But it scraped at me for some reason that we were keeping it so secretive when people outside of the ARC had been affected by them."
"We were trying to protect people," Abby said angrily. "If we had tried telling people, there would have been a panic -- or more people like Helen, who would try to use them to play god and make the world in their own image."
The venom coming from Abby hurt more than it should have a right to.
"I know that now," he said quietly. And he did. He had realized how wrong he had been before he hit Nick and locked himself in the room with the predators. "But back then, it just bothered me so much and I can't even explain why. Then Helen started appearing at random intervals to tell me how wrong the world was going and that Lester was manipulating Cutter, and therefore all of us."
Abby shook her head and he could see the anger filling her eyes. "Lester never lied to us. He was bluntly, irritatingly honest. We may not always have liked what he said, but he was doing what the Minister and everyone thought was for the best."
"I didn't think you particularly cared about Lester --" he began, but Connor's eyes pinned him to the back of his chair.
"Don't. Don't talk badly about Lester. Not here, and especially not now."
"Lester never gave up on them while they were lost," Becker finally said by way of explanation. Stephen could see that he really didn't want to explain anything to him. "No matter how many days or months passed, Lester believed they were alive and would come back. He packed up their belongings at expense to himself and wouldn't let anyone touch their lockers, either. So if I were you, I wouldn't try to paint him with a brush wielded by Helen to them." His eyes locked with Stephen's. "Especially if you want them to listen to anything you have to say."
Stephen was really getting tired of Becker's veiled and not so veiled threats. Then again, when he looked at Abby and Connor, he couldn't honestly tell himself that he wouldn't have done the same thing if he was in Becker's place.
"I had been in love with her at one time," he finally opted for in the explanation. "I thought she loved me." Abby snorted. "That all aside, she did seem to be really upset about whatever it was she had seen through her travels. She seemed so sincere about wanting to make things better or different."
"Yeah, by wiping out the entire human race," Connor muttered.
Stephen's eyebrow lifted at that, but Connor waved him on.
"That last day, Helen called me. She sounded so scared." He ignored whatever it was that Abby chose to mutter under her breath at that point. "She told me that Lester had killed the two of you and Nick. She said that all of you were dead and she had been kidnapped."
"She told you we were dead?" Abby demanded. "And you believed her?!"
"Bloody marvelous," Connor shook his head. "So you died because she told you we were dead. Wonderful on the guilt right there."
"There's no reason for either of you to feel guilty," Becker said tightly. "It's not your fault he was gullible enough to fall for that."
"Especially since you already knew and had proof of what kind of manipulator she could be," Abby pointed out.
"I have no excuse for that, Abs," he said quietly. "I don't know why I believed in her at that time, but I did, and it looks like you suffered for it." He slumped in the chair. "When I realized that she had been lying to me the whole time, I was so angry. I knew I had so much that I needed to make up to Nick, but then those creatures were loose and the only way to secure them back was for one of us to go into that room with them and lock the door from the inside. Nick was going to, I could see that in his eyes. It was so like something he would do, sacrifice himself for everyone else to live." He sighed. "So, I stopped him and took his place."
"You should have just tossed Helen in there and been done with it." Becker contributed harshly. "It certainly would have made things a lot easier for those of us left to clean up after you."
Stephen was beyond tired of Becker and his comments. "You weren't there and don't know what was going on, so I'd thank you to keep your opinions to yourself."
"You can shove your wishes up your arse," Becker bit out. "You died on them and left that bitch alive. I'm the one that put them back together after that and after Cutter was killed. I'm the one that watched out for them on every excursion we ended up going on, and I'm the one that tried for a year to find them and bring them home while you were off being a stupid git of a ghost! If you had killed her when you had the chance and knew the truth none of the hell that they've gone through would have happened!"
Stephen jumped to his feet. "Why the hell are you blaming me for all of this? I was dead, you idiot. I would never have done anything to hurt them or cause whatever happened to happen."
Becker was also on his feet. "Because Helen is the reason they were trapped in the past for a bloody year! It was something that could have been prevented if you had used your brain when you had a chance and stopped her before everything went to hell!"
Stephen wondered if a ghost could punch someone and make it hurt, because he was itching to plant his fist in Becker's face. Becker must have seen something of that desire in his eyes, because his stance took on one of challenge.
"That's enough." Connor's voice was cold as he held Abby on his lap, running his hand up and down her back. "You came here to talk, not to get your arse thrown through a wall by our boyfriend."
It wasn't until Becker moved back to the sofa and took a protective stance next to Connor and Abby that Stephen sat back down. He looked at Abby and visibly flinched at the tears he saw shining in her eyes.
"What does he mean, Abby?" Stephen's voice was gentle. "What did Helen do to you?"
"Cutter was working on an anomaly mapping project where he was charting possibly anomaly openings in the past and in the present. He and Sarah figured out that some documentations about mythological creatures in the past were possibly caused by creature incursions." She swallowed. "He came into possession of a strange artifact which turned out to be from the future. He was trying to unlock the mystery of it when Helen turned up again. Helen wanted him to give it to her and when he wouldn't hand it over to her, she shot him."
"After everyone was out of the building and Cutter still hadn't come out, I went looking for him." Connor's eyes welled and he closed them tightly for a long moment. When he opened them again, Stephen was struck by the pain in his eyes. "I was with Cutter when he died. He gave me the artifact and asked me to carry on his work and keep the knowledge safe from Helen."
"Danny Quinn came on board shortly after that," Becker said. "There was an incident and Jenny left. Between losing Cutter and almost dying, it was too much for her. Danny became the new team leader."
"He was a lot different than Cutter," Abby said quietly. "But he got the job done and he cared about all of us. We became like a family and everything started running smoothly for a little while. Then Helen showed up again."
"Only we didn't know she was Helen. She had some kind of technology from the future where she was able to disguise herself. She took someone hostage until I agreed to give her the artifact. Only, she killed the person, too. She shoved her through an anomaly that led to the place of the future predators." Connor was looking down as he talked about that and Becker's hand clasped his shoulder.
"We've been to the future. Horrid, dead place. Those future predators and some kind of killer bugs are all over the place," Becker contributed.
"We decided that we couldn't leave the artifact in Helen's hands and we couldn't let her destroy everything we had worked so hard for. More importantly, we couldn't let her kill anyone else," Abby took back up the narration. "Me, Connor and Danny decided that we were going to follow her and stop her -- no matter what we had to do."
"Why didn't he go with you?"
"He had no choice but to stay behind and make sure to keep everyone else safe from another attack from Helen." Becker's eyes were full of anger and something else that Stephen couldn't quite decipher. However, it was obvious that the other man hadn't liked being left behind and held himself responsible for whatever had happened.
"We found Helen in what looked like a control center in the future. Apparently, it was the ARC. She keyed some things into a computer console and tried to destroy the artifact. It looked to us like she shattered it when she threw it on the floor before disappearing into another anomaly." She shook her head. "Connor, though, he was clever as usual and was able to figure out the coordinates she had keyed in and we managed to re-open the anomaly she went through."
"Of course, like all evil villains in the movies, Helen just had to tell us what she was planning to do," Connor frowned into the distance. "She was going to go back into the past and wipe out mankind by killing the first humans."
Stephen blinked and then shook his head once. Then he blinked again. "She what?"
"Planned to go back to the beginning of history and wipe us all out," Becker said evenly. "Of course, she waited to tell anyone that until she thought she had Abby, Connor, and Danny trapped where she wanted them to be."
"Yeah, give us all of the information and leave us unable to do anything to stop us. She shouldn't have written us off so easily."
"We followed her to the Cretaceous, but the three of us were attacked by raptors and Connor was hurt." Abby took a deep breath. "I couldn't leave him behind, so I told Danny to go after Helen without us. The anomaly closed and we..." Abby swallowed hard again, but she seemed unable to get the words out.
"We were trapped there," Connor said, burying his face in Abby's hair again. "For over a year."
"The worst part was not knowing if Danny had survived and if he had stopped Helen," Abby wiped tears away. "We didn't know if the people we loved were still alive. We kept hoping that something would happen and we would get home, but it never did. We learned how to survive and how to keep ourselves alive. I tried to hold on, but I finally was just unable to keep myself hoping that we would get back home."
"Abby --" The sobs that we coming from her tore at his heart. The things that he saw in her eyes before she turned and buried her face in Connor's chest made the pain even worse. When he saw that Connor had his own tears sliding down his face, Stephen didn't know what to say. "Connor --"
"I think you need to leave," Becker said quietly. "Now."
"I'm not leaving." He couldn't take his eyes off of where Connor and Abby were wrapped around each other.
"Yes you are," Becker growled, coming to stand between Stephen and the others. "Don't you get it, mate? The two of them lived through a nightmare that was worse than you or I could ever imagine. They were alone and scared and at the mercy of killers that they had no weapons to fight off. They were there, trapped, for over a year, because of your bloody girlfriend!"
"She wasn't my girlfriend!"
"Okay, so the bitch you were shagging then. She cost them more than a year of their lives and two close friends because she wanted to control the world. We still don't know where Danny is or whether he's even alive. You could have prevented all of this if you had just kept it in your pants and dealt with her when you had the chance!"
"Damn it, Becker, you weren't there and you don't know what was going on."
"I saw what happened afterward. I saw the destruction that your affair with Helen caused."
"You bloody bastard, I saved Cutter's life!"
"And why was he in that situation to begin with? Because you were keeping secrets!"
"If you're going to throw blame around, then why in the hell didn't you go after them and get them back?! If you love them so much and are so bloody protective, why did you leave them in that hell for so long?"
"Damn you, I tried!" The raw anguish in Becker's tone had Stephen stepping back in surprise. "We sent several missions and tried to find the exact time they were in. I went on every mission that was sent, just trying to get them home, but we couldn't find them!. I lost some good men and our friend Sarah was killed on a mission looking for them."
Stephen hadn't expected any of this and now he found himself floundering. He had wanted to come back and talk to Abby and try to make amends to her for being such a git. But now he found the issues were so much worse than he had realized.
"Becker," his voice was quieter. "I didn't know."
"Just go," the other man said.
Stephen was going to protest, and that was when Cole appeared in the room. He put his hand on Stephen's shoulder. Stephen tried to shrug him off, but Cole hung on.
"Come on, buddy," Cole said evenly. "We need to go."
"I'm not going anywhere, yet," Stephen argued.
"Yes, you are." Cole's tone brooked no argument, but Stephen was ready to put up a fight about it.
Becker didn't even watch as the two ghosts left the flat. He was busy putting his arms around Abby and Connor and trying to give them what comfort he could.
Bloody ghosts.
When Stephen found himself in a wooded area that was most certainly not Abby's flat, he rounded on Cole.
"What the hell are you doing, Cole? I wasn't ready to leave!"
"You all needed a break," Cole said calmly. "That Becker guy was ready to hit you."
"He wouldn't have been able to hurt me," Stephen cursed. "I'm already dead, remember?"
"God, you can be so fucking stupid sometimes," Cole snapped. "Dead or not, how do you think Abby would have felt if she saw the two of you trying to hurt each other?"
That stopped Stephen cold and he groaned. "Abby." He ran his hands through his hair and gave Cole an accusing look. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I did try to warn you."
"She's been through hell isn't a warning, Cole! It's the beginning sentence of a really bad film summary."
Cole sighed. "What the hell was I supposed to say, Stephen? Your lost love was broken because she and her boyfriend were trapped with dinosaurs and poisonous plants in Jurassic Park for a year?" He glared at him. "I told you that she was with someone new and that they loved each other and you still tried to have a prick waving dick fight with him!"
"Cretaceous."
"What?"
"They were trapped in the Cretaceous Era, not the Jurassic."
"That's not the point."
"And you didn't ever get into fights with any of Phoebe's guys when she moved on?"
Cole laughed at him. "Hardly, since I'm the one that sent her the man she fell in love with later."
Stephen fought not to let his jaw drop. "You're lying. From everything you've said about her, I highly doubt you would have quietly helped set her up with some other guy."
"Drake wasn't just some other guy," Cole said in a warning tone. "He was a good man and I knew he would give Phoebe back her faith in love again."
"And yet, you're still trying to find a way to get back together with her? So you'll break up the relationship you put together just so you can have her back." Stephen shook his head. "And people say I screwed up."
"Drake died," Cole frowned. "She's been alone since then."
Stephen winced. "Damn."
Cole sighed. "She's a Charmed One. It's pretty much meant it's hard for her to get a happily ever after."
"She doesn't sound like her life is too charmed, Cole."
"It's her --" He shook his head. "Never mind. We're trying to help you make amends with Abby, not discuss my love life."
"Your love life is less depressing."
"Shut up." Cole sighed. "You really know how to make a mess of things, you do realize that, right?"
"I didn't intend to." Stephen paced in front of him. "I went there to fix things with Abby, and damn it. I never expected any of that." He stopped and glared at Cole. "Did you know about that?"
"About what?"
"About everything they've gone through since I died!"
Cole sighed quietly. "I knew about some of it. Drake gave me enough details for me to know that it hasn't been an easy few years for any of them. I didn't know that Helen was responsible for all of it, though. It does make Drake's opinion about someone he's never met easier to understand."
"His opinion?"
Cole smirked faintly. "You have to be someone pretty awful to get Drake to come close to hating you. He is about the most forgiving demon or man that I have ever met. He had no such tolerance for Helen."
Stephen leaned against a tree. "I can see why. I figured out she was treacherous, but I had no idea how bad she was."
"Drake said that she was demon spawn without the distinction of having the demon blood."
"A hearty insult coming from a demon, I suppose." Stephen looked down at the ground. "I screwed up so much more than I ever realized," he finally said to his shoes.
"But those are screw-ups that can be rectified, Stephen," Cole said quietly as he started into the distance.
"I don't think anything will make up for what they've gone through because of me."
"Look, you screwed up and you screwed up badly. However, that Becker guy had it all wrong -- even if his heart is in the right place where they're concerned. Everything that happened wasn't completely your fault. Yes, had you made certain changes, some things could probably have been avoided. You can't beat yourself up for things that you had no control over -- after all, you were dead. Had you not died, would Abby have been safe and would she not have lost people? There are only a few people in this existence who can answer that, and we are not going to find out."
He knew he shouldn't ask, but he couldn't help it. "Why not?"
"Because we are not going to play It's A Wonderful Life or Christmas Carol any time soon. Those movies are damned depressing and I don't think we need any more depression hanging around right now." He frowned. "Besides, we don't want go near the Demon of Time or any kind of seer. It's not a good idea for a ghost to get on the wrong side of a seer."
Stephen let the back of his head hit the tree he had come to a stop beneath as Cole was talking. "So what you're saying is that you have no idea what I can do to show Abby that I did love her and that I'm so sorry for everything that happened."
"Now, see that's where you are wrong."
A small back box suddenly appeared in the air in front of Stephen. Stephen reached out to grab it, but when he opened it, he gave Cole a look of confusion. "What is this?"
"Put it on," he said gruffly. "That ring is your key to making up for all of the shit you think you caused."
Abby didn't go to the ARC that day for work. In fact, after crying herself out -- again -- she had fallen into a deep sleep and when it was time to go to work, the boys hadn't wanted to wake her. Neither one of them liked leaving her alone, but she needed rest and they needed to go in and see if there was anything in the databanks about how to prevent ghosts from visiting when they weren't invited. Lester would be surprised that Abby didn't come in, but Connor and Becker were convinced that they could get him not to worry too much about her.
Not that they would call it worry, no. They both knew better.
When Abby woke up much, much later, it was to find herself alone in the bed. There was a note propped up on the night stand in Connor's handwriting. They had gone in to work and she was not to come in. They wanted her to stay in the flat and rest.
She briefly considered ignoring their request and going in, anyway, but then she quickly changed her mind. There were a lot of things that she needed to deal with in her own mind -- and going to work to cling to Connor and Becker wasn't going to help with anything.
After taking a shower to ease her aching head and neck -- where she carried all of her stress -- she got dressed and went into the kitchen for a cup of tea. She needed the tea and she needed to gather her thoughts.
Stephen.
She had never expected to see him again he died. Even with all of the anomalies and time lines and everything else, dead was dead. Stephen Hart had died and they had all tried to move on.
Key word being tried. There had been so many unanswered questions from back then and she hadn't realized how not having the answers had hurt.
While she agreed with Becker that some things could have been prevented if Stephen had leveled with them in the first place, she had seen Stephen's stricken look when Becker blamed him for everything that had happened to her and Connor. There were some things that could have been stopped, perhaps, but it wasn't Stephen's fault that she and Connor had been trapped in the Cretaceous for over a year. It had been unlucky chance that the anomalies closed too soon -- and that they didn't have access to the devices Helen did.
After making herself a large cup of tea, Abby went out onto the balcony. It had been the one request she had made when they were looking for a new place. She wanted space to make a small garden and a place to go out and watch the sky if she felt like it.
"You shouldn't be here," she said a few minutes later when she felt someone else watching her on the balcony. "Becker would love to see just what kind of weapon he can alter to work on a ghost."
Stephen's chuckle didn't have a trace of humor in it. "Yeah? I guess I have a little bit of time to make sure I'm prepared for anything, then." He moved up beside her and ran his hand again her cheek. "I'm not going to stay very long, at least not this time."
Abby turned to look at him. "This time?"
"I'm sorry, Abby," he said softly. "I really am. I never meant to hurt you and I hate that I did -- in so many ways. If I could go back and undo everything --"
"Don't." Her voice was even as she cut him off. "Don't even talk about doing something to change time and the events that happened. That was what Helen wanted to do and you don't want to sound like her."
"I came here to try to make things up to you, and instead I made you cry. I didn't know," he said quietly. "I swear to you that I didn't know."
"About?"
"Helen." Abby snorted. "Let me finish." When she didn't say anything, he took that as a good sign. "I knew that she wasn't quite sane and I realized at the end that she did have another agenda. But I really didn't realize how far gone she had been."
"Would it have changed anything, Stephen? If you had know how barmy she really was, would you have done anything different? Would have talked to us or would you have still shut us out?"
That was the real question, wasn't it?
"I don't know," he finally admitted. "It might have, or I still might have kept things to myself in some kind of failed attempt to protect all of you from the things she was saying she had seen happen."
"It killed Cutter, you know," she said, taking a drink from her cup. "Oh, not that you were shagging Helen again, but that you didn't trust him -- didn't trust any of us."
"I trusted you and Connor."
"Not enough to tell us the truth, though." She turned to look at him. "He blamed himself for your death, right up until he was killed. He blamed himself for Helen getting her claws into you and for manipulating you into your death like she did. He never got over it -- and Connor has never gotten over his death, either." She frowned slightly.
"You love him a lot, don't you?"
"Connor? Yeah. I love Connor a lot, Stephen. I love Becker, too. The two of them are more important to me than anything else in this world. I'd do my best to protect them from anything."
The "even you" wasn't said, but Stephen knew it was there. He looked down at his hand, at the silver ring he was now wearing.
"I love you, Abby --"
"Stephen. Don't." Abby's words were both a plea and a command.
"I love you and I'm sorry that I didn't value the trust and the love you had for me."
Abby shook her head. She didn't want to hear any of this. "The past --"
"Is the past, I know. But that doesn't stop how I feel. I promise you, that I'm not going to do anything to endanger what you have with Connor and Becker, but I'm not disappearing completely, either."
Abby's eyes had darkened with suspicion and Stephen had to fight down the flash of hurt. He supposed that he deserved her suspicions, but it didn't make them any easier to face.
"Someone told me that you have a wonderful future ahead of you and then this important thing that you'll be doing when you die." He reached out to touch her hand. "I'm going to be sticking around to make sure you get that chance."
"The anomalies aren't --"
"I'm not talking about anything that's been seen or discovered because of the anomalies, Abby." He gave her a faint smile. "I know you, and I know that your first instinct will always be to take care of others before yourself. I know that you would die for Connor -- and for Becker. I'm going to be around to make sure that you never have to do that."
"You're not making any sense."
He laughed softly. "I know. None of this made sense to me, either. But, as of right now, Abby, you have yourself your very own guardian angel."
"You're mad."
"No. For the first time in a long time, I'm thinking clearly. You don't love me anymore, and that's fine. I'm the one who caused that. You have something wonderful with Connor and Becker. I can see your love and your happiness with the two of them." His smile faded a little bit. "You worry about the two of them more than you do yourself, and from now on I'm going to do my best to make sure you don't have to worry as much."
Abby just stared at him, her blue eyes full of confusion.
"I'm your assigned guardian angel, love," he said quietly. "And, well, that's going to stretch to cover your boyfriends, too."
"Stephen --"
He shook his head. "Consider it my way of making amends to you, love. I have a lot of things to make up for."
"I don't hold you responsible --"
"Maybe not for all of it, but there are things I'm responsible for, Abby. There are things that I need to atone for, and this is the way I'm going to be able to do it." He gave her one of his usual smiles. "It won't be so bad, you know, having a guardian angel. They wanted to give you one, any way, and I just happened to have two friends who pulled some strings to get me here."
"This is insane!"
"No more insane than going through anomalies that lead to different times," he pointed out. "I love you, Abby. Let me do this to make amends. I'm going to do it, any way. It's just easier if I don't have to argue with you every time I show up to help."
He could see the struggle going on in Abby's face as she searched for the words she wanted to say. He wasn't going to give her the chance. He leaned in close and brushed his lips gently over hers.
Cole was waiting for Stephen in the same wooded area that they had been in before. He looked at Stephen's hand and then gave a smile and a nod when he saw the ring the other man was still wearing.
"No fighting?"
"No fighting," Stephen said quietly. "I don't think I really gave her much of a chance to argue about it."
"Did you do something stupid and tell her about what happens after she dies?"
"No, just that she would be doing something incredibly important after that. She thinks I'm insane."
"Most of them do until they see things for themselves. It took Paige a little while to be convinced of the sanity of her sisters."
"So what now?"
"Now?"
"What happens now? Do I just stay here and haunt her building or what? How else will I know when one of them is about to get into trouble and needs help?"
Cole laughed at him. "You've watched too many movies -- and there's no need for you to become any kind of spiritual stalker." Cole had tried that, himself, once. Nothing good ever came from it. "I don't know how it all works, but you don't need to spy on them. Don't become a voyeur. You'll just know when one of them needs you -- or more specifically when Abby needs you. It will be through her that you'll know when one of her boys is in trouble." He pointed to the ring. "Don't lose that. It's the one thing that guarantees you'll always know when she's in trouble."
"You do realize that Abby isn't a witch, right?"
"You don't have to be a witch to become a whitelighter. Her dedication to the creatures from all time periods and her capacity for love is what drew her to the attention of the Elders."
Stephen shook his head. "This still sounds like some bloody film plot."
"It's not, as you should know by now. You were dead, and now you're still dead, but have been prompted to a guardian angel."
"Because of you and Drake."
"Maybe, maybe you would have been tapped, anyway. What's important is that you were tapped and now you get to make sure your beloved Abby is taken care of." He paused. "But be careful. I wouldn't put it past that Becker guy to figure out a way to shoot you or hit you after what happened today."
"Cole, can you answer me a question?"
"If I feel like it."
"Bastard." Stephen frowned. "Does he really love them? Does Becker really love them or is this just some passing thing with him?"
"Don't worry, Stephen. He really does love them. He's not going to leave them or do anything to break their hearts. Cupid assured us of that."
Stephen shook his head and then sighed. "And this Cupid is reliable?"
"He got you that ring didn't he?" Cole laughed and hit his shoulder. "Let's go. I want to go check on Phoebe."
"You have got a one-track mind, you know that?"
"It's what makes me fun," Cole said as they disappeared from view.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-02-14 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 02:28 pm (UTC)LOL at "I guess it's one of the benefits of being dead. I don't have to work out quite as much to keep in shape."
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Date: 2011-02-14 04:13 pm (UTC)*giggles*
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Date: 2011-02-14 03:10 pm (UTC)And congratulations on being the first person to complete a Mini Bang. I've tagged this with challenge:mini bang in honour of the achievement.
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Date: 2011-02-14 04:14 pm (UTC)*looks at other in progress*
It's been a busy Primeval month. :D
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Date: 2011-02-14 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:33 pm (UTC)Poor Becker, you can't hit a ghost.
Becker: Yet.