I've been trying to type this up in time (since I recently watched this show and it begged to be used for this prompt). I think I've just made it...

Title: Second Take
Fandom: Primeval
Rating: All ages
Length: 635 words.
Content notes: None. Although it's my first attempt at Primeval fic, so I hope it's okay.
Author notes: Spoilers for the end of S1/start of S2.
Summary: Getting a second chance isn't always a good thing. (Nick Cutter, Claudia Brown, Jenny Lewis).

***

There must have been thousands of people out there who’d think it was a good idea to get a chance to completely start over; to go back in time and change a few tiny details. Nick Cutter knew the idea really wasn’t all it cracked up to be.

*

Once, Claudia Brown had sat in a group of three girls in a corner of the library on a rainy day, perched on the table, safely out of view of the teacher on duty. There, solemn in school uniform and burgundy blazers, they swore an oath they’d never force their children into a pretentious school – before things broke down into a low-voiced and giggly argument about whether or not they needed to swear an oath never to have children in the first place. Claudia thought that was probably going a bit far.

Now, something has changed, and in her place Jenny Lewis decides how to tackle her schooldays. And – after that brief, awkward phase of puppy-fat and hideous shyness – she decides the only way is to win. And while she can’t truthfully claim she conquers the whole school, it works well enough to set a pattern for life.

*

Claudia Brown had always had a good idea of what she had wanted. School hadn’t been so bad, after all, and it led to a decent job. Claudia Brown, Home Office. She could probably be here for life – if she wanted. She thought she’d probably want something else after a few years – not for ambition, but she wasn’t sure she’d choose to be swallowed whole by the Establishment.

Jenny Lewis is successful – she’s made a habit of that – but she admits to herself that she isn’t always clear as to her direction, or what she really wants out of life. She sells things, or helps other people sell them, but sometimes it seems at a remove from reality.

*

The first time Claudia Brown met Nick Cutter, she’d kissed him. There had been a reason for that, or an excuse (or maybe that was only what she told herself). She didn’t really care. It might not have been sensible, but there were times for responsible and professional behaviour, and then there were times when you let that go hang. She’d kissed Nick Cutter the last time she saw him, too.

Jenny Lewis dislikes Professor Cutter; she has from her first moment at the ARC. Or maybe that isn’t entirely true, but it’s hard to take to a man who’s scaring her by staring and calling her Claudia. She doesn’t know any Claudia Brown. She doesn’t even care for the name. She certainly doesn’t need a mad Professor in her life right now. The impossible monsters are more than enough. Still she finds that he gets under her skin in ways she can’t explain.


*


Perhaps he was cursed, Nick thought. You had to admit there was something in that when his wife had left him for a dinosaur, and the moment he fell for someone else, she turned out never to have existed. That was an egocentric, unscientific thought, though, and untrue.

It was the most frustrating thing in the world, this change; far worse than watching an impatient child screw up perfectly good work and throw it away to start again on something new. Thanks to something he’d done, or Helen had done, that was what had happened with time, or evolution itself. Helen thought it was a discovery, an opportunity, and that they could play with the concept again, see what else changed. He thought that was insanely dangerous.

He also thought the universe had got things right the first time around. He’d thought it had got something pretty close to perfect, just this once. The second time around was never going to measure up.

***