Helen brings home Connor
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures.
1. (Several weeks later)
The evening was typical of an English October-night – dark, damp, not quite rainy, not quite foggy, but definitely cold, cold enough for Jenny Lewis to wince as her still not-quite-recovered muscles twitched and ached slightly due to the above reasons.
It has been several weeks – probably a month or two – since Helen had brought her back from that ill-fated quest into the prehistoric past, and since then, things continued to proceed in new and unusual directions.
Take her own life, for the main example. The original Jenny Lewis would've never gone through a time anomaly in the forest of Dean or anyplace else, would have never experienced certain death twice or lose some muscle mass in her legs... and yet she would not have given up that experience either, and not just because of the sea reptile's tooth that she used as a conversation piece when her parents had come to visit.
And then there was Helen Cutter. The anthropologist turned time traveller turned impromptu assassin turned madwoman was now turning into someone else, namely a professional artist – and Jenny Lewis was right in the middle of it. Somehow, during all of those years of loneliness, Helen Cutter had picked a hobby – an earlier one than the whole kill Nick and destroy humanity thing – and it was drawing. Scenery, prehistoric and futuristic animals, people – Helen could draw them all, and then some: Jenny's mother, in particular, had been caught rather flat-footed when Helen took-on her challenge and had drawn the Lewis family... as a family of centaurs, of all things. Rather non-canonical centaurs too, and Mrs. Lewis had not been amused... but Jenny's father was, and that settled things nicely, as Jenny, being now something of Helen's PR agent, was allowed to keep her hard-won independence from her family...
There was a knock on the door, and Jenny frowned – one of her new idiosyncrasies had been giving Helen a spare key, so the older woman had never knocked-
"Jenny, open up!" Helen's voice followed the knock. "I've run into a familiar face in a bar and brought him here!"
Him? Jenny couldn't exactly imagine who the man in question was: Sarah and Becker had rescued Danny, Connor and Abby but there were some complications, she had heard from Lorraine, Lester's secretary that Danny had ended up in modern-day Corsica of all places and Lester thus was currently busy-
Suddenly, the door was opened rather violently, and a rather irritated Helen dragged a very drunk Connor Temple inside the flat, leaving Jenny feel rather flabbergasted...
2.
The morning light filtered through the windows half closed by the exotic-looking curtains onto a rather girly-looking bed. Connor Temple, who was certainly not girly, but who was lying in that bed all the same, grimaced and opened one bloodshot eye.
What had happened last night? He mutely wondered. Of course, he could remember yesterday to a point, which was that he would rather forget that wretched day completely, but instead he remembered clear enough, except for the twilight part of it – never mind the night. That was just a big black blot with some cobweb memories that vanished away like dew in sunlight whenever he tried to concentrate on any one of them.
Still, where he was, currently? This wasn't Lester's apartment, or Abby's- theirs- his- flat, or –
There were voices coming from outside the bedroom, Wincing and feeling as if every last bone in his body was hung-over, Connor carefully made his way.
3.
The rest of the house, or at least the parts that Connor could see, had that same look – not so much neat, as girly, feminine, or some similar adjective. That didn't console Connor any – he knew that the two qualities didn't always go together gender-wise, and-
The corridor suddenly opened into a clean and small dining room, where a pair of women were sitting at a table – at least, Connor assumed that they were women, for the bright sunlight in this room was a bit too much for his eyes for the moment and all that he could truly distinguish were their silhouettes; beyond that, they could be aliens from Jupiter for all that he could really see.
"Ah, Mr. Temple," one of the women/aliens thrust something glassy and cold into Connor's hands. "Drink this and return to human race at least temporarily, would you?"
Connor's conscious brain feels like oozing out of the ears in regards to making sense from the woman's voice. His subconscious, however, works just fine, and so he takes the glass of coldness and gulps it down.
The next moment, some icy cold fireworks burst in his skull, and he just ran into the bathroom, momentarily forgetting about his hosts.
"...that was cruel," was the last thing that he remembered for a while.
4.
Shortly afterwards, Connor re-emerged from the washroom, still looking a bit flushed and a bit self-disgusted, but otherwise fine; he emerged and walked back to the dining room, where another plate with sausages, black bread and ketchup, all looking rather appetizing to the hungry youth. The faces that were located on the other side of the table, however... they were another story.
"You!" Connor exclaimed at the sight of the two women who were the last people he expected to see together. "What are you doing here?" he turned to Helen.
"Well, since I brought you here last night I decided to stay around and ask you some questions... oh, right about now," Helen said airily, but the look on her face was much more serious.
"I don't have to answer anything to you-"
"Connor, last night you were badly drunk, and Abby didn't answer the phone when I called her. What's wrong?" Jenny said before Connor could finish his statement or Helen respond to it.
Now that caused a reaction: Connor's defiant stance just crumbled and he almost shrunk onto himself. "Abby," he managed to half-gasp half-sob, "Abby is dying!"
"What?!" It took all of Jenny's self-control not to launch herself across the table. "What- how-"
"It all started, as luck would have it, when Sarah and Becker brought us back-"
"Wait – did they bring you straight from the Cretaceous, or did you take a more... roundabout route?" Helen interrupted.
"Actually... yeah, first me and Abby jumped through a time anomaly that we found, partly in desperation of searching for Danny, partly to avoid the possible encounter with the big rock from space that killed the dinosaurs – pretty stupid, hah?"
"...no," Helen shook her head as she and Jenny exchanged an enigmatic look between themselves (something that bothered Connor somehow, along the way), "it wasn't – you were just not so lucky and somewhat ignorant: back then, the time was late Cretaceous, but it was still 10 million years before the giant meteorite caused the K/T extinction, so you were in no danger from that, I made sure of it."
"...oh, okay, anyways, after we landed in the Jurassic, and saw the sauropods, the allosaurs, the ceratosaurs, and the stegosaurs... Sarah and Becker found us and brought us back at that point," a slight smile appeared momentarily on Connor's face before vanishing abruptly. "At any rate, though, the problems began when we came back: first Abby had a sudden attack of diarrhoea, but after that she seemed okay for a while – a really short while, but still – and then she began to deteriorate, there's no other word, and the doctors are seriously confused-"
"So, let me see," Helen said quietly. "First you go back in time and then forwards, right?"
"Yeah, but-" Connor fell silently, as Helen brusquely got up from her seat.
"Jenny," she spoke to the other woman, "have Connor take you to the hospital where they keep Abby, unless it's in the ARC's medical wing-"
"It's not – I mean, she's not there," Connor responded, "the ARC wasn't equipped to handle such sicknesses, so Abby was moved to a local hospital, you know, the one in our neighbourhood, because at first we thought that it was nothing, just a bug, but then it became too late for her to be moved, and- why are you looking at me like that?"
"I think I have a technology that can heal your girlfriend – Abby, was it?" Helen said, as she began to move towards the door. "However, I thought that you want to be around as well, 'cause clearly the two of you have something good, if I ever understood couples-"
"You can do that? With technology? That doesn't make sense- and besides, it's you. You killed Nick – why do you care about Abby?"
"I don't – I just think that it'll be better for my plans if she lives rather than dies," Helen's voice was both emotionless and sharp, like a finely made blade. "Therefore, I will try to heal her, whether you believe me or not." Without any further comments, she pulled out a small, bluish, rectangular device from her pocket – the time anomaly manifestation device. Several quick button punches – and she vanished into a time anomaly.
Connor looked at Jenny, who breathed in hard and got onto her feet. "Come on," she said, her cheeks a bit flushed with effort. "Lead me to the car, please?"
Connor blinked. Was it just his imagination or had Jenny gain some weight?
4.
"You're late," Helen said coolly as they met her at the front doorway to the hospital, "and Connor's got mismatched ears. What did he do this time?"
"All I did was comment about Jenny's-" Connor winced as the aforementioned Jenny whirled towards him, obviously pissed.
"Don't mind him," Helen's voice froze the two of them on the spot. "When I met Nick at around that age he was no more tactful than his, uh, what the term I am looking for?"
"I believe you called him a sycophant," Jenny muttered, as Helen helped walk up the stairs and through the doors. "And yeah, I am aware that I am still a bit out of shape – do the two of you have to rub it in?"
"I haven't said anything," Helen muttered.
"Yeah! And you didn't even answer me!" Connor piped up as he gave Helen a critical look. "Say, where is your miracle cure or whatever? Is it in your pockets or wherever?"
"Yes. It is very compact," Helen said.
"So, where did you get it?"
"The right question would when did I get it, and I got it in the twenty-fifth or maybe twenty-sixth century AD."
"Oh, you mean where the future predators and the fungus-"
"No. They came onto the scene roughly 5 thousand years after today, that's four-and-a-half millennia of difference. Haven't Nick taught you any basic paleontological techniques? Just whom do you plan on being when you grow up? Nick... he had his flaws, but palaeontology and dinosaurs had been his dream, and I thought that they were yours, too."
The word 'sycophant' or anything similar was never said aloud, but they hung in the air unsaid all the same, and Helen's gaze had such a potent mix of disgust and disappointment in it, that Connor turned first red, then white, and then fell completely silent as he led the other two to Abby's room.
5.
When Jenny had last seen Abby Maitland several months ago, the young woman was a vibrant and spunky character with blonde hair. Now, the woman who was lying in a hospital bed appeared to be a complete opposite to that character – and in a bad way.
"What- what has happened to her?" Jenny gasped, as she looked at the wizened, greyed shell of a woman lying before her, with several UVs going into her arms and fresh operation scars showing starkly on her abdomen and torso.
"A mixture of ptomaine poisoning and bacteraemia," Helen's voice was suddenly very quiet, "made worse by roughly 150 million years of time travel."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I... I have seen similar symptoms in some of my clones, and some of my personal chronological clones had experienced it," Helen shook her head, still quite quiet. "Now, I hope that this will work on her...and if it doesn't... I accept full responsibility."
With these words, Helen pulled out a small sack from her pocket. She unwrapped it – and it proved to be considerably bigger than before – and pulled out several contraptions, mainly consisting of tubes and wires that culminated in rather robotic-looking "gloves" at two of its' ends, and a battery pack of some sorts in the middle.
"Um, what are you doing?" Connor managed to ask Helen, as the latter just slipped on the contraction, as if it was a sweater.
"Revving it up," the latter replied curtly, as she attached an eye-piece on top of the rest. "Now shush, I am looking!" And the latter was said so masterfully, that Connor and Jenny actually drew back a bit and grew silent, as Helen cast a critical eye over Abby's prone form, lit the tips of her metallic 'gloves' with a chromatically white glow – and then jabbed them into Abby's stomach!
6.
For several minutes the hospital chamber was flooded with chromatically white light, crackling sound and a steady smell of ozone – as if a ball lightning has manifested in the hospital room... or maybe there was no 'as if', while Helen's administrations of Abby's conditions went, and moments passed, each as long as a heartbeat. And then – it was over.
"You!" Connor exclaimed in righteous rage, momentarily forgetting his chastisement at Helen's hands, "you! What you-"
He froze, staring at Abby, who was staring back at him, actually looking around the room in a state of general confusion. "Connor, what is going on? Am I still- Why is Helen- Never mind!" she suddenly grimaced and raced off into the built-in bathroom.
"Well, it's so good being right," Helen exhaled sharply as she half-turned around to Jenny, wiping, flakes of rush off her sleeves and into the current waste bin. "Now let's leave and let the young couple settle things on their own, okay?"
Jenny nodded mutely, staring with something suspiciously resembling awe in her eyes. "Um, where are-" she began, indicating the apparatus that Helen had used on Abby and which now was gone.
"Deteriorated completely in the process," Helen gave a part-sheepish and part-awkward date. "I admit that it wasn't in the best of conditions when I have grabbed it-" she paused. "Anyways, Jenny, I think you and I should leave-"
"Yes, yes, and have them make up, or make out, or whatever," Jenny laughed. "Anyways, Connor-"
"Excuse me," the door opened and yet another woman walked into the room. "I thought that I've heard a name of Connor mentioned here – oh, you are here. Hello again."
"Caroline," Connor spoke slowly. "Hello, what are you doing?"
For a few second the four people just stood there, staring at each other, and then Caroline's face hardened, as if she was plunging into some unknown waters.
"Connor," she said firmly. "I'm pregnant."