tli_productions | Fic: Retrograde Becker (1/3)

Title: Retrograde Becker
Fandom: Primeval

Co-author:

explodedpen

Summary: In which Becker fights the laws of gravity, evolution and tea-making, with mixed results. Still, not bad for someone who can't remember his own middle name.

Characters: Becker, Matt, Lester, Abby, Connor, Jess, references to and appearances by others, including OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~6700
Beta:

fredbassett

Spoilers: The end of series 3 and the webisodes, mostly.

Warnings: Bad language and references to violence and character death. Also fluff.

Authors' Notes: This started off as an idea by

explodedpen which rapidly deteriorated into text messages containing plot and eventually became this. Also, as she puts it: THE FLUFF. OH MY DAYS THE FLUFF. (

tli swears she just came along for the ride.)

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

1

Becker cursed and covered his head as another part of the wall gave way. Beside him the woman – an office worker whose name Becker couldn't remember – whimpered but shielded herself as well.

“Come on,” he shouted. “We're nearly there!”

“Don't let it get me,” she begged, clutching his sleeve.

“It won't,” Becker said, even as another slab of concrete crumbled onto the floor. “Just keep moving!”

Easier said than done. There was a mature Stegosaurus trampling its way through the ground floor of a four storey office building, and with each part of the wall that disappeared Becker got another glimpse of a wide, long tail swinging back and forth, wreaking some serious collateral damage on the ARC team.

“Don't look -”

But it was too late. The woman froze on the spot and screamed.

“Come on!” Becker grabbed her arm and pulled, almost yanking her off her feet. He pushed her ahead of him. The door was so close now. “That's it – run!”

The long tail smashed through another segment of wall, the debris bouncing off the back of his legs. The woman screamed again and Becker shoved her forwards. He had time enough to see her stumble to the door before something smashed into the back of him sending him flying into the wall.

That was the last thing he remembered.

o o o o o

He wakes up slowly, and his first instinct is to panic. The walls around him are white, there are people moving around and over him and he doesn't know where he is.

“Oh, thank God,” says a voice off to his left.

He twists his head to look. There's a man sitting beside his bed – pale brown hair, nondescript clothes and a blank expression – he wonders if that's who the voice belongs to. Then the man speaks again, and confirms it for him. “Doctor, how is he?”

There's a rustling noise on his other side; he leans that way – slower this time, there's an ache in his neck and shoulder on that side – and sees an older woman looking at the machines positioned over his bed. “Hard to tell, Mr Anderson,” she says. “There's evidence of trauma, obviously, but we won't know how extensive the damage is until we can run more tests – if that's okay with you, Captain?”

There's a pause. He blinks.

Captain. Did they mean him?

“Captain?” the doctor repeats, a note of concern in her tone.

He blinks stupidly. His head hurts. “Is that me?”

This is apparently the wrong thing to say.

o o o o o

“What do you mean, total amnesia?”

“Becker only took a thump to the head, he gets worse than that -”

“As I've been trying to explain, Mr Anderson -”

“- in the field. Not like this.”

Hilary Becker sits on the thin hospital bed, picking at his gown. The last half an hour has proven very informative. His name is Hilary Ewart Becker. He's twenty seven years old. The blank faced man is Matt Anderson – apparently both his boss and his friend. The female doctor – Rachel Thomas, according to the chart she'd left on the bed – has extensive military training, though he's not sure how he knows that yet. There are two more soldiers stationed just outside the door.

And his head still hurts.

Matt gestures at him. “Fix it!”

“It's not that simple,” Dr Thomas begins.

Hilary waves at them. “My head hurts,” he says, because he said it five minutes ago and no one gave him anything, and it's definitely worth saying again. He shifts on the bed. “I can't believe you put sick people on these things. There is no spot where a spring isn't trying to kill me.”

The two of them stare at him like they've never seen him before.

“I don't remember it, but I've been told I took a massive blow to the head,” he points out. “And all you've done is argue in a corner.”

Dr Thomas' eyebrows climb up her forehead.

“Are you sure you're feeling all right, Becker?” Matt asks carefully.

Hilary stares at him. “Do you really want me to dignify that with an answer?”

Matt doesn't have anything to say to that, though his eyes widen just a fraction. But Dr Thomas finally gets into gear and makes some adjustments to the IV drip still attached to Hilary's arm.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely.

Matt lets out a loud sigh. “Lester is going to love this.”

Hilary frowns. “Who's Lester?”

“Forget Lester,” Dr Thomas mutters. “What about his parents?”

Matt and Hilary frown in unison – it might be the first thing they've agreed on so far.

“I am not telling his mother,” Matt says firmly. “You are going to fix him so that we don't have to tell his parents anything.”

“Wait,” Hilary says. “I have parents?”

Matt and Dr Thomas stare at him.

“I know I must've had parents at some point,” Hilary says hastily, because he might have amnesia but he knows how things work and Dr Thomas looks like she might be considering giving him the 'talk', which fills him with both dread and the desperate need for a cup of tea. “But they're alive?” They must be. Another thought occurs to him. “Do I have any siblings?” He twists on the bed, but he can't really see anything beyond the white room he's in, and the soldiers still just outside the door. “Where exactly am I?”

Matt's mouth is open a little. Hilary thinks he looks surprised, maybe shocked. It's hard to tell. “Your parents are alive,” he says slowly. “Two siblings, according your file. And – you're in the medical wing of the ARC.”

He has a family. Cool. Hilary wonders if they're close, if he has a brother. He thinks he'd like that. Then he backtracks a little. “Ark?”

Matt sighs. “It's complicated, okay?”

Hilary frowns. How can an ark be complicated?

o o o o o

The man called James Lester stares at him impassively. “You fight dinosaurs.”

Hilary laughs. “Nice one.”

Lester sighs. “Do I look like a man with time to joke, Captain?”

Hilary blinks. “I fight dinosaurs? Seriously?”

Lester has the look of a man in dire need of a painkiller. Hilary feels his pain – well, he would, but the doctor clearly gave him the good stuff and it hasn't worn off yet. He grins. “That is just awesome.”

Another thought occurs to him. “Why do I fight dinosaurs?” His knowledge of, well, everything is kind of hazy, but... “Aren't they extinct?”

“Finally the penny drops,” Lester mutters.

“Wait a minute,” Matt demands. “How can you know that dinosaurs are extinct but not remember your own middle name?”

Hilary pulls a face. “Shouldn't you just feel lucky that I remember anything at all?” An image of him, a blank-minded thing having a panic attack flashes through his mind and he shudders.

“So what happens now?” he asks nobody in particular.

There's an excruciatingly long pause and a lot of eye contact between everyone except Hilary.

“I think you can handle things from here, yes?” Lester high tails it out of the room before anyone can reply.

“I'll go tell the rest of the team,” Matt says eventually and follows Lester out of the door.

“Hang on...” Hilary says to Matt's retreating back. What about his parents?

o o o o o

Over the course of the rest of the morning and afternoon, Hilary continues to learn things by quietly sitting very still on the hospital bed (still highly uncomfortable and totally unsuited for human use) and looking pitiful. He's not sure what this says about the person he's supposed to be with memories going back more than six hours, but intel is intel.

As well as Matt, he works with people called Connor Temple and Abby Maitland. Neither of them like infirmaries, or the sight of him in one, and don't stick around any longer than it takes for them to confirm that he has no idea who they are.

Soldiers trickle in and out. They're easier to deal with because they're upfront about simply wanting to ascertain that their CO is alive, mental status notwithstanding. From them Hilary gleans such information as the ARC stands for Anomaly Research Centre; anomalies are time portals that allow dinosaurs and other creatures to invade the present (which makes a lot of sense as long as he doesn't think too much about the details); he had a favourite shotgun that someone called Danny Quinn lost in another time period and never returned.

Nobody mentions his parents.

Maybe they're not close at all. Maybe they're horrible people and in his past life Hilary was horribly scarred from whatever dysfunction they'd imparted onto him and that's why nobody's mentioned them, or offered to phone them on Hilary's behalf.

Maybe Hilary was the horrible one and dinosaur hunting is some kind of personal penance for being a remorseless wanker.

Thinking about all of this makes him a bit unhappy, so he goes in search of a kettle. Dr Thomas has given him free reign of the ARC so long as he doesn't remove the IV drip (something about kick starting his memories), so Hilary wheels the drip in front of him and goes looking for a kitchen or a break room – anything.

What he finds is Jess Parker.

“Becker!” she says, startled, her coffee cup slipping in her grip. Liquid sloshes over the side and she looks guilty, shoving the cup down onto the worktop and grabbing a grungy looking sponge from the sink. “Damn.” She kneels down and hurriedly wipes up the spill.

“Are you all right?” he asks carefully.

“I should be asking you that,” she babbles, “I mean -” She gestures to her head and winces. “Oh God, you probably don't even know who I am, do you?”

“Jess Parker,” he says, feeling absurdly proud of himself.

Her face lights up. “You remember me!”

“Actually, Matt told me,” he admits.

Her face falls. “Oh.”

“But I remembered it.” That has to count for something, right?

Jess smiles at him again. “Are you supposed to be out of...”

Hilary glances down at himself. He's still in a gown that doesn't quite reach his knees – and there's the IV stand, of course. “I just wanted a cup of tea,” he says, suddenly nervous.

“Oh! I can do that.” Jess reaches into a cupboard for a bright yellow mug. “How do you take... you don't know you take it, do you?”

“I was hoping you did,” Hilary says. Or that it would be something he'd managed to retain, but he stares at the mug, and the kettle on the worktop, and the silver containers beside that – and his mind remains infuriatingly blank.

“No.” Jess deflates. “I'm sorry.”

Hilary leans against the IV stand, gripping it tightly.

“Perhaps,” Jess suggests slowly, her gaze flickering between him and the kettle, “you could try? Muscle memory might take over or something?” She gestures at the silver containers. “They're always in the same place.”

Hilary takes a step forward and reaches out for the mug. He pauses and lets his hand stop.

“Don't think,” Jess urges him. “Just do it. What's the worst that could happen?”

Hilary opens his mouth but stops himself before he explains the multiple scenarios that have just popped into his head.

Tea. He's going to make a cup of tea. He checks the water level in the kettle and flicks it on. He takes the mug from Jess and -

He can't remember. How is he supposed to function if he can't even

- and he takes a tea bag from the middle of the three containers, and a spoonful of sugar from the right hand one. A half empty bottle of milk is in the fridge on the other side of Jess, and a dollop of that goes in the mug as well.

The kettle whistles and turns itself off. Hilary pours the water, finds a spoon and stirs.

After a minute, he flicks the tea bag into the bin, and takes a sip from the mug.

And spits. “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted.”

“Right!” Jess says brightly. “So we've learned something.”

Hilary stares at her. “What, that I should never have tried doing this in the first place? Matt's right, I didn't even know my own name until someone found my driving license to prove it to me.”

Jess' smile doesn't waver. “You're not a milk and one sugar man. Try again.”

She takes the mug from his hands and replaces it with another one from the cupboard. This one is white, with blue writing across the side that proclaims This brew has been compliancy checked.

The second attempt tastes even worse than the first.

The third mug is pink and declares that tea has been Crisis management since 1652!. Even the colour of the tea doesn't look right.

Their fourth attempt Hilary knows will go badly. It feels wrong to leave out the milk, but Jess encourages him to cover all the bases. It tastes truly vile, but at least it can then be converted into attempt number five with a new mug and an added splash of milk.

“Not sweet enough,” he says, pulling a face.

“You said one sugar was too sweet,” Jess points out. She tilts her head, considering. “Try a half?”

“Half,” Hilary echoes. “What kind of idiot would only put half a -”

She stares at him and raises her eyebrows a little.

The sixth mug (some kind of humanoid robot on the side and cybermen in faded letters) gets a splash of milk and a carefully measured half teaspoon of sugar.

He purrs into the mug.

“Finally,” Jess mutters, but she's smiling. She takes a swig from attempt number 4 and leans against the counter.

A few minutes later Matt appears, and swipes the yellow mug without saying anything.

A little while after that, Connor and Abby take attempts two and five respectively, and murmur their thanks to Hilary.

He frowns at them, then at the lone mug on the counter (number three: milky and sweet).

Jess smiles at him. “I'll go take this to Lester.”

Hilary eyes her. “Did you know what I was doing all along?”

“Only after the third go,” she grins at him, and disappears with what is apparently Lester's tea.

Hilary sips his tea, savouring the taste. It's already taken the edge off an encroaching headache – tea withdrawal, maybe? Can you get tea withdrawal? Clearly he's the tea-maker of the group. He frowns – he's not their dogsbody or anything, is he? He takes another sip of the glorious liquid in his cup.

No, he decides – he is just God's gift to tea making.

There's something missing, though.

He sets his mug down with exaggerated care and opens the cupboard again. There's a silver tub in there. He pulls it out without thinking and opens the lid. It's full of biscuits – flat ones that look like they contain raisins. He takes one out and nibbles it.

Oh.

That's it.

Now it's perfect.

Garibaldi, his mind supplies.

He looks up to see Connor grinning at him. “Like eating one for the first time?” he asks, reaching into the tin for a biscuit of his own. He bites into it, then his whole face lights up. “Lord Of The Rings.”

“No,” Abby and Matt say together.

“I just want to see his reactions!” Connor protests.

“I'm not a lab rat,” Hilary points out.

Connor deflates a little. “Just think of all the things you could experience for the first time all over again.”

Hilary holds up his tea and Garibaldi.

“Good point,” Connor allows.

Hilary grins, and takes another sip of tea.

o o o o o

Go to: Part 2

o o o o o