Beverly Barlowe's epiphany

Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to SyFy channel.

Note: this story contains spoilers for the official series.

Holly Marten was basically dead. Senator Wen has personally unplugged her from the VR-generator, clearly uncaring that the younger woman was going to die from the sudden and overwhelming shock to her surroundings.

But Beverly Barlowe cared. It was pointless, she knew, ridiculous, even irrational, but... it did not matter. Holly was going to die in a matter of minutes and all of Barlowe's new irrational emotions were not going to do anything.

But her intelligence could. Question was, should she? So what if the good senator proved to be more ruthless than her everyday glory-hound persona let on to believe? In actuality this meant that Beverly made the right choice – she did not want such a powerful and ruthless person as her enemy... she did not care. She did not care that Wen was higher than she in the Consortium's hierarchy was, she knew that could do something about Holly Marten situation... and she was going to.

It was all Allison Blake's fault, what Beverly was about to do. Beverly's grandfather, old Jacob Barlowe, was a humanitarian to the core, and knew plenty of stories (most of which he made up on the spot), from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" to the Greek myths. Right now, Beverly was reminded of one of the latter stories, which stated that it's dangerous even for the stellar to look under another' skin – that other personality just might stick beneath your skin and taint you.

In Grandpa Jacob's story, Argus Panoptes, the titan-god of the starry sky, looked at the terrible satyr of Arcadia, and became as evil as that satyr. Here, Beverly suspected, something opposite might have occurred: due to her (undoubtedly, very clever) plan, she had been forced to live Allison Blake's life down to the small details, she had to be Allison Blake, a completely different person, and she had to be very convincing (considering that she was uncovered in the end, she just wasn't that convincing after all). As a consequence of her being Allison Blake for a long period of time, she had to learn the principles that guided Allison Blake throughout her life, and found them to be very alien to her own.

Allison Blake once had what Beverly Barlowe had – respect, power, career... and she was quite ready to throw them away for the sake of her family and friends. It was foolish and irrational, but ever since Beverly's forceful eviction from Allison's mind Beverly found herself yearning for those values – family, friends... even if they were completely irrational.

Something broke in her fist. Beverly glanced at it.

"Oh dear."

It was ampullae of her soporific – ever since her forceful ejection from Allison's mind, Beverly had trouble sleeping... and if she was not going to save Holly Marten, then she would be having trouble when being awake as well...

Was not going? She already did, in matter of speaking! The powerful soporific would basically nullify the otherwise deadly shock from being disconnected from the VR Eureka... for the next six to eight hours... more than enough time for Holly Marten to recover... and then what? Senator Wen, even if discounting her power in the Consortium, was still a US senator; she could crush Marten even if the redhead was at her best, even if Barlowe was on her side...

The latter part was ridiculous, maybe Holly Marten was better off dead, Beverly thought, and froze as a wave of self-disgust rose in her gut: she was not a saint, she was, possibly, a sociopath, but murder was one line that she could not cross.

"Thou shall not steal," grandpa Jacob said every Passover, "thou shall not kill. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's house..." As she became older and more intelligent, Beverly felt that she had easily buried her old family values in her past – but she apparently did not, and more than that, she found the choice of going against them – distasteful.

"Ma'am, where are you taking the corpse?"

It was one of the security goons; Beverly was certain that she did know his name, but for anyone's sake she could not remember it at the moment; therefore, she just turned around and looked at him, projecting all of her confusion and all of her irritation towards that confusion at the goon. Judging by the way he blanched at her gaze, her choice was a correct one.

"I'm disposing of the corpse personally," Beverly Barlowe spoke in a voice that was probably used by the Creator when dealing with a particularly stupid angel. "Considering the fact that we recently had to move because of a mistake, we cannot afford to make another one. Is that clear?"

"Yes, ma'am!" the goon jumped to attention as if Beverly Barlowe was senator Wen or someone like that. "Sorry, ma'am! Right away, ma'am!" He froze, as he realized that he was speaking gibberish.

"Leave," Beverly said curtly, or rather, she spat the words out. "Now."

The goon made some sort of a meeping sound and fled.

That crisis solved, Beverly looked down at Holly Marten. Weeks and months of existing in a suspended animation did not do the younger woman any favors, and the soporific that Beverly gave her caused a lethargic sleep as its main effect – so right now (and for the next six to eight hours) Holly Marten pretended to be a corpse very convincingly. But then what?

"Think, you idiot, think," Beverly muttered to herself. "You get Marten out, and then what?"

There was only one answer, and it was the one Beverly hated the most.

Eureka.

"You can a scientist out of Eureka, but you cannot take Eureka out of the scientist," Beverly muttered half to herself, half to still unconscious Holly. "Marten, we're going on a little road trip."

TBC