Fanfic: Three Words
Primeval fandom has finally made it onto my trope bingo card!!! Yey! Kind of ironic it's taken this long, considering the primary reason why I signed up to it was in the hope of prompting some Primeval bunnies, but better late to the party than never!
Title: Three Words
Author: Athene
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing/characters: Becker
Rating: 15
Warnings: Occasional language, canon character death mentioned
Spoilers: General series 3, webisodes
Disclaimer: Not mine. ITV and Impossible Pictures own them.
Word count: approx 578
Summary: Becker couldn’t even bring himself to read the report.
AN: Fills the trope bingo square ‘presumed dead’.
Missing, presumed dead.
Three words, three lives, three marks of his failure.
Becker couldn’t even bring himself to read the report. What would it tell him that he didn’t already know? That the higher ups had lost confidence in the ARC team. That they would not authorise any further search and rescue missions. That they had given up on the impossible possibility that Danny, Connor and Abby were still out there somewhere, still trying to get home, still hoping that they had a home to come back to.
It had only been five months, and already they had been written off. Becker wanted to be shocked by the narrow-mindedness of the authorities, but in all honestly he wasn’t. They had no fucking clue what it was like doing this job, what the anomalies and the past and the future worlds were really like. Five months, though?
Helen Cutter had survived for eight bloody years, and she had been on her own. And yet it had been decided by some fucking idiot in a suit and a nice safe office that Danny, Connor and Abby couldn’t survive for five months. Connor, an expert on dinosaurs and the past, Abby, an expert in tracking and animal behaviour, and Danny, expert in whatever the hell he needed to be, and beloved of Lady Luck herself. If anyone could survive out there, it would be those three.
Missing, presumed dead.
Becker couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it, not until he saw their bodies. And he knew exactly how futile that resolution was, because the chance of finding their bodies in the vastness of time was even more remote than the chance of them all strolling through the very next anomaly, Danny grinning and making some quip about whether or not Becker had missed him.
Becker closed his eyes. God, he could see it happening just like that. Connor and Abby hugging each other, and maybe even him as well. Danny smirking and pretending that he cared far less than they all knew he really did. Becker pretending he didn’t care at all, when everyone knew that was the biggest bloody lie ever.
Sometimes he wished he didn’t care. Sometimes he remembered the days when they were nothing more than scientists. Annoying, naive, creature-loving scientists with no sense of self-preservation and no respect at all for what little chain of command actually existed at the ARC. When protecting them was nothing more than a job, his latest posting on his way through the military hierarchy as he did his damndest to prove himself to everyone. Well, that hadn’t worked out so great, had it? Damn near everyone he had been sent here to protect was either presumed dead or actually dead.
Sarah. God, Sarah. If only he had known. If he had stopped for even five minutes and thought about it. If he had spent more fucking time actually protecting the one person who was still here for him to protect, instead of blindly chasing after the ones who he had already failed.
Becker opened his eyes. The screen was still there, too bright in the darkness of his office. The words still mocked him and his futile resolutions. Three words that summed up his failure in the most clinical, efficient, and detached manner possible.
He blinked, and the words were gone for the briefest moment. He blinked again, allowing a single tear to escape.
Three words.
Becker only needed two.
“I’m sorry.”