Work Text:
1
The first time Jenny confronted Helen over it, the other woman thrust a revolver in her face in response, and it all happened like this.
"You! I hope that you're happy now!" Jenny snapped as she walked up to Helen, as the other woman was sitting placidly in the ARC's office. The members of the staff, passing by, gave her curious and cautious looks, but otherwise left her alone – Helen was here on Lester's invitation, after all.
"About what?" Helen asked placidly – Jenny was not yet familiar enough with the other woman to realize that Helen could snap from inactivity to action in under a minute, and thus was deceived – that time.
"About bringing Nick and Stephen together!" Jenny snapped, as she loomed over her sitting interlocutrix.
"Ah," Helen said knowingly, "believe me, I did it only because the right thing to do – for them and for me. I did not have to do it – I could have done many things, including killing them both, separately or together, and oh, but was I tempted to do so – but then I would have gone completely mad. Some things just must be done, you know?"
The words were reasonable, the voice was reasonable, the revolver showed in Jenny's voice was not so reasonable at all.
"Um," Jenny croaked, trying to move back slowly only to discover that it was tricky to do so in high heels. "Helen-"
"Mrs. Cutter, please put the revolver out of Ms. Lewis' face," Lester said almost cheerfully, as he approached the strange tableau. "Her sweat might ruin her makeup, and where then she'll be? Cutter's already busy with Hart to appreciate her, and her loss of face might ruin her life even more."
Of course Jenny was grateful for Lester's intervention; still, his choice of words was rather poor; surprisingly, though, Helen thought so too.
"Lester," she spoke in a voice that sounded rather like the way Jenny felt, "why did you ask me to come here? I've had my fill of the twentieth century at the moment, so if you don't mind I would rather leave."
"And where would you go?" Jenny could not help but ask.
"Considering how I'm presently feeling? I could even try to give the Eocene another chance," Helen muttered, not even facing Jenny. "That said, I'm more likely to go somewhere like the Miocene, where the feeling's neutral and I haven't really been there before."
"Fascinating," Lester muttered in his acerbic manner, "you really like to run from your problems, don't you?"
"And who are you to judge me?" Helen faced Lester squarely. "I have my share of flaws, I am not the all-powerful and all-knowing time queen I fancied myself to be, but, as far as I am concerned, I had love in my life and I had hatred, and now, I have sadness. In short, I am living my life to the fullest, and my choice to walk through my fire time anomaly? I had no regrets about that, believe me. But what about you, James Lester? A political career that you have sidetracked practically by yourself with no regrets, a loveless marriage that have long exhausted itself before I came through the forest of Dean, and – what else? You're hollow, James Lester, you merely exist in time, and that's why Oliver Leek, the half-crazed and disturbed weasel of a man was able to fool you on all levels – because he had lived, as crazy as that may sound, and you do not. Dispute me," she practically spat the last words into Lester's face.
Jenny gulped. James Lester was largely an unflappable man, and like so many other people, who become involved in politics, he had a very good poker face. Now, however, it had gone white, and Jenny did not had to tap into her inner PR agent to realize that the look in Lester's eyes was pain: Helen had hit him full on, right into that potential soft gooey center of the civil servant.
"And here," Lester clearly did a titanic effort of keeping his proverbial temper under control, "I am offering you a job, while you're insulting me."
"I am not insulting you," Helen stood firmly, "I was merely answering your question, remember? And I already have a job-"
"Yes, as a part of a plot that Leek had devised in order to siphon away the ARC fund," Lester said, sounding more flippant than he did earlier. "And one that was paying really low too, I should add."
"This was never about the money," Helen sighed, quietly. "Not for me. If I cared about money, everything would be different. Why do you want to offer me a job?"
"Technically, you are already working for the ARC – I feel that you deserve a break," Lester said, now sounding rather quiet himself. "Sometimes doing the right thing does result in a reward. But if you don't want it-"
"Eh, I can try," Helen shrugged, "as long as it's not a desk job – it was always Nick's thing, not mine. Oh, and during the summers I work in a booth in a renaissance fair, so I'll have to take time off then."
"You're too modest," Lester said flatly.
"You don't need to pay me during that time," Helen shrugged.
"Oh? Then maybe we will be able to get along," Lester said thoughtfully: Leek's machinations may not have brought the ARC into a financial pit, but they did bring it very close to one. "What do you think, Ms. Lewis?"
"Fine, just keep her away from me," Jenny said flatly.
"No can do," Lester shrugged in mock concern. "The two of you are actually on the same team."
"What? Why?"
"Because I'm not running a backdrop to a soap opera, Ms. Lewis," Lester snapped. "Cutter and Hart are two of the most obtuse people by themselves – why, even Shaggy figured out that they had attraction to each other before they did – and they don't need your presence to complicate it further; or Mrs. Cutter's."
"It's Dr. Cutter," Helen's grin was anything just friendly. "I'm no more a Mrs., Mr. Lester, than you're a knight."
"Okay, let's keep the tension to a minimum," Jenny said, before the bickering could start again. "James, we'll discuss your team assignment decision later. Is there anywhere we can go now, please? Any time anomaly?"
"Not so fast, Ms. Lewis," Lester's facial expression clearly said "Nice try." "There's one more member of your new team that you will meet."
2
Captain Becker, Jenny thought, was a rather morose and taciturn young man, and something of a martinet as well, especially considering that he was probably around the same age as Stephen Hart. Judging by the look he gave them, the captain was not particularly impressed by them either.
"And this is our newest member, straight from Sandhurst, captain Hilary Becker!" Lester finished grandly. "What do you think?"
"His generation's answer to Lawrence of Arabia, no doubt," Helen said wryly. "Do we have a choice?"
"No," Lester said brightly, though now there was a certain brittle quality to this brightness as well.
"Fair enough," Helen shrugged and actually backed down. "Ms. Lewis? You have anything constructive to say?"
"No, though I do wonder why such a promising military man is here, rather than in the military," Jenny confessed.
"Personal preference – ma'am," Becker spoke, curtly, clearly implying that this was the end of this discussion if he could help it.
"Fair enough," Jenny backed down. "So, now what?"
"Now, there's a disturbance at the British Museum," Lester said firmly. "Can you go and check it out? I already have my hands full dealing with other matters that you're distracting me from right now."
3
The British museum loomed – stern, big, and stony. "Have you been here any time recently?" Jenny asked Helen for the other woman did not speak ever since they left the ARC.
"No, not recently," Helen replied and fell silent again.
Jenny found that she liked this silence even less than when Helen was talking to her – though not when she showed a revolver in her face. The fact that the new captain, Becker, seemed to be quite pleased at keeping the conversation to a minimum, keeping mostly to orders and the like.
Jenny was not quite a social butterfly, but she did rather thrive on discussion rather than silence, and so she decided to begin to talk to Helen after all.
Or, rather, tried to talk to Helen, for the appearance of a new face on the scene interrupted Jenny's attempts to make peace.
"And who are you, people?" the woman asked, sounding worried, failing to notice their firepower.
"We're with the government," Jenny said matter-of-factly. "You're with the museum? You have a problem?"
"Yes! That!" the woman pointed as a large, crocodile-headed creature came from around the bend.
"Something as ugly as that must've come from the Eocene," muttered Helen, making the Eocene sound not unlike a particularly unpleasant ex, before she began to look through her backpack. "Ah. Just what the occasion calls for!"
To Jenny's surprise, however, what Helen produced was not the revolver that she had threatened Jenny with earlier, but a bar of dried meat or fish that she threw at the approaching crocodilian with its gaping jaws. To Jenny's further surprise, the reptile snapped the bit up and paused, clearly waiting for more.
And Helen obliged, through not very eagerly. "Captain, please," she whispered urgently to Becker. "Tranquilize it before it decides that we have more meat than my pemmican does!"
Becker, Jenny realized, was not the sort of a man to be asked twice to shoot anything; rather, it was the tranquilizing bit that caused him to hesitate – briefly; but shoot the reptile he did.
"Wow! That was impressive! Do you do this sort of thing often?" the museum worker asked Jenny after that was over.
"That's our regular job, actually," Jenny confessed. "Interested in joining?" she added, slightly sarcastically.
"Well, actually," the woman said, somewhat thoughtfully, "maybe? It cannot be any worse from what I have been working with previously. Sarah Page, egyptologist."
"Helen Ambroise, anthropologist. That's Jenny Lewis, public relations, and captain Becker, from the military," Helen replied as Becker and his men tied up the now prone reptile.
"Um, yeah," Jenny said, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Say, where did this friend of yours come from?"
"Oh, of course! Let me show you!"
TBC