Chapter 28~The Tough Decisions

Maria had known what she needed to do as soon as she had arrived back in her own time. At the same time, she had known that everyone would try and talk her out of it, but it had to be done, so she made up her mind to tell no one. Well, no one besides Lou. Someone had to know what she was up to, if only to stop everyone else following her. By "anyone else," she did, of course, mean Becker. As soon as he learned of her plan he would do his best to stop her and then, failing that, insist upon going with her. She couldn't have that. She couldn't bear it if he got hurt because of her. And anyway, in order for this to work, she needed to be alone. Wilder wouldn't listen to her otherwise.

So the first person she sought out upon their return to the present was Alison, having decided that if anyone could get through to Becker it was his sister. And as expected, Alison was less than happy.

"Are you insane?" was the first of many questions.

"Well, maybe," Maria decided. "But this needs to end before anyone else gets killed."

"You don't have to go alone you know. And anyhow, you don't even know where he is,"

"Yes I do. Wilder listens to me. If anyone comes with me then he won't tell me what I need to know and I won't be able to do what I need to do. And I have a fairly good idea of where he'll be."

"Do you really or are you just saying that to shut me up?"

"No, I really do." Alison was silent for a few moments.

"I can't let you do this,"

"I'm not asking you to let me do anything, just cover for me until morning. If I'm not back by then, you can assume something ate me."

"Maria, you are asking me to lie to my own brother,"

"Not lie to him, just don't tell him the details."

"Is there a difference?" Alison was getting more and more worked up over the situation. If she didn't calm down someone would come over and ask what the problem was, and Maria did not need that.

"In this situation, yes. Please, Alison. Wilder has to be stopped and I'm probably the only one who can do that without anyone ending up with a bullet in their skull." Alison didn't say anything for what seemed like an age, and when she did finally speak, Maria almost didn't recognise her voice.

"Maybe," she said quietly, "he doesn't deserve to live." Maria's eyes darkened. She had expected someone to say that, but certainly not Alison.

"Everyone deserves life, Alison, and it's not up to you or me to decide who gets it and who doesn't."

"You could get yourself killed out there,"

"It's a risk I seem to have a habit of taking," After another long pause, Alison let out a breath and gave in.

"Fine. I'll cover for you. But if Ryan figures it out and I can't stop him then I'm coming after you with him, you understand?"

"Perfectly."

"Good," The two women nodded at each other, a kind of forced trust forming between them, before Maria set off in search of Lou. His initial response was the same as Alison's, but he quickly realised that trying to change her mind was completely pointless.

"Then I'm coming with you. You can't expect to find him all by yourself,"

"No, Lou, you need to stay here. I don't think that Alison can quite manage her brother by herself. You two are the people he is most likely to listen to,"

"Right now, I hate you. I will continue to do so for a very, very long time."

"Good to know." Lou rolled his eyes and shook his head in complete and utter despair. Maria just smiled, pleased that he hadn't given her too much trouble.

"Just don't get killed," he told her, before sighing and, muttering to himself, went off towards the ambulances parked along the back of the garage. Maria's smile vanished for a second as the thought of saying a subtle goodbye to Becker flitted through her mind but she plastered it back in place as she sauntered with completely fake nonchalance towards Becker himself. Genuine humour reared its head as she took in his expression at the medic who was clearly chatting up his sister, so the smile she gave him as she slid her hand into his wasn't as artificial as it had been a moment ago. She leant against his shoulder, letting the day's events catch up with her for a few minutes before she had to leave him. Again. He pulled her into a comforting hug and rested his chin on the top of her head while she listened to the beat of his heart and the sound of his breathing. She was quite content just to stay like that all night, actually. But it couldn't last. She sighed, only realising too late that he was about to ask her what was troubling her. So she beat him to it.

"Oh man, Valerie is going to kill me,"

"What?"

"I said," Maria straightened up so that she was talking at him not down to the floor, "That Valerie is going to kill me," Becker smiled down at her, giving her yet more reasons to stay exactly where she was.

"She'll understand,"

"Oh, undoubtedly."

"So why..?"

"Have you ever been sedated?"

"No, actually,"

"It's not very nice. And yes, Val will realise that it was necessary and will, probably, get over it very quickly, but she will still kill me." Becker smiled again and Maria nestled herself back against his chest. The sentimental little voice in her head was telling her that going back through the anomaly was a stupid idea and she should just stay where she was, but the logical voice said that not doing anything would just drag all this out for weeks, maybe months more. Becker yawned, interrupting her inner argument, and Maria laughed, somehow finding this extraordinarily funny.

"Me too, I could sleep for a week," she said through a smile. Lou shouted over to them, saying that they were waiting for them so that they could go home, and Maria gave him a thumbs-up and turned back to Becker. She kissed him, long and soft, before staring into his eyes.

"Do you trust me?" she asked. She needed to confirm it, in her mind thinking "if he trusts me, he won't follow me. He'll trust that I know what I'm doing and will just leave me to it." Becker's eyebrows furrowed and Maria was suddenly afraid that he had cottoned on, or worse, been told what she was doing.

"Of course I do, why?" Relief flooded through her and instead of answering, Maria tightened her grip around his neck and hugged him again, which Becker returned, albeit somewhat slowly. She let it go on for far too long, and decided that it was either now or never.

"Ahh crap," she muttered her internally-rehearsed escape excuse after an almost awkward pause.

"What?" Suspicion was slowly creeping into Becker's tone. That was the last thing she needed.

"I left my MedKit down there. You go on, I'll run and get it and catch you up," She pulled away from him and jogged towards the anomaly locking device, hoping as hard as she could manage that he didn't turn around in the next few seconds. She scooped her MedKit up from the floor and, without giving herself even a second to think twice about what she was doing, Maria stepped through the anomaly.

The ocean blue Audi TT Quattro convertible raced at alarming speeds down the main roads of London, breaking probably every single rule in the book seeing as neither of its two passengers had bothered to pay the congestion charges. The passengers in question had an awkward and hostile silence firmly lodged between them that neither wanted to have, but didn't really have any idea how to start breaking. It wasn't until the driver muttered an apology at sending the occupant of the passenger seat nearly flying into the foot well due to a sudden corner that conversation started flowing, albeit grudgingly, between them.

"Lou, why did you let her go off by herself?" Becker kept his gaze firmly fixed upon the edge of the light cast by the Audi's headlamps as Lou composed an answer.

"Because she wasn't going to let me not let her, if that makes sense," Lou decided, reckoning that answer was much better than 'I really have no idea,' which was probably the more truthful of the two. Becker just nodded, lost in thought again at the reasons why Maria hadn't told him anything.

"Can I ask you something?" Lou asked, five or so minutes later.

"You can ask. Whether I answer or not is another matter entirely,"

"Fine. What would you have done if she had told you?" Becker thought for a moment, still not looking at Lou in case his face gave anything away.

"I would have tried to stop her," he eventually decided.

"And then? When it was blatantly obvious that you weren't going to succeed?"

"I would have gone with her, whether she wanted me to or not," Lou considered this response for a moment and then, upon further reflection of what Alison had told him about how Becker had been acting over the last few hours, said what he hoped was the best and most encouraging thing he could say.

"She didn't tell you because she didn't want you to get hurt by following her, you realise that, right?" Becker made a noise that sounded like a snort, and Lou shot him a sideways glance.

"She has no idea," Becker muttered. Lou sighed.

"I know what you're thinking. That she has caused more hurt by leaving you behind than anything a predator could ever do to you. But just think about it from her perspective. People can die from physical wounds. Emotional ones take longer to heal, sure, but she probably figured that she had more chance of getting you killed if she said something," This time it was Becker's turn to give the sideways looks. Lou wasn't really a Deep and Meaningful kind of guy, and he was making next to no sense due to embarrassment, but Becker got the gist. It didn't make it any better, though.

"If she had told me to stay then I would have," he pointed out.

"Really? I doubt that very much," Lou said, incredulous as always.

"Okay, fine, if she'd just dropped it on me and then run then probably not,"

"I didn't think so," Becker glared at the cocky grin forming at the corners of his friend's mouth but said nothing. His glare turned to a frown as the car's dim interior lights revealed an ugly dark blue smudge peeking out of the collar of Lou's shirt.

"What happened to you? That wasn't there earlier,"

"What, the bruises? Let's just say that Seb didn't take the news of Maria's latest adventure particularly well," Lou let out a humourless laugh. "Although, when I told him I did expect him to hit me. Which he didn't, for which I am eternally grateful."

"So he tried to strangle you?" Becker was starting to remember why he didn't like Maria's brother very much.

"No. Well. Not really. He just made a few dark threats while I was hanging to the wall by my shirt, that was all," Lou noticed Becker's glower intensify and elbowed him halfway through a gear change. "Seriously, you are not going to start a fight with him over me. For one thing that would just be weird,"

"Lewis, what exactly have you been drinking since the last time we spoke?"

"Something of the order of five Red Bulls," Lou admitted. "And don't call me Lewis."

"Great. I'm in a car being driven by a deranged youth who is high on caffeine. My life expectancy has just dropped considerably."

"Oh shut up old man, I get enough of that from Maria,"

By the time the ocean blue Audi TT Quattro convertible pulled up in the ARC parking area, both passengers were laughing with each other as they had once done before their lives got overly complicated.

Anton heard Lou's sports car approach long before he saw it, and wondered for the trillionth time in his life what human beings had been thinking when they thought to use petrol as a propulsion system. He looked down at the floor to check that the holdall he had brought out with him hadn't wondered off of its own accord, suppressed another wave of guilt at leaving Valerie to wake up by herself after everything she'd just been through, and shifted his body weight to the other foot. He really should go back in there and at least wait for Valerie to wake up before explaining pretty much everything and then go off with Lou, Becker and whoever they might have convinced to come with them, but that was about as likely to happen as suddenly finding a stegosaurus around the corner of the ARC building.

Shaking his head at his terrible mental pun and vowing to answer every single question Valerie could throw at him no matter how personal or difficult, Anton pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against and watched the small blue car screech to a stop half a foot away from his leg. Lou got out of the driver's seat and frowned at him, before asking the single most stupid question in the entire Stupid Questions Pamphlet.

"What are you doing here?" He sounded like he was high on something, which only caused Anton to raise his eyebrow further.

"I live here, what do you think I'm doing?"

"No, I mean what are you doing here? Outside? In the rain..."

"Waiting for you, genius. Now can that car of yours fit a third in it or am I going to have to borrow another one?"

"You can drive?"

"I'm from the future, not Mars," Anton retorted, in far too bad a mood to bother with any more pleasantries. Lou shrugged and got back into the car, evidently not quite being able to process everything at once, and Becker asked a far more sensible question.

"What's in the bag?"

"Three EMDs, nine power packs, some night vision goggles and my latest contraption," Anton pulled a handheld device similar to something out of a Star Trek episode out of the holdall and tossed it over to him. Becker recognised it instantly; it was the sonar scanner Anton had been showing Valerie when the two parties had first encountered one another.

"Nice. Wait, three EMDs?" Anton sighed. Was it really that un-obvious what he was trying to do?

"Yes, three EMDs. I am coming with you. The pair of you will get hopelessly lost without me, and as amusing as that would be, I would like Maria to get back here before Valerie wakes up."

"Fair enough," Becker said, giving Anton an odd look. Anton gave him one straight back and picked up the holdall, slipping the scanner back in at the same time. Becker held the passenger seat forwards for him and he practically fell into the back, once again cursing the fact that his height didn't allow him to fit into small spaces very well, and Lou started the engine. Anton decided to ignore the fact that Lou was less than completely sober at this point and made himself comfortable in the back, preparing himself to go back home for the second time in a day.