Title: You Can't Go Back
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own none of this and I'm not making any money from it.
Rating: PG
Summary: Connor finds himself reliving his own past, but also finds that he can't recreate what he had before.
AN: So, I could probably try to do a series rewrite or something, but I'm not going to, because I've been there and done that, and it's too damned big a project for me to take it on again. Also, my apologies to Conby 'shippers. This is just . . . an idea. Annnnnnnd . . . no smut. There was gonna be smut, but I had to write a separate PWP sequel for the scene I was thinking of, and to keep this fic rated as not M, you can find that on my LJ, the handle you're looking for is scwlc_fic. Lastly, I'm sure iEvenstarEstel may be horrified to know her fic Coda (which I kind of love) inspired this, but it did.

Stephen didn't quite know what to make of Connor Temple. For one thing, it seemed he was a time traveller from a future that was already entirely defunct. That is, Connor could still predict with oddly entertaining accuracy when and where anomalies would open, he could answer behavioural questions about the animals with the authority of experience and knew personal things about everyone on the team.

"How do we even know you're telling the truth?" Cutter demanded. "You're trying to tell me that Helen's some sort of megalomaniacal supervillain."

"You once said that her mad old aunt gave the pair of you embroidered handkerchiefs for every event, birthdays, Christmas. She'll leave one at that woman's house, the mosasaur anomaly, to try to tempt you into going after her." Connor looked at him seriously. "Of course, at this stage in the game, she's not completely crazy, only mostly."

He'd pulled Stephen aside not long after confessing that he'd somehow gotten merged with his younger self, obliterating the other personality entirely.

"Tell Cutter about the affair with Helen now. You'll regret it if you don't. Because if you think she'll keep her mouth shut about it, you're a bigger idiot than you were to trust her to begin with."

The first thing that had piqued Stephen's interest, though, had been the abrupt transformation from stumbling idiot into smooth tracker. They'd been standing by the vehicle, the one that had been ripped apart by the gorgonopsid, and Connor had seemingly tripped and fallen. They'd ignored him, until the stillness with which he was lying on the ground told him and Nick that this was something more than just clumsiness.

"Temple?" Nick had poked at the boy, who'd remained still and pale for a minute before groaning and putting a hand to his head.

"Anyone catch the number on that T-Rex?" he asked, rolling over and dragging himself to his knees.

"You just fell over," Stephen said, amused despite himself. "No reason for it, either."

"Cute, Becker. You still cranky Lester won't get . . . you a . . . tank . . ." He trailed off, whipping around, his eyes wide and scared and white as a sheet. Then he pinched himself. "Ow. Not dead, that's a good sign. I think."

"Why would you think you're dead?" Nick asked curiously. It was strange enough that it was worth investigating if the poor boy had simply gone mad.

But he wasn't paying the least attention to Nick. "Oh my God. How'd I get back here?" he muttered. "The anomaly went to the upper Triassic, Helen's dead, so it's not her fault, thank God."

"What!?" Nick demanded. "What about Helen?"

Temple waved a dismissive hand at Cutter, then suddenly seemed to refocus on where he was. "I . . . nothing. Crazy talk," he said unconvincingly. "I . . . was just confused a minute, Professor."

And he refused to say another word as they made their way from the site to the bar nearby.

He sat beside the car with Stephen, glancing repeatedly at the boxes atop the car. The ones he kept loaded with the dart guns and ketamine, with the tents and equipment they usually needed for expeditions. "How many dart guns do you have in there?" he asked.

"Just the two," Stephen said. "How did you know-"

"It won't be enough," he'd muttered. "And Leek'll be calling in Lester anyhow."

Gamely Stephen gave another shot at figuring out what had changed the puppyish student into this tense and intense man beside him. "Who's Leek? And Lester?"

"No one," said Temple, with a smile on his face that was cheerful and so patently false Stephen nearly whacked him over the head.

Then Nick came out accompanied by a woman, and he heard Temple gasp, "Jenny?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, looking confused. "You must have me mistaken for someone else."

"This is-" Nick began.

Temple interrupted, looking a little like he was meeting the Tooth Fairy. Pleased, yet utterly disbelieving. "Claudia Brown. Oh my God, I'm in the original timeline. Before . . . oh, wow."

Nick had had enough. "Temple, if you don't explain what's going on this instant, I'm going to have Stephen drag you somewhere and shoot you."

"I'm . . . sort of from the future," he'd explained awkwardly. "Only not exactly, because I think my consciousness was just, sort of, downloaded into my younger self, and you all think I'm crazy, which probably makes more sense right now than that I'm from the future."

They all stared at him.

"Please just pretend I didn't say that until after we see the scutosaurus," he pleaded.

Not entirely sure what to do with him, they'd dragged him along. And there had been a scutosaurus. There'd also been a coelurosauravus, and somehow, he'd wound up being forcibly drafted into chasing after a large predator along with Temple. In spite of what they'd just seen, the temporal anomaly, an ancient proto-tortoise and a flying, cheeping lizard, he'd still been fairly certain Temple was mad. But they'd made a tremendous team.

Temple had backtracked to the cow in the tree, looking around the roots. "We're looking for a quadruped, about oh . . . five metres long, about two at the shoulder, heavily weighted at the head, relatively short tail. Pretty compact all things considered, though." He'd described the footprints and they'd gone looking. They were armed with dozens of ketamine darts and Temple had indicated he thought they were going to have to snipe from a tree to knock the thing out.

The younger man was a more than adequate tracker. He wasn't as good as Stephen, but then, he thought in a moment of justifiable pride, who was? But Temple knew more about the animal, and was a decent shot too. It had taken the whole supply of darts to bring it down, but they had.

Ever since that first day, he'd rather liked Connor. The other man was smart and competent. Sometimes scatterbrained, but no more so than Nick when he got himself involved in something. What he lacked in physical skills, he'd make up for in intellect and enthusiasm. He was good-looking too, and Stephen quite enjoyed watching him work, dark eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and the dimple appearing with every broad smile.

In point of fact, the only thing he truly disliked about Connor Temple was his inexplicable insistence on shoving Stephen and Abby together.

While he wasn't averse to attractive women, far from it, and he was quite well-aware of Abby's charms, he also wasn't interested in them. She had a core of innocence, cuteness and spunkiness that wasn't to his taste. More than that, there was something in the way Connor looked at her that was . . . off. It was as though he was seeing someone else there, and perhaps he was. Because the Connor that had ridden up to the Forest of Dean with them, the young man with his noisy walk and conspiracy theories, he would have fit well with this Abby in an opposites attract sort of way. The Connor they had, though, was too mature for her. Seasoned in ways that left his eyes sometimes shadowed and grief bowing him down.

There'd been some abortive attempt on Connor's part to even move in with her, but that had gone by the wayside quickly, and it was after that, that he'd started trying to force Stephen and Abby together.

And of the double act that was sometimes Connor and Abby, Stephen was far more interested in Connor. He liked tracking with him, the approach Connor taking to it one of an intellectual understanding of the animal, translated to educated guesswork about where it might have gone, combined with reading signs, to Stephen's preference to run on instinct and experience. The complemented each other in the field, and Connor's intellect was a force of nature all its own. Between his looks and his brains, Connor was, in short, quite a sexy package. On top of that, though, Connor was, mentally, about Stephen's age, while Abby remained several years off from that.

Also, the way he sometimes glanced sideways at Stephen had led Stephen to think Connor wasn't as indifferent to Stephen as his weird matchmaking might have indicated. Still, he chose to approach the matter obliquely. They were chatting in the breakroom one day when he brought it up. "So, I don't suppose you'll ever explain what's up with you and how you look at Abby?"

Connor's mouth twisted a moment, then he said, as though the words had torn themselves free of him without his permission, "It's just hard to see her like this. I don't think I ever realised how much we'd both changed over the years," he said. "And now . . . I can't make her into that person again." He took in a trembling breath, released it and said. "It's just weird being in mourning for my wife when she's right there." He shook his head. "Only she's not."

That had been entirely unexpected. "You're just giving up on her?" he asked. He couldn't imagine giving up on someone like that.

Connor shook his head. "Maybe it's meant to be in the end, I don't know. But I can't retrace the steps to how we got to where we were. There are things that I did then I can't do now. Some of them because the situation that made it happen won't, now, and some of them because it's not me anymore. And the Abby I married, the one here, isn't her."

Stephen could see the dilemma. Because Connor was starting the relationship over at the beginning with her, but he was, for lack of a better term, in the middle of it on his end. The whole thing would be off. Still, "That doesn't explain why you're throwing her at me, then."

"You noticed that, did you?" Connor asked.

He raised an eyebrow. "Yes," he said, and waited for an answer. He didn't get one, because Connor's anomaly alarm went off and got the other man out of the conversation.

Stephen hadn't told Nick about Helen and his affair. When she told everyone while they were hunting the so-called future predators, he realised why Connor had told him to just tell Nick. Because at least they might have had a chance to work through this, but now no one would trust him, and all because Helen had dropped this bomb on them. Connor came through, stopping the creatures in their tracks before they did anything else, but the damage to his friendship with Nick was shot to hell.

It was in his apartment that evening, sitting with Connor in amicable silence, drinking their way through a few bottles of varying kinds of alcohol, that he had a small epiphany. Abby had been rather nasty to him since the revelation that he was an adulterous bastard, and he turned and asked, "Were you trying to get Abby to be obliged to take my side against Nick in this? Was that why the matchmaking?"

Connor shook his head. "Not really. It's just . . . Helen messed around with you a lot, we discovered. It . . . she messed with your head, using the affair and some other stuff. It probably won't happen anymore, but . . . I wanted you to have someone to keep her from influencing you." He looked away. "And I'd always thought you'd wind up with Abby, I mean, until you died."

That was . . . shocking in a way. And Connor was drunk, which would explain why he was confessing something he'd never said a word about, although it did explain that early comment about it being good he wasn't dead. "I died?"

"Mm-hmm. Martyred yourself to save the world," Connor's voice was only slightly facetious. "A room full of alpha predators from across history. Someone had to get in and lock it all down from the inside. Or so Cutter said. You did it." He looked up at Stephen, his eyes filled with grief. "We'd let Helen play us, you'd let Helen trick you and it all went to hell. If you'd had someone on your side, maybe it wouldn't have all fallen apart then."

"I'm not dead now," Stephen told him. Then he asked, "And why not you? Why wouldn't you try? Don't think I haven't seen you look at me out of the corner of your eye."

The laugh that erupted from Connor was a tad hysterical with a leavening of bitterness. "Me? Geeky Connor? Logistics and backup Connor? That-database-is-a-little-pathetic, Connor? 'You know, I'm not your type,' Connor?"

Thing was, while Stephen could see where Connor had once been those things, he wasn't anymore and clearly hadn't been for a long time. But some injuries took a long time to heal, rejection being one. More than that, being back in time was putting Connor into the unenviable position of having to reposition himself without any reference or ability to do so. But Stephen could help him with one thing. "You know how you said your relationship with Abby could never be what it once was again?" he asked.

"Yeah?" Connor's little diatribe was stopped in its tracks.

"Why would you think yours with me would be the same, either?" he asked, then leaned over and kissed him. He felt Connor stiffen in surprise, then pull away.

"I sort of thought you might be a bit joking," he said slowly. "I thought you were straight. You always seemed . . . and Allison and Helen . . ."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Stephen replied, edging closer. "I thought you'd never be past Abby, but she was a second choice in some ways, wasn't she?" he asked. "I remember how you tripped over yourself that first day in class."

"I did love Abby," Connor admitted. "Always will." He was leaning in closer though, "But I knew I never had a chance with you."

"Maybe not the first time 'round," Stephen kissed him again and felt Connor shiver and lean into it. "But you can't have expected it to go the same way this time."

A half laugh and half sob escaped from Connor, maybe the simultaneous dashing and resurrecting of hopes, and he seemed to fling himself wholeheartedly into the moment. He let Stephen press him down onto the couch, the pair of them snogging like a pair of randy teenagers and Stephen spared a moment to feel sorry for this version of Abby, who'd had this in another lifetime and would never know what she was missing, and for his other self, who had so easily dismissed Connor and had lost out on his own chances.

Eventually the first flush of excitement wore off and they both eased back, settling comfortably on the sofa, Connor curled up half on top of him. "Abby's not going to be happy with me, not after all that time I've spent trying to push you together."

"It won't be that bad," Stephen said, laughing.

Connor half sat up, "Clearly you've not seen Abby in a bad mood," he told Stephen. Then he shook his head with a soft sigh. "Everything's going to be so different now," he said. "By now the old timeline was gone. Claudia Brown was Jenny, we had Leek in charge, Ryan was dead . . . it's completely different from how I remember it."

"Who's Leek?" Stephen asked.

"A male, slimy, weaselly, snivelling, conniving, bald, annoying answer to Claudia," Connor told him.

For the longest time, Connor had stuck to the essentials in what he told everyone. The only person he'd explained everything to had been Lester. But now, that night, with Stephen, years worth of turmoil, adventure, friendship and loss were finally told. Connor drifted off to sleep midsentence, worn out from the emotional roller-coaster of his story.

Stephen pressed a kiss to the top of Connor's head and drifted off, thinking about possibilities.