Primeval Fanfic: Beyond All Hope (Sequel to "Gaining Hope)
Title: Beyond All Hope
Author: TalliW
Characters: Nick/Lester, Leek, Helen, Abby, Connor, Jenny
Rating: NC17, slash
Disclaimer: Primeval are the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun. So don't bother me.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to fredbassett for beta-reading. I couldn't have done it without you.
AN: Sequel to "Gaining Hope". I couldn't let them suffer there.:)
Nick was not used by them any more, but they still came for Lester every day. Most of the time it was just Leek and a guard.
Nick could no longer count the times he'd had to be part of the sick game. Oliver Leek liked to watch Nick fucking James Lester's mouth while he pushed into the battered body of his former boss.
It was a price Lester had told him he would gladly pay if it bought a short period of grace for Nick.
"Leek isn't interested in you. He only wants to take revenge on me. Why should you suffer unnecessarily at the hands of his men, when I can prevent it?" he had said to him and then he'd kissed him softly on the lips.
But that must have been weeks ago. Now Lester just lay there, broken and unresponsive.
Nick knew he was losing him slowly. James Lester couldn't take much more before breaking completely.
Three days ago Lester had shivered at his touch, yesterday he had flinched and today he had recoiled as Nick had tried to clean him up.
Every time the key turned in the lock, something shattered inside James Lester. Every time Nick had to penetrate the once proud man something died inside him.
Then the squeak of the door came again, sounding like a fanfare announcing the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But this time it was not the unpleasant voice of Oliver Leek he heard. It was a woman asking: "Someone still alive in there?"
The woman's eyes scanned the battered body on the floor and the desperate man crouching beside it.
"Get him out of here. Please, I'll do everything you want, just get him out of here," the blond man pleaded.
Through the long greasy hair hanging down around a gaunt face, Helen barely could recognize the man as the one she had married once upon a time.
"I didn't know he would do something like that," she whispered, shocked. "Tell me, Nick, did he defile you too?" she asked him.
The bowing of his head in shame told her enough.
With a weary sigh she turned around and started to leave.
"The door is open. Get him out of here!"
Dazed, Nick stumbled out of the room, anxious to avoid touching the bodies of the guards who lay there with their throats cut.
In the next cell he had found Abby and Connor, both battered, cuddled together in the arms of a bruised Jenny.
They were barely be able to walk out of the building together, with Lester draped over Nick's shoulder.
The hospital room reminded Nick too much of the bare walls in the cell. He couldn't leave Lester there alone, so he took him home.
He fed and he cleaned him and held him in his arms every night when the nightmares came.
After a week, James ate his first sandwich all of his own and started to clean up himself again.
Another week later, he walked around in the house and read the newspaper. But he'd still not spoken a word and his gaze was still blank.
The only time the blankness in his eyes changed to burning hate was when Nick drove him back to the building to visit a mutual acquaintance.
Nearly every day now they went to Southwark and walked over the Millennium Bridge in the direction of Saint Paul's Cathedral.
In the middle of the bridge they stopped for a while and looked down at the lively water of the Thames on it long journey into the North sea.
It had a calming effect on them all. Abby's eyes looked less haunted, Connor cracked a smile from time to time and Jenny's posture got less rigid.
Sometimes Nick even felt a faint squeeze from Lester's fingers as he held his hand.
Nick Cutter watched the two swans on the water under him and played with the key on the chain around his neck. It was his day of the week for taking care of Oliver Leek. The blind rage had died down weeks ago. Now he gave the whimpering creature in the cell just his daily ration of food and water.
He knew the others felt the same way he did. They all just wanted to forget.
Suddenly, with a hefty jerk, the key was removed from his neck. It was now swinging over the water on a broken chain from the hand of James Lester.
Cold soulless eyes gazed into his. Nick looked over at the other three people, asking them without words. Then he gave a faint nod and the hand opened up.
The twinkling metal sunk down quickly into the swirling water. It had been used so many times to open a door to horrible memories and to the man who had created them. Now the small piece of metal would be forgotten soon.
After all, it was just a key to a door in a building.
It didn't matter that he had nightmares nearly every night from their first time together. It didn't matter that he had to jerk off in the bathroom every morning after a restless night spent with James in his arms. The only things that really mattered were the small signs of recovery James showed from now on.
A week later, Nick Cutter saw a whiff of warmth in James' vacant expression. Two weeks later, Lester went to rape counseling for the first time.
Six weeks later he said his first complete sentence outside the psychiatrist's room.
Three months later the nightmares stopped.
Four months later he went back to work in the ARC again. Six months later he smiled at one of Connor's jokes.
One morning, nearly 8 months after the end of their dreadful captivity Nick was woken by a hand skimming over his chest and arms.
A masculine voice whispered: "I can still feel a part of you inside me. Am I still under your skin too?"
Nick just managed to utter a sleepy "Yes!" before soft lips closed over his mouth. Then he lost himself in the arms of his soul mate.
It seemed he wouldn't need to jerk off in the bathroom any more.