Fic: Disconnected Paths
Title: Disconnected Paths
Fandom: Primeval
Summary: Jenny dislikes the new Special Forces Captain as soon as she meets him. (AU)
Characters: Becker/Jenny, appearances by and references to others
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~5000
Beta: The amazing Lady Drace
Author's Note: Written for rain_sleet_snow in the 2017 Denial Secret Santa, inspired by the prompt I do not want people to be agreeable. It saves one the trouble of liking them. I also tried to include a few things from your wish list. I really hope you like this!
I would like to think our paths are straight
Disconnected from choices we make
- Street Map, Athlete
Jenny dislikes the new Special Forces Captain as soon as she meets him.
She can't put her finger on why. Lester signed off on his assignment, so it can't be that he's incompetent (not that one can always infer that just from a bland smile and a handshake, as she has to constantly remind herself). He looks the part, as far as she can tell from his well fitting charcoal suit.
He stands there quietly while Jenny and Nick consider him then steps forward and offers them a hand.
“Joe Wilder.”
His voice matches the rest of him.
And no, Jenny can't help it. There's just something about him.
o o o o o
Wilder is good in the field. He handles Cutter like he's been herding recalcitrant scientists all his life, and follows Jenny's directions calmly and quickly. He absorbs Sarah and Connor's enthusiasm without being dismissive of either of their very different skill sets. He adheres to Abby's rule of incapacitation and repatriation over bullets.
He's not even fazed by the prehistoric creatures.
Lorraine pulls up his service record during one of the quieter days, the kind Jenny has learned to take as they come, with lunch that requires an actual fork to eat.
She listens to Lorraine's summary as she finishes assembling her salad (extra dressing, she's more than earned it). “There's nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of commendations, some favourable letters from former commanding officers.”
Jenny raises an eyebrow, and puts the dressing away before she can abuse her own goodwill. “Favourable?”
Lorraine shrugs and deposits a foil wrapped sandwich on the table while she waits for the kettle to boil. “No more, no less. Seems to be how they breed them in Special Forces.”
“Just good enough to not attract too much attention?” Not for the first time Jenny wishes Major Ryan was still stationed at the ARC. He'd have Wilder's measure in a heartbeat. Possibly less.
“Looks like.” Lorraine considers Jenny. After half a sandwich she gestures with her mug. “If I keep digging, I'll start to raise flags, and not just with Wilder. What exactly are you looking for?”
“I'm not sure,” Jenny admits slowly.
“If there was anything... bad in there, Lester wouldn't have hired him,” Lorraine points out.
“Of course. I'm not - I'm not looking for something to smear him with.”
“Of course,” Lorraine echoes. “But you're not exactly looking for reasons to be friends with him either.”
Jenny concedes the point. “I don't know what I'm doing, really.”
A ghost of a smirk flashes across Lorraine's face. “Since when do any of us?”
o o o o o
The day Helen storms the ARC with her clones and blows it up, Jenny loses track of everyone and everything. The day seems to happen in flashes and starts, but the one thing she remembers clearly is Wilder offloading Cutter onto a gurney and slamming the side of an ambulance before it rumbles out of the ARC car park.
“You got him out,” Jenny says numbly. “Thank you.”
She can't read the expression on Wilder's face. “Just doing my job, ma'am.”
It might be the longest conversation they've had since that first meeting in Lester's office.
o o o o o
Nick doesn't come back to the ARC, at least not straight away. Jenny can't blame him. The days she wishes she'd never taken Joanna Elliot's recommendation of the cryptic government PR opening are becoming almost too many to count.
Luckily for her and her maudlin tendencies the to-do list between anomaly callouts never seems to end. While Connor hoards Helen's artefact, Lorraine steps into oversee the repairs to the ADD and its surrounding hardware.
Jenny finds herself overseeing the temporary relocation of Nick's lab.
It's the need for attention to detail that she appreciates most. Nick's utter aversion to any kind of technology, networked or otherwise, means there is a mountain of paperwork in varying degrees of charcoal that needs to be sorted through. Nothing is dated, because that would be far too simple for a former university professor, but there are distinguishable themes that she adheres to, even though in a few months Nick will no doubt find fault with all of it. It's just the way he is; Jenny already knows she won't be offended by the inevitable reaction.
The anomaly alert is almost annoying in its distraction. Jenny rounds up a handful of people still on-site - Abby, Connor and a couple of soldiers - and lets Wilder drive them to a government building not too far away.
They're met in the lobby by a sharp dressed woman who could easily be Lester's female equivalent, right down to the predatory gleam in her eye and the two black clad men flanking her.
The younger one of them locks eyes with Wilder for a moment, which is interesting. Jenny would stare, but the woman opposite her looks far too amused.
“Christine Johnson,” she tells Jenny, holding her hand out like a weapon. Perhaps it is.
“Jenny Lewis.”
“From the Anomaly Research Centre, yes.”
Jenny tries not to gape. “How -”
Christine shrugs a single shoulder. It's too rehearsed to be casual. “James isn't the only one with security clearance. Something he'd do well to remember.”
Jenny's hackles rise. “I'm not a messenger.”
“Of course.” Christine watches her, unblinking. “Well, whatever wild goose chase led you here, I'd ignore it next time. Becker?”
The younger flunky glances to her. “Ma'am?”
“See these people out, would you?”
She turns on her heel and stalks off through a door with - Jenny tries not to be too obvious with her peeking - a card reader and pressure-sensitive keypad.
The flunky - Becker - looks the team up and down. Quite what he makes of them all, tired and (with the irritating exception of Wilder) scruffy, Jenny isn't sure she wants to know. The man himself looks like a younger version of Wilder, right down to the deliberately bland expression. It ought to lump him straight into the dislike pile.
“Door's that way,” Becker says. He glances at Wilder again, then Jenny.
This time the silence is unnerving.
“Come on,” Jenny tells the others. She'll ask Lester about Christine Johnson, not just because the other woman had managed to insinuate that she wasn't supposed to know.
If there's anything she dislikes more than not knowing how to feel about someone, it's being to made to feel like she's not supposed, or allowed, to know anything.
Back at the ARC, Jenny hesitates getting out of the car. Wilder notices the cue and waits for Abby, Connor and his men to head into the building before turning to look at her.
“You know him, don't you?” Jenny has just enough restraint left to stop it from sounding like an accusation.
Wilder dips his head slightly. It's obvious who she means. “I taught him for a while at Sandhurst. Quiet, very good at what he does. But the stick up his arse is big enough to make him the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square.”
Despite her sudden ungainly snort, Jenny stares. “You taught?”
Wilder's head bobs in the other direction. “Considered retiring 'til James made the call. Does that make a difference?”
“A difference to what?”
Wilder shakes his head slightly. “My mistake, ma'am. Never mind.”
o o o o o
Twelve hours later Jenny's still in the ARC. Home is more of an effort than she feels capable of right now. Her thoughts won't stop whirling, from Lester's reluctant debrief to trying - and failing - to stop Mick bloody Harper and his lot from getting killed.
She wonders if this is what Stephen had felt like, back when he was still crusading for freedom of information. More and more she thinks he had a point, but the way he'd gone about things back then had been so far off the scale of wrong things Jenny isn't sure there is a classification for it. She can only hope that he and Nick are having better luck finding middle ground now they're both on medical leave.
All Jenny keeps coming back to now is Lorraine's wry assertion that none of them knew what they were doing. Jenny can't help but think things were easier back in the early days of her assignment to this confounded place, when she had a clearly defined role and was not jumping haphazardly between team leader, morale officer and whatever else a spare pair of hands are needed for at a given moment in time.
She lets out a loud groan, pressing the heels of her hands into her forehead. When she looks up again Sarah's watching her.
“That bad?”
“Ugh.”
Sarah lets out something that could almost be a laugh. “Thought so. Come on, lady. Time we got out of here. There's a twenty-four hour Thai place near mine, you can crash on the sofa if you want.”
That might be the best offer Jenny's had in a long time, and she makes sure to say so out loud. Sarah's smile this time is genuine, and offers Jenny her arm before they leave.
o o o o o
A couple of days after the best green curry she's ever had, Jenny closes and locks her front door, then stops. She has the strangest feeling like she's being watched. She looks around as she pretends to fumble with her car key, but there's nothing - no one - out of the ordinary.
Then she sees him, maybe a hundred yards away but ambling slowly towards her. She recognises his face - well, his hair - immediately, but it takes a couple of seconds to recall his name.
“Morning, Miss Lewis,” Becker tells her. The red checked shirt he's wearing makes him look younger than his file says he is.
“What are you doing here?”
Becker shrugs. “Taking the scenic route. Doing some recon. Whatever you'd prefer to believe.”
Jenny draws up into herself. “Recon,” she echoes.
Becker shrugs again. “Your journo stalker's stopped paying attention to you.”
He has to mean Mick Harper, which is a whole other avenue of questioning that Jenny doesn't feel equipped for right now.
“People move on,” she says as lightly as she can.
Becker nods slowly. “That's good to hear.”
This close, Jenny can see a thin line of stitches running near the edge of Becker's hairline. It looks fresh. “You're welcome to report your findings to the Neighbourhood Watch or, failing that, the police.”
“I'll bear that in mind,” Becker says. He nods curtly this time, the only thing missing from the motion a salute. “Have a good day.”
He resumes his previous slow walking pace. Jenny watches the back of him until he turns a corner and disappears. Then she lets out the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding.
o o o o o
“I think Christine Johnson is having me watched.”
Lester merely blinks at the newest variation of 'hello' he's been subjected to, and presses a button on his phone. “Lorraine, find Captain Wilder, and if anyone else tries to come into my office, tell them to sod off.”
Jenny glances through the glass wall, just in time to see Lorraine's head twitch - anyone else's exaggerated eye roll - and waits for the next proclamation. It comes quickly enough.
“Details.”
Jenny keeps them to a minimum, not that a lot even happened.
“Was it the pretty one or the competent one?”
“Why can't he be both?” Jenny blurts before she can stop herself.
Now Lester looks amused. “Christine Johnson likes her minions to fall into very neat, one note categories. Wilder already informed me that there are two Special Forces Captains seconded to her little... whatever it is she has running over there.” There's the slightest petulance in his voice that at any other time would be amusing.
“It was Becker.”
“The pretty one,” Lester decides. “I'd be offended if I were you.”
“Offended by what?” Wilder asks, coming into the office. There are stains on his trousers and he smells like burning.
“Christine Johnson thinks she can honey trap my interim team leader.”
“You're over-reacting,” Jenny says.
“Says the woman who's all but being stalked by the enemy,” Lester retorts.
Jenny frowns. “Christine Johnson is the enemy now?”
Lester raises his eyebrows and leans back in his chair.
“Treating her like a super-villain won't accomplish anything,” Wilder says.
The expression on Lester's face suggests otherwise. “She's suggested to the Minister that one of her people replace Cutter as permanent team leader here. Whoever the candidate is, they're coming on a tour of the ARC this afternoon.” He makes another face. “Forewarned being fore-armed and all that.”
Jenny glances at Wilder.
It's going to be a long day.
o o o o o
Jenny's prediction proves accurate. It turns out that Christine Johnson's candidate for ARC team leader is none other than Captain Hilary Ewart Becker.
Lorraine surreptitiously emails everyone the copy of his service record that Jenny's already seen, which leads to Danny (after pilfering Connor's phone to read said email) blurting out to the entire atrium that he can't believe Becker is the youngest person in the room.
A quick headcount proves it's true. The only other twenty-somethings present are Abby, Connor and one of Wilder's NCOs who, to be fair, does look like he should still be at school.
Gone are the faded jeans and checked shirt. Wearing a civilian suit with his hair slicked back, Becker looks like he's playing grown-ups at a family wedding.
Christine's eyes narrow a fraction at Danny's outburst.
Things only get better from there.
Like the fungus monster that takes over the ARC atrium.
Wilder's updated security measures, as well as the memory of recent events, make it easy for him and Lorraine to evacuate the ARC and for Connor to handle environmental controls from a laptop in the car park. Jenny's pretty sure by now that Wilder has given up trying to stop her from jumping into the fray, but it's still an odd feeling when she demands a handgun from the baby faced NCO and doesn't hear a quiet admonishment from behind her.
What she does get when she turns back around is a faceful of Becker. Again. The suit and sensible shoes are long gone, and in their place this time is cleanly pressed combat gear and a jacket that says OBAID. It's a baggy fit, making him look younger still, but he doesn't seem bothered.
He also has a rather nice looking Mossberg 590 in his left hand.
“That's not standard issue,” Jenny says.
Becker just smirks. “Come on.”
It isn't until they're halfway back to the atrium that Jenny realises what's wrong with this picture. “What are you still doing here?”
Becker points the shotgun down an empty corridor. “Isn't it obvious?”
She supposes it is.
Later, after the chaos starts to die down and the dust begins to settle, Jenny finds herself back in Cutter's old lab. The last few boxes of his notes line the far wall, there's a giant dust sheet covering a hole in the ceiling and Jenny can't breathe.
She folds herself into a corner and sticks her head between her knees. Her back will hate her for this in the morning, not that they're far off daylight again anyway, but she doesn't care. Just closes her eyes and waits for the world to go away and her lungs to work.
A few seconds, maybe a few minutes, later she leans back and blinks away tears. A rustling sound to her right makes her jump. Her back slams into the wall and she winces.
“Sorry,” Becker tells her. The borrowed jacket is gone, and there's a joke about pretty young things and outfit changes but Jenny can't think of the words right now. She can't really think of anything. He's standing in the open doorway, still carrying the Mossberg and a look Jenny really doesn't want to think about right now.
Instead she pulls herself together, just enough, to say: “Seriously. What are you still doing here?”
Becker shrugs. “Same as earlier.”
Jenny tips her head back to rest against the wall, closes her eyes and breathes through her nose. “Just answer the question. Or leave. I'm sure your boss is pissed enough as it is.”
She doesn't hear anything for a little while, and when she opens her eyes again Becker is perched rather precariously on an upturned bucket. He's left enough space between them for it to feel only a bit awkward.
The Mossberg is propped against his leg. Jenny gives herself a moment to admire its sleek lines. “Where did that come from?”
Something like amusement flashes across Becker's face. “Brought it with me. Your security needs some serious work.”
“Tell Wilder,” Jenny retorts. “Since you're after his job.”
Becker's face turns inscrutable. “No. I'm not.”
Jenny blinks. “You don't want to swoop in and infiltrate our ranks?”
Oh, god, now she's turning into Lester.
“You assume I have a choice,” Becker says quietly.
“You don't?”
“I didn't choose any of this.”
Jenny frowns, pushes herself into a less uncomfortable seated position. “Any of what?”
Becker snorts. “Pretty sure that's classified. I...” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. A few strands slip out of place, and the stitches Jenny had seen that morning are revealed again. The automaton who had followed Christine around at her whatever-that-place-is is nowhere to be seen.
Jenny waits.
“Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you'd done just one thing even a bit differently?” Becker asks.
Now Jenny snorts. It's loud and ungainly and nothing she'd ever normally do. At Becker's startled expression she shakes her head. “If your boss is half as devious as my boss thinks she is, go back and look up anything you can find on Claudia Brown.”
She sighs. “According to - well, depending on which theory of linear time and or whatever...oh I don't know. But seven or eight months ago I allegedly used to be her. In another timeline,” she adds.
“Oh. The anomalies. Right.”
It's really late. Or really early. Jenny's pretty sure she can let that one go.
Becker sits there for a moment, looking dangerously close to - Jenny refuses to let herself even think it.
Oh, whatever. It's been a hell of a day. She died, for Pete's sake. Not for long. Later on she'll tell herself to brush it off as adrenaline, or something else that sounds convincing.
Becker's cute like this, bruised and rumpled and clearly well versed in handling his very nice gun.
Oh, god. She's twelve.
Eventually the silence becomes too much. “Why did you ask?”
Becker shakes his head. “I don't know, I - I don't know,” he repeats. “I'm glad you're all right,” he adds with apparent sincerity.
“Me too,” Jenny admits.
“And for whatever it's worth,” Becker continues, “I wasn't following you.”
“Christine had you following Harper,” Jenny guesses.
Becker nods.
It looks like Wilder won't be the only one shoring up ARC defences.
“I should get going,” Becker says without moving. “Before I'm escorted out.”
“Door's that way,” Jenny replies. She jerks her head to open doorway.
Becker snorts, and a tiny smile appears on his face. By the time he stands up it's gone.
Jenny watches him leave then rests her head on her knees again. Sometime after that she falls asleep.
o o o o o
Jenny considers quitting. At 3:12 the next morning she sits in front of her laptop in the corner of the living room that used to be Mike's office and begins writing a resignation letter. She gets as far as unreasonable madwomen and also dinosaurs when she rubs her eyes again and realises exactly what she's written.
She doesn't save the document, or tell anyone what she started.
o o o o o
Lester offers to make Jenny's role as team leader permanent.
She accepts on the condition someone else tells Nick.
o o o o o
On Thursday the anomaly detector sends the team to Swansea. Everyone piles into two 4x4s and Connor's swift offer to stay behind and offer navigation from the ADD is just as quickly rebutted by Lorraine.
“I get carsick on long journeys,” he says, trying to sound pitiful.
Danny just ushers him into the back seat. “You'll be fine, sunshine.”
A few miles out from Slough the traffic comes to a grinding halt.
“Anyone have a phone signal?” Jenny asks from the front passenger seat.
She is answered with various mutterings and one very disappointing: “Forgot my phone!”
A few vehicles ahead Sarah is riding shotgun to Danny. Hopefully they're having better luck.
“Sat phone in the glove compartment,” Wilder says, once he's done glaring at his squaddie in the rear view mirror.
Jenny has to admit she's impressed, and duly fishes the contraption out. Wilder walks her through how to make a call on it.
“I suggested a helicopter,” he adds while she waits to see if she's being connected. “James gave me this instead.”
“Should've bargained harder,” Jenny smirks while behind her someone snorts.
“I try to pick my battles.” The death glare Wilder is now directing at the BMW in front of him would probably suggest otherwise but the ringing noise in Jenny's ear wins her attention.
It's Lorraine who answers. “Overturned lorry a mile or so ahead of you,” she says. It sounds like she's reading from a screen. “Emergency services are en route.”
“Damn,” Jenny mutters. “Have you heard from the others?”
“Danny phoned a few minutes ago,” Lorraine replies. “He's on the same side as the lorry as you. And the next junction is much further past it.”
“We could be here a while,” Jenny mutters to Wilder. He lets out a long breath.
“Helicopter,” he mouths to himself.
Jenny lets out a giggle. “It's nothing, Lorraine. Let us know if anything changes ahead. What about the anomaly?”
“Still going as far as we can tell. Lester's trying to get through to Ryan. He's somewhere in the West Country, apparently.”
“Oh, that's promising,” Jenny says. It's not as if she can do anything in gridlock anyway.
Lorraine signs off, and Jenny glances at Wilder. He's back to staring at the car in front of them but, realising he's being watched, looks over at Jenny. He gives her a look as if to say, “What can you do?”
Of course it's probably a lot swearier than that. And at least this time the silence is very nearly comfortable.
o o o o o
It's nearly midnight when Jenny gets home that night. The lorry had been carrying food that needed clearing, adding several hours onto the team's travel time. Ryan had been rerouted to Swansea, but the anomaly had disappeared before he'd even made it out of Devon. On the upside, there were no major injuries on the M4, and no creature incursion in Wales.
Even though she technically didn't do much, Jenny is exhausted.
The street light two doors down is broken, so it takes her three attempts to guess the right key to unlock the door.
Reaching for the light switch just inside the door is a much easier task, and it's only when the light flickers on that Jenny sees a piece of paper peeking out of the letterbox. She crumples it as she pulls it out, thinking junk mail but there's handwriting on one side.
She pushes the door closed and smooths out the paper.
Can we talk? HB
Underneath is a mobile number.
o o o o o
Her first instinct is to tell Lester. Or Lorraine.
To her surprise, the next morning after less than half a cup of tea and with no hesitation whatsoever she finds herself telling Wilder.
It's not really a surprise when he nods quietly. “Be careful. The record Miss Wickes found is accurate but it doesn't account for how smart he is. You don't know what kind of game he's playing.”
Jenny thinks back to the conversation they had in Nick's lab. “I think it's worth taking a chance.”
Wilder nods again. Then he hesitates, unholsters his handgun and offers it to Jenny.
“It's my job to keep you safe,” he says.
Once upon a time Jenny would have been offended by that. And not just coming from Wilder; she's faced enough paternalistic bullshit over the years for bristling to become her default reaction. But things have changed between them, even if it's only from her perspective.
She takes the handgun, tests the weight in her hand. It's a standard Sig Sauer, nothing she hasn't used before.
She's going to hand it back. Not from bravado, she thinks, but instead finds herself saying: “Thanks,” in a strangely small voice and disarming it to safely carry in her handbag.
Wilder offers her a small smile, the reassuring kind usually reserved for Connor or Sarah or one of the younger soldiers. “Be careful.”
She appreciates him, Jenny realises. And as much as she didn't want to originally, she thinks she even likes him. “I will.”
o o o o o
Becker's choice of meeting place is a dilapidated laundrette. It's not particularly near either the ARC or Christine Johnson's facility. And it's far enough away from her flat that she has to dig out her old sat nav, practically rusty from disuse, to help her find it.
He's sitting on one of the benches when she gets there, the only person she can see through the windows. At least one of the machines is vibrating behind him.
She closes the door behind her, grateful to be out of the early morning chill. This close up again, she can see the exhaustion written all over Becker's face. His civilian clothes are stained and wrinkled.
“You look like you should be in that machine,” she says, aiming for levity.
It doesn't quite work, but he offers a wry smile in response. “Long couple of days.”
She's been there. She settles for arching an eyebrow and adjusting the strap of her handbag. The weight of the handgun is reassuring, but she'd be surprised if Becker isn't carrying at least twice what she has. Especially if his trick with the Mossberg was anything to go by.
Becker nods his head to the bench opposite him. Jenny looks around, for what she's not sure, but takes a seat. Becker waits for her to adjust her bag again.
“That night, in the Professor's lab,” he begins. “You wanted to know why I asked you that question.”
It's awkward as hell, but so is virtually everything else in Jenny's life right now. She nods. “If I ever wondered what my life would be like, if I'd made different choices,” she says.
Becker nods. “I do. A lot. I don't know what Wilder's told you about me - it's probably true. But I'm not... I thought - whatever I thought my life would be like when I joined the Army, it wasn't what it is now. I thought I was doing the right thing. For the right reasons, at least.”
Jenny waits.
“I'm no good at speeches,” Becker says finally. He reaches behind him and pulls out a black rucksack. Inside that is a manilla folder which is passed over to Jenny.
“But I know the difference between right and wrong.”
Jenny opens the folder and instantly recoils. The first page is an A4 glossy photograph of a future predator strapped to a gurney. Two figures in medical scrubs and face masks, both out of focus, stand behind it.
“Oh, god,” she says faintly.
“You've seen one before,” Becker says.
“Yes.”
“That's behind the keypad at Johnson's building,” Becker says. “She's fucking insane and... I want no part of it.”
“You could have just walked away.” Jenny flips through the other pages. There are more photographs of the predator, and a couple more that are mostly blurs but are still recognisably anomalies.
“Not an option.”
Jenny looks up at him. Becker rubs the back of his neck and doesn't make eye contact. “People have been killed for what's in that building. Good people. She wants the ARC next.”
“Why?” Jenny asks.
“Why not,” Becker shrugs. “She hates Lester, so there's that. I don't know the history.”
He gestures at the folder. “Besides, you're the only person I trust to do the right thing with that.”
Jenny can feel her hackles rising. “You don't know me.”
“I know enough,” Becker says. “Maybe you were Claudia Brown once, maybe your professor is as stark raving as some people seem to think. Maybe there are other time lines where I haven't done the things I have. I don't know you, but I trust you. Does it matter why?”
Jenny looks down at the photos again. No, she doesn't think it does.
“Come on,” she tells him, getting to her feet and tucking the folder inside her bag.
“What, where?”
“The ARC,” she decides out loud. As much as Lester's going to love the validation of having a real arch nemesis, he needs to know what's going on. So do the others. If Jenny's learned anything from her time at the ARC it's that co-operation is king.
Becker looks uncertain for a moment, then climbs to his feet too. “Well, it's not like I'll have a job to go back to when she finds out about this,” he says. “Or a career. Oh, god.”
Jenny takes half a step forward and puts a hand on Becker's arm. “Come on,” she says, more gently this time. Then she smirks. “Play your cards right and you might get a new job out of it.”
“You're joking,” Becker says flatly. “Your lot are insane.”
Despite everything Jenny suddenly feels a little giddy. “It's insane or evil. Your call.”
Becker shuts his eyes tightly and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lead on,” he says faintly.
Jenny pats his arm a couple of times, and leads him out of the laundrette.
o o o o o
Becker calls Jenny insane many times over the following months.
Jenny just laughs, and calls him Hilary.
It's a pleasant stalemate.
end
Fandom: Primeval
Summary: Jenny dislikes the new Special Forces Captain as soon as she meets him. (AU)
Characters: Becker/Jenny, appearances by and references to others
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~5000
Beta: The amazing Lady Drace
Author's Note: Written for rain_sleet_snow in the 2017 Denial Secret Santa, inspired by the prompt I do not want people to be agreeable. It saves one the trouble of liking them. I also tried to include a few things from your wish list. I really hope you like this!
I would like to think our paths are straight
Disconnected from choices we make
- Street Map, Athlete
Jenny dislikes the new Special Forces Captain as soon as she meets him.
She can't put her finger on why. Lester signed off on his assignment, so it can't be that he's incompetent (not that one can always infer that just from a bland smile and a handshake, as she has to constantly remind herself). He looks the part, as far as she can tell from his well fitting charcoal suit.
He stands there quietly while Jenny and Nick consider him then steps forward and offers them a hand.
“Joe Wilder.”
His voice matches the rest of him.
And no, Jenny can't help it. There's just something about him.
o o o o o
Wilder is good in the field. He handles Cutter like he's been herding recalcitrant scientists all his life, and follows Jenny's directions calmly and quickly. He absorbs Sarah and Connor's enthusiasm without being dismissive of either of their very different skill sets. He adheres to Abby's rule of incapacitation and repatriation over bullets.
He's not even fazed by the prehistoric creatures.
Lorraine pulls up his service record during one of the quieter days, the kind Jenny has learned to take as they come, with lunch that requires an actual fork to eat.
She listens to Lorraine's summary as she finishes assembling her salad (extra dressing, she's more than earned it). “There's nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of commendations, some favourable letters from former commanding officers.”
Jenny raises an eyebrow, and puts the dressing away before she can abuse her own goodwill. “Favourable?”
Lorraine shrugs and deposits a foil wrapped sandwich on the table while she waits for the kettle to boil. “No more, no less. Seems to be how they breed them in Special Forces.”
“Just good enough to not attract too much attention?” Not for the first time Jenny wishes Major Ryan was still stationed at the ARC. He'd have Wilder's measure in a heartbeat. Possibly less.
“Looks like.” Lorraine considers Jenny. After half a sandwich she gestures with her mug. “If I keep digging, I'll start to raise flags, and not just with Wilder. What exactly are you looking for?”
“I'm not sure,” Jenny admits slowly.
“If there was anything... bad in there, Lester wouldn't have hired him,” Lorraine points out.
“Of course. I'm not - I'm not looking for something to smear him with.”
“Of course,” Lorraine echoes. “But you're not exactly looking for reasons to be friends with him either.”
Jenny concedes the point. “I don't know what I'm doing, really.”
A ghost of a smirk flashes across Lorraine's face. “Since when do any of us?”
o o o o o
The day Helen storms the ARC with her clones and blows it up, Jenny loses track of everyone and everything. The day seems to happen in flashes and starts, but the one thing she remembers clearly is Wilder offloading Cutter onto a gurney and slamming the side of an ambulance before it rumbles out of the ARC car park.
“You got him out,” Jenny says numbly. “Thank you.”
She can't read the expression on Wilder's face. “Just doing my job, ma'am.”
It might be the longest conversation they've had since that first meeting in Lester's office.
o o o o o
Nick doesn't come back to the ARC, at least not straight away. Jenny can't blame him. The days she wishes she'd never taken Joanna Elliot's recommendation of the cryptic government PR opening are becoming almost too many to count.
Luckily for her and her maudlin tendencies the to-do list between anomaly callouts never seems to end. While Connor hoards Helen's artefact, Lorraine steps into oversee the repairs to the ADD and its surrounding hardware.
Jenny finds herself overseeing the temporary relocation of Nick's lab.
It's the need for attention to detail that she appreciates most. Nick's utter aversion to any kind of technology, networked or otherwise, means there is a mountain of paperwork in varying degrees of charcoal that needs to be sorted through. Nothing is dated, because that would be far too simple for a former university professor, but there are distinguishable themes that she adheres to, even though in a few months Nick will no doubt find fault with all of it. It's just the way he is; Jenny already knows she won't be offended by the inevitable reaction.
The anomaly alert is almost annoying in its distraction. Jenny rounds up a handful of people still on-site - Abby, Connor and a couple of soldiers - and lets Wilder drive them to a government building not too far away.
They're met in the lobby by a sharp dressed woman who could easily be Lester's female equivalent, right down to the predatory gleam in her eye and the two black clad men flanking her.
The younger one of them locks eyes with Wilder for a moment, which is interesting. Jenny would stare, but the woman opposite her looks far too amused.
“Christine Johnson,” she tells Jenny, holding her hand out like a weapon. Perhaps it is.
“Jenny Lewis.”
“From the Anomaly Research Centre, yes.”
Jenny tries not to gape. “How -”
Christine shrugs a single shoulder. It's too rehearsed to be casual. “James isn't the only one with security clearance. Something he'd do well to remember.”
Jenny's hackles rise. “I'm not a messenger.”
“Of course.” Christine watches her, unblinking. “Well, whatever wild goose chase led you here, I'd ignore it next time. Becker?”
The younger flunky glances to her. “Ma'am?”
“See these people out, would you?”
She turns on her heel and stalks off through a door with - Jenny tries not to be too obvious with her peeking - a card reader and pressure-sensitive keypad.
The flunky - Becker - looks the team up and down. Quite what he makes of them all, tired and (with the irritating exception of Wilder) scruffy, Jenny isn't sure she wants to know. The man himself looks like a younger version of Wilder, right down to the deliberately bland expression. It ought to lump him straight into the dislike pile.
“Door's that way,” Becker says. He glances at Wilder again, then Jenny.
This time the silence is unnerving.
“Come on,” Jenny tells the others. She'll ask Lester about Christine Johnson, not just because the other woman had managed to insinuate that she wasn't supposed to know.
If there's anything she dislikes more than not knowing how to feel about someone, it's being to made to feel like she's not supposed, or allowed, to know anything.
Back at the ARC, Jenny hesitates getting out of the car. Wilder notices the cue and waits for Abby, Connor and his men to head into the building before turning to look at her.
“You know him, don't you?” Jenny has just enough restraint left to stop it from sounding like an accusation.
Wilder dips his head slightly. It's obvious who she means. “I taught him for a while at Sandhurst. Quiet, very good at what he does. But the stick up his arse is big enough to make him the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square.”
Despite her sudden ungainly snort, Jenny stares. “You taught?”
Wilder's head bobs in the other direction. “Considered retiring 'til James made the call. Does that make a difference?”
“A difference to what?”
Wilder shakes his head slightly. “My mistake, ma'am. Never mind.”
o o o o o
Twelve hours later Jenny's still in the ARC. Home is more of an effort than she feels capable of right now. Her thoughts won't stop whirling, from Lester's reluctant debrief to trying - and failing - to stop Mick bloody Harper and his lot from getting killed.
She wonders if this is what Stephen had felt like, back when he was still crusading for freedom of information. More and more she thinks he had a point, but the way he'd gone about things back then had been so far off the scale of wrong things Jenny isn't sure there is a classification for it. She can only hope that he and Nick are having better luck finding middle ground now they're both on medical leave.
All Jenny keeps coming back to now is Lorraine's wry assertion that none of them knew what they were doing. Jenny can't help but think things were easier back in the early days of her assignment to this confounded place, when she had a clearly defined role and was not jumping haphazardly between team leader, morale officer and whatever else a spare pair of hands are needed for at a given moment in time.
She lets out a loud groan, pressing the heels of her hands into her forehead. When she looks up again Sarah's watching her.
“That bad?”
“Ugh.”
Sarah lets out something that could almost be a laugh. “Thought so. Come on, lady. Time we got out of here. There's a twenty-four hour Thai place near mine, you can crash on the sofa if you want.”
That might be the best offer Jenny's had in a long time, and she makes sure to say so out loud. Sarah's smile this time is genuine, and offers Jenny her arm before they leave.
o o o o o
A couple of days after the best green curry she's ever had, Jenny closes and locks her front door, then stops. She has the strangest feeling like she's being watched. She looks around as she pretends to fumble with her car key, but there's nothing - no one - out of the ordinary.
Then she sees him, maybe a hundred yards away but ambling slowly towards her. She recognises his face - well, his hair - immediately, but it takes a couple of seconds to recall his name.
“Morning, Miss Lewis,” Becker tells her. The red checked shirt he's wearing makes him look younger than his file says he is.
“What are you doing here?”
Becker shrugs. “Taking the scenic route. Doing some recon. Whatever you'd prefer to believe.”
Jenny draws up into herself. “Recon,” she echoes.
Becker shrugs again. “Your journo stalker's stopped paying attention to you.”
He has to mean Mick Harper, which is a whole other avenue of questioning that Jenny doesn't feel equipped for right now.
“People move on,” she says as lightly as she can.
Becker nods slowly. “That's good to hear.”
This close, Jenny can see a thin line of stitches running near the edge of Becker's hairline. It looks fresh. “You're welcome to report your findings to the Neighbourhood Watch or, failing that, the police.”
“I'll bear that in mind,” Becker says. He nods curtly this time, the only thing missing from the motion a salute. “Have a good day.”
He resumes his previous slow walking pace. Jenny watches the back of him until he turns a corner and disappears. Then she lets out the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding.
o o o o o
“I think Christine Johnson is having me watched.”
Lester merely blinks at the newest variation of 'hello' he's been subjected to, and presses a button on his phone. “Lorraine, find Captain Wilder, and if anyone else tries to come into my office, tell them to sod off.”
Jenny glances through the glass wall, just in time to see Lorraine's head twitch - anyone else's exaggerated eye roll - and waits for the next proclamation. It comes quickly enough.
“Details.”
Jenny keeps them to a minimum, not that a lot even happened.
“Was it the pretty one or the competent one?”
“Why can't he be both?” Jenny blurts before she can stop herself.
Now Lester looks amused. “Christine Johnson likes her minions to fall into very neat, one note categories. Wilder already informed me that there are two Special Forces Captains seconded to her little... whatever it is she has running over there.” There's the slightest petulance in his voice that at any other time would be amusing.
“It was Becker.”
“The pretty one,” Lester decides. “I'd be offended if I were you.”
“Offended by what?” Wilder asks, coming into the office. There are stains on his trousers and he smells like burning.
“Christine Johnson thinks she can honey trap my interim team leader.”
“You're over-reacting,” Jenny says.
“Says the woman who's all but being stalked by the enemy,” Lester retorts.
Jenny frowns. “Christine Johnson is the enemy now?”
Lester raises his eyebrows and leans back in his chair.
“Treating her like a super-villain won't accomplish anything,” Wilder says.
The expression on Lester's face suggests otherwise. “She's suggested to the Minister that one of her people replace Cutter as permanent team leader here. Whoever the candidate is, they're coming on a tour of the ARC this afternoon.” He makes another face. “Forewarned being fore-armed and all that.”
Jenny glances at Wilder.
It's going to be a long day.
o o o o o
Jenny's prediction proves accurate. It turns out that Christine Johnson's candidate for ARC team leader is none other than Captain Hilary Ewart Becker.
Lorraine surreptitiously emails everyone the copy of his service record that Jenny's already seen, which leads to Danny (after pilfering Connor's phone to read said email) blurting out to the entire atrium that he can't believe Becker is the youngest person in the room.
A quick headcount proves it's true. The only other twenty-somethings present are Abby, Connor and one of Wilder's NCOs who, to be fair, does look like he should still be at school.
Gone are the faded jeans and checked shirt. Wearing a civilian suit with his hair slicked back, Becker looks like he's playing grown-ups at a family wedding.
Christine's eyes narrow a fraction at Danny's outburst.
Things only get better from there.
Like the fungus monster that takes over the ARC atrium.
Wilder's updated security measures, as well as the memory of recent events, make it easy for him and Lorraine to evacuate the ARC and for Connor to handle environmental controls from a laptop in the car park. Jenny's pretty sure by now that Wilder has given up trying to stop her from jumping into the fray, but it's still an odd feeling when she demands a handgun from the baby faced NCO and doesn't hear a quiet admonishment from behind her.
What she does get when she turns back around is a faceful of Becker. Again. The suit and sensible shoes are long gone, and in their place this time is cleanly pressed combat gear and a jacket that says OBAID. It's a baggy fit, making him look younger still, but he doesn't seem bothered.
He also has a rather nice looking Mossberg 590 in his left hand.
“That's not standard issue,” Jenny says.
Becker just smirks. “Come on.”
It isn't until they're halfway back to the atrium that Jenny realises what's wrong with this picture. “What are you still doing here?”
Becker points the shotgun down an empty corridor. “Isn't it obvious?”
She supposes it is.
Later, after the chaos starts to die down and the dust begins to settle, Jenny finds herself back in Cutter's old lab. The last few boxes of his notes line the far wall, there's a giant dust sheet covering a hole in the ceiling and Jenny can't breathe.
She folds herself into a corner and sticks her head between her knees. Her back will hate her for this in the morning, not that they're far off daylight again anyway, but she doesn't care. Just closes her eyes and waits for the world to go away and her lungs to work.
A few seconds, maybe a few minutes, later she leans back and blinks away tears. A rustling sound to her right makes her jump. Her back slams into the wall and she winces.
“Sorry,” Becker tells her. The borrowed jacket is gone, and there's a joke about pretty young things and outfit changes but Jenny can't think of the words right now. She can't really think of anything. He's standing in the open doorway, still carrying the Mossberg and a look Jenny really doesn't want to think about right now.
Instead she pulls herself together, just enough, to say: “Seriously. What are you still doing here?”
Becker shrugs. “Same as earlier.”
Jenny tips her head back to rest against the wall, closes her eyes and breathes through her nose. “Just answer the question. Or leave. I'm sure your boss is pissed enough as it is.”
She doesn't hear anything for a little while, and when she opens her eyes again Becker is perched rather precariously on an upturned bucket. He's left enough space between them for it to feel only a bit awkward.
The Mossberg is propped against his leg. Jenny gives herself a moment to admire its sleek lines. “Where did that come from?”
Something like amusement flashes across Becker's face. “Brought it with me. Your security needs some serious work.”
“Tell Wilder,” Jenny retorts. “Since you're after his job.”
Becker's face turns inscrutable. “No. I'm not.”
Jenny blinks. “You don't want to swoop in and infiltrate our ranks?”
Oh, god, now she's turning into Lester.
“You assume I have a choice,” Becker says quietly.
“You don't?”
“I didn't choose any of this.”
Jenny frowns, pushes herself into a less uncomfortable seated position. “Any of what?”
Becker snorts. “Pretty sure that's classified. I...” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. A few strands slip out of place, and the stitches Jenny had seen that morning are revealed again. The automaton who had followed Christine around at her whatever-that-place-is is nowhere to be seen.
Jenny waits.
“Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you'd done just one thing even a bit differently?” Becker asks.
Now Jenny snorts. It's loud and ungainly and nothing she'd ever normally do. At Becker's startled expression she shakes her head. “If your boss is half as devious as my boss thinks she is, go back and look up anything you can find on Claudia Brown.”
She sighs. “According to - well, depending on which theory of linear time and or whatever...oh I don't know. But seven or eight months ago I allegedly used to be her. In another timeline,” she adds.
“Oh. The anomalies. Right.”
It's really late. Or really early. Jenny's pretty sure she can let that one go.
Becker sits there for a moment, looking dangerously close to - Jenny refuses to let herself even think it.
Oh, whatever. It's been a hell of a day. She died, for Pete's sake. Not for long. Later on she'll tell herself to brush it off as adrenaline, or something else that sounds convincing.
Becker's cute like this, bruised and rumpled and clearly well versed in handling his very nice gun.
Oh, god. She's twelve.
Eventually the silence becomes too much. “Why did you ask?”
Becker shakes his head. “I don't know, I - I don't know,” he repeats. “I'm glad you're all right,” he adds with apparent sincerity.
“Me too,” Jenny admits.
“And for whatever it's worth,” Becker continues, “I wasn't following you.”
“Christine had you following Harper,” Jenny guesses.
Becker nods.
It looks like Wilder won't be the only one shoring up ARC defences.
“I should get going,” Becker says without moving. “Before I'm escorted out.”
“Door's that way,” Jenny replies. She jerks her head to open doorway.
Becker snorts, and a tiny smile appears on his face. By the time he stands up it's gone.
Jenny watches him leave then rests her head on her knees again. Sometime after that she falls asleep.
o o o o o
Jenny considers quitting. At 3:12 the next morning she sits in front of her laptop in the corner of the living room that used to be Mike's office and begins writing a resignation letter. She gets as far as unreasonable madwomen and also dinosaurs when she rubs her eyes again and realises exactly what she's written.
She doesn't save the document, or tell anyone what she started.
o o o o o
Lester offers to make Jenny's role as team leader permanent.
She accepts on the condition someone else tells Nick.
o o o o o
On Thursday the anomaly detector sends the team to Swansea. Everyone piles into two 4x4s and Connor's swift offer to stay behind and offer navigation from the ADD is just as quickly rebutted by Lorraine.
“I get carsick on long journeys,” he says, trying to sound pitiful.
Danny just ushers him into the back seat. “You'll be fine, sunshine.”
A few miles out from Slough the traffic comes to a grinding halt.
“Anyone have a phone signal?” Jenny asks from the front passenger seat.
She is answered with various mutterings and one very disappointing: “Forgot my phone!”
A few vehicles ahead Sarah is riding shotgun to Danny. Hopefully they're having better luck.
“Sat phone in the glove compartment,” Wilder says, once he's done glaring at his squaddie in the rear view mirror.
Jenny has to admit she's impressed, and duly fishes the contraption out. Wilder walks her through how to make a call on it.
“I suggested a helicopter,” he adds while she waits to see if she's being connected. “James gave me this instead.”
“Should've bargained harder,” Jenny smirks while behind her someone snorts.
“I try to pick my battles.” The death glare Wilder is now directing at the BMW in front of him would probably suggest otherwise but the ringing noise in Jenny's ear wins her attention.
It's Lorraine who answers. “Overturned lorry a mile or so ahead of you,” she says. It sounds like she's reading from a screen. “Emergency services are en route.”
“Damn,” Jenny mutters. “Have you heard from the others?”
“Danny phoned a few minutes ago,” Lorraine replies. “He's on the same side as the lorry as you. And the next junction is much further past it.”
“We could be here a while,” Jenny mutters to Wilder. He lets out a long breath.
“Helicopter,” he mouths to himself.
Jenny lets out a giggle. “It's nothing, Lorraine. Let us know if anything changes ahead. What about the anomaly?”
“Still going as far as we can tell. Lester's trying to get through to Ryan. He's somewhere in the West Country, apparently.”
“Oh, that's promising,” Jenny says. It's not as if she can do anything in gridlock anyway.
Lorraine signs off, and Jenny glances at Wilder. He's back to staring at the car in front of them but, realising he's being watched, looks over at Jenny. He gives her a look as if to say, “What can you do?”
Of course it's probably a lot swearier than that. And at least this time the silence is very nearly comfortable.
o o o o o
It's nearly midnight when Jenny gets home that night. The lorry had been carrying food that needed clearing, adding several hours onto the team's travel time. Ryan had been rerouted to Swansea, but the anomaly had disappeared before he'd even made it out of Devon. On the upside, there were no major injuries on the M4, and no creature incursion in Wales.
Even though she technically didn't do much, Jenny is exhausted.
The street light two doors down is broken, so it takes her three attempts to guess the right key to unlock the door.
Reaching for the light switch just inside the door is a much easier task, and it's only when the light flickers on that Jenny sees a piece of paper peeking out of the letterbox. She crumples it as she pulls it out, thinking junk mail but there's handwriting on one side.
She pushes the door closed and smooths out the paper.
Can we talk? HB
Underneath is a mobile number.
o o o o o
Her first instinct is to tell Lester. Or Lorraine.
To her surprise, the next morning after less than half a cup of tea and with no hesitation whatsoever she finds herself telling Wilder.
It's not really a surprise when he nods quietly. “Be careful. The record Miss Wickes found is accurate but it doesn't account for how smart he is. You don't know what kind of game he's playing.”
Jenny thinks back to the conversation they had in Nick's lab. “I think it's worth taking a chance.”
Wilder nods again. Then he hesitates, unholsters his handgun and offers it to Jenny.
“It's my job to keep you safe,” he says.
Once upon a time Jenny would have been offended by that. And not just coming from Wilder; she's faced enough paternalistic bullshit over the years for bristling to become her default reaction. But things have changed between them, even if it's only from her perspective.
She takes the handgun, tests the weight in her hand. It's a standard Sig Sauer, nothing she hasn't used before.
She's going to hand it back. Not from bravado, she thinks, but instead finds herself saying: “Thanks,” in a strangely small voice and disarming it to safely carry in her handbag.
Wilder offers her a small smile, the reassuring kind usually reserved for Connor or Sarah or one of the younger soldiers. “Be careful.”
She appreciates him, Jenny realises. And as much as she didn't want to originally, she thinks she even likes him. “I will.”
o o o o o
Becker's choice of meeting place is a dilapidated laundrette. It's not particularly near either the ARC or Christine Johnson's facility. And it's far enough away from her flat that she has to dig out her old sat nav, practically rusty from disuse, to help her find it.
He's sitting on one of the benches when she gets there, the only person she can see through the windows. At least one of the machines is vibrating behind him.
She closes the door behind her, grateful to be out of the early morning chill. This close up again, she can see the exhaustion written all over Becker's face. His civilian clothes are stained and wrinkled.
“You look like you should be in that machine,” she says, aiming for levity.
It doesn't quite work, but he offers a wry smile in response. “Long couple of days.”
She's been there. She settles for arching an eyebrow and adjusting the strap of her handbag. The weight of the handgun is reassuring, but she'd be surprised if Becker isn't carrying at least twice what she has. Especially if his trick with the Mossberg was anything to go by.
Becker nods his head to the bench opposite him. Jenny looks around, for what she's not sure, but takes a seat. Becker waits for her to adjust her bag again.
“That night, in the Professor's lab,” he begins. “You wanted to know why I asked you that question.”
It's awkward as hell, but so is virtually everything else in Jenny's life right now. She nods. “If I ever wondered what my life would be like, if I'd made different choices,” she says.
Becker nods. “I do. A lot. I don't know what Wilder's told you about me - it's probably true. But I'm not... I thought - whatever I thought my life would be like when I joined the Army, it wasn't what it is now. I thought I was doing the right thing. For the right reasons, at least.”
Jenny waits.
“I'm no good at speeches,” Becker says finally. He reaches behind him and pulls out a black rucksack. Inside that is a manilla folder which is passed over to Jenny.
“But I know the difference between right and wrong.”
Jenny opens the folder and instantly recoils. The first page is an A4 glossy photograph of a future predator strapped to a gurney. Two figures in medical scrubs and face masks, both out of focus, stand behind it.
“Oh, god,” she says faintly.
“You've seen one before,” Becker says.
“Yes.”
“That's behind the keypad at Johnson's building,” Becker says. “She's fucking insane and... I want no part of it.”
“You could have just walked away.” Jenny flips through the other pages. There are more photographs of the predator, and a couple more that are mostly blurs but are still recognisably anomalies.
“Not an option.”
Jenny looks up at him. Becker rubs the back of his neck and doesn't make eye contact. “People have been killed for what's in that building. Good people. She wants the ARC next.”
“Why?” Jenny asks.
“Why not,” Becker shrugs. “She hates Lester, so there's that. I don't know the history.”
He gestures at the folder. “Besides, you're the only person I trust to do the right thing with that.”
Jenny can feel her hackles rising. “You don't know me.”
“I know enough,” Becker says. “Maybe you were Claudia Brown once, maybe your professor is as stark raving as some people seem to think. Maybe there are other time lines where I haven't done the things I have. I don't know you, but I trust you. Does it matter why?”
Jenny looks down at the photos again. No, she doesn't think it does.
“Come on,” she tells him, getting to her feet and tucking the folder inside her bag.
“What, where?”
“The ARC,” she decides out loud. As much as Lester's going to love the validation of having a real arch nemesis, he needs to know what's going on. So do the others. If Jenny's learned anything from her time at the ARC it's that co-operation is king.
Becker looks uncertain for a moment, then climbs to his feet too. “Well, it's not like I'll have a job to go back to when she finds out about this,” he says. “Or a career. Oh, god.”
Jenny takes half a step forward and puts a hand on Becker's arm. “Come on,” she says, more gently this time. Then she smirks. “Play your cards right and you might get a new job out of it.”
“You're joking,” Becker says flatly. “Your lot are insane.”
Despite everything Jenny suddenly feels a little giddy. “It's insane or evil. Your call.”
Becker shuts his eyes tightly and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lead on,” he says faintly.
Jenny pats his arm a couple of times, and leads him out of the laundrette.
o o o o o
Becker calls Jenny insane many times over the following months.
Jenny just laughs, and calls him Hilary.
It's a pleasant stalemate.
end