A/N: This is a slash fic, i have read some briallant stories about Nick/Stephen and Nick not remembering their relationship. This wouldn't leave me alone until i had written it down. Normal disclaimers apply, please R&R and i will write more thanks.

Nick doesn't remember. I have all these feelings and memories and he doesn't remember. No it's worse than that, it never happened for him.

To begin with I had hope, I thought he was just being careful after coming through the anomaly and finding things had changed. I hoped that he didn't want to hurt me. But the more he talked about Claudia and what they shared, the more I knew that he loved her, that he could never love me.

I wish it hadn't been such a secret now, our relationship, that someone other than me knew just what had been lost. That someone was able to offer words of comfort, or at least to try. I cannot help but feel doomed. Nick's surprise when I followed him through the anomaly proved that he thought of me only as a colleague, and after Helen's revelation probably less than that.

I am sitting at my desk in the arc, my foot throbbing, after the debacle with the raptors, waiting for Cutter to arrive. Lester seems to have something up his sleeve. My eyes are on Cutter immediately as he walks through the door; he snipes at Lester and joins Abby and Connor. I don't think he even notices that I am not with them. Then over the hushed voices, the clicking of heels on the tiled floor can be heard, with a whoosh the main doors open and Lester is introducing his newest member of the team, some PR woman. But I am not looking at her I am looking at Nick's face, he calls her Claudia, she corrects him, but he looks at her in a way I thought he would only ever look at me. I hobble out quietly soon after, desperate for a stiff drink or twenty.

Stephen's been acting strange since I came back, well not back exactly, Connor has come up some alternative reality theory he once saw on Stargate SG1, it makes my head spin. So I am not sure if this Stephen is the same one I've known all these years. But either way something seems wrong.

I try not to let it affect our work at the mall too much, although he seems desperate to bring it up. I meant what I said about shooting him if I had wanted him dead, although the idea that he thought I would let him be torn to pieces by a raptor is more than uncomfortable. I hoped he knew me better than that.

What I realise now is how much I took him for granted, I expected him to read my mind, provide the logistics for any plan that came to me. I miss the closeness we used to share, and the occasional brush of an arm or shoulder just reminding me that he had my back.

I don't like thinking about these things too much as it raises all sorts of questions I am not ready face, so I throw myself into trying to find Claudia. I can barely control myself when I am introduced to the newest member of the team, she looks like Claudia and sounds like her. But she is so different, the makeup the clothes the way she carries herself. It's not right at all.

I notice Stephen hobbling out of the door, from the corner of my eye. Something churns in the pit of my stomach knowing how close he came to being stuck in the past or worse killed. Part of me wants to take him home, make sure he is okay, like I used to do. But he seems so distant now; I can't bring myself to move.