Fic, The Visitor, Claudia, Helen, 15
Nov. 24th, 2011 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : The Visitor
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia, Helen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : 1.5
Summary : Claudia gets a unexpected visitor.
A/N : Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lsellersfic’s birthday. I hope you have a lovely day. With thanks to lukadreaming for the beta.
Claudia grimaced in disgust at the wreck of her clothing and consigned the whole lot to the bin with a silent apology to the memory of her grandmother who would no doubt have suggested several different ways of removing the bloodstains. Claudia didn’t approve of waste either, but on this occasion she was prepared to make an exception.
A hot shower improved her mood slightly and got rid of the last of the blood from her skin. She prided herself on taking everything that life threw at her in her stride, including dinosaurs, but even she had to admit that a day on which she’d been knocked unconscious by a pteranodon and then forced to fight a flock of something she couldn’t even pronounce, half-blind and armed with nothing more than a golf-club, could hardly be classed as normal.
Wrapped in her largest, fleeciest dressing-gown, Claudia rubbed her hair partially dry and combed out the tangles. Her flat was warm and her hair would be dry by the time she wanted to go to bed. She knew she ought to have something to eat, but the knowledge that two men had died that day was a very effective appetite suppressant. A drink wouldn’t go amiss, though, even though she usually made a point of never drinking alone.
Claudia padded barefoot through to her living room and came to an abrupt halt in the doorway at the sight of a bottle of red wine and two full glasses standing on the coffee table next to a pile of magazines she’d hadn’t had time to read. For a moment, she wondered if Nick had decided that someone needed to keep an eye on her but that notion was swiftly dispelled when an entirely different Cutter rose lazily from the sofa with the grace of a hunting cat and favoured her with a typically inscrutable smile.
“Helen, what on earth are you doing here?” Claudia amazed herself by managing to keep her voice steady.
“Checking on your health?” It was more of a question that a statement.
Claudia sighed. “It’s been a long day, Helen, and I’m not in the mood for games.”
“That’s good, because neither am I.” Helen picked up one of the glasses of wine and held it out to her. “I save your life today, Claudia, surely that entitles me to exhibit some concern for your welfare?
Claudia accepted the glass and took a sip. Helen must have brought the bottle with her because it certainly wasn’t one of the ones from her kitchen. She wondered fleetingly where Helen obtained her money from – or even whether she’d come by the wine by honest means – but that didn’t seem like the time to be asking that sort of question and Helen was right, she had saved Claudia’s life.
A ping from the kitchen made Claudia jump.
“You need something to eat,” Helen said by way of explanation. “I found two portions of macaroni cheese in your freezer. I haven’t eaten macaroni cheese for years.”
“I don’t suppose they have much of it in the Permian,” Claudia commented.
“Or in the Cretaceous,” her visitor acknowledged lightly.
Helen sauntered through to the kitchen as though she owned the place and returned a few moments later with two plates of food. Claudia’s stomach surprised her by letting out a loud rumble. Helen smiled smugly and handed her a plate and a fork.
They ate in silence and when she’d finished, Helen took the plate from her, poured more wine and took the plates back to the kitchen. Claudia heard the sound of running water and realised with some degree of surprise that Helen was doing the washing up. That degree of domesticity from a woman who habitually wore khaki and carried a rather large knife wasn’t what she’d expected. But then she hadn’t expected to find Helen Cutter sitting on her sofa, either.
“You get in the habit of clearing up quickly after a meal,” Helen offered by way of explanation as she settled down on the sofa next to Claudia and picked up her own glass. “Food attracts predators and I don’t like sharing.”
“Why are you really here, Helen? I meant it when I said I wasn’t in the mood for games.”
“Why so suspicious, Claudia?”
“You lied to us about that pack of sabre-tooths. A friend of Connor’s died because of something that came through the anomaly you led us to. I’m grateful for the fact that you saved my life, but you can hardly be surprised if I’m suspicious of your motives.”
“Your boss kidnapped me. You can hardly blame me for devising an exit strategy. And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t know that the dodos were carrying a parasite.”
But you did know Tom had died because of the dodos, Claudia thought, taking a sip of her wine.
“I heard the soldiers at the golf club talking,” Helen said, answering Claudia’s unspoken thought. In response to a raised eyebrow, Helen sighed. “No, I can’t read minds, but I can read faces.”
“I’m surprised you find many faces to read where you spend most of your time.”
Helen laughed. “Claudia Brown, I don’t suppose you have any idea at all where I spend most of my time, but for your information, animals have faces. Ones as expressive as humans a lot of the time. You just need to know how to read them.”
“What is it with you Cutters and full names?” Claudia snapped.
Her uninvited companion held up a placating hand. “Mea culpa. He picked up that habit from me and I picked it up from my mother.”
Helen pushed a strand of hair back from her tanned forehead and tucked it behind her ear. Wherever she’d been recently, she hadn’t had access to shampoo or conditioner. Her hair looked dry, like it had been exposed to both sun and wind for too long. Her skin was much the same. For a moment, Claudia saw past the aloof, self-assured air that Helen Cutter wrapped herself in like the soldiers did with their Kevlar vests. Underneath lay a woman who looked like she hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks and who almost certainly hadn’t had a bath or a shower in even longer, or slept in a real bed.
“Would you like a shower or a bath, Helen?” The words were out of Claudia’s mouth before she could stop herself, but it seemed like a small price to pay for the help she’d received from Helen that day.
“Do I detect a truce being called?” Helen’s tone appeared to have reverted to her ever-present mockery but Claudia wasn’t fooled. She’d seen the flash of longing in Helen’s brown eyes.
“If you want to put it that way, yes. As you reminded me earlier, you saved my life today. I’m sure I can run to a hot bath and the use of my spare room in return. The bed’s made up and you’ll find a dressing-gown behind the door. Use whatever you want in the bathroom and there’s a new toothbrush in the cabinet.”
“And you won’t call James Lester and have me dragged back off to the bowels of the Home Office?”
“That would seem a little… churlish in the circumstances. Would you like me to put your clothes through the washing-machine? Leave them outside the bathroom door. I have a tumble dryer…”
Helen’s brief hesitation betrayed her suspicions about Claudia’s good intentions, but then she nodded, the lure of clean clothing clearly proving too much of a temptation. Claudia remained on the sofa drinking her wine until she heard the sound of water running in the shower. She finished her glass of wine, refilled both hers and Helen’s to empty the bottle and then went to see if Helen had left her clothes for washing, as Claudia had suggested. She had. The clothes were in a neatly folded pile on the floor along with what looked like a spare shirt from Helen’s pack. They were old and faded and bore signs of repair: a hole neatly-patched with a piece of material taken from the hem and re-sown buttons. Clearly wherever Helen spent her time, she jealously guarded what few possessions she had.
Once the washing was in the machine, Claudia did a quick double-check to make sure her spare bedroom was indeed ready to receive a visitor and found an old, over-sized shirt left behind by a boyfriend from several years ago. She liked the shirt more than she’d ever liked him, if truth be told, and it made a very comfortable nightshirt so she left it on the bed for Helen. She also found some bras, knickers and thick walking-socks that she had purchased but not yet worn. She left them on the bed along with the shirt. The underwear and socks currently in her washing machine were definitely starting to show signs of wear.
When Helen finally emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a dressing-gown almost as fluffy as Claudia’s, she had the warm glow of a woman who had spent a long time under hot water and had then, probably for the first time in a very long while, treated herself to a liberal application of body lotion and moisturiser. She appeared to favour rose scents over citrus, Claudia observed. Helen’s hair was loose on her shoulders and her slender feet were bare. She settled down on the sofa again, cradling the wine glass in her hands and drew her feet up under her. She looked more relaxed than she had done earlier but that changed in an instant as Claudia’s mobile phone started to ring.
Claudia reached out for it, saw that it was Nick calling and hesitated before deciding that not taking the call was a bad idea and could easily end up with someone on her doorstep checking on her health. Holding up her hand to Helen to signify the need to keep quiet, she accepted the call.
“Hello, Nick.” In response to the inevitable question about how she was feeling, Claudia responded, “Yes, I’m absolutely fine.” To her amusement, Nick clearly didn’t quite know what to say next, so fortunately, the call was over relatively quickly after the exchange of a few general platitudes and an exhortation for her to take a day off if she felt in the slightest bit fragile the following day.
“Take two paracetamol and stay in bed?” Helen hazarded accurately. “He never was any good at dispensing tea and sympathy. He’s more of a ‘rise above it’ merchant – except when he’s ill, of course.”
“Prone to man-flu?”
“Aren’t they all?”
Claudia smiled wryly. It seemed strange to be sitting there in a dressing-gown, sharing a bottle of wine and discussing Nick Cutter with his wife – or was that ex-wife? Despite the kiss she’d shared earlier with Nick, she still wasn’t sure what her feelings were towards him. The frequency of the anomalies had left little time for anything personal and anyway, from what she’d seen, Nick was still very much wrapped up in Helen, no matter how much he tried to present himself as dispassionate on that particular subject. She certainly wasn’t fooled, and neither was Lester.
“A nightcap?” she said suddenly, as much to change the direction of her own thoughts as through any desire for more alcohol.
“A brandy would be nice,” Helen replied, her eyes closed, revealing small white lines at the corners than came from squinting into the sun.
As she paused a generous measure into two balloon glasses, Claudia wondered whether Helen had only recently learned how to navigate the anomalies and return to her own time or whether she’d simply been too wrapped up in her fascination at having the whole of time at her disposal to care what had been happening in her absence to a man she must have loved once. But despite Helen’s relaxed demeanour, Claudia didn’t think their fragile truce would withstand any probing questions and, if the truth was told, she wasn’t really sure she wanted to dig too deeply into matters that she might then have to reveal to Nick or to Lester. Better for all of them that this whole incident remained firmly within the realms of plausible deniability.
They drank their brandy in companionable silence until a yawn caught Claudia unawares and she suddenly realised quite how exhausted she felt. The washing machine had stopped and while Helen washed the glasses, Claudia moved the clothes into the dryer. She wondered whether Helen would still be in the flat come morning. Somehow she didn’t think goodbye was a word that featured prominently in the other woman’s vocabulary.
Claudia slipped under the duvet and turned the light off. Sleep wasn’t long in coming, but unfortunately, as was so often the case for her these days, nightmares weren’t far behind…
She came awake and sat up in the same instant, her own cry of fear still echoing in her ears. Sweat had broken out on her body and her heart was hammering in her chest as she groped for the bedside light, her hand trembling in reaction to the sight – in her dream – of her own dead body, stripped bare of flesh the way the golfer’s had been. Before she’d found the light switch, the bedroom door opened and warm light from the corridor flooded the room, driving back the shadows from her mind, but unable to banish them completely.
A moment later, the bed dipped under Helen’s weight and Claudia was pulled into a warm embrace. She opened her mouth to protest that it had been nothing more than a bad dream, but her voice betrayed her and all that emerged was a broken sob. The tears she’d spent most of the afternoon and evening suppressing finally broke through what remained of her self-control. Helen seemed unfazed by her display of emotion. From somewhere, a handful of tissues were pressed into Claudia’s hand and a steadying hand rubbed small, comforting circles on her naked back.
Without speaking, Helen pulled back the duvet and slipped inside the bed with her, settling back against the pillows, one arm around Claudia’s waist. She was wearing the brushed cotton shirt that Claudia had left out for her and Claudia found the familiar smell and feel of the fabric comforting. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and allowed Helen to continue holding her. She knew perfectly well that if the past few nights were anything to go by, the nightmares would only recur the minute she drifted off to sleep again, but she also knew from bitter experience that she couldn’t stay awake for ever.
“I’m good at keeping the monster under the bed at bay,” Helen said matter-of-factly.
“I should have hung onto that bloody golf club,” Claudia muttered, but she made no move to draw away. Helen’s wiry strength was something of a contrast to the yielding breast on which her cheek was currently pillowed, but then from what Claudia had seen of the woman currently sharing her bed, contrasts appeared to define Helen. One moment she appeared nothing more than a dispassionate observer, faintly amused by those who sought to confine her, the next she appeared capable of random altruism.
Claudia let out a long, slow breath. Whatever Helen’s motives, she was grateful for the woman’s presence. Her last thought as she slipped back into sleep was to wonder if Helen would still be there in the morning…
* * * * *
Claudia came awake slowly for the first time in several weeks instead of being jerked from sleep by some nameless fear. The sound of soft breathing from beside her told its own story. Helen Cutter hadn’t vanished back into the shadows. She was sprawled across the bed, the duvet pushed down to her waist, and the cotton shirt lying open, displaying tanned breasts.
The long, white lines of several old scars cut harsh trails across a body that displayed not one ounce of spare fat. One breast had clearly been raked by three claws at some point in the past, leaving parallel lines that had only just missed claiming a nipple. A puckered mark on Helen’s side told of a close encounter with something that owned sharp teeth. Helen’s survival in the wilderness of the past spoke volumes for the woman’s resourcefulness…
Claudia was suddenly aware of an almost imperceptible change in Helen’s breathing that betokened her return to wakefulness. The long dark eyelashes fluttered open and Claudia looked down into brown eyes devoid for once of Helen’s habitual mockery.
“Thank you for keeping the monsters at bay,” Claudia said quietly.
She was no closer to understanding this woman or her motives, and she couldn’t quite rid herself of the feeling that Helen would prove at best an unpredictable ally and at worst a bad enemy but Claudia owed the woman her life.
Set against that debt, a bed for the night and some old clothes hardly seemed much by way of thanks, but Helen appeared content with the bargain. The least Claudia could so now was provide a decent breakfast as well. For once, work could wait.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia, Helen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : 1.5
Summary : Claudia gets a unexpected visitor.
A/N : Written for
lsellersfic’s birthday. I hope you have a lovely day. With thanks to lukadreaming for the beta.Claudia grimaced in disgust at the wreck of her clothing and consigned the whole lot to the bin with a silent apology to the memory of her grandmother who would no doubt have suggested several different ways of removing the bloodstains. Claudia didn’t approve of waste either, but on this occasion she was prepared to make an exception.
A hot shower improved her mood slightly and got rid of the last of the blood from her skin. She prided herself on taking everything that life threw at her in her stride, including dinosaurs, but even she had to admit that a day on which she’d been knocked unconscious by a pteranodon and then forced to fight a flock of something she couldn’t even pronounce, half-blind and armed with nothing more than a golf-club, could hardly be classed as normal.
Wrapped in her largest, fleeciest dressing-gown, Claudia rubbed her hair partially dry and combed out the tangles. Her flat was warm and her hair would be dry by the time she wanted to go to bed. She knew she ought to have something to eat, but the knowledge that two men had died that day was a very effective appetite suppressant. A drink wouldn’t go amiss, though, even though she usually made a point of never drinking alone.
Claudia padded barefoot through to her living room and came to an abrupt halt in the doorway at the sight of a bottle of red wine and two full glasses standing on the coffee table next to a pile of magazines she’d hadn’t had time to read. For a moment, she wondered if Nick had decided that someone needed to keep an eye on her but that notion was swiftly dispelled when an entirely different Cutter rose lazily from the sofa with the grace of a hunting cat and favoured her with a typically inscrutable smile.
“Helen, what on earth are you doing here?” Claudia amazed herself by managing to keep her voice steady.
“Checking on your health?” It was more of a question that a statement.
Claudia sighed. “It’s been a long day, Helen, and I’m not in the mood for games.”
“That’s good, because neither am I.” Helen picked up one of the glasses of wine and held it out to her. “I save your life today, Claudia, surely that entitles me to exhibit some concern for your welfare?
Claudia accepted the glass and took a sip. Helen must have brought the bottle with her because it certainly wasn’t one of the ones from her kitchen. She wondered fleetingly where Helen obtained her money from – or even whether she’d come by the wine by honest means – but that didn’t seem like the time to be asking that sort of question and Helen was right, she had saved Claudia’s life.
A ping from the kitchen made Claudia jump.
“You need something to eat,” Helen said by way of explanation. “I found two portions of macaroni cheese in your freezer. I haven’t eaten macaroni cheese for years.”
“I don’t suppose they have much of it in the Permian,” Claudia commented.
“Or in the Cretaceous,” her visitor acknowledged lightly.
Helen sauntered through to the kitchen as though she owned the place and returned a few moments later with two plates of food. Claudia’s stomach surprised her by letting out a loud rumble. Helen smiled smugly and handed her a plate and a fork.
They ate in silence and when she’d finished, Helen took the plate from her, poured more wine and took the plates back to the kitchen. Claudia heard the sound of running water and realised with some degree of surprise that Helen was doing the washing up. That degree of domesticity from a woman who habitually wore khaki and carried a rather large knife wasn’t what she’d expected. But then she hadn’t expected to find Helen Cutter sitting on her sofa, either.
“You get in the habit of clearing up quickly after a meal,” Helen offered by way of explanation as she settled down on the sofa next to Claudia and picked up her own glass. “Food attracts predators and I don’t like sharing.”
“Why are you really here, Helen? I meant it when I said I wasn’t in the mood for games.”
“Why so suspicious, Claudia?”
“You lied to us about that pack of sabre-tooths. A friend of Connor’s died because of something that came through the anomaly you led us to. I’m grateful for the fact that you saved my life, but you can hardly be surprised if I’m suspicious of your motives.”
“Your boss kidnapped me. You can hardly blame me for devising an exit strategy. And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t know that the dodos were carrying a parasite.”
But you did know Tom had died because of the dodos, Claudia thought, taking a sip of her wine.
“I heard the soldiers at the golf club talking,” Helen said, answering Claudia’s unspoken thought. In response to a raised eyebrow, Helen sighed. “No, I can’t read minds, but I can read faces.”
“I’m surprised you find many faces to read where you spend most of your time.”
Helen laughed. “Claudia Brown, I don’t suppose you have any idea at all where I spend most of my time, but for your information, animals have faces. Ones as expressive as humans a lot of the time. You just need to know how to read them.”
“What is it with you Cutters and full names?” Claudia snapped.
Her uninvited companion held up a placating hand. “Mea culpa. He picked up that habit from me and I picked it up from my mother.”
Helen pushed a strand of hair back from her tanned forehead and tucked it behind her ear. Wherever she’d been recently, she hadn’t had access to shampoo or conditioner. Her hair looked dry, like it had been exposed to both sun and wind for too long. Her skin was much the same. For a moment, Claudia saw past the aloof, self-assured air that Helen Cutter wrapped herself in like the soldiers did with their Kevlar vests. Underneath lay a woman who looked like she hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks and who almost certainly hadn’t had a bath or a shower in even longer, or slept in a real bed.
“Would you like a shower or a bath, Helen?” The words were out of Claudia’s mouth before she could stop herself, but it seemed like a small price to pay for the help she’d received from Helen that day.
“Do I detect a truce being called?” Helen’s tone appeared to have reverted to her ever-present mockery but Claudia wasn’t fooled. She’d seen the flash of longing in Helen’s brown eyes.
“If you want to put it that way, yes. As you reminded me earlier, you saved my life today. I’m sure I can run to a hot bath and the use of my spare room in return. The bed’s made up and you’ll find a dressing-gown behind the door. Use whatever you want in the bathroom and there’s a new toothbrush in the cabinet.”
“And you won’t call James Lester and have me dragged back off to the bowels of the Home Office?”
“That would seem a little… churlish in the circumstances. Would you like me to put your clothes through the washing-machine? Leave them outside the bathroom door. I have a tumble dryer…”
Helen’s brief hesitation betrayed her suspicions about Claudia’s good intentions, but then she nodded, the lure of clean clothing clearly proving too much of a temptation. Claudia remained on the sofa drinking her wine until she heard the sound of water running in the shower. She finished her glass of wine, refilled both hers and Helen’s to empty the bottle and then went to see if Helen had left her clothes for washing, as Claudia had suggested. She had. The clothes were in a neatly folded pile on the floor along with what looked like a spare shirt from Helen’s pack. They were old and faded and bore signs of repair: a hole neatly-patched with a piece of material taken from the hem and re-sown buttons. Clearly wherever Helen spent her time, she jealously guarded what few possessions she had.
Once the washing was in the machine, Claudia did a quick double-check to make sure her spare bedroom was indeed ready to receive a visitor and found an old, over-sized shirt left behind by a boyfriend from several years ago. She liked the shirt more than she’d ever liked him, if truth be told, and it made a very comfortable nightshirt so she left it on the bed for Helen. She also found some bras, knickers and thick walking-socks that she had purchased but not yet worn. She left them on the bed along with the shirt. The underwear and socks currently in her washing machine were definitely starting to show signs of wear.
When Helen finally emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a dressing-gown almost as fluffy as Claudia’s, she had the warm glow of a woman who had spent a long time under hot water and had then, probably for the first time in a very long while, treated herself to a liberal application of body lotion and moisturiser. She appeared to favour rose scents over citrus, Claudia observed. Helen’s hair was loose on her shoulders and her slender feet were bare. She settled down on the sofa again, cradling the wine glass in her hands and drew her feet up under her. She looked more relaxed than she had done earlier but that changed in an instant as Claudia’s mobile phone started to ring.
Claudia reached out for it, saw that it was Nick calling and hesitated before deciding that not taking the call was a bad idea and could easily end up with someone on her doorstep checking on her health. Holding up her hand to Helen to signify the need to keep quiet, she accepted the call.
“Hello, Nick.” In response to the inevitable question about how she was feeling, Claudia responded, “Yes, I’m absolutely fine.” To her amusement, Nick clearly didn’t quite know what to say next, so fortunately, the call was over relatively quickly after the exchange of a few general platitudes and an exhortation for her to take a day off if she felt in the slightest bit fragile the following day.
“Take two paracetamol and stay in bed?” Helen hazarded accurately. “He never was any good at dispensing tea and sympathy. He’s more of a ‘rise above it’ merchant – except when he’s ill, of course.”
“Prone to man-flu?”
“Aren’t they all?”
Claudia smiled wryly. It seemed strange to be sitting there in a dressing-gown, sharing a bottle of wine and discussing Nick Cutter with his wife – or was that ex-wife? Despite the kiss she’d shared earlier with Nick, she still wasn’t sure what her feelings were towards him. The frequency of the anomalies had left little time for anything personal and anyway, from what she’d seen, Nick was still very much wrapped up in Helen, no matter how much he tried to present himself as dispassionate on that particular subject. She certainly wasn’t fooled, and neither was Lester.
“A nightcap?” she said suddenly, as much to change the direction of her own thoughts as through any desire for more alcohol.
“A brandy would be nice,” Helen replied, her eyes closed, revealing small white lines at the corners than came from squinting into the sun.
As she paused a generous measure into two balloon glasses, Claudia wondered whether Helen had only recently learned how to navigate the anomalies and return to her own time or whether she’d simply been too wrapped up in her fascination at having the whole of time at her disposal to care what had been happening in her absence to a man she must have loved once. But despite Helen’s relaxed demeanour, Claudia didn’t think their fragile truce would withstand any probing questions and, if the truth was told, she wasn’t really sure she wanted to dig too deeply into matters that she might then have to reveal to Nick or to Lester. Better for all of them that this whole incident remained firmly within the realms of plausible deniability.
They drank their brandy in companionable silence until a yawn caught Claudia unawares and she suddenly realised quite how exhausted she felt. The washing machine had stopped and while Helen washed the glasses, Claudia moved the clothes into the dryer. She wondered whether Helen would still be in the flat come morning. Somehow she didn’t think goodbye was a word that featured prominently in the other woman’s vocabulary.
Claudia slipped under the duvet and turned the light off. Sleep wasn’t long in coming, but unfortunately, as was so often the case for her these days, nightmares weren’t far behind…
She came awake and sat up in the same instant, her own cry of fear still echoing in her ears. Sweat had broken out on her body and her heart was hammering in her chest as she groped for the bedside light, her hand trembling in reaction to the sight – in her dream – of her own dead body, stripped bare of flesh the way the golfer’s had been. Before she’d found the light switch, the bedroom door opened and warm light from the corridor flooded the room, driving back the shadows from her mind, but unable to banish them completely.
A moment later, the bed dipped under Helen’s weight and Claudia was pulled into a warm embrace. She opened her mouth to protest that it had been nothing more than a bad dream, but her voice betrayed her and all that emerged was a broken sob. The tears she’d spent most of the afternoon and evening suppressing finally broke through what remained of her self-control. Helen seemed unfazed by her display of emotion. From somewhere, a handful of tissues were pressed into Claudia’s hand and a steadying hand rubbed small, comforting circles on her naked back.
Without speaking, Helen pulled back the duvet and slipped inside the bed with her, settling back against the pillows, one arm around Claudia’s waist. She was wearing the brushed cotton shirt that Claudia had left out for her and Claudia found the familiar smell and feel of the fabric comforting. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and allowed Helen to continue holding her. She knew perfectly well that if the past few nights were anything to go by, the nightmares would only recur the minute she drifted off to sleep again, but she also knew from bitter experience that she couldn’t stay awake for ever.
“I’m good at keeping the monster under the bed at bay,” Helen said matter-of-factly.
“I should have hung onto that bloody golf club,” Claudia muttered, but she made no move to draw away. Helen’s wiry strength was something of a contrast to the yielding breast on which her cheek was currently pillowed, but then from what Claudia had seen of the woman currently sharing her bed, contrasts appeared to define Helen. One moment she appeared nothing more than a dispassionate observer, faintly amused by those who sought to confine her, the next she appeared capable of random altruism.
Claudia let out a long, slow breath. Whatever Helen’s motives, she was grateful for the woman’s presence. Her last thought as she slipped back into sleep was to wonder if Helen would still be there in the morning…
* * * * *
Claudia came awake slowly for the first time in several weeks instead of being jerked from sleep by some nameless fear. The sound of soft breathing from beside her told its own story. Helen Cutter hadn’t vanished back into the shadows. She was sprawled across the bed, the duvet pushed down to her waist, and the cotton shirt lying open, displaying tanned breasts.
The long, white lines of several old scars cut harsh trails across a body that displayed not one ounce of spare fat. One breast had clearly been raked by three claws at some point in the past, leaving parallel lines that had only just missed claiming a nipple. A puckered mark on Helen’s side told of a close encounter with something that owned sharp teeth. Helen’s survival in the wilderness of the past spoke volumes for the woman’s resourcefulness…
Claudia was suddenly aware of an almost imperceptible change in Helen’s breathing that betokened her return to wakefulness. The long dark eyelashes fluttered open and Claudia looked down into brown eyes devoid for once of Helen’s habitual mockery.
“Thank you for keeping the monsters at bay,” Claudia said quietly.
She was no closer to understanding this woman or her motives, and she couldn’t quite rid herself of the feeling that Helen would prove at best an unpredictable ally and at worst a bad enemy but Claudia owed the woman her life.
Set against that debt, a bed for the night and some old clothes hardly seemed much by way of thanks, but Helen appeared content with the bargain. The least Claudia could so now was provide a decent breakfast as well. For once, work could wait.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 05:46 pm (UTC)..and, it must be said, as I travel home on the train, I'm quite looking forward to the couple of glasses of wine, followed up maybe by some brandy, that this fic has made me visualise.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 06:07 pm (UTC)And I hope you have a lovely evening.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 07:07 pm (UTC)I think we could all do we with someone who keeps the monster under the bed at bay.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 10:43 pm (UTC)“Thank you for keeping the monsters at bay,” Claudia said quietly. - and thank you for this story.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 08:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 04:14 pm (UTC)Very enjoyable.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 04:16 pm (UTC)