"Primeval" belongs to Impossible Pictures.

"It Only Seemed Fitting"

Connor had trouble believing Nick Cutter was dead even as he walked out of the funeral. It seemed that they had just been standing in that very cemetery together, mourning Stephen Hart, and now Nick was gone, too. Connor made his way to the cars, away from the well-meaning crowd of mourners, unable to bear their platitudes any longer. As he waited, he involuntarily glanced down at his hands, half expecting to see Nick's blood still staining them as it had when he carried the professor's lifeless body out of the ARC. He pressed his eyes shut against both the image and the tears that threatened to fall again, resting his head on the cool metal of the car roof. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when a soft touch on his wrist brought him back to awareness. He opened his eyes to see Abby standing beside him: "Let's go home."

Rex seemed to chirrup a greeting as Connor and Abby entered the flat, but neither acknowledged his presence. Connor flopped facedown onto the couch while Abby headed straight to her bedroom. She immediately kicked off her shoes and unzipped her black dress, letting it puddle on the floor around her. Hanging her head, she let the composed exterior of the day slip away along with the fabric and her tears flowed freely. She had cried publicly at the funeral, of course, but with a reserve she was now able to abandon in the privacy of her home. She stood in her undergarments, crying for a few minutes and letting the quiet sobs move her petite frame. Eventually her tears slowed and she got dressed, grabbing the first clothes she touched out of her closet. She pulled on the t-shirt and sweatpants, took a deep breath, and padded to the kitchen to make tea.

Abby stared at the kettle as she waited for it to boil, trying not to think of what lay ahead of them now that Cutter was gone. She and Connor were the only ones left of the original team. The four of them had fallen into place right from the beginning, and now half that team had been ripped away. Jenny was all right, and Becker and Sarah, too, but it just wasn't the same with them as it had been before. They hadn't even shared a pint after dealing with an anomaly, she realized. She was wondering if she should suggest such an outing after the next one when the kettle whistled insistently. She poured a cup for herself and, of course, one for Connor.

He was still on the couch, though now he was sitting up and had removed his boots and jacket. Abby paused in the doorway, watching him for a moment. He was staring at his hands again, a habit he had picked up in the last few days. Every so often he would clench his fists and grimace before his face melted back into a blank stare; she wasn't quite sure what caused such an expression, but she had a theory she knew he was not willing to discuss yet. Instead, Abby cleared her throat softly to let him know she was there before entering the room and placing his tea on the table. She settled in beside him on the couch, tucking one leg beneath her and pulling the other knee to her chest.

"Sid and Nancy," she said after a few minutes' silence. Connor broke his gaze away from his hands to look at her for the first time since they had gotten in the car. "Names. For those two," she explained, nodding her head towards the corner where the two stranded diictodons slept in a cage. She noticed that they had chewed through a few of the bars already; those two were certainly going to be a handful. Connor nodded his agreement to her suggestion and a smile ghosted across his face.

"It seems only fitting," he replied, remembering Cutter's comment about Abby and himself at one point. He picked up his tea and they lapsed into another extended silence. His thoughts turned back to the haze of emotion that had been his existence the last few days: grief for the loss of his friend and mentor, confusion over what to do next, and hatred of both Helen for stealing Nick and himself for being unable to save him. Rationally, he knew there was little he could have done, but he still felt responsible.

"Helen," Abby suddenly snarled. Connor looked at her in surprise and saw a similar sentiment reflected on her own face at her unexpected outburst. Clearly she had been thinking along the same lines he had. "She lured Stephen away, and now she's taken Nick, too."

"Victims of a mad woman," Connor agreed, sighing. He raised his tea, but put it down again without having taken a sip as a thought occurred to him. "Claudia Brown."

"What?"

"Claudia Brown," he repeated, swiveling his body towards Abby. "She's a victim of Helen's, too."

"I suppose," Abby replied, not really convinced. She hadn't been able to accept Nick's alternate timeline story as readily as Connor had, try as she did. However, as she thought about it, if she were to believe Nick, she realized Helen was partially responsible for Claudia's disappearance. It had been just after a mission to find the future anomaly in the Permian that Nick first began talking about the mystery woman, and Helen was the one to attract the future predators to the present in the first place. If she had never led them through that anomaly in the Forest of Dean, the team would never have known that a future anomaly existed in the past and tried to remedy it. Perhaps it had always been there and future predators had helped shape evolution in the way humans currently understood it. Perhaps by eliminating the predators, the team had adversely affected evolution and caused the non-existence of Claudia Brown.

"No one really cares that she doesn't exist now," Connor stated flatly. It was true; though he and Abby knew that such a woman supposedly existed, they had never met nor cared about her. Now that Nick was gone, there was no one left to mourn Claudia Brown.

"No, I suppose not," Abby agreed. Connor's assertion hung in the air between them, an unpleasant notion. Rex glided down from his perch on a shelf to land on the arm of the couch next to Abby and she idly stroked his head. Either Sid or Nancy made a few noises in its sleep before settling down again; though names had been decided upon, they had not been assigned to either creature yet.

Making a decision of his own, Connor quickly drained the last of his tea and began pulling his boots on again.

"Where are you going?" Abby asked, placing her cup down. Rex skittered away at the movement.

"Come with me and you'll see," Connor replied, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet. She eyed him quizzically for a moment before letting him, curious as to what he had planned.

"There, all done." Connor sat back on his heels to survey his handiwork. Abby bent down beside him and readjusted the torch she held to get the best angle. She patted him on the shoulder.

"Nice job," she said warmly, and he smiled. They straightened up and stood together, Connor's arm around her shoulders, looking down at the gravestone. Beneath Nick's name and dates, in the neatest handwriting Connor could manage under the circumstances, two new lines were carved into the stone:

WITH CLAUDIA BROWN

TOGETHER AGAIN IN TIME

Nick Cutter had been the only person who cared that Claudia Brown didn't exist; now they would not exist together, forever. It only seemed fitting.