Fandom: Primeval.
Summary: Helen Cutter had done lots of bad things in her life but this was definately the one most people would consider the worst... And weirdest.
Warnings: Incest,
Disclaimer: I don't own primeval.
A/N: This is what happens when you try to take a break from writing, sometimes I worry about my brain.
Helen Cutter had done lots of bad things in her life but this was definitely the one most people would consider the worst… And weirdest. Not that it was her fault, she reminded herself, it wasn’t like she’d known she was pregnant when she’d gone through the anomaly, and with no way back to the exact right time giving up the baby had seemed like the best plan.
And she had made sure he was wrapped up warmly, and waited for someone to find him, it wasn’t as if she’d just dumped him and run. It was only twenty years before he was supposed to be born too so she knew he should have a slightly decent life, right? It wasn’t like he’d be living in the Victorian sewers.
It was only later on she realised her mistake, she happened to step through an anomaly into roughly the right time, about a year before she’d left civilization actually. Helen wanted to find the child, just to make sure he was okay, make sure he was safe and alive. Just because she wasn’t necessarily mothering material didn’t’ mean she didn’t care. It took a while to hack the correct files but finally she found it, the baby she had abandoned had been adopted at six months old by a couple named Josephine and Michael Hart. And they had named him Stephen.
She did wonder briefly if Stephen had fathered himself, now wouldn’t that be something, but when she looked at him closely she could see Nick in him. The way he grinned awkwardly when he was trying to escape conversation, the little dip at the end of his nose… She thought about going to talk to him but really what could she say? “Hi I’m your mother but also the woman who will eventually break your heart after the year long affair you’re about to embark on.” He’d think she was crazy. Plus if she changed the past then what if she cancelled Stephen out completely. If Stephen had never been born then Helen would never have met him, he’d have never mentioned the fossils turning up in the wrong times and she would probably have never discovered the anomalies. No, what was done was done.
It wasn’t that big a deal anyway surely? Incest used to happen all the time way back in history. It was just a moral issue these days. And it wasn’t as if she had known that Stephen was her son when she’d slept with him… She hadn’t raised him so there wasn’t that maternal bond. Nothing she could do about it now anyway.
It was three years, give or take, for Helen when she next returned, a quick look at a newspaper showed it had been eight years for everyone else since she’d left. She tracked down the boys, honestly expecting Stephen to be out in a jungle somewhere tracking animals, like he’d always talked about, so of course she was surprised to find him still working with Nick. Once she was sure both men were alive she headed up to Scotland, in search of an anomaly, there’d been rumours of a creature up there, stealing the local children. The Anomaly had closed by the time Helen got there and the creature, a prehistoric wolf, had been caught. The locals seemed to think it was just a big, scary, dog and had it put down. Helen was hardly going to correct them.
It was whilst she was in Scotland that she saw the paper, sightings in the Forest of Dean, Helen quickly packed up and headed back down the country. When she got to the forest there were soldiers everywhere and Helen quickly hid, wondering how to get through the anomaly without being seen. Then she saw them, Nick and Stephen chatting away to some skinny kid wearing the most ridiculous hat. Helen left the Forest, aware she couldn’t use this anomaly to leave now, she found a place to rest and sat down to try and figure out what to do next, there would be another anomaly sure enough, they popped up all the time, but now that the government had discovered them. Now that Nick had…
Helen went back to Nick’s house, sitting on a wall just out of sight of his living room window she watched as the man poured out two glasses of scotch and handed one to Stephen, listened as they discussed the anomaly and how Helen might have gone through one to leave. Helen watched them late into the night and realised that the appearance of the anomaly had changed something between the two men, the way they watched each other as they sat and talked, the way Stephen’s hand rested on Nick’s leg. No, she couldn’t let this happen, it was time she went home.