Title: Forgotten

Author: Squeezynz

Spoilers: S2Ep7

Setting: Post S2Ep7 AU

Pairing: None as yet. Ultimately Stabby (but you knew that, what else do I write?)

I refuse to believe that he died so horribly. Yes it was heroic, but also unnecessary. This is just my way of bringing him back. Not beta'd so any grammar or spelling mistakes are all my own work.

The rose tinted glasses are firmly stuck on, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

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The distant beep of some machine, steady and insistent, was his first indication that maybe he wasn't dead after all. He couldn't feel his body, his limbs or anything. He struggled to open his eyes but that small task was simply beyond him. Instead he lay and listened to the machine beeping out his pulse, the thread of sound becoming an anchor to the world beyond the darkness inside his head. He slept, images playing over and over in his head, a man's face – blue eyes staring- framed by a round window, his own focus narrowed down to just this man's expression in a vain attempt to ignore the fantastical creatures looming all around him.

It wasn't exactly how he pictured he would die. He couldn't even explain how he knew he was supposed to have died.

Time drifted as he lay there, the steady beep of the machine his only companion in the darkness. One time when he awoke, he felt someone in the room with him, leaning over him, moving around him. He tried to speak, to open his eyes, but whoever it was was gone before he could summon the strength to do more than think about the action.

More time drifted by, until one day he awoke and the beeping had stopped. Panic set in for a second, as he thought he must have died again, but his pulse still hummed in his ears, testament that his heart was still intact and beating. Calming himself down he tried to move something – anything, but couldn't, his limbs still numb and unresponsive. There was something down his throat, choking him, suffocating him, he struggled and pain blossomed everywhere. An alarm went off and suddenly he was surrounded by people, their hands on his body, his arms, his legs, telling him to calm down, to not fight the tube down his throat, to stop struggling.

Like an animal he fought blindly, his arms lashing out, heavily bandaged, only to be restrained easily, the tube down his throat eased out and gone leaving him raw and hoarse. Still the unseen hands held him down, his flailing limbs having little strength to resist. Darkness swallowed him and his feeble attempts to communicate.

When he next regained consciousness, the machine was back, the comforting beep more welcome than he cared to admit to. There was nothing down his throat, but something still covering his eyes. He tested his hands, flexing his fingers and trying to raise his hand towards his face, but nothing much happened and he let them fall back to the covers. He wondered is he'd ever felt so weak and helpless in his life before. Someone entered his room and he turned his head a fraction towards where he thought they stood. He could hear them breathing, but nobody touched him so he supposed it wasn't a nurse this time. With a tongue that felt six times its normal size, he tried to moisten his lips before attempting to talk. Whoever was in the room suddenly came towards the bed and he sensed them leaning over him. Suddenly something cool was being held against his mouth, the ice feeling like heaven in his mouth and against his woolly tongue. His throat still felt raw and he swallowed apprehensively, but there was little pain as the ice chip slid its way down.

"Thank you..." He managed to whisper, a thread of sound that he could barely hear himself, let alone the person with him.

"You're a lucky man Mister Hart. A few more seconds and you wouldn't have survived the mauling."

Images of impossible creatures flashed into his head and his body jerked at the memory of sharp claws and teeth fastening onto his limbs even as he fought them off in a last ditch effort to survive.

As if only now remembering how to form the words, he managed just one. "How?"

"It would seem that someone tripped the emergency failsafe and flooded the holding pen with gas, knocking everything out and saving your life."

"W-who?"

"We don't know. Whoever they were, they got away before we reached the building. Found several bodies, members of Leek's security force I imagine, and Leek...what was left of him, which wasn't much."

He couldn't place the voice of the man talking to him, but despite that he seemed familiar. Images flashed into his head of a man in a pinstriped suit and pink shirt looking supercilious, but he couldn't put a name to the face. The simple effort of trying to place a name to the face made his head reel, the darkness drawing him down again. The other names mentioned meant as little to him as well, the flash of faces scrolling across his minds eye no help.

Time had no meaning, years could have passed and he wouldn't have been any the wiser. Each time he awoke it was for a little longer, his eyes still covered, but now there was usually someone attending to him, gentle hands wrapping and unwrapping his arms and legs, bathing him and changing the bed linen, all without his participation or co-operation.

Then one time he awoke to hear more than one voice in the room. The machine that beeped had been removed some time ago, so he lay there and listened.

"So what's the likelihood of a full recovery?" It was the same man who had spoken to him before.

"There's extensive damage to muscle and tissue, and blood loss was extreme."

"Yes, yes I know...he nearly died. Is he going to recover?"

"Not nearly died...he did die...twice."

"But not today. Come come Doctor. I've seen you handiwork, you're a genius."

"Maybe. But this man was almost torn apart. I can only do so much."

"So he won't be as pretty as before, I'm sure a few scars will only improve his attractions. I'm wanting an idea of when he'll be up and about again."

"Given the damage to his liver, spleen and kidneys, plus the damage to his ligaments..."

"Yes, yes you can give me a shopping list later. Will he live?"

"You are fortunate he was a young, fit and healthy man. He'll live and should make a relatively full recovery."

"See...that wasn't so hard. Now do ask for whatever you need to move things along, won't you?"

"Of course."

"Good. I'll come back and see our patient again soon."

Time went on and life started to expand. Whatever had been done to him was healing well. The dressing on his arms and legs were removed, and some tentative exploration revealed long gashes feathery with stitches everywhere. It was as if someone had taken to him with a razor, cutting him deeply all over. Several more gashes were evident on his body, across his chest and stomach, down his ribs and across the base of his throat. The tightness of healing wounds pulled against the skin of his back and down both legs. He tried to imagine what he must look like but gave up when he realized that very little of him was unscathed. He's be a patchwork of scars when they finally healed, like a monster put together from many parts. If his body was so marked, he figured his face must be a picture as well.

Of his face, he could only feel his mouth and bristly jawline. Everything else was swathed still in dressings and bandages. He tried to remember what he looked like but it remained a worrying blank. He thought that maybe one of the faces he kept seeing in his minds eye could have been himself, but none seemed to fit.

Time moved ever onwards and stitches were removed. He was now doing simple exercises with a physiotherapist who had obviously been instructed well. The man was a consummate professional, moving and manipulating arms and legs, pushing and pulling, massaging and always without a word or question outside the limits of the therapy. Any questions asked were gently ignored or deflected with the focus always on his recovery and regaining his lost conditioning.

He felt like a prize thoroughbred being readied for a big race.

With the increase of movement, they removed the shunts in his arm and leg, feeding him no longer through a tube but with a spoon, the amounts increasing as the days sped by. A liquid diet turned into a solid diet and he started to take short walks from the bed to a commode and back again. His personal nurse remained frustratingly unhelpful with any form of information outside his welfare and general health until he gave up asking and just accepted that he'd learn nothing.

Then came the day they took off the last remaining bandages about his face and eyes. The lights had been turned down or shielded before the last piece of cloth was removed, revealing his recovery room. At first the shapes and people around him appeared blurry and indistinct, then a man stepped forward and tilted his head up to put drops in his eyes. The blurriness receded and everything swam into focus.

Three men regarded him with somber expressions. One stood with his arms folded, his expression oddly intent, wearing a sharply creased dove grey suit. The other two were, he supposed, his doctor and his male nurse. He looked down at his own body, the sheet bunched around his waist, and gasped at the first sight of all the scars criss crossing his skin.

"Not exactly very pretty, I agree...but you're alive, thanks to the Doctor and team of surgeons that patched you back up again." The man in the dove grey suit came forward, leaning down and resting one hand on the side of the bed to peer more closely into the face of the newly revealed patient. "You have my admiration Samuels...remarkable."

"Who are you?"

Standing upright again, the man frowned down at the patient. "Who am I?" The man exchanged a look with the Doctor who immediately hurried forward to shine a light into the patients eyes. He batted the light away and peered at the man in the suit.

"Who are you?"

"James Lester...but you know that Stephen."

"You called me...Mister Hart?"

"Yes...Stephen Hart...that's your name. Doctor, you never mentioned anything about memory loss?"

"How was I to know?" The Doctor shrugged. "This is the first time we've spoken to the man, on your orders I might add."

The man in the suit, Lester, frowned even more ferociously at the Doctor before turning back to face the patient. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"A man...a man with blue eyes starring back at me behind a round glass window."

"And you don't remember your name, or who you are?"

"You said I was called Stephen...Hart."

"Yes...you were...are called that." Lester turned away from him and addressed the Doctor again. "Get someone in here to deal with this. The best there is. I want a report as soon as possible."

"Of course Sir James. Cameron will be your man, he's the best in his field."

"Get him here...yesterday!" With a final look at the patient, Lester swung out of the room and out of sight, leaving behind the nurse and the Doctor who exchanged a look before the Doctor followed.

The male nurse busied himself about the room, his every move followed with bright interest by a pair of intense blue eyes thickly rimmed with black lashes.

"What happened to me?"

The nurse paused in folding a towel, then slowly turned to face the man in the bed. "I don't know, I'm just employed to take care of you."

"Did I fall into a machine or something?" Stephen indicated his body with it's multiple lacerations and incision lines.

"I don't know."

"Was I in a car accident...or air crash?" dark brows pulled together over confused eyes as he wracked his brains to come up with what could have happened to him.

"Look man, I really don't know. I was just contracted to come here and take care of you after the operations. You'll have to ask the Doctor, or Lester if you want to know more." The nurse went back to his towel folding, avoiding meeting the blue eyes still looking for answers.

Stephen stared down at himself, not recognizing his own body or limbs, his hands looking large, the fingers long but wasted from the long time spent in recovery. His arms felt weak, the muscles lax and the skin loose.

"How long have I been here?"

The nurse turned to face the young, scarred man in the bed. "Eight weeks man. I've been tending to you for about eight weeks. Here, there's a button if you need anything. I'll just be down the corridor." And he was gone, the door swinging back and forth behind him in his haste to leave the room.

"My name is Stephen Hart." He proclaimed out loud, the name not making any particular impact, or jogging any new memories. He would have to wait for the man in the suit, Lester, to return to get more answers to the questions starting to swarm in his head.

He lifted his hands to careful map the planes of his face, feeling the ridges of scar tissues and healing gashes, the skin itchy and flaking as he lightly scratched. A hank of hair slid over his forehead and he swept it back, the hair catching on another slashing scar near his hairline. He must really look a picture. He didn't even know what his face looked like before, let alone now. He grabbed for the button to summon back the nurse.

"What is it man?"

"A mirror...have you got a mirror?"

The nurse hesitated, then walked over to the beside cabinet and opened the top drawer. Pulling out a square of plastic, he slowly handed it to the man in the bed. "He did a great job on your face...really he did."

Stephen drew in a deep breath and then held the mirror up. The face that looked back at him was unrecognizable A pair of hauntingly blue eyes starred back at him, framed by dark lashes, and even darker brows, one of the brows bisected by a short, puckered scar. He raised his hand to trace each of the lines now marking his face, one running from just below his bottom lip across his chin only to be intersected by another slicing up his cheek to beside his eye. Several smaller scratches and lines cross hatched over the larger, deeper lines, as if his face had been grated, some of the lines extending down his neck and onto his collar bone.

"What the hell happened to me?" He asked in a whisper, laying the mirror down on the covers, his eyes starring off into nothing.

"You're alive. That's what happened to you. You just need to get your strength back now and you'll be fine." The nurse slid the mirror back into the drawer and turned to go.

"But I don't remember anything. Not even who Stephen Hart is?"

"Early days man. Just give it time...it'll all come back, you see."

"If remembering tells me how this happened, do I want to remember it?"

The man looked at Stephen with compassionate eyes. "You're alive, that's all that matters."

Then he left, leaving his patient to ponder what could possibly have left him looking like he's fallen into a paper shredder. And how the hell had he managed to survive.

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Another week passed and he was starting to feel restless. All the dressings were off, and stitches removed. He had healed well and his Doctor was full of praise for his progress. The physio had reported excellent progress in regaining his fitness, his body filling out and muscles becoming strong again. Even the patch of hair shaved off his head all those weeks ago for some unnamed operation was starting to catch up with the rest of his hair, all of it starting to get long about his ears. He preferred to keep the whiskers as well, the hair hiding some of the scarring, the longer fringe performing the same task. When the nurse offered to trim it for him, he let him, but only enough to even it up, not to seriously shorten it, leaving it covering a fair proportion of his face.

He didn't know it, but he was looking as unlike his former self as it was possible, almost enough so that anyone from his old life happening to meet him, would be hard pressed to recognize him.

Only his eyes remained the same, but now there was a hint of perpetual confusion in them, a bewilderment that begged many questions that simply had no answers.

The day finally came when he was pronounced as fit as he was going to get and Lester came once more to visit, announcing that he would be taking him out of the hospital wing and returning him to his old life. The many visits from Cameron had done nothing to restore Stephen's memory, with the man's report to Lester flung across the room to land near the bin. It seemed that, for the time being, Stephen Hart may be alive and well again, but he was nowhere near the man he used to be. He was missing his memories and posed a problem of what to do with him.

Because of the precarious odds against him surviving at the start, it was deemed necessary for the smooth running of the ARC and the personnel concerned to let them think their friend and colleague dead and buried. Against all odd, Stephen had managed to survive and now Lester had a decision to make.

In his present state, with no memory of his life before, it would be a simple matter of setting the young man up with a job and flat somewhere and let him build a new life for himself. Lester could manufacture anything at all to satisfy his curiosity, and there was no-one to gainsay him. The downside was, as Cameron pointed out, that one day all those repressed memories were likely to come flooding back. When they did, they'd be hell to pay and Lester would have to have very deep pockets.

They were still hunting Helen Cutter, and still working on getting control over the anomalies and predicting when they would appear, but the team were off balance, edgy and Lester knew that he'd have to decide whether to disband them or bring in someone to pull them together.

He had hoped that Stephen restored to them would effect that miracle, return them to being a cohesive group again, but with the young man's loss of memory, that was no longer a workable plan.

He would have to find someone to replace the supposedly dead team member, and also find a home for the newly resurrected one.

It was all very irritating.

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Stephen fingered the shiny key held between his fingers, rubbing his thumb over the surface as he stood in the doorway and surveyed his new accommodation

Lester had explained that his original flat had been sold off, and his belongings put into storage. So this was a new place, his stuff out of storage but still in boxes now scattered throughout the rooms he apparently now owned.

Apprehensively, he shut the door behind him and advanced into the sunny space that was his new lounge room. A kitchen led off to the left through a doorway, and a corridor beckoned from across the room, apparently leading to his bedroom, bathroom and a spare room.

He had a new car, a shiny navy blue Lexus which he was assured was similar to the one he'd had in his previous life, and he had an interview lined up for him to go to on the following Monday. Sir James Lester had been positively frightening in his efficiency, no aspect of Stephen's return to the world overlooked.

He had money, he had transport and he had accommodation.

What he didn't have was anyway of knowing who he was or how he was supposed to fit into a world he couldn't remember.

He dropped the key onto the kitchen bench before wandering further into the lounge and sitting down on the comfortably, if utilitarian sofa.

A sharp pain suddenly lanced through his head and he hissed, clutching his hand to his scalp, his eyes squeezed tight against the agony.

"Sorry mate, I'm doing this one..."

"No. Open the door...open it!"

"Can't do it Nick...can't take the risk...can't take the risk...can't take the risk..."

Next he knew, he was laying on his back staring, blinking up at his ceiling, his head no longer feeling as if it was about to split open. He replayed the words over in his head, but couldn't place them in either time or context. Did it have something to do with the one face that kept coming back to him? Did the man with the intense blue eyes have something to do with this? What was the risk, and why didn't he open the door?

Easing himself upright he gingerly moved his head up and down and side to side, but the pain didn't return. Hooking his boot around one of the brown boxes littering the living room, he tore it open and peered inside. Lester had told him that in his former life he'd had a passion for paleontology, and this was borne out by the contents, his fingers closing around a stone fossil, an Ammonite that fitted neatly into the palm of his hand. He laid it on the floor and delved in to find more treasures. Each one proved more fascinating than the last, the sun traveling across the floor almost to the wall before he reached the bottom, the floor around him strewn with fossilized remains, some he thought he recognized, others a complete mystery.

His stomach reminded him how long it had been since his last meal, so he pushed himself to his feet, his bum numb from sitting on the floor.

Pulling the fridge open he found it stocked with everything he could have wanted and more, his lips twisting up into a crooked smile at another example of Lester's efficiency.

Leaning against the counter he forked a bowl of chicken salad into his mouth while surveying the wreckage of his living room currently strewn with rocks, fossils and bones. When he was finished he dumped the bowl into the sink and contemplated his distorted reflection in the glass of the wall oven. His fringe covered the scars on his forehead, the beard and 'tache covered his lower face, leaving only his eyes unchanged by his experience. He wondered if he'd had a lover or girlfriend in his previous life, and if she'd still recognize him. He'd asked Lester, but he'd been vague, suggesting he leave the past in the past and forge ahead. Apparently his parents were long dead, with no living siblings or relatives, truly alone in the world. Lester had also said that the people he'd worked with hadn't survived whatever had scarred him for life, so there was no help from that quarter. All he had was what littered his living room and what he built for himself from now on.

Maybe Lester had it right, he should let the past remain past and stop worrying about where he'd been or who he knew before. If Lester was right, then anyone he knew before was dead and gone, his loss of memory effectively giving him a clean slate, his scars changing his appearance from before so that even if any of the people he used to know met him, they'd probably not recognize him, or he them.

He had the chance to do something other people only dreamt of, a fresh start, a new beginning, all past mistakes wiped away. Did he dare take the opportunity and let the past rest in peace?

Glancing over his shoulder he stared back at the mess on the floor and smiled again.

He'd give the present a chance. The past had obviously been less than stellar for him, resulting in his near death. Maybe this was a second chance, and chance to rebuild a life.

He didn't know what he would have done, what decision he would have made in his former life, as the man he'd been before, but as the man he was now - it was a new start, one he was going to embrace.

Padding barefoot across the floor, he pulled his shirt off over his head and started to unbutton his jeans. By the time he reached the gleaming bathroom he'd shed his clothes and walked naked into the shower. The mirrors steamed up quickly as he sluiced water over his body, his fingers tracing the myriad scars covering his skin. He was a new man in a new skin with a new face and life.

He had no past, he only had now.

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James lester faced the man across the table and sighed gustily.

"I'm aware you are the best at what you do. His belongings are clean?"

"There's nothing in anything to remind him of his former life or the people in it. Everything has been sanitized."

"Well, if he accepts the version of his life I've supplied him with, everything should fit neatly and satisfy his immediate curiosity. Certainly it is unlikely that he will run into any of the current team, stuck away as he is, and his new job will not bring him into any sort of contact with the ARC or anomalies."

"Then you have nothing to worry about. I assure you, Sir James, this man doesn't remember a thing about his former life. Whatever trauma he suffered, it has wiped his memories for good." Cameron leant back in the uncomfortable chair and smiled smugly. "If you thought you did, you wouldn't have bothered to go to these lengths. It would have been easier to just kill him...again."

"Your sense of humor always tended towards the black." Lester swung his swivel chair around, his back now to Cameron. "Thank you, you may go now."

Still smiling, Cameron rose to his feet and walked out of the room. Lester continued to stare out of his office window long after the door had swung shut. He hoped that Stephen Hart did accept his new life for the gift it was, and didn't start to want more. Cameron seemed confident the man would never remember his past, but Lester had seen many strange and sometimes miraculous things in his line of business, and never took anything for granted. He certainly never left anything to chance, having the flat, phone and car bugged to keep track of Mister Hart at home and beyond. Even his work was to be monitored, just in case. If Stephen Hart started to remember too much, Lester would know about it. The original plan to use what the man knew to capture Helen Cutter was now defunct. He was nothing now but collateral damage.

Swinging back around, Lester pulled his chair up to his desk and flipped open his laptop. The Stephen Hart issue had been addressed and put to bed.

Lester had more urgent matters to attend to.

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to be continued...