DISCLAIMER – Not mine.

A/N – Not normally the sort of show I would write about, but I thought, eh, I have nothing better to do, so...

"Uh – Professor? Hello?"

Nick Cutter stared into space, lost in his own world. He had given up on marking essays hours ago. Part of him knew that he was spending far too much time thinking about Helen , about Claudia, and the anomalies. The past and the future; one changed, and the other destroyed. There would be no future with Claudia now.

"Is he dead, do you think? He doesn't look dead."

An exasperated voice muttered in reply. "Shut up, Connor."

"I'm just saying...is he asleep with his eyes open?"

Reluctantly, before Stephen could give into the urge to throw the young man out, Nick dragged himself away from morbid thoughts. He swivelled his chair round to face his most eager student. With considerable effort, Nick collected himself, and gestured for Connor to speak. The young man looked even more excitable than usual, and was triumphantly holding a newspaper article.

"Hi Professor!" he said. "Did you see about the new dinosaur exhibition?"

"What can I do for you?" Nick said. He winced at the wavering smile on the young man's face. Apparently his tone hadn't been as measured as he'd thought.

"Um – it's about my dissertation, Professor." Connor said. He laughed nervously. "I've spent so much time chasing velociraptors that I'm really behind."

Nick let his mind wander, even as he listened and nodded at all the appropriate points. He tried not to notice Stephen hovering awkwardly in the background. A stab of anger took him by surprise. They had declared a truce – hadn't really been given a choice, under the circumstance – but the elephant was still in the room.

"So, what do you think?"

His professional side kicked in. "I think you need to come up with a plan. Having all these ideas is fine, but there's no structure." He eyed Connor suspiciously. "How long did you think about this before you came to see me?"

A bright red flush coloured the young man's face. "Um."

"Come back when you've got something to show me."

"So that's a definite no to the aliens?"

He didn't even bother to reply to that, and ignored the brief conversation Connor had with Stephen on his way out. Nick had the idea that they were worried about him. It had presented itself in small ways – whispered conversations, clandestine phone-calls, sideways glances. A tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. It sounded like he was describing an affair. Stephen rose, catching Nick's peripheral vision, and the smile disappeared.

"Connor's eager." Stephen said.

"Connor's always eager."

"You sure you should have dismissed him like that?"

Nick suppressed the flash of anger that flared up. "He had nothing."

"He had ideas."

"Nothing secure, nothing planned. He probably thought about it for all of five minutes before coming to me."

Stephen started to say something. He paused, and shook his head, well aware that any conversation with Cutter at the moment was like a minefield. Not for the first time, the younger man wished he had never met Helen. He turned back to his desk. There was a growing pile of paperwork that he had neglected in favour of working on the "anomaly problem" as he had taken to calling it.

"What?"

Stephen bit his lip. He had hoped that Cutter would leave it alone. "You've been – short. With all your students."

"Stephen, you and I both know that most of them waste my time."

"Yeah. But not Connor."

Nick leant back in his chair and sighed. "You're right." He rubbed at his tired eyes. "I'll talk to him."

Stephen watched Cutter go. The older man looked tired. He had done ever since returning from the anomaly six weeks ago. Stephen hadn't been surprised to find out that Connor and Abby were both concerned too. The story about Claudia Brown was bizarre. What had surprised him was Connor's newfound belief that Cutter was telling the truth. He had never really considered the consequences of their ability to walk into the past before, but if it was all true…Stephen chewed his lip absentmindedly. He wondered how much else they had changed, simply by taking a walk around a world that was not really their own.

He couldn't decide which of the two possibilities was worse. Take A – the world has been altered, and could be altered again, by the anomalies – or B – Nick Cutter was suddenly losing his mind. Stephen sat down and grabbed a piece of paper from the pile. He shook his head, dismissing reacherous thoughts in favour of paperwork.