The road not taken... Part 2
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
As Helen Cutter was leaving the ARC building, she was experiencing an emotion that she hadn't felt for a long time: she was shaken. Jenny Lewis' comment, possibly childish, was quite heartfelt, and it shook Helen to the core.
"Just what is happening to me, here?" she muttered to herself. "This is disturbing."
"Helen. What are you doing here?"
It was Stephen. Seeing him here and now, when Helen was already off balance by Jenny Lewis' statement was painful. "Hello, Stephen," she said, sounding oddly bashful, "how are you doing?"
"Relatively fine, away from your mind games," Stephen wasn't in a charitable mood this morning. "What are you doing here?"
"I just had a conversation with Nick and Jenny Lewis," Helen shrugged.
"A civil conversation?"
"You don't see your base burning down your ears?" Helen asked wryly.
"You can do that?"
"Apparently, and it's disturbing," Helen shivered. "To me, at least."
Stephen frowned. He intended not to be manipulated by Helen ever again, but here Helen appeared not to be manipulating him either, therefore...
"You want me to buy you some coffee?" he suggested, after a brief mental consideration. "Because it looks like you need some – and you need some company even more."
"I would like that," Helen said, surprising herself. "I would like some company indeed." She was feeling strange, off-balance for the first time in a long while, and that was worrisome. "Please?"
Stephen folded.
After Jenny was left on her own, she found the loneliness nowhere as satisfying as she expected it to be. There was a clear disturbance in the force, and she was, probably, in the center of it – something that Jenny wasn't enjoying one bit.
"Nick! Cutter! There you are!" she said with a forced joviality after thinking over the earlier events for about half an hour. "I wasn't sure that I'll be able to find you-"
"This is my office – Jenny," Nick said, looking embarrassed. "I mean, where else would I be?"
"Sorry, this is my first real day on the job," it was Jenny's turn to be embarrassed. "I, uh, well..."
"That's okay, we all make mistakes," Nick was starting to get his act together. "So, uh, why are you here?"
"I wanted to apologize – and to your wife too," Jenny explained, "regarding my outburst earlier. It's just that too many people have said something like that to me before: my parents just saw my potential, my fiancé sees a potential wife, and you and your wife are seeing this Claudia woman – it's annoying. Why cannot anyone see me for myself?"
"I don't know," Nick said thoughtfully. "Who are you then, Jenny Lewis?"
"Well!" Jenny said, flustered, "are you really interested in me or you just being polite? Because if you are, you want to go somewhere else and find out?"
Nick just nodded. Jenny's outburst had affected him too: he hadn't realized that not unlike Helen, he was wondering if he could bring Claudia back regardless of what that would to Jenny, and that just wasn't right.
"You mean it?" Jenny asked incredulously, not quite believing her own luck. "All right then!"
"Connor," Abby muttered in a slightly incredulous tone of voice some time later, "what is wrong with this picture?"
"Um," Connor said thoughtfully, "Stephen is talking to Helen, while Nick is talking to Jenny, while you're talking to me, and nobody seems to be arguing, contrary to some of our latest discussion sessions?"
Abby blinked. "Well, yes. Hah. I didn't think about it this way."
"That's okay, Abby, sometimes you just don't-"
Abby glared. "Don't push your luck!" she told Connor.
Before Connor could reply, there came the sounds of a time anomaly alarm, and so everybody reluctantly got up from their seats and went see Lester.
TBC