Apples and Ammonites
My entry for "A" of the A-Z Primeval FanFic Challenge
Who? Cutter (and Helen)
When? Post Series 2, Pre Series 3
Professor Nick Cutter was having a bad day. It was 8pm on Friday evening: he had a headache, a sore ankle and one of Lester's rather terse memos in his hand.
Anomaly debrief report. My desk. Monday morning.
Sighing, Cutter binned the memo and started filling out the report based on that day's explorations and discoveries. He'd never worked the normal nine to five most other men his age had settled for. He was always ready to go as soon as the next anomaly alert sounded. Even when all was quiet on that front, his mind was still working: he'd sit up into the early hours pondering his theories, setting out his predictions and justifying his instincts.
But, tonight, he just couldn't keep his mind on the task at hand.
Stephen had died two weeks previously and he'd visited his grave that morning, the first time since the funeral. Only a few of the wilted lilies remained: the majority of them had been taken by the wind. It was blustery enough to be autumn, spring had been slow in coming this year. However, it wasn't the dead flowers that worried him. It was the more permanent memorial of a fossilised ammonite that had caused him concern.
Once, he'd associated the ammonite with nature and history, of knowledge to be discovered: a symbol of his own career in palaeontology and academia. Nowadays, it was the personal history associated with the creature that made his blood run cold. An ammonite only meant one thing to him now: Helen.
He'd closed his eyes and leant heavily against the wooden cross that marked Stephen's resting place. When he looked up and blinked in the sunlight, Helen was there, as if conjured by magic. She was a force of nature to be reckoned with, far more dangerous than anything else he'd encountered in the natural world: appearing without warning and disappearing without a trace, leaving devastation in her wake. Stephen was her latest casualty.
Cutter watched, with a wary curiosity, as his estranged wife leant against a nearby tree. She was cutting slices of apple with her knife and popping them straight from the blade into her mouth, the way his mother had always warned him not to.
It was the nonchalant way with which she ate each segment that riled Cutter. It proved beyond belief that she hadn't cared about Stephen. She'd surely predicted and encouraged his heroic tendencies that had ultimately led to his death, and then she left the scene of the crime without a word. She hadn't even had the decency to attend the funeral, as far as he knew.
Cutter sighed and walked over to his wife. "What do you want, Helen?" he opened with the same old line, always slightly nervous of her answer.
"Visiting the grave of an old, dear friend. Paying my respects," she said in her haughty, self-confident way, as if hanging around graveyards was normal behaviour.
Cutter frowned at this. "Please don't pretend that you cared about Stephen."
"I loved him."
He coughed out a short laugh and shook his head in disbelief. "Maybe," he said, "In some sick, twisted way, maybe you did. But you manipulated him." He couldn't help but let the anger seep into his words. The loss of Stephen was still very new. "You used him for your own purposes," he reminded her, "And now he's dead, Helen. That's not love!"
She smirked, unaffected by Cutter's resentment. "And what do you know of love?"
"Not a lot, it seems," he looked pointedly at his wife. "Enough to know that Stephen deserved better."
Helen smirked again, that infuriating smile she always wore when she knew something you didn't know; and she always wanted you to know you didn't know and that she'd never tell.
Until it was too late.
Cutter was finally beginning to learn that. "There are a lot of things you don't know, Nick," she told him. "Mainly how to separate the individual from the big picture. This is bigger than Stephen, bigger than you."
"What are you on about now?" he said with a fatigued sigh. Helen liked to talk in riddles.
She munched on another slice of apple, waiting until she'd swallowed before answering. "The big picture. Humanity's very existence."
"The big picture," he repeated. "What about it?" His patience was wearing thin.
Another smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She started to walk away, backwards at first, then spinning quickly on her heel and pacing off across the graveyard.
Cutter went to follow her, still desperately wanting answers, but his foot hit a hole in the ground, hidden by the long grass. He felt his ankle twist and he cursed as he fell to his knees. When he looked up, Helen had gone.
He'd sat on the damp grass for a long time, rubbing his sore foot, waiting to see if she'd come back, but she didn't.
Now, sat at his desk, he stared at the ammonite fossil she'd once given him. In a fit of sudden anger, he pushed back his chair roughly and chucked his report for Lester into the bin to join the memo. Then he seized the ammonite and threw it across the room, not wanting to see it anymore.
"Whoa!" It hit the floor by two stilettoed feet and broke into several pieces. He looked up from the shattered remains to see a stunned Jenny looking back at him.
"Sorry," he said, leaning both hands heavily on the desk, "Are you ok?"
"Fine. What happened?"
"Helen."
"Ah." It required no further explanation. Jenny edged cautiously into the room. "Fancy going for that drink?"
Cutter looked into her face, so familiar, so open and so kind. He relaxed and smiled. "Thought you'd never ask!"