Duckling and Bodyguard

Pairing: Jesse/Becker

Genre: family/romance

Warning: a bit AU'ish

Intro: "Becker I trust you with my daughter's life" had been Lester's words to put it in a nutshell. It was his duty to protect her, because he was in charge of the team's safety and because her father had asked him to. But was it just because of that, sometimes even he doubted this. Duckling was very adorkable and sweet, and she had somehow managed to cling herself onto his heart.

It had been hard for Lester to lose his team and after that incident things had made a U turn for him and for the agency he was still working for. He could have given up, he could have taken a nice, decent job anywhere else. Hell, he could have even accepted his father-in-law's offer and take an MP seat. Or make get a posh office somewhere in the city center as the Vice president of LAK corporations instead of his brother; have people come and kiss the soles of his feet for a favor if necessary, make his wife finally happy and come home for dinner every night and go to his kids' plays and festivities at school. Yet he stayed here at the ARC, forced into accepting a collab with geek turned superhero Philip Burton.

He felt indepted. He felt indepted to his team that had been sacrificed in the name of their mission. He felt indepted to the man that has seen his friends sacrificed to the anomalies and it's creatures one by one. A man that on being called back to duty by his boss came back without complaining. Still coming to work every day doing his duty, still waking up wihout fliching everytime the phone rang in the middle of the night or at the crack of dawn. Because if that unfortunate incident had hit Lester hard it had hit becker even harder, having to see how his team mates had disappeared under his very nose and out of his grasp.

It was not Becker's nor Lester's fault, if anyone had to be blamed for this damned situation that was Helen and her insanity, yet a deep sense of guilt and responsability still persisted in their hearts and memory. If only Cutter had listened to him in the first place things would have not ended where they were now, Lester thought sometimes. But this was not the time nor the place to lament about the past. If there was something to be learned from the past mistakes was the fact that measures had to be taken. Something needed to be done, strenghten the securiy, make the rules unbreakable from the highest to the lowest chain of command ... rules to which even his precious daughter would have to comply.

Ah, his daughter. In spite of all the things that he needed to take care of, this pressed the uttermost urgency. How in the world had his daugher managed to get employment here? In the very place he was working, at the ARC, probably the most dangerous of all the places that existed on the face of Great Britain! Of course that answer had a name, Philip Burton, the geek that had been in charge of hiring all of the nonmilitary personel. He and Philip had been working for less than two months together and he already managed to step on his toes.

"Why?" had been Lester's obvious question to his daughter. From all the places she could have chosen, why did she choose to work for the ARC. And the answer had been as simple as his question: "Because she was curious." She was curious to know what was the reason for which her father prefered his office instead of his beloved family, why family came always second? And she had gotten her answer the moment she had been chosen from all those candidates. Shock was a little word compared to what she felt when she had been shown animals from another era causing chaos and panic on the streets (and not only) of present England. But still, she felt quite more intrigued and eager to start this new job and also felt very proud to know that her father had run this operations from the begining just to keep all of them safe. Her daddy!

Lester could have used his influence to take her off that position, but she had won it fair and square. This was her first paying job and she was proud of it. Firing her would have been equivalent to cutting her wings before she had even learnt how to fly. It was a dangerous place to work in, but a least she wouldn't be in the field, he could have her under his watch and guidance and ...

As he was watching Becker's last mission report he finally decided. He would need to let someone know about Jessica, someone to whom he could trust his life and especially his daughter's, just in case something God forbid would happen ... in spite of all the security measures.