Primeval: A Saving Grace | Season One

Supernova

She hadn't been blessed with so much as a gravestone. Nothing but a patch of disturbed earth and the tattered remnants of yesterday's roses remained to mark the place where her broken body lay. To Mac, this was the worst injustice of all; whatever April may have done, whatever cruelties she had supposedly inflicted, she still deserved to be mourned, just like anybody else. Why couldn't Lester have granted her that, at the very least? Was she not perceived as good enough even to cross the line that separated man from monster, human from beast, the one thing that set humanity apart from the rest; not good enough to be treated with the most basic compassion of civilization? Was that all she meant to them? All they saw her as? Maybe they were right in their beliefs that what she'd done and everything she stood for was wrong. Maybe Mac was following her blindly, into the embrace of evils that shouldn't even be spoken aloud, let alone fostered, nurtured, in the way he'd been shown. It didn't matter, didn't matter. It didn't stop her from being deserving of something as simple as a name to immortalise her death by.

He loved her, and he knew that he did, and he knew that bias was the most powerful tool love wielded. But still, it wasn't just April. He'd feel the same about anybody, under any other circumstance, who had been left in the same situation. Nobody, however deeply society's brand of evil penetrated, should be buried without a gravestone, or something, at least; something to keep them alive even in death, something to prevent them from fading away. Everybody was loved by somebody. Even if they'd never met the person who would love them with everything they had, be that love platonic or romantic or familial or something else entirely, fluid, nameless, shining in liquid integrity; they were loved, and they were human, and there was good in them somewhere, everywhere...there was always, always good.

"God, I miss you," he murmured hoarsely, tears like needles gleaming hoarsely in the corners of his eyes, like dewdrops, salted prayers; he'd never expected it to hurt this much, but the pain never stopped, it was relentless, to the point where he was desperate for apathy, an end, an answer, desperate to just stop feeling anything at all, because even death would be preferable to this. He didn't want to be alone. He never had. Well, nobody did. Nobody ever wanted to be alone, at least not this kind of alone, but Mac thrived on love, on other people, on having someone he could trust with his heart and his soul, his whole life. His greatest fear was that of abandonment. April had been that person for a while, the person to whom he'd dedicated everything he was, and in the end, she had left him, just like everyone else. He'd trusted her, built her up into something invincible, and yet she'd still disappeared, slipping through his fingers like sand.

She'd left, just like he'd always secretly known she would, even if it wasn't her fault. She couldn't help dying, after all. She'd chosen to make the sacrifice, but that didn't mean it was her fault, what had happened; he couldn't blame her for any of this, no matter how much he was hurting. April had never wanted to die, but she was selfless enough to recognise that New Dawn was bigger than either of them, bigger than anything, and reorganise her priorities accordingly. In fact, she'd been the first of them to recognise it.

She hadn't left. She'd sacrificed herself for New Dawn, the perfection of the future she'd spent her whole life working to achieve, a future in the apparition of a riddle to which only Prospero held the key. Despite everything that had happened, Mac still believed in that future. Burton, his hero, had died in the murder of his own work of genius after the others in the ARC team had somehow corrupted him. April, his love, had died in the fight to bring the project to life. And thus both deaths now fell to him to avenge, in any way he could...and he did have a way. Whatever the consequences, he would see this project through, set fire to the world that had killed April and Burton...stand back, eyes wide open, watching it burn...

...and then...and then, he would dance in the ashes, throw them to the merciful hunger of the winds. He would watch them take flight, haunted by hurricanes...watch them die. Watch it all die, everything that bound him to this past life he had no interest in living anymore. If he had to do this on his own, without April by his side, he was going to make it count for something, at least.

Blinking the tears from his eyes, the world dissolved into darkness.

When it cleared, everything seemed sharper than before, brighter and colder and clearer. He felt different, too, the breath still shivering in his lungs now taking on new dimensions, the shadows from the trees all around the graveyard touched with the raw supernatural shimmer of another realm altogether. It was beautiful. A glacial winter's beauty, harsh and forbidding, but laced at the fringes with the first thaw of spring, and a new glimmer of hope like the flame of a candle burning, tiny but unwavering, in the midst of a thunderstorm.

"I'm going to do it, April," he said, louder this time, layers of strength shining through beneath his trembling voice, powerful as a harvest moon yet still fragile as a summer sunset, rising into flames stolen straight from the darkest corners of his soul. "I'll do it for you. And for Burton. For Prospero. For everything we've ever done, everything we've ever stood for...because it's not over yet. I won't let it be over. I'll do it, or die trying. I'll make you proud,"

The fading sunlight stretched out over his body as he got to his feet, a sudden chill burning through his veins. "I wasn't sure. But I am now,"

And like an angel, or maybe a demon, he stood, half in darkness, half in light.

Then he turned away, walking straight into the shadows, with the breath hitching in his throat as he tensed himself into a parody of inner security. Towards the gate sheltered by the oak trees, feet crunching with new purpose across the crisp brown leaves as his hands began to shake from both fear and adrenaline, and a sense of time running out, born more of paranoia than anything else. He knew what he had to do, what had to be done. What April and Burton would have wanted him to do. He was an expert at hiding his feelings, from himself better than anybody, and if he focused hard enough he could almost make the grief disappear entirely, buried beneath this new, furious surge of emotion, a power that set his heart beating and touched his mind with sanity and reminded him how to breathe again, reminded him that he was alive.

He would never stop missing April. Never stop loving her.

But he had to finish what she had started. He knew that now. Whilst he wasn't sure what had prompted this sudden certainty, he couldn't remember ever feeling anything this acutely before, as though all the fragments of destiny he'd spent half a lifetime collecting were finally falling into place.

April wouldn't need a gravestone after all.

Once he was finished, the whole world would know her name.

This wasn't home. This wasn't where they were supposed to be. Something had gone wrong, so terribly wrong that for a moment Evan was convinced that he was dreaming; how else could this be possible? He was well aware that they had changed something back there in the anomaly junction, but what could they have done to cause this much damage? Hours ago, he and Dylan had come through the anomaly and left modern Vancouver in their wake, a beautiful city bursting at the seams with more energy than it knew what to do with, overflowing, rich storms of pure humanity seeping through into the sky itself, the earth and the oceans, infecting the land around it with miracles.

And now, they had returned to a...a wasteland.

Red sand beneath their feet. Stars scattered like sequins over the black velvet coating of the sky above.

It was cold, too. Colder than he ever remembered Vancouver being, even in the winter.

As far as he could tell, they were alone.

"Where the hell are we?" Dylan said suddenly, a rhetorical question, her voice lost somewhere between fear and wonder as she took a step forward and looked around, moonlight glancing in silver rivers off her hair with every move she made. A sudden wave of grimness washed over him, not the twinges of sickness that assaulted him every time he thought about what had happened back there...Mac's death...Brooke...no, he had grown used to those remarkably quickly, accustomed as he was to the pain that came with grief; tiny shivers of an unseen threat were beginning to tingle at the base of his spine, and despite the empty land stretching out in front of him as far as the eye could see, the brightness of the stars casting shafts of light over everything, he felt uncomfortably vulnerable here.

Perhaps it was just the cold and the shock and the sinister atmosphere of the place, but he didn't want to wait around and find out. Fresh urgency was tugging at the corners of his mind, every muscle in his body tense and screaming out a message that he couldn't quite hear, however hard he strained to catch the fleeting whispers...and then, in the flash of a single moment just like any other, he knew. If they didn't get out of here, right now, right away, they would die, it was as simple as that. And he didn't know how, and he didn't know why, but there was no way he was going to let that happen if there was even the slightest chance he could stop it.

Mac and Brooke were both dead because of him. That didn't mean he couldn't find a way to live. Too much of the time following Brooke's death had been spent in a state of suspension between terror and exhilaration at the dark, secret thoughts he harboured of joining her. Time not spent, but wasted. Mac had died to keep him alive, going back in time to save him regardless of everything Evan had done to him...the least he could do was live the life he had left the way his once-best friend had always wanted him to. Which meant staying alive. And keeping Dylan alive, too, that went without saying; she was one of the few things he had left that made his life worthwhile in any way at all. Whilst she was definitely still afraid, still in pain, the emotion he saw on her face was of a different breed to his, less urgent, less demanding.

She had no idea of what was about to happen.

Evan clenched his fists, trying to slow his breathing to a somewhat more normal level. "We have to go,"

"What?" she glanced at him, obviously confused. "No. We'd be better off staying here,"

"Dylan, please," his attempts to keep the pleading note out of his voice fell flat. "You don't understand,"

"Don't you want to get back home? Evan, if the anomaly reopens-"

"Don't be naïve, Dylan. This is our home now. The anomaly isn't going to reopen; that junction doesn't exist anymore," he snapped, his voice so low and gritty with fear it sounded almost angry as it sliced through the frigid night air. How could she not feel the threat approaching, hovering somewhere just below the smudged horizon in the distance? He wanted to explain himself, but had a feeling she would unravel any argument he tried to make with her own misguided attempts at logic, and he couldn't afford to let this be dismissed as paranoia. It was real, even if he could barely understand it himself. And anyway, he didn't think he had time enough left to formulate a coherent explanation. "I'm sorry. But we don't have time for this. Just trust me, okay?"

When she didn't respond, still visibly perplexed and slightly offended, he grabbed hold of her hand, signalling apologies with his eyes, and began to run, pulling her along behind him. At first she resisted, and he saw the disbelief on her face with a painful clarity, the same lack of trust he'd grown used to seeing on the faces of almost everyone he'd ever worked with. Silently, he willed her to stop thinking, stop doubting, just run, just run...and then, at last, she did. Something in her eyes seemed to change, the emergence of a new realisation, and she was there beside him; they were running, wind wrenching at their hair and feet catching in the sand, the furious adrenaline tearing with brutal hunger through their bodies, through their veins. With every stride he took, the air came spilling out of his lungs until he had nothing left to give, held together by just blood and bone and pain, a fatal poison twisting his muscles into action and keeping him on his feet as though he were no more than a puppet to its majesty, which, perhaps, he was.

Together, they ran on into the darkness until neither could run anymore.

Exhausted. Just hollow cavities and fading sparks of electricity and shadows...constant, unfailing shadows.

In the instant they stopped running Evan knew somehow, inexplicably, that they would be safe here. At least until the sun rose again, throwing everything into the turmoil of a new light...then, nobody could predict what would happen, but under the cover of darkness they would be safe. He could deal with Dylan's anger, even as she drew breath to question him - whilst now it was just a flare of curiosity, the anger would come later, when she realised only he could sense the reality his fears were based upon, that he'd taken them both from their once chance at returning to familiarity on what would appear to her to be no more than an idle whim, and he could accept that. He could deal with it, not because it was justified but because it meant he'd saved her, saved them both, a fact which meant more to him than he could ever find the words to describe.

"Go back," his other self had said. "You have to go back,"

That was all. No explanation, no justification. Expecting him to understand the puzzle, or at least to be capable of working out what it meant, and to know what do with the answers. Then he'd vanished, drifting into the dark infinities of a world Matt had yet to touch, leaving him to hide his fears and the agitation of questions in his mind as he followed Emily back into the arms of normalcy, although acting normal and pretending like everything was fine was the last thing he thought himself able to do.

So many questions, yet the key to the answers had vanished. Like a ghost, Matt thought. Like so many of the ghosts of his past, his future, the ones who appeared in his life and made him want to care and then disappeared again without so much as a word of apology. He was starting to get tired of ghosts, and this one was no exception, just another figure in the long line of mirages and dreams and nightmares that wouldn't leave him alone, angry, bitter, endless; no matter how hard he tried, their remnants wouldn't go away. And now this. He'd thought it was over. He'd been so sure. They'd stopped New Dawn, saved the world, saved the future - surely everything should be alright now, or near enough? God knew they'd suffered enough to deserve a happy ending. For a moment so fleeting he could no longer be sure it had ever really existed, he'd thought they'd created a world in which he could finally be at peace...but he'd been wrong. The moment had stopped, breathed and moved on; he'd lost touch with it altogether. Gone, like quicksilver, like a fly dancing on the evening wind. Gone. It wasn't over yet. He was starting to question whether it ever would be.

"Dammit," he muttered to himself, fingers twitching with the effort of resisting the urge to slam his fist against the top of his desk in frustration. "Go back, go back. Go back where? To the future? What the hell do you want from me?"

The next breath he took quivered in his lungs, germinating, waiting...waiting to exist. Waiting to become; to become something else, something more. A scream of regret, of rage, of hatred; it felt hot and cold, inhuman, otherworldly, the war cry of a predator wounded and at its most vicious. A week. A full week since the visit, and nothing had happened. A week he'd spent waiting, for the answer that never-

The explosion came from nowhere and everywhere, severing his train of thought like a blade that hit with the force of a meteor. For a moment, Matt let the panic sweep over him, carry him away to depths of insanity far greater than any he'd known before, but the last few tattered scraps of reality still floated in the wind and he reached to grasp them with everything he had, anchoring himself to his own soul, preventing him from letting the craziness defeat him like it had done before, all those years ago. The silence lasted barely a few seconds, but those seconds seemed to span centuries, a never-ending charade of time passing by before the second explosion hit with even more force than the first, shaking the entire building down to its very foundations. Sirens split the air in half, wailing in protest as the room began to flash black and scarlet under the sweeping lights of the alarms, vibrant waves of blood and darkness.

Acting on an unknown instinct, Matt ran to the window; it took everything he had to keep himself from screaming out along with the sirens.

The sky was alight with shimmering clouds of coloured fire.

Winds blowing, a frantic surge of destruction. One tiny, unrecognisable figure stood in the middle of it all, caught up in the chaos of the devastation.

It was no more than a silhouette, dwarfed by the golden light of the vast anomaly pulsing behind it, arms raised, as though trying to control the storms of despair that raged and seethed around it. Musical notes of maniacal laughter slammed through the rest of the cacophony, screams and sirens and all the rest of it dwarfed by the figure's savage shrieks of glee.

He barely had time to take in the full, technicolor chaos of the scene all around him before the third explosion tore the world around him to pieces and he found himself falling into the arms of eternity, the howls of the wind reaching new and greater heights as the storm reached out to take him, soothing the sudden flares of white-hot pain winding through his entire body and carrying him instead to the blissful nightmare of oblivion.

Uhh...hey, Primeval fandom! So...this fic is basically a combined continuation of both Primeval and Primeval: New World, since both of those shows are now cancelled which is something I'm veeeeery bitter about; this is my take on what it would be like if the two were put together and recommissioned. The title says season one; there will be at least a second 'season' - if I have time to write it xD - and maybe more, depending on the fic's popularity and my inspiration/motivation.

Hopefully, the exact changes to the timeline will become more evident in later chapters, but if you have any questions just leave them in a review or PM me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can! There will be violence, gore, character deaths and mental illness in this fic; if you're uncomfortable or triggered by any of those things in any way, I'd advise you not to read this. Updates should be fairly frequent, once a week or so...but don't hold me to that xD!

Hope you enjoyed the first chapter!

- Disaster's Playfield.