"Death Doesn't Want Us"

Shakespeare's Lemonade

Summary: Every night, Cutter dreams of the cage room. Every time it's different, except for one thing: Stephen always dies. Until one night, he doesn't.

A/N: This was supposed to be a oneshot, but may end up being a very AU, multi-chapter fic if I decide to continue. It takes place sometime during the first three episodes of series three. I'm still in the middle of watching that season right now.

Thanks to my UK friends in the Underground Fanfictioners group for checking my spelling and dialogue to be sure it all sounded sufficiently not American. Let me know if there's anything I can work on to make the characters sound better or anything.

Prologue: Visions of the Cage Room

It haunts him every night in his dreams. Cutter hasn't been able to sleep the night through since he watched Stephen get torn to pieces in the cage room. He heard it more than he saw it, and his dreams are full of sounds more often than not.

Some nights, he watches longer than he did in reality. He can't tear his eyes away, no matter how hard he tries. He watches as the floor turns from dark grey cement to sticky blood red. He can't see Stephen, but Cutter knows he's already dead.

Some nights, Cutter doesn't watch. He didn't have the stomach for it when it really happened, so in a way, those dreams are worse. He hears the screeches and cries of all the carnivorous beasts as they tear into each other-and into Stephen.

Some nights, Cutter swears he can still hear Stephen screaming even after he bolts upright in bed.

He remembers when he's awake. Remembers that Stephen is dead, that he didn't see it happen, that Stephen didn't even scream once.

But that doesn't make the dreams any less real when he's living them. Cutter lives more in his dreams than when he's awake. Everyone can tell how distant he's become, but he doesn't care any more. The concept of tragedy is that it's unavoidable. A man's greatest strength is his strongest weakness. Stephen's desire for truth led him to believe anyone who told him what he wanted to hear. And Cutter was never good at telling people what they wanted to hear.

In dreams, sometimes Cutter tells Stephen he's sorry for letting this happen. Stephen never responds. He's either dead or dying by that point. He always dies. There's no escaping it. Cutter lives in his dreams, and in his dreams, Stephen dies every night.

Until one day, he doesn't.

There's no blood, no creatures, only Stephen standing in the middle of the cage room. His clothing is ripped in places, and Cutter can see deep scars on his skin, but they're old. Healed over. Cutter doesn't understand.

"You're dead," he says.

"I know," Stephen replies, and the look in his eyes is very much that of a man who stopped living a long time ago.

"Why are we here?" Cutter just wants Stephen to keep talking because he never talks in the dreams.

"Because you're dead too."

Then Cutter remembers. The explosion at the ARC. Helen.

He looks down and sees a hole in his shirt. There are bloodstains around the tattered edges, but the wound is closed.

"Helen shot me," Cutter deadpans.

Stephen smiles. Cutter realises that he hasn't seen laughter in his friend's eyes in a very long time. "Why am I not surprised?"

"So what is this? The afterlife?"

Stephen shrugs. "I think it's the future. Or maybe the past. Or something else entirely."

"You think?"

"I haven't been here that long."

"Felt like a long time to me."

"I suppose it did. I don't regret it, you know?"

"Dying, you mean?"

"Yeah. I think I see now where I went wrong."

"Trusting Helen?"

"Exactly. She did seem to be the only person still talking to me at the time."

"I'm sorry about that. I can't help thinking things could have been different."

Stephen's eyes light up as if he knows a secret. "I think they still can," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"I told you this place is... confusing. I think there may be a way out. A way back."

Cutter stares. His mouth might be hanging open. "Back from the dead?" he sputters.

Stephen has a look of dead seriousness. "After everything that's happened, changing the past, you shouldn't be surprised."

Cutter thinks about that for a moment. "You never believed me about Claudia."

"I didn't want to believe our lives could be dictated by random events millions of years ago. But if there's an alternate time line where Claudia Brown is Jenny Lewis, or vice versa, then there could be one where we're not dead."

"Maybe that's where we are right now." Cutter gestures around them. "Like a—parallel universe?"

"That's what I thought. But should we try to get back? Should we mess with the time line again?"

Cutter has to think about that. He's never wanted to screw up the natural order of things, but he can't help thinking that this isn't how things were supposed to turn out. Stephen isn't supposed to be dead.

Cutter sighs. "I don't know what damage we might do trying to get back to our old lives. But I can't stay here knowing that if we don't try to stop her, Helen will keep on manipulating history anyway. Right now, we're the only ones who know how mucked up things could really get."

Stephen nods with that trademark impassive look on his face. "That's what I thought. I suppose we look for the next anomaly and hop through it then?"

"That does sound like a plan you would come up with."

The two of them begin walking toward the open door. The one Stephen sealed shut with Cutter on the other side.

"There's another possibility though," Stephen says, almost casually.

"What's that?" Cutter asks.

"We could both be mad."

Cutter laughs genuinely for the first time in a very long time. "Then we've got nothing to lose, have we?"

Stephen smiles again, and they pass through the door, into the unknown.