So this was originally going to be the opening chapter for the third installment of that Trilogy I was talking/hinting about in Hope's Flickering Flame however, at the time I wrote this I hadn't watched all the way through Primeval yet. Now I have so the beginning is going to be vastly different. BUT! I just loved this so much and wanted to share with my lovely paitent readers. So count this as a drabble of unrealized and unusable potential (at least for this story, maybe I'll use it in a different cross or canon story done the road, something with time-travel within time-travel).
I do not own Primeval, if I did there would be a lot more BAMF!Connor with maybe some time-traveling into the beginning of the journey for the original group. (Just imagining the faces of Stephen, Cutter, Lester, and Young!Abby on seeing Cretaceous!Connor...priceless!) Should have kept the beard, Connor.
So please, read, review, and enjoy!
Colors blurred in sickening swirls of mud and forest. The natural sounds of the woods were drowned out in the pounding crackle of crunching leaves, panting breaths, and the deep animal roar of a creature very few heard in modern times.
"RUN, ABBY! JUST RUN!"
Abby Maitland ran; she ran for her life and for her best mate's life. Had anyone told her eight years previous that she would find herself trapped in the cretaceous period for a year with one of the smartest, nerdiest blokes she knew, she would have laughed in their face. But here she is, running from a spinosaurus towards an anomaly that might or might not take her and her companion home.
Her best mate was just a few steps behind her, his large calloused palm warm and soothing on her back as he pushed her ever forward, just as he had always done since they first met. Abby could no longer picture a life without him beside her; they had gone through to much together. If he died, she would die. Simple as that.
She can hear the spinosaurus closer now and a distance so close has never appeared farther. Then she's tripping, falling forward to sprawl on the ground except she isn't, she's flying into the anomaly from the force of those familiar hands and that familiar body grabbing her up and tossing her forward. He's always saving her, his Abs, and as she rolls across pavement -pavement!- she believes he always will be, because he will always be at her side.
Abby staggers to her feet, takes in the familiar modern buildings and the smell of city smog and English weather, and lets the joyous laughter bubble up from her.
"Connor, we made it! We made it back, Conn!" she spins, expecting to feel his arms around her, sharing his excitement with her, encompassing her in him. But he's not there. Abby is somewhat surprised at how fast elation can turn to fear. The anomaly is still open, the fragmented projection of the rip in space and time spinning in it's patterned short spurts. There is just no Connor Temple in the plaza with Abby Maitland.
She doesn't register the black trucks swarming the plaza, nor the armed men shouting at her to get on the ground. Abby only has eyes for the anomaly, for the one thing that could bring back her Connor, for the one thing that has possibly ripped away her remaining family. There are hands on her shoulders, large male hands that aren't the right shape or size and that isn't the right smell, but familiar in the way a ghost of a memory will slither past on a trigger.
Captain Becker is holding her as she screams and cries for Connor, as her voice reaches ear shattering decibels when the anomaly is locked and Connor is still in there and not here with her. Captain Becker is the only thing holding Abby upright when her knees collapse under her and broken whimpers replace the screams.
Connor Temple is gone.
Black. It's everywhere, but not the soft gentle black of a deep night or a comfy shirt, more a harsh black like that of a fresh cut onyx or maybe this is the black of space, cold and sharp and unfeeling for the needs of others. He doesn't know where he is besides the black, doesn't know if there was anything before the black or if there will be anything after the black. He hopes there will be an after because he is actually quite bored here and the black is slightly terrifying in that he can't see the monsters it must surely hide. But he applies the age-old adage of 'if I can't see it, it can't see me' and that helps ever so little with the fear.
He doesn't know who he is, only that he is himself and himself is located in the black but the black is not good or kind, that somewhere beyond this black is blue and sunshine and scales waiting for him, needing him. He fears the black but the black is not good for finding the blue-scale-sunshine and so he must combat the black in order to move forward.
He must win. Failure isn't an option.