![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Time of Prophecy
Author: alyse
Artist: aithine
Fandoms: Primeval/Legend of the Seeker
Characters: Primeval: Abby, Becker, Connor; Legend of the Seeker: Shota
Spoilers: Set post series 3 for Primeval
Word Count: 2,000 [right at the max word count, baby!]
Disclaimer: Not ours, don't sue
Notes: Created for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
legendland Crossover Fic and Art challenge. So, of course we did Primeval ::g:: I must admit I have had (for months and months) a crossover fic going around in my head for Primeval and LotS. I don't do crossover fics, but the idea that Abby and Connor had maybe come home from the Cretaceous via the Midlands, and that the rest of the team are oblivious to this little fact until an anomaly to the Midlands opens and Abby and Connor are revealed to have split loyalties, wouldn't leave me alone. (Plus: Abby + knives = omgsohawtandcompetent.)
This is not that fic. But it's almost that fic, if you squint a little. And, who knows? Maybe it will grow up to be that fic ::g::
Summary: They weren't the same people he'd watched walk away with Danny a year ago
-o-
The relief of having Abby and Connor back lasted for weeks. They were a little older, a little wiser and had a few more scars, but they were alive and with a miracle like he figured that he was entitled to grin from ear to ear, even if it gave his new team - who had him neatly categorised as a hard bastard - pause.
Maybe the relief was why he didn't realise at first that they weren't the same people he'd watched walk away with Danny a year ago.
He'd expected some changes, but the nature of them gave him pause. Connor, who'd talked a mile a minute, was quiet. Quiet, not subdued, and it took a while for Becker to cotton onto that, too. At first he'd put it down to shock or trauma or post-Cretaceous stress disorder, but Connor's silence was watchful, not wary. He watched as Becker's men swirled around him, like Connor was the one in the eye of the storm when it had always been Connor whirling around, leaving chaos in his wake. Once Becker noticed that, other things started to leap out at him. Like the way that both of them moved, comfortable in their own skins. Abby had always moved like a predator - she was a smart girl, fierce and resourceful, and that much hadn't changed - but now Connor matched her, both of them moving as smoothly as one.
The first time he saw Abby pull a knife from her boot at an anomaly site, he'd rationalised it - they'd been stranded in the past, so of course they would want to be prepared for the future. But then he'd watched as Connor unsheathed a knife from the small of his back, and handled it like he knew which end cut. It was highly illegal but when he tried to talk to them about it, they kept silent, kept watching him, Abby with a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth, and Connor with a slight frown, neither listening to a word he said.
It was unsettling, refusing to add up or make any sense.
That was why he watched them back.
---
He was still watching when they stepped through the anomaly into a forest that felt old and deep, the trees unfamiliar and stretching greenly overhead, shading the forest floor. The gloom made it difficult to see, but even so he noticed Abby stiffening. So did Connor, who glanced towards her and then around before the tension flowed out of him, his shoulders falling.
The trees were familiar to them.
Becker didn't know why he thought that, but he trusted his instincts. "What is it?" He didn't aim his gun in their direction, not exactly, but Abby glanced at him, her lips pursed, frowning as her eyes dropped automatically to his weapon. Once she'd have called him on it; now she just dismissed him, her eyes flitting from his face to the woods around them. "Connor," Becker prompted, because maybe he'd actually get some sense out of Connor. "Where are we?"
Connor was chewing at his lip, but the move didn't strike Becker as worried, more thoughtful, hopeful even. He didn't want to follow that thought; these people were his team. He'd trusted them once.
He just wasn't sure he could trust them now, and that thought bit deeply.
"The Midlands," Connor said, his voice gravelly and too deep. "I think we're in the Midlands," which was weird because it sure as fuck didn't look anything like Birmingham to Becker.
"When are we?" he asked, impatience colouring his voice.
"What?"
"When are we? I mean, I'm pretty sure that the M62 doesn't run through primeval forests."
Connor's face cleared. "Not that Midlands, Becker," he said, and his gentle 'I know best' tone was starting to piss Becker off. He was about to fire something back, maybe even his actual weapon, when an urgent, "Sir!" grabbed his attention.
He turned around, mouth already opening to snap at Reynolds, whose voice it was, when he realised what was missing from the scene.
The anomaly was gone.
"There was no warning, sir." Reynolds was too professional to sound panicked even if he was shaking his handheld AD as though that would do anything but break it. "No fluctuation in the magnetic fields, no indication it was going to close, nothing, sir. It just... shut."
He looked up at Becker; all of his men were looking at him, all of them expecting him to do what he was paid to do - give orders.
All of them but Abby and Connor.
Connor was staring off into the gathering gloom, his eyes narrowed but his hands relaxed, hanging by his sides. Something was off in the fluid lines of his body, alerting Becker even before Connor moved, sliding his hand around to the small of his back and pulling out his ever-present knife at the same time as Abby sank down into a crouch, neatly pulling two matching blades from the inside of her Doc Martens.
It distracted Becker for a second before his baser instincts kicked in; he spun around, raising the muzzle of his own weapon and pointing it in the direction that Abby and Connor were looking.
He still wasn't sure he trusted them entirely - not as much as he had - but their instincts in this, at least, proved correct. There was a figure headed towards them, a woman judging by the height and build, dressed in white and moving smoothly between the trees.
It was fucking creepy.
He kept his weapon trained on her as she moved closer. Abby and Connor flanked him, still holding their knives as though they knew how to use them, as though bringing knives to this fight was going to do any good when his men had guns.
"Who goes there?" Abby's voice rang out and only years of training stopped Becker from jerking or tightening his finger on the trigger. When Abby stepped past him, he had to stop himself from grabbing her and jerking her back - Connor was still standing next to him holding a large knife and he was no longer sure that Connor wouldn't use it. Even if Connor wouldn't, he had no doubts that Abby would use hers.
"Who dares question me?"
The words echoed towards them and, as answers went, it didn't bode well; Becker didn't let the barrel of his rifle drop as the woman - he'd been right about that at least - stepped into the clearing. It was a matter of moments to weigh her up - slim, long auburn hair, wrapped in white fur and somewhere on the cusp of middle age but trying hard to hide it. She didn't look like a threat - Reynolds, who was standing to the side and slightly in front of Becker, relaxed a little too much for Becker's comfort - but Becker wasn't buying it. Apart from anything else, neither Abby nor Connor appeared to be taking her at face value, Abby's whole stance shifting, moving from wary towards confrontational.
Even if this woman wasn't a danger, Becker was getting sick and tired of taking his lead from Abby and Connor; it seemed they'd forgotten that their team these days consisted of more than just the two of them.
"Who are you?" He echoed Abby's question, but without the edge she'd had in her voice, tacking a cautious, "Ma'am," on the end for good measure.
The woman bristled anyway, turning a jaundiced eye on his men and raising one slim, pale hand towards them.
Surging heat scorched against Becker's skin, searing into his fingers and his palms where they were pressed into the stock and barrel. He swore, all of his instincts overwhelmed as his gun dropped from his gasp, his men likewise affected. What the fuck?
The woman smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant one. "I am -"
"Shota," interrupted Connor, watching her intently. Whatever the hell had just happened, it hadn't happened to either Abby or Connor's weapons. They held them confidently as they eased between Becker and the woman.
Shota - she didn't dispute Connor's identification - scowled.
"You would do well to remember who I am, and what power I wield," she said, and if Becker's cheek wasn't still burning, his fingers still painful, he might have taken issue with that.
"Who is she?" he asked tersely, wondering whether to reach for his knife. The explanation for how Connor knew her would have to wait until later.
"Shota," Abby answered, a hard edge to her voice. "Witch woman and ruler of Agaden Reach."
"Is that where we are?" Connor's voice. "Agaden Reach?"
"If you had crossed my borders," Shota intoned, silkily dangerous, "you would already be dead."
"I don't doubt it," Abby bit out, hard as nails. "You closed the anomaly." It was a statement of fact, not a question, no doubt in Abby's words. Looking into Shota's cold, hard eyes, Becker found that he didn't doubt it either although he'd be hard pressed to explain it. "Why?"
"Do you think that I would permit more of your world to spill into mine? You're not welcome here."
"I take it you didn't open it, then?" Connor this time, sounding - strangely - as hard as Abby.
"I am no mere tool of prophecy - you would be wise to remember that, boy." The insult wasn't subtle, but Connor merely narrowed his eyes, watching Shota intently. "You were brought here by prophecy and I have no part in it."
Prophecy? The hell?
"Prophecy?" Abby, at least, wasn't shy about hiding her disbelief.
"When the outlanders return, death shall walk the land." Shota smirked triumphantly. "It is not the first time you have been here, and not the first time you've aided the Seeker."
"The Seeker?" Becker's next words were silenced by Abby raising one peremptory hand, her eyes not leaving Shota's face.
"What do you want, Shota?" she asked, her voice colder than Becker ever remembered hearing.
"I want you away from my borders. You bring death in your wake, Outlander, and I want no part of it. I suggest you make haste to the Seeker's side before my patience wears thin." Shota turned on her heel, vanishing eerily and abruptly into the rising evening mists.
"What the hell was that about?" Becker snarled. He was justified in losing his temper in the circumstances, but neither Abby nor Connor seemed perturbed, sharing a long look that said a great deal to each other but nothing to Becker.
"We need to head west," Abby said eventually, meeting Becker's eyes calmly. "I wouldn't bother bringing your guns. I'm sure Shota's pretty much wrecked them." Reynolds' rueful nod told Becker that Abby was right about that, at least.
"Why west?" The anomaly had opened here, and he'd be damned if he was giving ground that easily, not when they were already yanking it out from under him. He didn't bother hiding his scowl, but Abby ignored it.
"Because Shota went east."
It wasn't an explanation, at least not one that satisfied him, but Connor snorted. When Becker spared him a look, Connor shrugged his shoulders. "D'Hara is west," he said. "And we need to hurry. Night's falling."
"And?"
"If Agaden Reach is that a way," Connor pointed after Shota, "then D'Hara is that a way..." another gesture in the opposite direction, "and this, in the middle, must be Cadic. Believe you me, you don't want to be in Cadic after dark."
"Why not?" He could do stubborn, too.
"Lions and tigers and werewolves, oh my," Abby said softly.
"Werewolves?" He didn't bother hiding his disbelief this time, but it was Connor who answered him while Abby simply held his gaze calmly.
"Well, Calthrops, really. Same sorta thing."
It was unbelievable. All of this was unbelievable.
Abby finally gave him a smile, one that was shaded around the edges with sympathy at his predicament. "Welcome to the Midlands, Becker. We hope you enjoy your stay."
Somehow he doubted he was going to.
Author: alyse
Artist: aithine
Fandoms: Primeval/Legend of the Seeker
Characters: Primeval: Abby, Becker, Connor; Legend of the Seeker: Shota
Spoilers: Set post series 3 for Primeval
Word Count: 2,000 [right at the max word count, baby!]
Disclaimer: Not ours, don't sue
Notes: Created for the
legendland Crossover Fic and Art challenge. So, of course we did Primeval ::g:: I must admit I have had (for months and months) a crossover fic going around in my head for Primeval and LotS. I don't do crossover fics, but the idea that Abby and Connor had maybe come home from the Cretaceous via the Midlands, and that the rest of the team are oblivious to this little fact until an anomaly to the Midlands opens and Abby and Connor are revealed to have split loyalties, wouldn't leave me alone. (Plus: Abby + knives = omgsohawtandcompetent.)This is not that fic. But it's almost that fic, if you squint a little. And, who knows? Maybe it will grow up to be that fic ::g::
Summary: They weren't the same people he'd watched walk away with Danny a year ago
-o-
The relief of having Abby and Connor back lasted for weeks. They were a little older, a little wiser and had a few more scars, but they were alive and with a miracle like he figured that he was entitled to grin from ear to ear, even if it gave his new team - who had him neatly categorised as a hard bastard - pause.
Maybe the relief was why he didn't realise at first that they weren't the same people he'd watched walk away with Danny a year ago.
He'd expected some changes, but the nature of them gave him pause. Connor, who'd talked a mile a minute, was quiet. Quiet, not subdued, and it took a while for Becker to cotton onto that, too. At first he'd put it down to shock or trauma or post-Cretaceous stress disorder, but Connor's silence was watchful, not wary. He watched as Becker's men swirled around him, like Connor was the one in the eye of the storm when it had always been Connor whirling around, leaving chaos in his wake. Once Becker noticed that, other things started to leap out at him. Like the way that both of them moved, comfortable in their own skins. Abby had always moved like a predator - she was a smart girl, fierce and resourceful, and that much hadn't changed - but now Connor matched her, both of them moving as smoothly as one.
The first time he saw Abby pull a knife from her boot at an anomaly site, he'd rationalised it - they'd been stranded in the past, so of course they would want to be prepared for the future. But then he'd watched as Connor unsheathed a knife from the small of his back, and handled it like he knew which end cut. It was highly illegal but when he tried to talk to them about it, they kept silent, kept watching him, Abby with a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth, and Connor with a slight frown, neither listening to a word he said.
It was unsettling, refusing to add up or make any sense.
That was why he watched them back.
---
He was still watching when they stepped through the anomaly into a forest that felt old and deep, the trees unfamiliar and stretching greenly overhead, shading the forest floor. The gloom made it difficult to see, but even so he noticed Abby stiffening. So did Connor, who glanced towards her and then around before the tension flowed out of him, his shoulders falling.
The trees were familiar to them.
Becker didn't know why he thought that, but he trusted his instincts. "What is it?" He didn't aim his gun in their direction, not exactly, but Abby glanced at him, her lips pursed, frowning as her eyes dropped automatically to his weapon. Once she'd have called him on it; now she just dismissed him, her eyes flitting from his face to the woods around them. "Connor," Becker prompted, because maybe he'd actually get some sense out of Connor. "Where are we?"
Connor was chewing at his lip, but the move didn't strike Becker as worried, more thoughtful, hopeful even. He didn't want to follow that thought; these people were his team. He'd trusted them once.
He just wasn't sure he could trust them now, and that thought bit deeply.
"The Midlands," Connor said, his voice gravelly and too deep. "I think we're in the Midlands," which was weird because it sure as fuck didn't look anything like Birmingham to Becker.
"When are we?" he asked, impatience colouring his voice.
"What?"
"When are we? I mean, I'm pretty sure that the M62 doesn't run through primeval forests."
Connor's face cleared. "Not that Midlands, Becker," he said, and his gentle 'I know best' tone was starting to piss Becker off. He was about to fire something back, maybe even his actual weapon, when an urgent, "Sir!" grabbed his attention.
He turned around, mouth already opening to snap at Reynolds, whose voice it was, when he realised what was missing from the scene.
The anomaly was gone.
"There was no warning, sir." Reynolds was too professional to sound panicked even if he was shaking his handheld AD as though that would do anything but break it. "No fluctuation in the magnetic fields, no indication it was going to close, nothing, sir. It just... shut."
He looked up at Becker; all of his men were looking at him, all of them expecting him to do what he was paid to do - give orders.
All of them but Abby and Connor.
Connor was staring off into the gathering gloom, his eyes narrowed but his hands relaxed, hanging by his sides. Something was off in the fluid lines of his body, alerting Becker even before Connor moved, sliding his hand around to the small of his back and pulling out his ever-present knife at the same time as Abby sank down into a crouch, neatly pulling two matching blades from the inside of her Doc Martens.
It distracted Becker for a second before his baser instincts kicked in; he spun around, raising the muzzle of his own weapon and pointing it in the direction that Abby and Connor were looking.
He still wasn't sure he trusted them entirely - not as much as he had - but their instincts in this, at least, proved correct. There was a figure headed towards them, a woman judging by the height and build, dressed in white and moving smoothly between the trees.
It was fucking creepy.
He kept his weapon trained on her as she moved closer. Abby and Connor flanked him, still holding their knives as though they knew how to use them, as though bringing knives to this fight was going to do any good when his men had guns.
"Who goes there?" Abby's voice rang out and only years of training stopped Becker from jerking or tightening his finger on the trigger. When Abby stepped past him, he had to stop himself from grabbing her and jerking her back - Connor was still standing next to him holding a large knife and he was no longer sure that Connor wouldn't use it. Even if Connor wouldn't, he had no doubts that Abby would use hers.
"Who dares question me?"
The words echoed towards them and, as answers went, it didn't bode well; Becker didn't let the barrel of his rifle drop as the woman - he'd been right about that at least - stepped into the clearing. It was a matter of moments to weigh her up - slim, long auburn hair, wrapped in white fur and somewhere on the cusp of middle age but trying hard to hide it. She didn't look like a threat - Reynolds, who was standing to the side and slightly in front of Becker, relaxed a little too much for Becker's comfort - but Becker wasn't buying it. Apart from anything else, neither Abby nor Connor appeared to be taking her at face value, Abby's whole stance shifting, moving from wary towards confrontational.
Even if this woman wasn't a danger, Becker was getting sick and tired of taking his lead from Abby and Connor; it seemed they'd forgotten that their team these days consisted of more than just the two of them.
"Who are you?" He echoed Abby's question, but without the edge she'd had in her voice, tacking a cautious, "Ma'am," on the end for good measure.
The woman bristled anyway, turning a jaundiced eye on his men and raising one slim, pale hand towards them.
Surging heat scorched against Becker's skin, searing into his fingers and his palms where they were pressed into the stock and barrel. He swore, all of his instincts overwhelmed as his gun dropped from his gasp, his men likewise affected. What the fuck?
The woman smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant one. "I am -"
"Shota," interrupted Connor, watching her intently. Whatever the hell had just happened, it hadn't happened to either Abby or Connor's weapons. They held them confidently as they eased between Becker and the woman.
Shota - she didn't dispute Connor's identification - scowled.
"You would do well to remember who I am, and what power I wield," she said, and if Becker's cheek wasn't still burning, his fingers still painful, he might have taken issue with that.
"Who is she?" he asked tersely, wondering whether to reach for his knife. The explanation for how Connor knew her would have to wait until later.
"Shota," Abby answered, a hard edge to her voice. "Witch woman and ruler of Agaden Reach."
"Is that where we are?" Connor's voice. "Agaden Reach?"
"If you had crossed my borders," Shota intoned, silkily dangerous, "you would already be dead."
"I don't doubt it," Abby bit out, hard as nails. "You closed the anomaly." It was a statement of fact, not a question, no doubt in Abby's words. Looking into Shota's cold, hard eyes, Becker found that he didn't doubt it either although he'd be hard pressed to explain it. "Why?"
"Do you think that I would permit more of your world to spill into mine? You're not welcome here."
"I take it you didn't open it, then?" Connor this time, sounding - strangely - as hard as Abby.
"I am no mere tool of prophecy - you would be wise to remember that, boy." The insult wasn't subtle, but Connor merely narrowed his eyes, watching Shota intently. "You were brought here by prophecy and I have no part in it."
Prophecy? The hell?
"Prophecy?" Abby, at least, wasn't shy about hiding her disbelief.
"When the outlanders return, death shall walk the land." Shota smirked triumphantly. "It is not the first time you have been here, and not the first time you've aided the Seeker."
"The Seeker?" Becker's next words were silenced by Abby raising one peremptory hand, her eyes not leaving Shota's face.
"What do you want, Shota?" she asked, her voice colder than Becker ever remembered hearing.
"I want you away from my borders. You bring death in your wake, Outlander, and I want no part of it. I suggest you make haste to the Seeker's side before my patience wears thin." Shota turned on her heel, vanishing eerily and abruptly into the rising evening mists.
"What the hell was that about?" Becker snarled. He was justified in losing his temper in the circumstances, but neither Abby nor Connor seemed perturbed, sharing a long look that said a great deal to each other but nothing to Becker.
"We need to head west," Abby said eventually, meeting Becker's eyes calmly. "I wouldn't bother bringing your guns. I'm sure Shota's pretty much wrecked them." Reynolds' rueful nod told Becker that Abby was right about that, at least.
"Why west?" The anomaly had opened here, and he'd be damned if he was giving ground that easily, not when they were already yanking it out from under him. He didn't bother hiding his scowl, but Abby ignored it.
"Because Shota went east."
It wasn't an explanation, at least not one that satisfied him, but Connor snorted. When Becker spared him a look, Connor shrugged his shoulders. "D'Hara is west," he said. "And we need to hurry. Night's falling."
"And?"
"If Agaden Reach is that a way," Connor pointed after Shota, "then D'Hara is that a way..." another gesture in the opposite direction, "and this, in the middle, must be Cadic. Believe you me, you don't want to be in Cadic after dark."
"Why not?" He could do stubborn, too.
"Lions and tigers and werewolves, oh my," Abby said softly.
"Werewolves?" He didn't bother hiding his disbelief this time, but it was Connor who answered him while Abby simply held his gaze calmly.
"Well, Calthrops, really. Same sorta thing."
It was unbelievable. All of this was unbelievable.
Abby finally gave him a smile, one that was shaded around the edges with sympathy at his predicament. "Welcome to the Midlands, Becker. We hope you enjoy your stay."
Somehow he doubted he was going to.