Jenny
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures.
1.
Jenny dreamt.
Jenny dreamt that she was drowning and a monstrous fish-lizard thing was coming from the deep aquatic abyss to bite her in two and she was too slow and couldn't feel her legs and-
Suddenly, a sharp stench cut across her nasal nerves, across her face, and her eyes fluttered open of her own accord – only to see a hand belonging to a very familiar face thrust something that resembled a freshly laid bird dropping from beneath her nose.
"Ah, good, I can see that you're awake," Helen Cutter said calmly, "as well as alive, and sane, I presume? You are sane, aren't you?"
"Helen," Jenny said sternly, but somehow managed to gasp pathetically instead. "I was looking for you."
"You found me," Helen said, as she moved away from Jenny and flung the droppings out of the grotto in which they were currently staying. "Now what?"
Ever since the episode with the giganotosaurus, as well as the development regarding the futuristic fungus, Jenny was trying to be more spontaneous, like Danny Quinn had been in those circumstances, and so she told it to the other woman.
Helen's eyebrows curled up and her eyes widened in surprise – "Ms. Lewis, my respect for you have gone up a notch or two," she told the former PR agent. "I never thought that you had it in you."
Jenny felt her own eyebrows rise up. "What, no criticisms or comments about my stupidity, how I went unprepared and ended-up-"
"I did the same thing – only I've been relatively luckier," Helen said dismissively. "I didn't end up in the sea, I ended on dry ground...and that was the end of my luck for a long, long while. Better thank your guardian angel that you didn't end up learning how to build a primitive boat among the giant marine reptiles of late Jurassic, for example."
"You mean like the one that almost bit me in two?"
"No, that one only lacerated your legs, albeit pretty badly – I had to use most of my current supplies to patch you up – oh, and do you want a souvenir? It came from your leg-" and Helen thrust a still-slightly-bloody tooth under Jenny's nose.
"That's a dinosaur's tooth?" Jenny gasped.
"No, dinosaurs live on land, what attacked you lives fully in the water, therefore it is not a dinosaur," Helen said patiently. "Also, your attacker wasn't fully grown, most likely, otherwise he would've killed you then and there, never mind an escape-" she paused. "Which leads me to my next question – why have you come?"
"For you."
"Ah," Helen said quietly. "I see. And now that you found me, now what?"
Jenny worked her mouth, clearly searching for the right words to say. When she finally spoke, she asked this question:
"Who was Claudia Brown?"
"She would've been you, if your grandmother hadn't been able to stand up to her mother and marry the man she was 'supposed' to."
"Oh? But the only way grandma was able to do that was of her uncle Jonas, who went crazy-"
"Yes, and in one version he found a time anomaly and had his mental breakdown in the Pliocene, while in this one he didn't."
Jenny stiffened. "Were you behind it?"
"No, it was just an unfortunate side effect, you could say," Helen said miserably. "I never had anything against Claudia-you having it with Nick, as long as I could've tried it out with Stephen..." her voice trailed away, all rigidness and control drained from her posture, and Jenny saw just an ordinary woman, getting on in her old – well, middle – age, lonely as the rocky walls of their grotto... in other words someone, whom Jenny had suspected all along.
"There, there," Jenny decided to get up to console Helen and froze. "What's with my legs?"
"I had to sterilize all the wounds," Helen said, her voice once more having that matter-of-fact quality, "as well as cut out the reptile's teeth – there were two or three still stuck there, as I showed you. To do that, I had to apply fire, since I was short of medical supplies, and so I had to numb your legs by cutting off blood circulation to them, and then I bandaged up the wounds – fortunately I did have plaster of Paris-"
"Stop," Jenny said firmly and really looked at her legs: they were naked, save for white-coloured bands of plaster wrapped around them in several places; fortunately, she still had her panties on-
"I am wearing your shirt," Jenny said slowly, "and the panties aren't mine either. Have you-?"
"Your things were soaked with seawater and blood and several sorts of dirt, so I threw them out and changed you," Helen shrugged.
"Changed me?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's nothing that I haven't seen on myself, anyways," Helen said calmly.
Jenny felt blood rush to her cheeks and the righteous anger beginning to burn in her belly, when there was a thump and a commotion outside. "What's going on?" she said momentarily distracted from her embarrassment.
"Oh, just the T-Rex waking up."
"Say what?"
"It's just a juvenile," Helen said, a trifle defensively. "It sometimes comes down here to hunt for food. In this case, your body attracted quite a few of seabirds and pterosaurs and they, in turn, have attracted the dinosaur."
"Oh," Jenny said weakly. "Wait – seabirds?"
"Yes, they have already evolved by now, and as nasty as any man-sized creatures can get," Helen said, as she walked deeper into the grotto, from where some interesting smells were emanating. "Incidentally, do you want some hot soup?"
2.
"This is really isn't how I pictured our confrontation," Jenny said slowly as she carefully ate the hot and filling soup from a plate. "I mean, even if I had entertained the notion of us sitting down and sharing a meal, somehow I didn't picture myself being that pathetic at that moment."
"You should've met in on my third jump, to late Jurassic," Helen said softly, with a hint of some rather self-depreciating humour. "Now then I was pathetic, and a bit crazy as well – you see, I was just getting the hand of the whole time anomaly situation, and my clothes were almost gone from all the exposure, and there were those meat-eating dinosaurs-"
"Helen," Jenny said firmly as she twisted around to fully face the other woman, "why did you kill Nick?"
There was a pause and Jenny gulped, suddenly feeling that a direct confrontation was not such a good idea in her condition.
"It all started," Helen's voice was deep and emotionless, "after Claudia became you – I grew too arrogant, too self-confident – I allied myself with Leek and assisted him. Because I grown too arrogant, Nick was able to trick me easily, and I, in my pride, tried to get him killed. It failed, spectacularly, and Stephen died instead-"
"And that's why you killed Nick, eventually?"
"I guess I sort of went insane, or at least delusional, in all that self-denial afterwards," Helen admitted quietly. "Killing Nick made it only worse. The pair of them just haunted my dreams – only when Danny had killed me, have I finally peace, somewhat."
"You got to stop saying that Danny killed you," Jenny managed to say. "It's creepy."
"Ms. Lewis, let me explain." Helen drew a pair of lines on the grotto's floor. "The line on the left is time flowing from past to present to future. The one on the right is a typical life, going from birth to death, in an opposite direction. Now, here," she put a dot on the left line, "is when I was born, here" another dot "is the Triassic, where I arrived through my first time anomaly, here," a third dot, "is our current position, and here" a fourth and final dot, "is when I died. What strikes you first?"
Jenny just stared at the four dots. "They, they aren't in order!"
"I prefer the term non-linear," Helen said with a small smile. "When you're living a regular, linear life, then yes, death is final, but a non-linear one, ah, that is different. I have died in the Pliocene Africa, three million years BC, but that isn't the end: I have mastered time to the point where I can survive even death itself – to a point. For example, the great K/T extinction that has killed off the dinosaurs as well as roughly-" she froze. It was quiet, too quiet outside, as well as too dark.
"Helen?" Jenny asked in a small voice. "That's not the start of that extinction, is it?"
Instead of replying, Helen half-turned around. "Hop on," she said, "we're sneaking a peek outside."
"Say what? You can't be serious-"
"Just hop on!"
3.
The meteorite was huge – maybe not as big as the moon, but bigger than ten or fifteen Big Ben clock towers put together, all cragged and ragged and red-coloured rock... because it was also red-hot, as opposed to the sun, whose light/heat combo had been more of a yellowish colour... before the massive stone obscured it via its' own bulk.
Moreover, it was moving at an amazing speed – within mere seconds it would impact the planet, and then-
"Helen," Jenny whispered, "is this our end-?"
Helen burst into action: she grabbed Jenny around the legs and raced back into the grotto's depths.
Several moments afterwards the meteorite struck the planet, causing tsunamis and earthquakes all over the world. Needless to say, a certain little coastal grotto got obliterated completely – but it didn't matter, for by then it was already devoid of human life...
4.
The smell of spring flowers and fresh new leaves after the semi-sterile atmosphere of the late Cretaceous grotto is nothing short of overwhelming, Jenny thought as she lay on her back, feeling as if every ounce of strength had left her body and left her with the constitution of a jellyfish, staring helplessly at the clear blue sky with just a hint of clouds at the edge of her vision.
From her right, Jenny heard some new sounds – Helen. "You all right?" the other woman said thickly, clearly not well herself after the mad dash through the time tunnel. "Say something, if you are."
"That was the big one, right?" Jenny said getting into a sitting position. "Got to admit, it was, it was-"
"Big?" Helen's voice was carefully controlled. "Can you, uh, take a look at your legs now?"
"What? Sure," Jenny glanced and froze. "Where are the bandages? They look-"
"Never mind how they look - can you walk?"
"Walk? Let me see-" Jenny tried to shift them and froze. "They- they barely move, they feel so weak – what happened?"
"They got hit with roughly 64 million and several thousand years of healing at once," Helen said flatly. "You're lucky that they haven't atrophied at all – I'm sorry."
"Hah?"
"I'm sorry for this," Helen elaborated, "I intended to stay back there until they healed completely and then take you home, but now, well... that's why I never trust the Cretaceous, you know?"
"...what are we going to do about my legs?"
"Oh, I'll take you to your home; you'll phone Lester, sort it over, get a trainer, and soon will be as good as you ever were."
"No."
"What?!"
"That sort of thinking put me into a mental state that was insufficient to outmanoeuvre a mushroom from the future, let alone a giant meat-eating dinosaur or anything else," Jenny shook her head, and then shifted to face the other woman. "Helen, look. You have sort-of cleaned the slate by saving my life twice, so why not start anew?"
"If you think that I can help you walk and be your sitter-"
"I mean, I would rather deal with you than Lester," Jenny exclaimed. "Helen, come on, there must be something I can do that interests you or something?"
Silence fell, as Helen carefully observed Jenny's still-sitting form. "Hmm... tell me, as a PR agent, do you know any publishing houses or something like that?"
"Maybe," Jenny admitted carefully. "Why? Do you need something published?"
"Yes," Helen said calmly, "something that, perhaps if played right, can help your Center as well – financially: Leek's depredations had hit you hard there too."
"How do you- never mind," Jenny said slowly.
"So, do we have a deal?" Helen hunkered down next to Jenny and stretched out her hand.
For her part, Jenny gave the other woman a look. Probably for the first time ever since their initial meeting, Helen looked somewhat unsure of her surroundings, probably of Jenny's reaction – but why shouldn't she? Everything that Jenny had ever done, has been initially dictated by others – her parents, her fiancé, James and Nick, even Danny was beginning to, when she quit, in part due to the pain of losing Nick, but in other part of self-mortification and certain self-realizations that just didn't sit well with her even back then...
"Deal," she said and shook Helen's hand. "Let's show them!"