Ten connected ficlets, loosely based around prompts.
1. Dysania (the state of finding it hard to get out of bed)
Nick Cutter does not approve of mornings.
After the oblivion of sleep, the noise and the light and the activity are too jarring. Everything in the world seems just slightly off-centre until he drowns in his first mug of coffee.
Ever since the timeline change, the whole world is like one big morning. Nothing fits. And try as he might, Nick can't find the cup of coffee to wake himself up. This isn't his world.
He misses CMU. He misses Stephen.
And he misses Claudia Brown. He doesn't know if he loved her, but he greatly resents losing the chance to find out.
He tries not to think about Jenny Lewis. If the existence of the ARC makes him feel off-balance, then she's the equivalent of a cyclone.
So it's ironic, really, that as he lies on his back, trying to come up with one single goddamned reason to get out of bed – other than to save the world – it's the ringing of his mobile that rouses him.
Jenny Lewis calling…
2. Lethonomia (the inability to recall the names of people)
Jenny Lewis does not approve of Nick Cutter.
At first, she is irritated by him - by his sandy-blond hair and his sharp blue eyes, by the way his scruffiness is attractive when it should be the very opposite. Irritated by the way his wild theories inevitably turn out to have more than a ring of truth to them.
Irritated by the way he can't get her bloody name right.
After a few months, the irritation starts to segue into something else.
But she still wants to knee him in the balls when he calls her Claudia Brown. It's not just that he calls her by another woman's name. It's that he makes her feel as though Claudia-bloody-Brown is someone she should aspire to be. Jenny's worked damn hard at being independent and successful and she does not appreciate the disappointment in his eyes. Nick Cutter doesn't even know her.
However, after six months, he finally looks her in the eyes and calls her Jenny Lewis. She doesn't know if she's changed or if he has, but to her horror she feels oddly validated.
She'll always hate him a tiny bit for that.
3. Colpocoquette (woman who knows she has an attractive bosom and makes good use of its allure)
Nick's main problem with Jenny Lewis is that she manages to simultaneously remind him of both Claudia Brown and Helen.
She looks like Claudia – to all intents and purposes she is Claudia - but there's a certain air to Jenny Lewis that she shares with his ex-wife.
Jenny's beautiful and she knows it. Claudia knew it too, but Jenny uses it. She isn't afraid to manipulate a man by his hormones. She isn't afraid to flutter her eyelashes and toss her hair and thrust her breasts to the fore – it makes it all the better when she turns around and bites.
But, for reasons he doesn't understand, Nick admires this in Jenny in a way he never did with Helen. She's got balls.
The reason doesn't start to become clear until he accidentally walks in on Jenny and Abby in the ARC kitchen. Abby's eyes are red - although judging by the look he gets, she'd neuter him for mentioning it – and Jenny looks oddly protective. That's when he realises – she doesn't just have balls, she has heart.
She might look like Claudia, she might act like Helen, but Jenny Lewis is very much her own person.
It's taken him six months, but he finally looks her in the eyes and uses her name. Her full name – and he hopes she understands what he's trying to say. He's never been very good with words.
He calls her Jenny Lewis but what he means is 'I know you're not Claudia Brown'.
4. Apodyopsis (the act of mentally undressing someone)
It's taken nearly a year, but Jenny finally feels as though she belongs in the team.
She and Connor have reached a place where they have mutually accepted that they will never understand each other.
She and Abby are almost friends.
She and Lester are the Sanity Club. Not that she's ever coined that term in his presence.
She and Stephen share the burden of being the voice of reason. Neither of them are particularly successful at it, but they try.
She doesn't know what she is to Cutter.
She likes him. He's aggravating and infuriating and exasperating and every other word along those lines. She's the doppelganger of a woman he's in love with and half the time he calls her by her full name as though he needs the reminder.
The other half of the time, his eyes burn into her and she wants nothing more than for him to stop staring. If it was any other man, then she'd say he was undressing her with his eyes. Because it's Cutter, she's got no bloody idea at all what it means.
The fact she'd quite like his hands to follow where his eyes have been is irrelevant.
5. Sesquipedalian (using excessively long words)
Nick is good at denial, but not so good that he's unaware of that fact. He's just become adept at burying the things that matter.
His entire relationship – if it warrants that word – with Jenny has been like a dance. They fight, they bicker, they quarrel – sometimes he thinks they might actually flirt – but the entire time it's one step forward, two steps back.
He hides behind science and the slightly insane façade that he's accidentally cultivated and she – well, Jenny's a spin doctor. That says it all.
Stephen's death changes things.
Suddenly Nick finds denial a whole lot more difficult. There are things that matter.
He's been burying the issue with Stephen for so long that it's only when his best friend is actually being buried, that he realises how much more Stephen deserved.
Jenny wears black to the funeral. She cries and Nick knows there's no spin involved.
'We should go for a drink,' she says.
He agrees.
It's the biggest step they've ever made and yet somehow also the simplest. Nick takes the step for them - because Jenny's become the thing he likes most about this world - but he also takes it for Stephen.
It's too late to fix things, but he's trying now and he hopes that somehow, that might count as an apology.
6. Hypnerotomachia (the struggle between sleep and sexual desire)
Jenny wakes in an unfamiliar bed. Consciousness filters through her dreams like sunlight through a crack in the curtains.
Nick's hands are on her skin. They trace gently; paths along her spine, her ribs, the sides of her breasts. The touch is nothing but a branding of his name.
She stirs.
'Shhhh,' his voice is low and hoarse but his hands don't stop. They just keep tracing patterns until she's almost lulled back to sleep.
She can feel him watching her. He does that a lot. She doesn't ask why. As long as she doesn't know the reasons, she can pretend his gaze is for her alone.
Turning slightly causes one of his hands to brush her nipple. She exhales sharply, the skin tightening instantly.
'Shhhh,' he says again, but now she needs to be awake – needs to be so that he knows she is Jenny. She reaches down and his breath hitches.
She can still feel the warm pull of sleep, but she wants this more.
When his hands are on her, she feels as though the moment could last forever.
But if there's one thing she's learnt in the past year, it's that time is fickle.
Things change.
7. Schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the misfortune of others)
Being with Jenny is very different to being with Helen.
Jenny cooks, for one thing. Nick suspects he's eaten more healthily over the last month than for the last ten years.
Jenny also drinks coffee, instead of tea. She takes hours to get ready. And she goes to the shooting range at the weekend.
Nick finds, although the feeling is rather tentative, that he's happy.
So of course, the next anomaly opens in the Forest of Dean. He tries to tell himself that he's being superstitious. Superstition has no grounding in scientific fact.
However, scientific fact can clearly go and bugger itself, because when they pull up in the clearing, Helen is leaning against a tree. She smiles and waves and she's so obviously happy that Nick knows something has gone dreadfully wrong.
A quiet cough comes from the left. Nick turns and his whole world tilts on its axis.
James Lester is standing by the anomaly. He's older, thinner, greyer and far dirtier than Nick had ever expected to see. But that isn't what's causing Nick to veer dangerously close to cardiac arrest.
Standing to the left of this new version of Lester, is a woman.
Claudia Brown.
8. Philodox (person in love with his own opinions, who loves to hear himself talk)
Nick Cutter isn't mad. Jenny should be grateful. She's not.
Claudia Brown is real. She's real and she's beautiful and she's here. With Lester of all people – only this one is Sir James. He's dirty and stubbled and rangy, but he's lost none of his superiority.
They speak of anomalies, of disaster and escape, but Jenny couldn't care less. Yes, she is that selfish. All she can focus on is that Claudia Brown is real and Nick's eyes haven't left her since they arrived.
She also notices the way that Sir James' fingers constantly rest at the small of Claudia's back. She remembers Nick telling her Claudia's opinion of Lester. She remembers her own opinion of Nick.
How times do change.
Perhaps she should be grateful. After all, she's wondered enough times if Nick chose her, or settled for her.
She chose Nick – but that's not enough any more. Not with Claudia Brown here in person.
Jenny Lewis is no one's consolation prize.
9. Coruscating (sparkling, dancing)
Nick sits in the ARC with Jenny Lewis by his side, Claudia Brown across from him and two versions of James Lester facing off across the desk.
He wonders if everyone else's world has gone as crackpot crazy as his, or whether he's just unlucky. It's as though all the different pieces of his life are spinning out of control, sparkling and dancing – and when did his entire life become an anomaly?
Claudia Brown is not what he remembers. There's a hardness in her eye that wasn't there before. She looks – and it startles him to think it, because it's never been this way round before – she looks like Jenny.
The first thing he asks her about is Stephen.
She shakes her head and the compassion in her eyes is still the same.
There's no one left. He's aware that should hurt – and soon it probably will, but none of this is real yet.
Even the Lesters look shell-shocked.
Nick can't quite believe that she's here. Claudia Brown. He looks at her and the world spins faster, in much the same way it had in the forest, when he stepped into this world for the first time.
Then he allows his eyes to swivel to meet Jenny's. Her eyes are fierce, stubborn – and he's struck again by how different she is.
If there was an apocalypse – and let's face it, at the moment that's likely – Helen would laugh. Claudia would be calm and strong and hold it together. But Jenny – Jenny would go down fighting. And probably swearing.
Nick finds himself grinning. Jenny looks confused and a little worried for his sanity, but the corner of her mouth quirks.
The spinning of the world slows down a little.
10. Nudiustertian (the day before yesterday)
Nick doesn't get to talk to Claudia alone until the next day. He's on the roof of the ARC, staring absently at the sky. She approaches, settles down next to him.
Lester – her Lester – is over by the fire door. He doesn't come any closer.
'I'm sorry.' That's the first thing she says.
He quirks an eyebrow. 'Why?'
'You got lost. We didn't find you.'
They didn't, but thinking of Jenny and this world's Stephen, Nick thinks that maybe someone else did.
'I'm sorry too.'
They're not words he's ever said to Jenny, but somehow it's easier with Claudia. They both know what he's apologising for, even though it's nowhere near his fault. She hasn't shared details of what happened back in that world – although that will have to come soon enough – but he's sorry that she had to live through it.
Claudia nods and her eyes flicker towards Lester.
'Are you…?' Nick knows it's none of his business, but that's never stopped him before.
Claudia half-shrugs. 'It's complicated.'
Nick isn't sure that it is really, and heaven alone knows he's good at over-complicating things.
'Okay,' he says, and he's surprised to find that it is.
'What's she like?' Claudia asks and her tone isn't as resentful as it might have been from a lesser person.
'She's…' Nick hesitates. He doesn't want to discuss Jenny. 'She's not you,' he settles for, and is surprised to find that that feels a bit like he's made a choice. A confirmation, maybe.
Claudia nods. 'Abby and Connor haven't changed.'
They're skittering between topics, but Nick doesn't mind this particular change.
'No,' he chuckles. 'I don't think changes in the timeline will ever have an effect on Connor.'
Claudia smiles and it's full of ghosts. Nick feels a tiny spark of pain as he remembers that there's nothing left of the Connor he first knew. He's aware that over time that tiny spark of pain will grow. Claudia is probably already drowning in it.
'It's good to see you again,' Claudia says. She bends forward and kisses him on the cheek, before rising.
Nick wants to protest that surely the conversation can't be over already, but then he realises that he doesn't have anything left to say. Odd that, after so many months of wondering.
He rises too and Lester approaches, moving towards Claudia automatically. Nick can't quite categorise the changes in the man – but he's radically different.
Nick knows it's time to go and for a moment he's tempted to voice his farewell, but that feels too clichéd.
Instead he nods a goodbye and turns for the exit.
For the first time since Helen vanished, he turns his back on the past. It would be an achievement, except he knows he can only do it because there's nothing left for him there any more. Times change, but he's always been good at resisting.
Down in the ARC kitchen, he finds Abby and Connor. Connor's not talking – for once – but he's still on his skateboard. Abby is fussing over Rex – and Nick never thought to ask where Rex came from in this timeline.
Jenny is sitting, drinking a cup of coffee as though it's personally offended her. Nick grins and moves to sit beside her. She looks surprised at this and that makes him grin wider.
He's taking another step and once again, for all its size, it's simple.
Times change. He doesn't, but he's trying.
After all – for all time's games, for all its fickleness and all its shifts – there's only one thing about time that Nick knows for certain.
There's never enough of it.