Fic, Admitted, Ryan/Lester, 18
Jul. 17th, 2020 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Admitted
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Ryan/Lester, Claudia, Nick, Helen, Stephen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : s1.6
Summary : Lester has a really bad feeling about Cutter’s latest expedition to the Permian
A/N : This follows on from Anonymous, Acknowledged, Accepted and Answered.
“I don’t like this,” Lester said, keeping his voice low.
“So why go along with it?” There was no challenge in Ryan’s words, just enquiry.
Lester ran a hand through his hair, wishing he could do something to calm the jittery feeling he’d had ever since agreeing to Cutter’s mad scheme to use the young predators to lead them to an anomaly to the future. The man’s equally mad fucking wife had suggested the idea, which had been enough to make Lester want to countermand it on principle.
“I don’t know. I’m not fucking scientist – and that’s part of the problem.”
“I think Cutter’s part of the problem. He’s not rational where she’s concerned. She’s still leading him around by the dick.”
“Shoot her if she gives you the slightest reason, Ryan.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes. She’s already listed as missing, there won’t be any additional paperwork. You also have my full authority to abort this mission if necessary. And shoot those ugly little fuckers is you need to. Bring back Cutter if you can, but if insists on staying, let him.”
Ryan nodded, his face impassive.
“Be careful, Ryan. Emily Fanshawe will never let me hear the last of it if we don’t turn up for tea and cakes on Sunday.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
On the other side of the clearing, Helen Cutter called, “I think we should get going!”
Ryan’s men picked up the box containing the shrieking baby predators and walked towards the anomaly.
“Think I should make a speech?” Lester said, knowing he was missing levity by a wide mile. “One small step for man, that sort of thing?”
“Maybe another time.” Claudia was staring anxiously after Cutter.
Lester was tempted to tell her to just kiss the wretched man and have done with it.
As Ryan followed his men towards the swirling shards of light, Lester tore caution into tiny pieces and took his own advice for the first time in a long while, steeping forward quickly to Ryan and kissing him. Ryan stood stock still for a moment, his eyes wide, then he relaxed against Lester and kissed back him, hard and deep, then the soldier turned and walked into the anomaly.
Lester stepped back, conscious of the fact that no one else knew quite where to look.
“Well that wasn’t very professional,” Claudia said, with a wide, amused smile.
“Stuff professionalism.” In answer to the equally amused looks he was getting from Stephen, Connor and Abby, Lester waved a languid hand. “I’m sure you all have work to do, people, let me introduce you to the concept…”
Lester pulled his phone out of his pocket and walked back to the vehicles, hoping he hadn’t done anything so embarrassing as to blush. He also hoped that Ryan wasn’t currently planning to eviscerate him for outing him in front of his men.
The science team poured over various instruments and the remaining soldiers moved about, shifting kit, looking purposeful even though Lester had no bloody clue what any of them were actually doing. He fiddled with his phone, made a couple of calls to the Home Office, then simply leaned back against his car, trying not to check his watch more than once every five minutes.
“Coffee, sir?” One of the soldiers was holding out a mug to him. Cooper. The youngest of the military team.
Lester took it, grateful for something to do with his hands. “Thank you.”
The soldier turned to walk away, then looked back and said quickly, “The captain’s the best, sir. Try not to worry.”
Lester’s eyes widened and he could see the man flinch, probably expecting to get a tongue lashing for presumption. “Thank you,” he said again. “I appreciate that.”
The man shot him a smile and hurried back to the others, leaving Lester with the comfort that at least one of the soldiers hadn’t been concerned by what he’d done.
With both hands wrapped around the mug, at least he couldn’t look at his watch again.
****
“Incoming!”
The yell from one of the soldiers broke into Lester’s thoughts and he hurried forwards, his heart racing uncomfortably.
Cutter stepped through the anomaly, a rifle cradled in his arms.
“What happened? Did you find it?” Lester demanded.
“Captain Ryan didn’t make it and all his men are dead. Whatever happens, nobody goes back through.”
Cutter’s words hit Lester with the force of a cricket bat to the stomach. He opened his mouth to ask what the fuck Cutter was talking about, but the words just wouldn’t come out.
“Fuck that.” The words came from the soldier Lester recognised as the new unit medic. “Where are the bodies?”
“We had to leave them.” Cutter cast a look at his wife, who looked wholly unconcerned.
“We don’t leave men behind.” The soldier turned to Lester, his voice urgent. “Sir, permission to recover the bodies?”
Lester nodded as his world slowly crumbled around him. “Bring them home, please…”
The medic started yelling orders and in a matter of minutes, four of them went through the anomaly at a run.
Nick Cutter stared after them. “No, they shouldn’t…”
“Well, I’m sorry to break your new rule so soon, as well, Nick, but I’m not staying, either,” Helen Cutter drawled.
“Well, what did you come back through for?”
“Oh, just a little, um, unfinished business.” Barely taking in what was happening around him. Lester watched as she looked pointedly at Stephen. “You see, Nick, it was just one of those things. I was lonely, and you didn’t seem to care about me. And Stephen was so sweet and attentive.”
Cutter looked backwards and forwards between his wife and Stephen, who shook his head, a pleading look on his face.
“Shut up, Helen.”
The look on the woman’s face was spiteful. Lester wished Ryan had had the opportunity to put a bullet in her. “Oh, you mean you never told him? Oh dear.” She raised her hand to her mouth in a deliberately affected manner.
“What an extremely awkward moment,” Lester muttered, wanting nothing more than to push the fucking lot of them through the anomaly.
“You see, I don’t want to be on my own any more.” Malice was glittering as brightly in her eyes as the rip in time behind her. She was about to collapse someone else’s world as thoroughly as Lester’s had just been ripped apart. She stared at Stephen, her expression part challenging, part mocking. “You once said you’d do anything for me if I gave you the chance. Well, here it is. Come with me.”
Stephen took a step back from her, looking appalled. “Don’t do this…”
“Falling for one of your students is never a good idea, but…” She turned to Cutter who was staring at her in horrified disbelief. “Sometimes these things just happen, you know.”
“How could you keep that from me for so many years?” Cutter demanded, staring at Stephen.
“There was no point in saying anything. It was a long time ago. In the past.” The expression on Stephen’s face was pleading.
“The past has a habit of coming back these days, doesn’t it?” Helen sneered.
Cutter turned away, pushing blindly past Lester and the others, distancing himself from both Stephen and Helen.
“Well? Are you coming?” Helen’s impatience was showing now, along with the faintest trace of uncertainty.
Stephen walked over to her and for a moment, Lester thought he was thinking with his dick rather than his head then, “You know what I’d forgotten, Helen? Sometimes, you can be a real bitch.” He turned and walked away from her.
Helen stared after him, doing a bad job of containing her anger, before turning and striding through the anomaly, leaving a frozen tableau behind her.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said quietly, talking to Lester rather than Cutter. “Ryan was a good man.”
The sympathy in Stephen’s vivid blue eyes hit Lester hard. It was real. It was fucking real. Ryan was dead. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
One of Ryan’s men came over to him and held out a battered hip flask. “They’ll bring him back, sir.”
Lester tried to swallow around the hard lump in his throat and almost gagged, coming close to spitting out the brandy. A second mouthful went down more easily. He handed the flask back with a nod of thanks. It was all he could muster. The world was still tilting on its axis around him and he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Claudia hurried to his side, tears on her cheeks. “James, I’m so sorry…”
He wouldn’t break down. He owed it to Ryan to stand there and wait for his men to bring him back.
“It’s weakening!” Connor’s voice cut through the silence.
“How long?” Lester demanded.
“I don’t know, they’re unpredictable…”
“Sir, let the rest of us go through…” The young soldier who’d given him the drink was clearly speaking on behalf of the rest of the military unit, his expression pleading.
Lester knew it was a gamble, a huge fucking gamble, and if it went wrong, they would lose even more men. He had no fucking idea what Ryan would do, but Ryan wasn’t here, he was dead, millions of years ago in the fucking past, and it suddenly hit Lester that he didn’t know how he’d died, Cutter hadn’t even said.
Cutter was still staring at Stephen, looking like a man trying to wake up from a bad dream, then he almost visibly shook himself and said, “No, no one else should go through!”
“I’ll go with them,” Stephen said quickly.
“No!”
“Fuck you, Cutter,” Lester said, surprising himself by keeping his voice level. “You don’t get to make that decision.” He looked at the soldier and nodded. “Volunteers only. You know the risks.”
The man nodded and yelled, “Two more, on me!” and sprinted to the anomaly, Stephen at his heels.
“What have you done?” Cutter looked shocked and outraged.
“Hopefully what you couldn’t and didn’t,” Lester snapped. “Did you even fucking try? And you haven’t even told me what happened. You’re so wrapped up in your own bloody dramas that nothing else seems to matter to you. I should have just ordered Ryan to put a bullet in their ugly little heads, not risk lives on your fool errand. You were happy to go through the anomaly with them but didn’t even try to get any of them back…”
“We can’t mess with time. That first time, we found the remains of our own camp… We found a body…”
“So you had to leave them there to fulfil some sort of time loop crap? Don’t give me that bollocks, Cutter. I’m not bloody stupid. Even five minutes on Wikipedia told me that at the end of the Permian, 98% of life on earth gets wiped out, so how the hell can anything we do or let happen make any fucking difference? And that’s not an invitation to explain to me why you’re right.”
“Leave it, Nick,” Claudia said. “Now’s not the time.”
Lester turned away, clenching and unclenching his hands, looking at his watch every minute, staring at the anomaly, trying to see whatever difference Connor was picking up on his instruments.
The shout of ‘incoming!’ from one of the remaining soldiers sent Lester’s stomach into freefall. The anomaly was fading visibly now, getting paler, more ghost-like, the trees on the other side of the clearing visible through it now.
Four black uniformed figures carrying a stretcher burst through, one yelling, “Casevac! Get a fucking casevac team here now!”
Stephen came through at a run, last two soldiers hard on his heels.
Behind them, the anomaly suddenly flared, expanding so far that for a moment, Lester thought the running men were going to be engulfed, snatched back into the Permian, then it winked out of existence, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.
Stephen sank to his knees, panting, sweat running into his eyes as he dragged air into his lungs.
The soldier who’d initiated the recovery – Owen? – had a mobile phone to his ear and was talking into it fast, demanding an air ambulance, spouting medical terms that meant nothing to Lester. When he finished, he started yelling more orders.
Stephen staggered to his feet. “It’s Ryan, he’s still alive. Ripped to shit, but still alive. They others weren’t. We had to make a decision. Had to leave Tabs and Kev behind. Took four of us carrying in shifts, running, to get him back…”
Lester stared at him, the words not rearranging themselves into any sort of coherent sentence in his head.
“But Cutter said…”
“Cutter’s an evolutionary zoologist not a fucking medical doctor. Ditz found a pulse. But if we’d not gone through…”
The thread holding Lester in place abruptly snapped and he ran to the stretcher, staring down at Ryan’s still form. He was covered in blood, his face splattered with it from a long gash that ran from his neck down his chest. His uniform was shredded, flesh showing red with the occasional sharp flash of white bone.
“I need fluids!” the young medic yelled. One of the others ran up holding a clear bag, keeping it high while Owen worked to get a line into Ryan’s arm. When he succeeded, he sat back on his heels for a moment, and looked up at Lester, his brown eyes calm. “He’s alive, but it’s bad. If there’s something you want to say, sir, I’d say it…”
The world tilted again, and Lester dropped to his knees, taking one of Ryan’s bloody hands in his. “Don’t you fucking dare die,” he said quietly. “Not now, not like this, not at all.”
Owen gave him a tired grin. “Not quite what I had in mind, sir, but it’ll do. Keep talking to him. Hearing’s the last sense to go. He needs to know you’re here for him.” He looked up and caught Claudia’s shocked eyes. “Get me an ETA on that casevac, ma’am. We need to get him to Bristol asap.”
Lester squeezed Ryan’s hand. “Stay will me, Tom. If we don’t get to Emily Fanshaw’s for tea, I’ll never hear the last of it.”
Ryan gave no sign that he’d heard but as instructed, Lester kept talking. He had no idea what he said but that didn’t seem to matter, he just had to make sure that Ryan knew he wasn’t alone, that he hadn’t been left to die in the fucking Permian because Cutter had been so fucking preoccupied with his wife and her games that he’d just trailed after her like a lovesick teenager, leaving a man to die.
He barely registered a hand on his shoulder, then Stephen was kneeling at his side, talking to him the way he was talking to Ryan, grounding him, taking over when he ran out of words and had to take a drink from the battered hipflask that Owen held out to him again.
As far as he could tell, Owen had applied as many field dressings as he could and had slammed a syringe of morphine into Ryan, telling Lester that he’d done his best to stop the bleeding but Ryan’s heartrate was erratic and his pulse was dangerously low.
“Five minutes!” Claudia announced. “They’ve said we need to get him to the road.”
“On it, ma’am.”
The stretcher was lifted and the soldiers started to move to the road, with Lester still at Ryan’s side.
He could soon hear the rhythmic beat of the helicopter’s rotor blades and in a matter of minutes, it set down in the middle of the road and Lester watched as Ryan was lifted in.
Owen called out to Claudia, “Get Sir James to Bristol Frenchay, ma’am. We’ll see you there.”
The door was slammed to and the air ambulance took off smoothly, leaving Lester staring after it, all the words he hadn’t said swirling around in the vortex of his head.
So many words, not enough time.
Fuck time.
Time was where it had all gone wrong.
Too much time.
Not enough time.
Never enough time.
****
Lester sat with his head in his hands, barely registering what was going on around him. The ride to Bristol with Claudia had passed in a blur. The hospital was as confusing as every single one Lester had ever visited, with the usual unappetising smell of antiseptic cleaning materials and fear, but eventually they’d found Owen in a small family room, on the phone to his CO in Hereford. All the army medic could tell them was that Ryan had been rushed straight into theatre, where he’d been for the last hours and a half.
He had multiple lacerations and numerous breaks, including a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis, broken tibia and fibula in his left leg, a broken scapula. The list was fucking endless and read like an extract from a medical textbook, each one burning themselves into Lester’s brain in letters of fire.
Eventually, Owen shoved the hip flask at him again. “Drink it, you look grey. Ms Brown, could you see if you can rustle up a couple sandwichs from somewhere? Sorry to ask, but I said I’d wait here for news, if there is any.”
“I’m not hungry,” Lester said, but he didn’t turn down the drink.
The medic gave him a tired grin. “Who said they’re for you, sir? I could eat a scabby cat.”
No news turned into even more news.
Owen wolfed down a couple of sandwiches and, after giving into a combination of cajoling and outright bullying, Lester managed to chew his way through rubbery chicken on soggy white bread, while Claudia hovered protectively, bringing an endless procession of hot drinks that only became palatable with the addition of brandy.
“Go back to London, Claudia,” Lester said after a couple of hours. “Someone needs to make sure Cutter isn’t making Hart’s life even more miserable.”
“Oh god, I’d forgotten that.” Claudia groaned. “He’s not going to have taken it well, is he?”
“Hart was her student. The bloody woman should have kept her hands to herself.”
“And her tits,” Owen muttered, adding, “sorry, ma’am.”
Claudia gave a surprised laugh. “I’ve been wondering where you can buy push up bras from in the Permian or wherever she’s been hiding away for the last eight years. None of mine ever last that long. Phone me the minute you get any news.”
No news stretched on for more interminable hours. If it hadn’t been for Owen’s calm presence, Lester would have been plaguing any passing member of the medical staff. Every time he got up and made for the door, Owen demanded to know if he was going for a piss or to mug a nurse. Most of the time – unless he actually did need a piss – Lester just sat down again and stared into space.
“Tell me to mind my own fucking business if you want to, sir, but have you and the captain been together long?”
“We’ve been together, as you’ve delicately put it, on precisely four occasions, as well as uncharacteristically rash outing of our relationship, if it can be described as one. That was stupid of me.”
“The captain didn’t seem to mind, sir. Don’t beat yourself up.”
Lester stared at the clock on the wall. “Four and a half hours. Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?”
“They’ve got a lot of patching up to do. If he’d died, they would have told us. Bad news travels fast in hospitals. Good news is a bit slower.”
“I keep thinking what would have happened if you hadn’t have gone back through…”
“He would have died, sir.”
Lester flinched. “I still don’t even fucking know what happened.”
“I phoned Cutter before they rushed him to theatre in case there was anything the surgeons needed to know. They were ambushed by an adult predator. It took Tabs and Kev apart and chucked Ryan about like a dog with a fucking chew toy. He didn’t stand a chance. A gorgonopsid turned up and the predator lost. Cutter thought Ryan had died in his arms so…” Owen trailed off and shook his head as though trying to dislodge a memory he didn’t want to carry.
“So…?”
“So Cutter and his wife made a cairn and buried them all.”
The words hit Lester with the force of a fist in his solar plexus and the chicken sandwich tried to claw its way out of his mouth. He swallowed hard, his vision blurring.
“They buried them under rocks?” Lester’s hands shook as he took a drink from the battered flask, trying to chase away the sour taste of vomit that had risen in the back of his throat. “They fucking buried him alive?”
“Finding a pulse wasn’t easy.”
“How hard did they fucking look?” He stared at the medic in growing horror. “Jesus Christ, do you think Ryan will remember?”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t.” But the expression on Owen’s face was too bleak to offer any comfort.
When the door finally opened, Lester jumped to his feet like a startled cat.
A tired looking woman in surgical scrubs closed the door behind her and smiled slightly. “Captain Ryan has come through surgery. He’s been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.”
“How is he?” Owen asked, his voice steady.
“I think the phrase ‘’as well as can be expected is probably in order,” the surgeon said. She shot them both a hard look. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what really happened to him, are you?”
“Sorry, ma’am. Classified.”
She sighed. “It usually is where you people are concerned. The next 48 hours will be critical but I think he stands a chance.”
“Can we see him?” Lester asked, his voice scratching in his throat.
The doctor looked uncertain.
“Sir James is Captain Ryan’s partner,” Owen said smoothly. “I’m his unit medic. I need to report to my CO. He’s not keen on secondhand information.”
“Five minutes,” she said. “Follow me.”
Lester dragged the ragged edges of his composure around him like tattered armour as they walked through more endless corridors like a couple of ducklings after their mother. The IC Unit was full of purposeful medical staff and enough machinery to launch the space shuttle. A nurse was beside Ryan’s bed, checking monitors and making notes on a chart.
All Lester could see was bandages, tubes, wires and more bandages, covering the few parts of his anatomy that were visible outside the light sheet. He stood by the bedside looking down at the man that he’d come to care about before he’d even realised that had happened.
He brushed Ryan’s cheek very gently with his fingers and said quietly, “Tea and cakes at Emily Fanshawe’s, Tom. I’ll never hear the last of it if you stand me up.”
The tears he’d fighting against for hours finally tracked unheeded down his face.
Ryan was alive.
That was all that mattered for now.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Ryan/Lester, Claudia, Nick, Helen, Stephen
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : s1.6
Summary : Lester has a really bad feeling about Cutter’s latest expedition to the Permian
A/N : This follows on from Anonymous, Acknowledged, Accepted and Answered.
“I don’t like this,” Lester said, keeping his voice low.
“So why go along with it?” There was no challenge in Ryan’s words, just enquiry.
Lester ran a hand through his hair, wishing he could do something to calm the jittery feeling he’d had ever since agreeing to Cutter’s mad scheme to use the young predators to lead them to an anomaly to the future. The man’s equally mad fucking wife had suggested the idea, which had been enough to make Lester want to countermand it on principle.
“I don’t know. I’m not fucking scientist – and that’s part of the problem.”
“I think Cutter’s part of the problem. He’s not rational where she’s concerned. She’s still leading him around by the dick.”
“Shoot her if she gives you the slightest reason, Ryan.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes. She’s already listed as missing, there won’t be any additional paperwork. You also have my full authority to abort this mission if necessary. And shoot those ugly little fuckers is you need to. Bring back Cutter if you can, but if insists on staying, let him.”
Ryan nodded, his face impassive.
“Be careful, Ryan. Emily Fanshawe will never let me hear the last of it if we don’t turn up for tea and cakes on Sunday.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
On the other side of the clearing, Helen Cutter called, “I think we should get going!”
Ryan’s men picked up the box containing the shrieking baby predators and walked towards the anomaly.
“Think I should make a speech?” Lester said, knowing he was missing levity by a wide mile. “One small step for man, that sort of thing?”
“Maybe another time.” Claudia was staring anxiously after Cutter.
Lester was tempted to tell her to just kiss the wretched man and have done with it.
As Ryan followed his men towards the swirling shards of light, Lester tore caution into tiny pieces and took his own advice for the first time in a long while, steeping forward quickly to Ryan and kissing him. Ryan stood stock still for a moment, his eyes wide, then he relaxed against Lester and kissed back him, hard and deep, then the soldier turned and walked into the anomaly.
Lester stepped back, conscious of the fact that no one else knew quite where to look.
“Well that wasn’t very professional,” Claudia said, with a wide, amused smile.
“Stuff professionalism.” In answer to the equally amused looks he was getting from Stephen, Connor and Abby, Lester waved a languid hand. “I’m sure you all have work to do, people, let me introduce you to the concept…”
Lester pulled his phone out of his pocket and walked back to the vehicles, hoping he hadn’t done anything so embarrassing as to blush. He also hoped that Ryan wasn’t currently planning to eviscerate him for outing him in front of his men.
The science team poured over various instruments and the remaining soldiers moved about, shifting kit, looking purposeful even though Lester had no bloody clue what any of them were actually doing. He fiddled with his phone, made a couple of calls to the Home Office, then simply leaned back against his car, trying not to check his watch more than once every five minutes.
“Coffee, sir?” One of the soldiers was holding out a mug to him. Cooper. The youngest of the military team.
Lester took it, grateful for something to do with his hands. “Thank you.”
The soldier turned to walk away, then looked back and said quickly, “The captain’s the best, sir. Try not to worry.”
Lester’s eyes widened and he could see the man flinch, probably expecting to get a tongue lashing for presumption. “Thank you,” he said again. “I appreciate that.”
The man shot him a smile and hurried back to the others, leaving Lester with the comfort that at least one of the soldiers hadn’t been concerned by what he’d done.
With both hands wrapped around the mug, at least he couldn’t look at his watch again.
****
“Incoming!”
The yell from one of the soldiers broke into Lester’s thoughts and he hurried forwards, his heart racing uncomfortably.
Cutter stepped through the anomaly, a rifle cradled in his arms.
“What happened? Did you find it?” Lester demanded.
“Captain Ryan didn’t make it and all his men are dead. Whatever happens, nobody goes back through.”
Cutter’s words hit Lester with the force of a cricket bat to the stomach. He opened his mouth to ask what the fuck Cutter was talking about, but the words just wouldn’t come out.
“Fuck that.” The words came from the soldier Lester recognised as the new unit medic. “Where are the bodies?”
“We had to leave them.” Cutter cast a look at his wife, who looked wholly unconcerned.
“We don’t leave men behind.” The soldier turned to Lester, his voice urgent. “Sir, permission to recover the bodies?”
Lester nodded as his world slowly crumbled around him. “Bring them home, please…”
The medic started yelling orders and in a matter of minutes, four of them went through the anomaly at a run.
Nick Cutter stared after them. “No, they shouldn’t…”
“Well, I’m sorry to break your new rule so soon, as well, Nick, but I’m not staying, either,” Helen Cutter drawled.
“Well, what did you come back through for?”
“Oh, just a little, um, unfinished business.” Barely taking in what was happening around him. Lester watched as she looked pointedly at Stephen. “You see, Nick, it was just one of those things. I was lonely, and you didn’t seem to care about me. And Stephen was so sweet and attentive.”
Cutter looked backwards and forwards between his wife and Stephen, who shook his head, a pleading look on his face.
“Shut up, Helen.”
The look on the woman’s face was spiteful. Lester wished Ryan had had the opportunity to put a bullet in her. “Oh, you mean you never told him? Oh dear.” She raised her hand to her mouth in a deliberately affected manner.
“What an extremely awkward moment,” Lester muttered, wanting nothing more than to push the fucking lot of them through the anomaly.
“You see, I don’t want to be on my own any more.” Malice was glittering as brightly in her eyes as the rip in time behind her. She was about to collapse someone else’s world as thoroughly as Lester’s had just been ripped apart. She stared at Stephen, her expression part challenging, part mocking. “You once said you’d do anything for me if I gave you the chance. Well, here it is. Come with me.”
Stephen took a step back from her, looking appalled. “Don’t do this…”
“Falling for one of your students is never a good idea, but…” She turned to Cutter who was staring at her in horrified disbelief. “Sometimes these things just happen, you know.”
“How could you keep that from me for so many years?” Cutter demanded, staring at Stephen.
“There was no point in saying anything. It was a long time ago. In the past.” The expression on Stephen’s face was pleading.
“The past has a habit of coming back these days, doesn’t it?” Helen sneered.
Cutter turned away, pushing blindly past Lester and the others, distancing himself from both Stephen and Helen.
“Well? Are you coming?” Helen’s impatience was showing now, along with the faintest trace of uncertainty.
Stephen walked over to her and for a moment, Lester thought he was thinking with his dick rather than his head then, “You know what I’d forgotten, Helen? Sometimes, you can be a real bitch.” He turned and walked away from her.
Helen stared after him, doing a bad job of containing her anger, before turning and striding through the anomaly, leaving a frozen tableau behind her.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said quietly, talking to Lester rather than Cutter. “Ryan was a good man.”
The sympathy in Stephen’s vivid blue eyes hit Lester hard. It was real. It was fucking real. Ryan was dead. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
One of Ryan’s men came over to him and held out a battered hip flask. “They’ll bring him back, sir.”
Lester tried to swallow around the hard lump in his throat and almost gagged, coming close to spitting out the brandy. A second mouthful went down more easily. He handed the flask back with a nod of thanks. It was all he could muster. The world was still tilting on its axis around him and he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Claudia hurried to his side, tears on her cheeks. “James, I’m so sorry…”
He wouldn’t break down. He owed it to Ryan to stand there and wait for his men to bring him back.
“It’s weakening!” Connor’s voice cut through the silence.
“How long?” Lester demanded.
“I don’t know, they’re unpredictable…”
“Sir, let the rest of us go through…” The young soldier who’d given him the drink was clearly speaking on behalf of the rest of the military unit, his expression pleading.
Lester knew it was a gamble, a huge fucking gamble, and if it went wrong, they would lose even more men. He had no fucking idea what Ryan would do, but Ryan wasn’t here, he was dead, millions of years ago in the fucking past, and it suddenly hit Lester that he didn’t know how he’d died, Cutter hadn’t even said.
Cutter was still staring at Stephen, looking like a man trying to wake up from a bad dream, then he almost visibly shook himself and said, “No, no one else should go through!”
“I’ll go with them,” Stephen said quickly.
“No!”
“Fuck you, Cutter,” Lester said, surprising himself by keeping his voice level. “You don’t get to make that decision.” He looked at the soldier and nodded. “Volunteers only. You know the risks.”
The man nodded and yelled, “Two more, on me!” and sprinted to the anomaly, Stephen at his heels.
“What have you done?” Cutter looked shocked and outraged.
“Hopefully what you couldn’t and didn’t,” Lester snapped. “Did you even fucking try? And you haven’t even told me what happened. You’re so wrapped up in your own bloody dramas that nothing else seems to matter to you. I should have just ordered Ryan to put a bullet in their ugly little heads, not risk lives on your fool errand. You were happy to go through the anomaly with them but didn’t even try to get any of them back…”
“We can’t mess with time. That first time, we found the remains of our own camp… We found a body…”
“So you had to leave them there to fulfil some sort of time loop crap? Don’t give me that bollocks, Cutter. I’m not bloody stupid. Even five minutes on Wikipedia told me that at the end of the Permian, 98% of life on earth gets wiped out, so how the hell can anything we do or let happen make any fucking difference? And that’s not an invitation to explain to me why you’re right.”
“Leave it, Nick,” Claudia said. “Now’s not the time.”
Lester turned away, clenching and unclenching his hands, looking at his watch every minute, staring at the anomaly, trying to see whatever difference Connor was picking up on his instruments.
The shout of ‘incoming!’ from one of the remaining soldiers sent Lester’s stomach into freefall. The anomaly was fading visibly now, getting paler, more ghost-like, the trees on the other side of the clearing visible through it now.
Four black uniformed figures carrying a stretcher burst through, one yelling, “Casevac! Get a fucking casevac team here now!”
Stephen came through at a run, last two soldiers hard on his heels.
Behind them, the anomaly suddenly flared, expanding so far that for a moment, Lester thought the running men were going to be engulfed, snatched back into the Permian, then it winked out of existence, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.
Stephen sank to his knees, panting, sweat running into his eyes as he dragged air into his lungs.
The soldier who’d initiated the recovery – Owen? – had a mobile phone to his ear and was talking into it fast, demanding an air ambulance, spouting medical terms that meant nothing to Lester. When he finished, he started yelling more orders.
Stephen staggered to his feet. “It’s Ryan, he’s still alive. Ripped to shit, but still alive. They others weren’t. We had to make a decision. Had to leave Tabs and Kev behind. Took four of us carrying in shifts, running, to get him back…”
Lester stared at him, the words not rearranging themselves into any sort of coherent sentence in his head.
“But Cutter said…”
“Cutter’s an evolutionary zoologist not a fucking medical doctor. Ditz found a pulse. But if we’d not gone through…”
The thread holding Lester in place abruptly snapped and he ran to the stretcher, staring down at Ryan’s still form. He was covered in blood, his face splattered with it from a long gash that ran from his neck down his chest. His uniform was shredded, flesh showing red with the occasional sharp flash of white bone.
“I need fluids!” the young medic yelled. One of the others ran up holding a clear bag, keeping it high while Owen worked to get a line into Ryan’s arm. When he succeeded, he sat back on his heels for a moment, and looked up at Lester, his brown eyes calm. “He’s alive, but it’s bad. If there’s something you want to say, sir, I’d say it…”
The world tilted again, and Lester dropped to his knees, taking one of Ryan’s bloody hands in his. “Don’t you fucking dare die,” he said quietly. “Not now, not like this, not at all.”
Owen gave him a tired grin. “Not quite what I had in mind, sir, but it’ll do. Keep talking to him. Hearing’s the last sense to go. He needs to know you’re here for him.” He looked up and caught Claudia’s shocked eyes. “Get me an ETA on that casevac, ma’am. We need to get him to Bristol asap.”
Lester squeezed Ryan’s hand. “Stay will me, Tom. If we don’t get to Emily Fanshaw’s for tea, I’ll never hear the last of it.”
Ryan gave no sign that he’d heard but as instructed, Lester kept talking. He had no idea what he said but that didn’t seem to matter, he just had to make sure that Ryan knew he wasn’t alone, that he hadn’t been left to die in the fucking Permian because Cutter had been so fucking preoccupied with his wife and her games that he’d just trailed after her like a lovesick teenager, leaving a man to die.
He barely registered a hand on his shoulder, then Stephen was kneeling at his side, talking to him the way he was talking to Ryan, grounding him, taking over when he ran out of words and had to take a drink from the battered hipflask that Owen held out to him again.
As far as he could tell, Owen had applied as many field dressings as he could and had slammed a syringe of morphine into Ryan, telling Lester that he’d done his best to stop the bleeding but Ryan’s heartrate was erratic and his pulse was dangerously low.
“Five minutes!” Claudia announced. “They’ve said we need to get him to the road.”
“On it, ma’am.”
The stretcher was lifted and the soldiers started to move to the road, with Lester still at Ryan’s side.
He could soon hear the rhythmic beat of the helicopter’s rotor blades and in a matter of minutes, it set down in the middle of the road and Lester watched as Ryan was lifted in.
Owen called out to Claudia, “Get Sir James to Bristol Frenchay, ma’am. We’ll see you there.”
The door was slammed to and the air ambulance took off smoothly, leaving Lester staring after it, all the words he hadn’t said swirling around in the vortex of his head.
So many words, not enough time.
Fuck time.
Time was where it had all gone wrong.
Too much time.
Not enough time.
Never enough time.
****
Lester sat with his head in his hands, barely registering what was going on around him. The ride to Bristol with Claudia had passed in a blur. The hospital was as confusing as every single one Lester had ever visited, with the usual unappetising smell of antiseptic cleaning materials and fear, but eventually they’d found Owen in a small family room, on the phone to his CO in Hereford. All the army medic could tell them was that Ryan had been rushed straight into theatre, where he’d been for the last hours and a half.
He had multiple lacerations and numerous breaks, including a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis, broken tibia and fibula in his left leg, a broken scapula. The list was fucking endless and read like an extract from a medical textbook, each one burning themselves into Lester’s brain in letters of fire.
Eventually, Owen shoved the hip flask at him again. “Drink it, you look grey. Ms Brown, could you see if you can rustle up a couple sandwichs from somewhere? Sorry to ask, but I said I’d wait here for news, if there is any.”
“I’m not hungry,” Lester said, but he didn’t turn down the drink.
The medic gave him a tired grin. “Who said they’re for you, sir? I could eat a scabby cat.”
No news turned into even more news.
Owen wolfed down a couple of sandwiches and, after giving into a combination of cajoling and outright bullying, Lester managed to chew his way through rubbery chicken on soggy white bread, while Claudia hovered protectively, bringing an endless procession of hot drinks that only became palatable with the addition of brandy.
“Go back to London, Claudia,” Lester said after a couple of hours. “Someone needs to make sure Cutter isn’t making Hart’s life even more miserable.”
“Oh god, I’d forgotten that.” Claudia groaned. “He’s not going to have taken it well, is he?”
“Hart was her student. The bloody woman should have kept her hands to herself.”
“And her tits,” Owen muttered, adding, “sorry, ma’am.”
Claudia gave a surprised laugh. “I’ve been wondering where you can buy push up bras from in the Permian or wherever she’s been hiding away for the last eight years. None of mine ever last that long. Phone me the minute you get any news.”
No news stretched on for more interminable hours. If it hadn’t been for Owen’s calm presence, Lester would have been plaguing any passing member of the medical staff. Every time he got up and made for the door, Owen demanded to know if he was going for a piss or to mug a nurse. Most of the time – unless he actually did need a piss – Lester just sat down again and stared into space.
“Tell me to mind my own fucking business if you want to, sir, but have you and the captain been together long?”
“We’ve been together, as you’ve delicately put it, on precisely four occasions, as well as uncharacteristically rash outing of our relationship, if it can be described as one. That was stupid of me.”
“The captain didn’t seem to mind, sir. Don’t beat yourself up.”
Lester stared at the clock on the wall. “Four and a half hours. Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?”
“They’ve got a lot of patching up to do. If he’d died, they would have told us. Bad news travels fast in hospitals. Good news is a bit slower.”
“I keep thinking what would have happened if you hadn’t have gone back through…”
“He would have died, sir.”
Lester flinched. “I still don’t even fucking know what happened.”
“I phoned Cutter before they rushed him to theatre in case there was anything the surgeons needed to know. They were ambushed by an adult predator. It took Tabs and Kev apart and chucked Ryan about like a dog with a fucking chew toy. He didn’t stand a chance. A gorgonopsid turned up and the predator lost. Cutter thought Ryan had died in his arms so…” Owen trailed off and shook his head as though trying to dislodge a memory he didn’t want to carry.
“So…?”
“So Cutter and his wife made a cairn and buried them all.”
The words hit Lester with the force of a fist in his solar plexus and the chicken sandwich tried to claw its way out of his mouth. He swallowed hard, his vision blurring.
“They buried them under rocks?” Lester’s hands shook as he took a drink from the battered flask, trying to chase away the sour taste of vomit that had risen in the back of his throat. “They fucking buried him alive?”
“Finding a pulse wasn’t easy.”
“How hard did they fucking look?” He stared at the medic in growing horror. “Jesus Christ, do you think Ryan will remember?”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t.” But the expression on Owen’s face was too bleak to offer any comfort.
When the door finally opened, Lester jumped to his feet like a startled cat.
A tired looking woman in surgical scrubs closed the door behind her and smiled slightly. “Captain Ryan has come through surgery. He’s been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.”
“How is he?” Owen asked, his voice steady.
“I think the phrase ‘’as well as can be expected is probably in order,” the surgeon said. She shot them both a hard look. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what really happened to him, are you?”
“Sorry, ma’am. Classified.”
She sighed. “It usually is where you people are concerned. The next 48 hours will be critical but I think he stands a chance.”
“Can we see him?” Lester asked, his voice scratching in his throat.
The doctor looked uncertain.
“Sir James is Captain Ryan’s partner,” Owen said smoothly. “I’m his unit medic. I need to report to my CO. He’s not keen on secondhand information.”
“Five minutes,” she said. “Follow me.”
Lester dragged the ragged edges of his composure around him like tattered armour as they walked through more endless corridors like a couple of ducklings after their mother. The IC Unit was full of purposeful medical staff and enough machinery to launch the space shuttle. A nurse was beside Ryan’s bed, checking monitors and making notes on a chart.
All Lester could see was bandages, tubes, wires and more bandages, covering the few parts of his anatomy that were visible outside the light sheet. He stood by the bedside looking down at the man that he’d come to care about before he’d even realised that had happened.
He brushed Ryan’s cheek very gently with his fingers and said quietly, “Tea and cakes at Emily Fanshawe’s, Tom. I’ll never hear the last of it if you stand me up.”
The tears he’d fighting against for hours finally tracked unheeded down his face.
Ryan was alive.
That was all that mattered for now.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 04:01 pm (UTC)