Not A Fairy Tale 13/16
Title: Not A Fairy Tale 13
Author: TalliW
Pairings: Lester/Cutter!clone
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Primeval is the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Fredbassett for beta-reading. I couldn't have done it without you.
The encounter with the Dracorex had been a disaster.
While Abby and Becker dealt with the dinosaur and Danny and Connor had run around after the knight, Nick had taken nearly a dozen calls from the Home Office, complaining over enraged people babbling about strawberry eating monsters and an armed man in black destroying half of a day's strawberry harvest.
The topic of sending a substitute for Lester came up and that had been the final straw for Nick.
Jenny Lewis walked tentatively into the ARC, astonished about the lack of security personnel at the entrance.
Her eyes fell on the man heading towards her. "You're the one who called me. You're Cutter's clone."
Nick nodded. "That's correct. Thank you for coming."
Jenny ran her eyes over the inside of the building. It hadn't changed much since the time she had left.
Without looking at the clone, she said, "OK. I'm here, against my better judgment. Now tell me all about the life-threatening problem the team needs my help with."
"You called me because of strawberries?" Her outraged cry was met with a lob-sided grin from the clone and Jenny felt her rage dissolving against her will.
"You're totally impossible." Jenny looked him up and down and sighed. "That seems to be one of the traits you've inherited from Cutter, if nothing else. I can't believe how afraid I was to come here after your call. Afraid of seeing you. But you don't have much in common with him. Your clothes, your mode of speaking ...it all resembles Lester. You don't even have Cutter's accent."
The clone straightened his back. "I'm not him. I'm my own person."
His voice softened as he gazed into her eyes. "I called you because the team needs you, Miss Lewis. Will you help?"
When the team came back hours later, excitedly babbling about their adventure, the situation was under control.
Jenny was sitting in her old office, eying Nick who had brought her a cup of coffee and some biscuits, after she had mentioned she had skipped lunch.
"I'm very grateful you've helped the team out of a very tight situation, Miss Lewis."
"You are welcome! At some point it was also my team." She sighed deeply. "Sometimes I wish it still was."
"Is that the reason you came here? Because you want to return to the ARC?"
"After I came to terms with myself, I started to miss the people and the work. It was always exiting. I had almost forgotten how dull normal life can be. And finding excuses for rampaging dinosaurs is definitely a challenge. But I don't know if I can live with the permanent danger."
Jenny was surprised how easy it was to share her thoughts with the clone. Around Cutter she had always felt self-conscious.
She pushed the basket she had brought along from her latest task in his direction. "Strawberry?" and snorted when the clone pulled a face.
"After hearing that word in every sentence I would rather delete it from my vocabulary. I'm amazed how easily you managed to calm the upset people and resolve the situation."
"It's what I do best, spinning a tale, doing some downright lying or bullying a few people. You certainly weren't a big help there."
Jenny snatched a strawberry and bit heartily into the fruit. She remembered well the nervous looks the clone had thrown to the people around them while he had stood so close to her that she had almost got the feeling he was trying to hide behind her back.
Nick looked embarrassed to the floor. "I'm not used to interacting with people other than James."
"You had no problem with me," Jenny pointed out.
"That's something else entirely. James has told me so much about you and the other team members it's like I've always known you."
"Really? Should I be worried about what he has revealed about me?"
The clone grinned impishly. "I heard only good things about you. Mostly."
Jenny shock her head. "I'm still reeling from the thought that James Lester has taken you in and went to the trouble of educating you. That isn't his usual course of action."
"You mean you're surprised he hasn't killed me?"
Jenny was taken aback by the clone's directness and fell silent. But then curiosity won out. "He has told you about that order?"
Nick snorted. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out how the government usually deals with undesirable potentially dangerous persons. But I'm glad James decided against it. Living with him is rather nice."
Jenny raised her eyebrows. She couldn't imagine living with a man like James Lester. She had got to know too much about his former line of work to ever feel really comfortable with him around.
But she wasn't a creature only designed for the limited purpose of getting access to the ARC and then left there to die. The clone's view on the world was probably very different from every one else's.
"I have to go now. My work is waiting for me. Give my best wishes to James when you see him and tell him to get well soon. And if you ever need help again just call me."
Nick escorted Jenny down the ramp and was watching her walking out of the ARC when Danny and Connor stepped out of the locker room.
"I thought I just heard Jenny's voice," Danny said.
"That's wishful thinking. She left the project, Danny," Connor answered.
The clone just turned around and went back into the office he and Jenny Lewis had occupied.
After he had taken care of the dishes he put the last strawberry from the basket into his mouth and chewed contentedly.