Dandelion
My entry for "D" of the A-Z Primeval FanFic Challenge
Who? Connor and Abby
When? I'm not entirely sure. Probably post-series 1, pre series-2 but in the new timeline where the ARC exists and Abby and Connor are closer friends.
Lyrics? "Soldier On" by Temper Trap
"Well, this side of mortality is scaring me to death…"
Despite everything, battered and bruised as they are, strangely it makes sense to spend their Friday afternoon in the same way as they have all summer. It's become part of their routine – anomalies permitting, of course – to sit in the parkland south of the ARC. It's not anything special, just a field that no one really uses anymore, but it feels like it belongs to them: somewhere to sit and think and not say very much together.
When there isn't much going on at the ARC and Lester is done with his Friday morning moan, they escape. The weather has been far too nice all summer to waste time hiding underground. Cutter and Stephen usually end up in a beer garden somewhere. Abby used to go with them, but now it feels more natural to stick with Connor. She's not sure why but she can't be bothered to analyse it.
They make their way through the grass and sit with their backs to the tall, glass building. They admire the flowers and the weeds equally: Abby makes a daisy chain and Connor tries, unsuccessfully, to hold a tune with a blade of grass. Still, Abby finds it funny to watch him try.
Dandelions everywhere are going to seed now and turning into wispy, white balls of fluff, replacing the once golden florets. The fine hairs attached to each seed stick out at different angles, reminding Connor of the organised shards and splinters of an anomaly. He keeps plucking these dandelion clocks out of the ground and blowing their seeds into the wind. The sap is beginning to stain his fingertips.
He picks a new stem, careful not to disturb the seed head; then taking a sharp breath in, he blows it all away in one go until he's left with the bare stalk. The delicate seeds float upwards and catch the breeze, dispersing in the air. Many of them come to land on Abby's head and shoulders, like snowflakes lost in the paleness of her hair.
She glances upwards as they settle over her and then she looks at Connor steadily, but doesn't scold him. One seed gets caught in her eyelashes and she blows out of the corner of her mouth to dislodge it. She catches Connor's sheepish smile but frowns at the cut across his eyebrow, stitched together by a medic. There's stubble on his chin too. How long were they through that anomaly?
She's been absentmindedly toying with a buttercup in the grass. With her good arm, she picks it and holds it under Connor's chin. The yellow petals catch the light and she smiles.
"You like butter on your toast," she tells him.
"With marmalade," he says, carefully taking the buttercup from her fingers.
"Or honey."
"Only when you remember to buy it." She makes a mental note on her shopping list. Simple things make him happy.
Connor's tired eyes assess the scratches on her right shoulder, the graze on her elbow, her left arm in one of those silly foam slings. Just a precaution, the medic had said. He reaches out to gently touch the purple bruise on her cheekbone, drawing his fingers back just in time, and instead tucking the buttercup behind her ear.
Feeling awkward, he looks down at his knees: there are plasters on both, like he's six years old again and fallen over in the playground.
Sighing, he reaches for another dandelion. With each blow, Abby softly counts "one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock" as the seeds fall all around them. It's an unpredictable way of telling the time, as random as the anomalies.
This one didn't kill them. Others might.
They'll take that risk together.
"Soldier on, soldier on. Keep your heart close to the ground…"