Shades of Grey Chapter 14
Title: Shades of Grey Chapter 14
Author: TalliW
Characters: Stephen Hart, Tom Ryan, Nick Cutter, James Lester, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple, Jenny Lewis, Oliver Leek, Lyle, Finn, Helen Cutter, Ditzy
Rating: K+, T in later chapters
Disclaimer: Primeval is the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun.
Lyle and Finn belong to Fredbassett.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to the wonderful Fredbassett for beta duty.
Summary: Ryan has survived but he isn't the man he was. Can Stephen and Cutter manage to work together to help him? Perhaps Ryan has changed in more ways than it appears on first sight.
Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Chapter 14
"Yay!" Ryan had spied the playground before Stephen had and was now racing towards the well frequented tube slide.
"Hi, I'm Tom," he introduced himself to the girl who turned around to him in irritation as he almost stumbled against her in his attempt to get in line before a red-headed, lanky boy.
"I'm not allowed to talk with strangers," the blond girl with pigtails answered brusquely. "And I don't think grown ups are allowed to use the slide."
"But I'm not a grownup. I'm Tom."
Huffing the girl stared at Ryan from head to toe. "And how old are you?"
"I'm six and an half."
"You don't look like six."
Shrugging, Ryan declared, "My Granny says to Mrs Lipton all the time that I'm growing so fast you can almost see it happening as the food goes into me. Besides I'm almost seven."
"Are you here with your grandma?"
"No, with Stephen. He takes care of me since Granny’s gone to heaven. And who are you?"
"I'm Katherine Sarah Stuart-Worthley. But everyone just calls me Katie. You really want to slide down the slide?"
"Sure. Looks like fun. Back at my old place they only had a small flat slide for the shorties."
"The flat ones are crap," the lanky boy, who had spied on their talk said from behind. "Last holiday we were at this theme park. They had a mega long tube slide. At least 10,000 metres long."
"Rubbish," Katie replied. "No slide is that long."
"How do you know? Have you ever been to Blue Sky Park?"
When Katie and Ryan shook their heads, the redheaded boy grinned triumphantly. "That is a well cool slide there. It takes ages until you reach the end. Not for cry babies of course."
"I'm not a cry baby. And if I ask my daddy we’ll go to Blue Sky Park at the weekend. Then I can see the mega slide for myself. You'd better not have lied to me, Bobby Tauber," Katie growled, nailing the guy with a hard gaze. Then she climbed up the ladder of the slide.
Ryan was next in the queue. With joy, he sat down on the platform and slid into the tube. Stephen could hear him squeal from the edge of the playground.
"Another perverse weirdo again," a woman in her thirties muttered next to Stephen. "I’d better call the police."
"No, wait. That's Tom Ryan, a friend of mine. He’s had an accident and he’s suffers from amnesia. He thinks he's still a little boy. We'll go is you want us to. We certainly don't intend to cause trouble."
The woman looked at Stephen suspiciously then her eyes turned to Ryan who’d just emerged at the end of the tube slide. The childish delight on Ryan's face couldn't be faked.
"What's his profession? I mean what was it before the incident?"
"He's a soldier."
"Really? I would never have thought it. By the way I'm Marla Stuart-Worthley, the mother of the girl your friend is currently racing to the swing with."
"Stephen. Stephen Hart. Nice to meet you. So, you believe me?"
"Katie is usually a good judge of character. She would have come to me if the man had behaved strangely. I mean strangely in the sense of trying anything fishy," she added quickly as Stephen raised his eyebrows. "But I'll keep an eye on you two and I won't hesitate to call the police if necessary."
Stephen understood the warning and hoped Ryan wouldn't get too tactile with his new friends.
Forcefully Ryan pushed his bent legs off from the sandy ground and set his swing into motion.
Next to him, Katie was already up in the air, yelling, "Who gets highest can decide what we’re doing next."
Despite Ryan had more strength he couldn't galvanise himself enough to outdo Katie. Every time he tried to get more momentum his feet scraped the ground and slowed him down. Also the swing seat was a tad too small for his rear so the chains bit into his hip.
Peeved, Ryan brought the swing to a sudden stop and jumped off the flat swing seat.
"That's unfair. My legs are too long," he muttered and kicked the sand angrily.
"Doesn't matter. I’ve won fairly. And I say we’e playing mother, father, child now. Bobby can be our child."
Bobby, who'd lingered around the swings pulled a face. "No way. If I have to be the child you can play on your own. It's a dumb game anyway."
"Then Tom is our son. You okay with that, Tom?"
As soon as Ryan had nodded his assent, Bobby grasped him by the hand and pulled him towards the small grove on the outskirts of the playground.
"Hey, where are you going?" Katie called after them, completely caught off guard.
"Africa."
"But we wanted to play families."
"We are. I'm showing our son how to hunt tigers."
"Okay. Then I'm coming with you."
"Forget it," Bobby said dismissively. "Tiger hunting isn’t for girls."
"And what am I going to do?"
"You can clean the house and prepare the meal. We'll be hungry when we come back from Africa. Come on, Tom."
"Twit," Katie huffed sourly, and stomped towards her mother to complain about the mean behaviour of her playmates.
The news of the the amnesia-suffering soldier spread like wildfire. Marla Stuart-Worthley had made sure of it.
Soon Stephen was surrounded by curious parents and nannies who were more than glad for the diversion.
"He looks so normal," a woman on the wrong side of forty said.
"Yes, you wouldn't think he's sick in the head. He gets on well with Bobby. And Bobby is usually so very particular about people he’s just met."
"And look how fit he is," another woman added, as Ryan jumped effortlessly over a motorcycle spring rider instead of walking around it. "My husband already gets out of breath if he climbs the stairs."
Stephen felt quite uncomfortable in presence of the women discussing Ryan. He just wanted to grab Ryan by the hand and take off.
But for that he would have to get hold of Ryan first. Just that minute Ryan was hanging by the knees on the largest part of a three-parter chin-up bar, the next minute he had climbed a rope jungle gym or forced his way through the underbrush with Bobby.
He was almost like a Duracell Bunny without any intention of slowing down any time soon. Stephen only had the choice of shouting at Ryan or trying to outrun him.
But a scene was the last thing Stephen wanted to make in front of all the women. So he resigned himself to watching Ryan playing with the children a little longer.
Half an hour later Stephen made his first attempt at convincing Ryan that it was time for lunch and they had to go home now. Ryan had to stop because his shoelace had come undone.
"I'm not hungry," Ryan retorted and hurried after Bobby and two other boys who had joined the tiger hunt, after Stephen had helped him fasten his lace again.
"Oh no. There’s another one. It's going to attack us," Bobby shouted whilst circling the jungle gym.
The boys sent out a wild howl as they raced over the playground on the run from an imaginary tiger and tried to climb up a tree near the slide.
Ryan just reached up to the branch Bobby was already perching on as an sickening creak went through the old wood of the tree.
Bobby and Ryan hadn't even time to scream as the branch gave away. But the mothers and nannies watching the scene shrieked in fear as Ryan, Bobby and the branch tumbled towards the ground. And Stephen was among them.
Whimpering, Bobby cradled his ricked leg. His impact had mostly been cushioned by Ryan's body but his leg had bent away at the wrong angle for a moment albeit not strong enough to snap.
Ryan lay on the ground so very still that Stephen already feared the worst.
Then a shudder went through Ryan's body and with a groan Ryan sat up.
"Tom!"
"Bobby!"
In an instant Bobby's mother and Stephen were next to the injured. While Bobby threw himself in his mother's arms Ryan sat there like a picture of misery, his whole frame trembling in shock.
Stephen, not sure how to react, just knelt down next to Ryan and started to check him for injuries, afraid Ryan might have pulled his stitches after all. When Stephen had finally ascertained that Ryan had got away with a few scratches he put his arm around Ryan's shoulders and guided Ryan's head against his chest.
"Oh my poor baby. Why have the town council not made sure the trees around the playground are safe for climbing?" Bobby's mother mumbled as she rocked her son in her arms. "They know how much little boys like to climb trees."
Stephen was surprised she didn't blame him and Ryan. The branch had broken under Ryan's heavy weight after all.
"How is Bobby?" Stephen asked, worried.
"He’s just ricked his leg again. He does it every few weeks. I’ll get him to hospital anyway, just in case," she answered quietly so as not to startle her son and Ryan. "And...is your friend okay?"
"He seems to be. Tom's probably just in shock."
"Thank goodness! Bobby would be devastated if one of his friends was seriously hurt. He's so sensitive. When he accidentally elbowed the boy from next door so the poor child had to run around with a shiner Bobby slept fitfully for whole two weeks."
"I want to go home, mummy," Bobby sniveled against his mother's bosom, his former bigmouthed attitude completely gone now.
"Of course, my little angel."
Effortlessly, she swept Bobby up in her arms and stalked away after a curt nod to Stephen.
Stephen looked down at the man resting on his chest and then up at the women who had closed in on them in curiosity. None of them looked suitable to help him carry Ryan. He would have to wait until Ryan had calmed down enough to walk on his own.
"My head. Stephen, it hurts," Ryan suddenly said in a small voice.
Stephen had taken his mobile out and was ringing Ditzy before Ryan had even said the last word.
Author: TalliW
Characters: Stephen Hart, Tom Ryan, Nick Cutter, James Lester, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple, Jenny Lewis, Oliver Leek, Lyle, Finn, Helen Cutter, Ditzy
Rating: K+, T in later chapters
Disclaimer: Primeval is the property of Impossible Pictures. I write just for fun.
Lyle and Finn belong to Fredbassett.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to the wonderful Fredbassett for beta duty.
Summary: Ryan has survived but he isn't the man he was. Can Stephen and Cutter manage to work together to help him? Perhaps Ryan has changed in more ways than it appears on first sight.
Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Chapter 14
"Yay!" Ryan had spied the playground before Stephen had and was now racing towards the well frequented tube slide.
"Hi, I'm Tom," he introduced himself to the girl who turned around to him in irritation as he almost stumbled against her in his attempt to get in line before a red-headed, lanky boy.
"I'm not allowed to talk with strangers," the blond girl with pigtails answered brusquely. "And I don't think grown ups are allowed to use the slide."
"But I'm not a grownup. I'm Tom."
Huffing the girl stared at Ryan from head to toe. "And how old are you?"
"I'm six and an half."
"You don't look like six."
Shrugging, Ryan declared, "My Granny says to Mrs Lipton all the time that I'm growing so fast you can almost see it happening as the food goes into me. Besides I'm almost seven."
"Are you here with your grandma?"
"No, with Stephen. He takes care of me since Granny’s gone to heaven. And who are you?"
"I'm Katherine Sarah Stuart-Worthley. But everyone just calls me Katie. You really want to slide down the slide?"
"Sure. Looks like fun. Back at my old place they only had a small flat slide for the shorties."
"The flat ones are crap," the lanky boy, who had spied on their talk said from behind. "Last holiday we were at this theme park. They had a mega long tube slide. At least 10,000 metres long."
"Rubbish," Katie replied. "No slide is that long."
"How do you know? Have you ever been to Blue Sky Park?"
When Katie and Ryan shook their heads, the redheaded boy grinned triumphantly. "That is a well cool slide there. It takes ages until you reach the end. Not for cry babies of course."
"I'm not a cry baby. And if I ask my daddy we’ll go to Blue Sky Park at the weekend. Then I can see the mega slide for myself. You'd better not have lied to me, Bobby Tauber," Katie growled, nailing the guy with a hard gaze. Then she climbed up the ladder of the slide.
Ryan was next in the queue. With joy, he sat down on the platform and slid into the tube. Stephen could hear him squeal from the edge of the playground.
"Another perverse weirdo again," a woman in her thirties muttered next to Stephen. "I’d better call the police."
"No, wait. That's Tom Ryan, a friend of mine. He’s had an accident and he’s suffers from amnesia. He thinks he's still a little boy. We'll go is you want us to. We certainly don't intend to cause trouble."
The woman looked at Stephen suspiciously then her eyes turned to Ryan who’d just emerged at the end of the tube slide. The childish delight on Ryan's face couldn't be faked.
"What's his profession? I mean what was it before the incident?"
"He's a soldier."
"Really? I would never have thought it. By the way I'm Marla Stuart-Worthley, the mother of the girl your friend is currently racing to the swing with."
"Stephen. Stephen Hart. Nice to meet you. So, you believe me?"
"Katie is usually a good judge of character. She would have come to me if the man had behaved strangely. I mean strangely in the sense of trying anything fishy," she added quickly as Stephen raised his eyebrows. "But I'll keep an eye on you two and I won't hesitate to call the police if necessary."
Stephen understood the warning and hoped Ryan wouldn't get too tactile with his new friends.
Forcefully Ryan pushed his bent legs off from the sandy ground and set his swing into motion.
Next to him, Katie was already up in the air, yelling, "Who gets highest can decide what we’re doing next."
Despite Ryan had more strength he couldn't galvanise himself enough to outdo Katie. Every time he tried to get more momentum his feet scraped the ground and slowed him down. Also the swing seat was a tad too small for his rear so the chains bit into his hip.
Peeved, Ryan brought the swing to a sudden stop and jumped off the flat swing seat.
"That's unfair. My legs are too long," he muttered and kicked the sand angrily.
"Doesn't matter. I’ve won fairly. And I say we’e playing mother, father, child now. Bobby can be our child."
Bobby, who'd lingered around the swings pulled a face. "No way. If I have to be the child you can play on your own. It's a dumb game anyway."
"Then Tom is our son. You okay with that, Tom?"
As soon as Ryan had nodded his assent, Bobby grasped him by the hand and pulled him towards the small grove on the outskirts of the playground.
"Hey, where are you going?" Katie called after them, completely caught off guard.
"Africa."
"But we wanted to play families."
"We are. I'm showing our son how to hunt tigers."
"Okay. Then I'm coming with you."
"Forget it," Bobby said dismissively. "Tiger hunting isn’t for girls."
"And what am I going to do?"
"You can clean the house and prepare the meal. We'll be hungry when we come back from Africa. Come on, Tom."
"Twit," Katie huffed sourly, and stomped towards her mother to complain about the mean behaviour of her playmates.
The news of the the amnesia-suffering soldier spread like wildfire. Marla Stuart-Worthley had made sure of it.
Soon Stephen was surrounded by curious parents and nannies who were more than glad for the diversion.
"He looks so normal," a woman on the wrong side of forty said.
"Yes, you wouldn't think he's sick in the head. He gets on well with Bobby. And Bobby is usually so very particular about people he’s just met."
"And look how fit he is," another woman added, as Ryan jumped effortlessly over a motorcycle spring rider instead of walking around it. "My husband already gets out of breath if he climbs the stairs."
Stephen felt quite uncomfortable in presence of the women discussing Ryan. He just wanted to grab Ryan by the hand and take off.
But for that he would have to get hold of Ryan first. Just that minute Ryan was hanging by the knees on the largest part of a three-parter chin-up bar, the next minute he had climbed a rope jungle gym or forced his way through the underbrush with Bobby.
He was almost like a Duracell Bunny without any intention of slowing down any time soon. Stephen only had the choice of shouting at Ryan or trying to outrun him.
But a scene was the last thing Stephen wanted to make in front of all the women. So he resigned himself to watching Ryan playing with the children a little longer.
Half an hour later Stephen made his first attempt at convincing Ryan that it was time for lunch and they had to go home now. Ryan had to stop because his shoelace had come undone.
"I'm not hungry," Ryan retorted and hurried after Bobby and two other boys who had joined the tiger hunt, after Stephen had helped him fasten his lace again.
"Oh no. There’s another one. It's going to attack us," Bobby shouted whilst circling the jungle gym.
The boys sent out a wild howl as they raced over the playground on the run from an imaginary tiger and tried to climb up a tree near the slide.
Ryan just reached up to the branch Bobby was already perching on as an sickening creak went through the old wood of the tree.
Bobby and Ryan hadn't even time to scream as the branch gave away. But the mothers and nannies watching the scene shrieked in fear as Ryan, Bobby and the branch tumbled towards the ground. And Stephen was among them.
Whimpering, Bobby cradled his ricked leg. His impact had mostly been cushioned by Ryan's body but his leg had bent away at the wrong angle for a moment albeit not strong enough to snap.
Ryan lay on the ground so very still that Stephen already feared the worst.
Then a shudder went through Ryan's body and with a groan Ryan sat up.
"Tom!"
"Bobby!"
In an instant Bobby's mother and Stephen were next to the injured. While Bobby threw himself in his mother's arms Ryan sat there like a picture of misery, his whole frame trembling in shock.
Stephen, not sure how to react, just knelt down next to Ryan and started to check him for injuries, afraid Ryan might have pulled his stitches after all. When Stephen had finally ascertained that Ryan had got away with a few scratches he put his arm around Ryan's shoulders and guided Ryan's head against his chest.
"Oh my poor baby. Why have the town council not made sure the trees around the playground are safe for climbing?" Bobby's mother mumbled as she rocked her son in her arms. "They know how much little boys like to climb trees."
Stephen was surprised she didn't blame him and Ryan. The branch had broken under Ryan's heavy weight after all.
"How is Bobby?" Stephen asked, worried.
"He’s just ricked his leg again. He does it every few weeks. I’ll get him to hospital anyway, just in case," she answered quietly so as not to startle her son and Ryan. "And...is your friend okay?"
"He seems to be. Tom's probably just in shock."
"Thank goodness! Bobby would be devastated if one of his friends was seriously hurt. He's so sensitive. When he accidentally elbowed the boy from next door so the poor child had to run around with a shiner Bobby slept fitfully for whole two weeks."
"I want to go home, mummy," Bobby sniveled against his mother's bosom, his former bigmouthed attitude completely gone now.
"Of course, my little angel."
Effortlessly, she swept Bobby up in her arms and stalked away after a curt nod to Stephen.
Stephen looked down at the man resting on his chest and then up at the women who had closed in on them in curiosity. None of them looked suitable to help him carry Ryan. He would have to wait until Ryan had calmed down enough to walk on his own.
"My head. Stephen, it hurts," Ryan suddenly said in a small voice.
Stephen had taken his mobile out and was ringing Ditzy before Ryan had even said the last word.