So...I promised myself I wouldn't bombard the Primeval fandom with lots and lots of fics, that I would stick to the major stories I was working on for the fandom in which I tortured poor Connor and made Abby save his but and not write another story until I was done. Yeah...right...

In any case, this came to me one night when I was supposed to be studying for a rather important test and just wouldn't let me alone until I had gotten everything down. I'm not super satisfied with the ending, or the fact that Nick is a pain to write. More than likely I'm just going to rewrite the ending - again - and post it after I'm done...

As always, reviewers are loved more than life itself and any and all concrit is accepted and will be absorbed into the massive intellect...or, well, not so massive intellect...whatever, same difference right?

And no, I don't own anything. No matter how much I'd like to.

It had always been fairly obvious, to everyone else in the world but them it seemed, that there was bound to be something between them, given enough time.

From the moment he had seen them interact he had seen their possibilities. Connor, with his near idiotic babble about UFOs and government conspiracies, looking at Abby as if she was the most brilliant thing he had ever seen in his life. Once upon a time he had looked at Helen the same way, as if there was nothing to the world but the woman that stood before him. Then, of course, there was Abby. Calm, cool, and collected despite the fact that everything steady in her world had turned sideways and upside-down. She hadn't shown the least bit of interest in Connor at the time, unaware that she had just become the very center of his world.

If it wasn't for the fact that Connor seemed to be doing his level best come across as a complete and utter fool, Cutter might have shown more sympathy for the boy's plight. At the time, however, all anyone could do was stare at the giant prehistoric turtle standing before them in awe.

Later Cutter found that the two's relationship had become, if not more confusing, more entertaining to him and the rest of the team. Connor was living with Abby, first for a week, then a few weeks, then the expected - if not by Abby - outcome of Connor becoming as permanent of a resident as the zoologist girl's beloved lizards. Connor seemed only too willing to please Abby, and kept her secret about Rex, or did until the accidental escape of said dinosaur. Abby seemed to soften to Connor's idealistic views of the world, and was there to try and ease the pain of Tom's death when not even Cutter knew what to do with the gutted young man.

He had hated to admit it at the time, though now that it really didn't matter he had come to accept the fact, but the two youngest members of the team had grown on him rather dramatically. Abby had become the daughter he had always imagined one day having, smart, brave, kind hearted. He wondered sometimes if, had Helen wanted children - and she hadn't gone and left him for time itself- if the daughter they might have had would have been anything like young Miss Maitland. He hoped so, in a distant, ridiculous sort of way. And Connor, Connor filled a number of rolls in Nick's life. A sort of son, a sort of apprentice, a sort of young awkward hormonal teenage boy running after Cutter's only daughter. In many ways Cutter was proud of everything Connor had done, as well as complete and utter amazement at the young man's bizarre ideas. And an almost ever constant annoyance for Connor's blundering, clumsy ways.

Ultimately though, it was Connor and Abby who come to his aid when he began to doubt his own mental health. Abby in a much more subtle way, asking him about what Claudia was like and what it was he had felt for her. While Connor had readily had come forward to tell him that he believed him, even going so far as to keep him in check when he very nearly lost it with Jenny Lewis. He had never thanked either of them for what they had done.

The ordeal with Caroline had him worried, well worried and a little angry. He was happy that Connor finally managed to get himself a girl, it not surprised that he had gotten one such as Caroline Steel. It still didn't settle with him that the boy's interest could seemingly be transferred from one girl to another so easily. Abby had grown to fit the image of a daughter he had conjured nicely, and he had seen the looks she had been sending Connor's way - even if she herself hadn't been aware that she had been doing so.

Cutter had felt better - and worse, so much worse - when upon Abby's near miss with Mers Connor had revealed what was reallygoing on in that over-crowded head of his. Even if Connor had jumped back about twelve steps and ran right back into Caroline's hold, there was still some reason behind the madness...sort of. Connor loved Abby, Cutter had heard him say it and even if he hadn't the whole world could tell, but the boy was too terrified of her rejection or - worse still - her abandoning him to do anything. Cutter could tell there was a story behind that, something that explained the fear that the young man had, though he wouldn't find out until after the chance to ask had passed.

Time went on, as it always did. They found Anomalies, they dealt with creatures, life went on in their mad little world.

Losing Stephen had been one hell of a blow. Even with everything that had happened, all the lies and all the secrets, it had been devastating to all of them. Connor, he knew, had often gone to Stephen for advice, and Abby had once thought - in a schoolgirl sort of way - that she was in love with him. Cutter saw how his two young protégés only got closer with the loss of their friend. The strength they showed made Nick feel more confident in their ability to be able to carry on, no matter what happened. He hadn't thought at the time, what they would have to go through in order to carry on. He hadn't thought about how soon that time would come either.

Death, had found, was not as bad as coming face to face with a clone of yourself. Death didn't involve too much surprise. When he had turned around to find himself face to face with...well himself, he was fairly certain that his heart had stopped. When he had turned around to find Helen pointing a gun at him, however, he had known what was to come next. And then, of course, his heart actually had stopped.

Connor had been there, in the end. He had come to save him, too late of course, but had ended up just being there to sit with him as he slipped away. He had made the boy - or who he had once considered a boy - promise to figure it out, The Artifact that Helen was so obsessed with. Cutter had known, deep within his bones, that if anyone could do it then it would be Connor. And that if anyone would be able to keep Connor from going too far - just as Cutter himself had - to keep him sane, it would be Abby.

His two crazy kids left to deal with the mess he was supposed to take care of.

He continued to look after them. With Stephen and - when their so called paths crossed - Connor's old friend Tom, who kept a watchful (if not twitchy) eye on his friend. There were a few others, figures of both Connor and Abby's past who had made the same decision to stick around. He had learned a lot about them from those shadows, more than he ever could have learned in his living life.

Both Connor and Abby had taken his death hard, harder still than when Stephen had died. Too late he had realized that, while he had considered them his sort of children, they had in turn come to think of him as a father figure in their broken lives. He really had wished to be a different enough man to have told them what he had really thought of them, but that was how life or in his case death, went.

Jenny had a close call, far too close in his opinion. It had allowed them the chance to talk, to get a few things sorted out that they had left unsaid while he had been alive. He told her that, even when she left - he knew before she did that she was not going to stay with the ARC - to keep an eye on his kids. Because that's what they were now, his kids.

He never would know how much of their conversation Jenny had remembered after she had been brought back, but she seemed to have held onto the basics of the message at the very least. She kept her promise to look after Connor and Abby.

The chaos that ensued after Jenny's leaving was mixed between expected and unexpected. His kids managed it, if not without a few bruises. They had, he despaired to realize, become accustomed enough to loss that they had managed to get back on their feet again rather quickly. Then everything had gone to hell with nothing more than a simple phone call.

Had he been alive and able to do so, he would have taken Abby firmly by the shoulders and shaken her until reason was knocked back into her thick head. Or at least until she realized what a narcissistic prat her brother was. Should he been alive to meet the young man properly, Cutter was fairly certain he would have punched Jack squarely in the mouth.

Abby eventually got the sense knocked into her though. Even if it very nearly cost her Connor and many other lives to get the fact that her brother needed to get his life together, on his own. And Connor eventually got his due for his part in getting Rex back. He wondered if all parents felt that their kids grew up too fast, he certainly did.

The brief, very brief, even by ARC standards, peace between crisis' was shattered by Helen in an instant. He was so surprised. When Stephen made a comment about ghosts supposing to be above such things as being sarcastic assholes he had responded with dignity and intelligence. This of course being in the form of a certain hand gesture that would remain unnamed.

His kids had been trapped in the past. Connor injured, Abby terrified and neither of them sure how they were going to get back home. Helen had lost it, well and truly lost it. And the outcome was Connor and Abby having to survive a cruel world where they had little to no resources and no visible silver lining to bring them back from the brink.

Cutter had worried, unable to do anything else other than watch as they managed day by day, leaning heavily on each other to stay alive and sane. Each week was a miracle, and each month a testament to their combined strength, until finally - at the three month mark - they had finally managed to get back home. Had he been able to - and had he been such a man to begin with - he would have hugged the both of them tightly and told them how proud he was of what they had accomplished.

Instead he gave a proud smile to his ghostly companions before continuing his vigil over Connor and Abby's ever entwining lives.

After their return to their own time, disturbingly only a few days to their friends as even Danny had made it back with only a day between their departure and his return, they had jumped head first into a real relationship. Dates, talking, anniversaries, meeting what family the two of them had left, the works. In five months time - officially in any case - they had gone from awkward former flatmates to announcing their engagement to a less than surprised group of friends.

Cutter had been amused - alright so he laughed his ghostly ass off - not only at how unimpressed, stoic Lester had actually been moved during his task of giving Abby away, but most importantly at the fact that it was not stuttering, clumsy Connor who messed up the ceremony. Rather, it was the unusually nervous and tongue-tied Abby who had been the one to, before all present to witness their joining in holy matrimony, jump the gun and kiss Connor before Becker even had the chance to say dearly beloved.

He continued to look after them, he always would, even after their marriage. Watching as new villains arose to take the place of Helen and Christine Johnson, as the ARC team expanded and matured. Feeling all the annoyance that Lester expressed as Mr. and Mrs. Temple's little home of lost in time creatures grew and grew with each passing Anomaly until finally the ARC leader agreed to their pestering and created a facility for them all.

Cutter even felt a small amount of excitement and joy Connor had showed - whooping and screaming and twirling Abby around like a complete idiot before the entire ARC staff - when the small, blurry black and white photo of a indistinguishable blob was presented. He watched as the two carefully packed up their flat and moved into a house, a gorgeous thing that Cutter had vaguely recognized as the house that the gremlin creature had haunted for so many years that wasn't too far away from the ARC. Of course Connor's over-exuberance took control over rational thought in all aspects that involved the baby, becoming even worse the larger Abby's baby bump became. Everything from nursery decoration to overly complicated baby furniture became something grand and profound to the two parents-to-be and Cutter found himself wondering again how different his life would have been if he had had children. Looking on as Abby's stomach grew large and Connor became one of those hilarious to watch panicky fathers who went running for the overnight bag ready to scoop his wife up and carry her off to the hospital at any given moment.

Stephen had commented that it was this over eagerness for the baby that had led the universe to throw a little irony their way. Cutter could only agree as baby Temple finally arrived in true ARC style. A nerve wracking touch and go situation in which predators were let loose in the ARC by the latest villain and Lester was made to mourn the loss of his desk - and perhaps his sanity - as he, Connor and Sarah were forced to help Abby through her labor in Lester's office. Something warm spread throughout Cutter's chest as the newborn was curled between his parents, one brilliant beautiful moment of peace within a day of terror and chaos.

Nicolas, baby Nick, was perhaps marked apart from all the other children in that respect. The moment of his birth signifying an entire lifetime of adventure and amazement. If the life the boy's parent's led was any indication, then it would certainly be an interesting story to watch unfold.

Cutter couldn't wait.