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So he’s human again. But deep inside Nathan knows something is different. He doesn’t know how he knows that he’s changed, only that he does.
The one thing that Nathan Stark knows is when to keep his own counsel. He’s a scientist, until he’s got some concrete evidence he’s going to keep this secret to himself, apart from anything else, he senses that a misstep, or a mis-directed confidence could mean that he winds up the subject of a science experiment, and he has no intention of being someone else’s experiment.
His field is AI, and this adds a different dimension to his knowledge. When he was a cat, he was still Nathan Stark, he could still calculate, and hypothesise, and reason; he just couldn’t communicate. Now he’s Nathan again, he can still feel the cat at the back of his mind. His hearing and eyesight both seem sharper, he always had good vision, but now it seems more refined, his sense of smell too.
He can even sense that there is a purpose to the cat in his mind. That he’s somehow more. He wants to explore what that means. His private lab is the place to do that, returning there after what took place with Callister hurts, but he beefs up his security, installing locks on the door, an entryphone, and security videos to keep himself secure. After Jack and Allison were able to walk in on him and Callister, Nathan knows he won’t feel secure any other way.
It’s odd, given that he was so sure that he wanted his marriage and his life with Allison, but he knows it’s Jack who would understand, just like he knows that Jack would have cared for him if he had remained a cat. He tries not to think of Allison’s responses to either Callister or the cat that he became. Jack is the one with true empathy. Nathan feels ashamed sometimes about how he has treated Jack.
He kept the cat collar as a reminder, now it’s become a part of the process. If he can make this work, he has no intention of being caught in the open as a stray. He reads the tag, and feels a frisson of rueful amusement. Jack probably expected him to be annoyed about being known as Nathan the cat, but it was accurate. That the tag awakens a sense of belonging is something that he ignores.
His computer network is closed, a little paranoia is a wise and healthy thing, so everything is encrypted and password protected, and nothing links to GD at all, Nathan starts to work.
It takes him six weeks, six weeks of trial and error, learning to access his newfound abilities, it feels weird, and there are times over the six weeks where he begins to wonder if it is all in his head, that he’s imagining his feelings.
The first time he tries, it’s slow and painful, and he figures out that he’s trying too hard.
Six weeks of feeling his way. Feeling the change.
He closes his eyes, and lets go, for control-freak Dr Nathan Stark, that’s the hardest part of this whole thing, surrendering himself to the freefall, but the scientist within that control-freak relishes the feeling, the ultimate paradox.
So he lets go. And seconds later he’s stepping out of his clothes. Turning slowly in circles, arching his back, feeling the stretch from the tips of his large ears, to the end of his tail.
He’s a cat again.
He takes a very deep breath, and wills himself to shift back. It’s painful, but the pain is fleeting, and he embraces it, and he’s a six foot four and very naked scientist again.
So far so good.
He puts the collar around his neck, feeling somewhat foolish as he does, but the thing seems at one with his body either as a man or a cat, and he doesn’t want to get lost, or worse still wind up being part of one of Taggart’s experiments and stuck as a cat.
At least with Jack he will be safe.
Jack is his safety.
He installed a cat flap, and tinkered with it, it’s keyed to his DNA, he puts his front paw on the pad, and the flap lets him out. The entrance is concealed around the side of the building, with a ten foot sprint he’s in the trees and invisible to many prying eyes.
For the next few weeks he spends his cat time exploring his instincts, and the freedom not to be Nathan the scientist for a while. It’s addictive.
He takes a risk. Well not much of one by his, and Jack’s, standards, but technically still a risk. He’s calculated that the potential rewards far outweigh any other considerations. He walks into the Sheriff’s station.
Jack Carter is bored, he’s on the late shift, for once Global Dynamics is quiet. That’s a rare occurrence and Jack should be happy about it, but somehow he can’t settle. The fine hairs on the back of his neck have been prickling the last few nights. Something is going to happen, he knows it.
It’s like a change in air pressure, suddenly he knows he’s not alone. He looks up from his paperwork towards the doorway, and he knows, the huge tabby is wearing a red collar that Jack last saw around Nathan’s neck when he was lying naked in the gutter after pushing Zoe out of the way of that old scientist’s car. “Nathan.” The tabby leaps effortlessly on to Jack’s desk, and sits in the middle of Jack’s paperwork.
Jack wonders silently why he’s not panicking, but this feels very different from the last time Nathan Stark was a cat. He knows without being told that this time Nathan’s done this to himself, and that this time, he can get himself out of it.
Nathan yawns, widely, displaying a full set of very white teeth, smirks at Jack, and then steps over to Jack’s in-tray and flops down, tail twitching idly.
“Really?” Jack picks up his pen, and reaches for the paper he was working on when Nathan walked in.
Jack Carter has learned over his years in Eureka that the place is odd. He accepts that. He accepts that half the time he’s not going to even begin to understand the science, and the rest of the time he’s not going to understand the motivations of people who put science above safety and humanity and a lot of other things.
For the last four months, Nathan has been coming to Jack at night when Jack is on call. As a cat. He jumps up on Jack’s desk, lies in Jack’s in tray, occasionally shreds Jack’s paperwork, but generally doesn’t make a nuisance of himself. Very occasionally he follows Jack home, and curls up on Jack’s bed, purring to himself.
Jack likes it.
When they meet as Sheriff and Scientist, nothing is ever said. In fact, Nathan’s ability to change from Man to Cat and back again is never ever mentioned. Jack figures it’s best that way. He’s careful to avoid talking about the Cat in case it changes things between them. He’s getting on better with Nathan Stark than he ever believed possible. He really doesn’t want to mess that up. It makes doing his job a lot easier.
So everything stays the same.
It’s Global Dynamics, it always seems to be teetering on the edge of some potentially world-ending crisis, because scientists. But seriously Jack can do without this, they’re locked in Dr Harmon’s smoking laboratory, the lights are flickering, smoke is still rising from Harmon’s damaged equipment, there isn’t an air vent big enough for them to crawl through, communications are cut and Jo is out cold on the floor. She’s hurt, and badly. They need help and now. He looks across at Nathan.
The scientist isn’t doing all that well himself. He has a head wound that is still bleeding sluggishly, his ankle is badly sprained, possibly broken and from the wheeze in his breathing, Jack is pretty certain he’s got at least a couple of cracked ribs. But the green eyes are looking at him with a mix of stubbornness and fierce determination and Jack knows what Nathan is going to do.
“I can get through there.” Nathan indicates the tiny vent above their heads.
Jack shakes his head. Nathan’s hurt, he’s never seen the shape shifting process, but he knows Nathan Stark, and he seriously doubts the process is painless. “Nathan, no.” He knows this is not a good idea.
“I just need you to lift me up there.” Nathan continues, like he often does, as though he hasn’t heard Jack.
“Dammit.” Jack scowls, he’s against it, even though, rationally he knows they need help and very quickly. He couldn’t care less that Harmon gets away, but Jo needs help, they’re way down in Section 7, and with Jo in there with them, there’s no way that they can just wait for random rescue.
Nathan holds Jack’s gaze as he strips down to his boxers. He closes his eyes and reaches into the recesses of his mind for the Cat. H’s injured. He’s got cracked ribs, and he’s ninety percent certain that his ankle is broken, and he knows that the injuries are going to carry through to cat.
It hurts. Worse than it ever has before, and he knows that the pain is from his injuries, he gasps in a silent meow as he becomes cat, looking up at Jack. Seeing the concern on Jack’s face as the Sheriff very gently picks him up in his arms. This is going to be bad, Nathan knows it, he’s feeling whoozy from the blow to his head, his right side hurts, and his right hind leg he’s dragging. The temptation to slump in Jack’s arms and just stay there is great, but he needs to get out, so that he can get help, so he scrambles through the small hole and slithers his way down the pipe.
The tiny pipe opens out into a much bigger duct, and Nathan knows that he needs to change back to human so that he can kick out the grill and get out into the corridor. Changing back is excruciating, and he nearly blacks out from the pain as his body reforms itself into Man. His right ankle is too badly damaged to be much use, but Nathan manages to kick out the grill with his left foot, and half slides, half falls out into a locker room. He finds a discarded boiler suit, which exacerbates his physical discomfort when he pulls it on, but since he has no intention of running about the corridors of GD naked, he grits his teeth.
He makes his way to the corridor, limping badly, finds an open lab with a functioning phone, calls for help, then makes his way back down the corridor to the lab he just left.
Since Jo is in urgent need, and Nathan wants to talk to Jack, he stands to one side and tries to hold himself together while Allison and Fargo fuss around Jo, and Jack fields questions from them both.
Allison keeps glancing at Nathan in his borrowed boiler suit, and it definitely does not take a genius-level IQ to know that he doesn’t want to talk about it with her. Jack can tell. He can also tell that Nathan is barely holding himself together, that he’s in a degree of pain which has reached that borderland between bearable and unbearable and Jack is going to have to do something and fast.
As they move Jo, Jack steps over and puts an arm gently around Nathan’s waist, supporting him. Nathan is torn between the need to hold on to his dignity, and his need to give in to his injuries. He sways a little, aware of the warmth of Jack carefully pressed to his side, Jack’s supportive arm around his waist, and he must have blacked out for a moment, because suddenly he’s lying down, and he’s moving and Jack’s there, by his side, and Nathan closes his eyes and lets go.
After Jack is certain that Jo will be fine, he focuses his full attention on to Nathan. The scientist just revealed himself, and Jack isn’t certain where this is going to take them, because even if Allison says nothing, she isn’t a fool, there is no possible way that Nathan could have got out of the lab without something major taking place. The way that Nathan looked at Jack, was rather the way that Nathan looked at Jack on the night of Callister’s death.
The next day Nathan had gone back to his uptight, superior self, and Jack had regrouped. But a lot had happened since then. Now Jack realised something, that he wanted Nathan in his life, that the nights with Cat Nathan were Nathan’s way of reaching out, but that Scientist Nathan couldn’t take that final step, that Jack had to reach out to Nathan.
He knew where this was headed.
He studied his sleeping scientist, two stitches in his head wound, his ribs and his ankle strapped up, Allison making noises about keeping Nathan in for observation, but Jack knew that as soon as Nathan woke, he would want to be out of there. Instinctively want to hide himself away, to process the day, that if Jack let him, he would be running back to that lab, and they would go back to the status quo.
Jack needed to move them forward.
Jo was still sleeping peacefully when Nathan wakes.
Allison is not pleased, and she stares reproachfully at Jack as the Sheriff helps Nathan get dressed, Jack ignores her reproachful looks.
“Nathan.” Allison tries again. “You need rest.”
“And I’ll get it.” He sucks in a breath as Jack helps ease his jacket on. He tries an appeasing smile on Allison.
She’s not buying it.
He sighs, and wishes he hadn’t, ribs, “I’m signing out against medical advice, I accept that.”
She can’t help it, she’s angry. Trouble is she really isn’t sure if she’s angry because Nathan’s being stubborn and pig-headed, or because whatever is between Jack and Nathan is growing and she’s losing both of them. Or even because even though she’s losing them, she acknowledges to herself that she isn’t ready to surrender herself to either of them. That as much as she did love Nathan, it was never enough, and Jack is a friend, and deep down inside she knows she does not love him like that, even though he probably wants her to. And she’s just going to let Nathan go, because there is something there that she doesn’t want to acknowledge, or deal with.
It takes a long time to get to the jeep. Jack drives carefully, aware of every suppressed hiss from his passenger as Nathan deals with the uneven road, and the fairly bouncy ride. Then Jack’s helping him down the stairs to the door of the bunker, and Nathan is trying to work out in his head, as SARAH opens the door, and Jack’s guiding him up the stairs to the bedrooms.
They reach the landing, and Nathan screws up his courage.
The kiss is soft and sweet, and everything Nathan finally recognises that he’s been wanting for weeks. They break off, and Jack’s free hand comes up to caress the side of Nathan’s face, “We will be talking about this at length, scientist, but for now I think you’ve had a really long day…” and he turns towards his room, and his comfortable mattress, and as he helps Nathan sit on the bed, Nathan Stark realises that he really is home.