This is his fault.
"It is not," Nikki says briskly. But her eyes are dark with exhaustion, and he knows she's only saying it to soothe him. Just about the last thing he wants, right now.
"I can't let this go on any longer. I can't just sit by and let everyone I care about slip away." He doesn't look at the small figure curled on the chair next to him, fighting sleep with fading intensity. Terrified of what else might be lost after another dip into oblivion.
"MacGyver. Trust Becky."
"Nikki, it's been days. Time we don't have any more. And I-"
He stops then, as the tv flickers into life, showing some scene of wooded groves. Becky. Ashton, too.
And Murdoc.
Mac listens with dull, fretful despair, wondering what more can go wrong. Whether he'll have to watch his niece die and not be able to help at all. But listening intently because paying attention is what he does. Looking for details, trying to find some slightest hint or clue or hope that there might be something, anything to be done-
"Oh my god," Nikki says. "You heard that?"
"I heard it!"
He hugs her; she kisses him. They laugh like little kids, crazily delighted with each other and the world. Everything's going to be all right now, everything will be okay.
"She can stop him," Nikki whispers, all her hard-edged self-protection melted away to nothing. "She can threaten him! That means we can stop him."
"Pete's been working overtime on finding Ashton anyway- you know Pete, if anybody can dig her up he can. So if he can find out where she is-"
"You go reason with her," Nikki finishes. "You saved her life, and it's obvious there's no love lost between those two. Get out there, MacGyver. Get her on our side, whatever it takes."
He's yanking the door open, when-
"You promised," Jack mumbles, hardly intelligible. "Remember? To make sure Becky had a lifeline home."
That stops him in his tracks. "Yeah, but-"
"Will you trust me to take care of them?" Nikki asks.
He's trusted all sorts of people over the years, even implicitly; but this is different. The two people who've needed the most looking after, over the course of his life; both here, both so vulnerable.
"I do."
She breaks out laughing afresh; and ten minutes and several miles down the road, he finally works out why.
Oh, well.
It'll be good to share the joke with her, when he gets back...
Of all the many reasons to be grateful for his work and friendship with Pete Thornton, being able to track down a foreign dream-researcher at the drop of a hat has to count as one of the most ridiculous ever.
Bless you, Pete.
"You wanted to talk to me?" Ashton asks.
Same woman he remembers, if a little less fluffy now they're on even footing. She pours out tea for him, offers a plate of biscuits; he refuses, leans in intently.
"Yeah. Look. We both know this whole Murdoc thing's gone out of control, right?"
"I haven't the slightest influence over his attempts to kill you in interesting ways," she says, quite coolly. Family resemblance, all right.
"I wouldn't figure you would- that's not the problem, I can take care of myself in the normal way of things. But this dreamscape stuff's beyond me." Open and honest as he knows how to be; might as well make a strength of his weakness. "I seem to be pretty resilient, for whatever reason-"
"I'd expect that," Ashton says, nodding as she sips her drink. "You're adept with possibilities, happenstance, evaluating multiple courses of action. The patterns of dreamweaving would naturally distress you less, especially since-" and here her voice sours, "my brother is so insistently unimaginative. Faced with the infinity of choices offered in Parabola, and he can't think of anything better to do with it than chase after the possibilities of one singular individual."
"But the people I care about haven't been so lucky. My co-workers, my niece, my best friend- he's already woken up different. Got one of my phobias now that he never had before, and I never even noticed it go."
Her eyes widen. "I...did not think he'd be that stupid. Or capable. Murdoc must be further along with his rites than even I'd guessed."
"Can you tell me how to fix it?"
"Frankly, no," she says, not without sympathy. "We've taken our researches slowly, cautiously, inching along and drawing back at the least sign of trouble. You can understand how different our procedures are than my brother's."
"He's gotta be stopped. Tell me how, and I'll do it."
"It's a question of raw power. All that's stopped him up to now is his own inability to imagine the right circumstances for you two to get together- and once he's sorted that out to his own satisfaction, he'll put every bit of his will into forcing it to happen. And as you're aware, his will is rather considerable...nobody I know could summon up the sheer intensity of desire to oppose that. With one noticeable and very intriguing exception. Your niece."
"Becky. Huh."
It's with a grave sense of disloyalty, that he realises his own surprise at the words. Telling Becky that of course she could take on Murdoc- had he not believed in her all along, then?
(The faintest image of a silver rope, stretched across an ocean and snapping, flickers across his mind and vanishes.)
"No disrespect to your sister," Ashton says, and pauses frowning. "No, actually, every disrespect to your sister. It's one thing shaping your own child into a weapon of the Great Game, it's another leaving them in the dark about it."
He tells himself that it's because of his general dislike of violence, that he doesn't fly off the handle at this point. Somehow, it doesn't sound as convincing a reason as usual. "That wasn't Allison's style."
"Suit yourself," Ashton says, shrugging. "Are you sure you won't have any tea?"
"I'm sure."
"All right. If I had her power, her gifts and shapings, all the encoded patterns that make up a born dreamweaver, I could take down my brother quite easily. It wouldn't do Becky any harm to give it up, her conscious mind would be completely unaffected- and that's the part that matters, isn't it? If you would talk to her, ask her to give over her dreams to me, I could promise that you and she and everyone else you care about would be able to sleep in perfect safety from now on."
Perfect.
Maybe too good to be true. "Suppose you're helping out your brother, though. Suppose you're actually just trying to get me to give away the only safeguard we have."
"An excellent question," Ashton agrees, wiping biscuit crumbs off her mouth with a napkin. "Come with me."
Below the elegant breakfast nook, the cellar is cool, white, well lit. There's several beds down here, with equipment surprisingly similar to that of the room in Los Angeles he's so recently left.
In one of them is Murdoc. Sleeping like a baby.
"I can't wake him up, mid-dream- I'd risk killing him, unmooring his mind from his body. Or perhaps the better word," Ashton murmurs. "Haven't. I can't...I can't bring myself to kill him. Even knowing what he does. Even knowing everything."
She points him towards a plug. "But you could. I might not even try to stop you."
It's simple. Simple as one of his fixes. As the round, ugly hole of a waiting gun.
"I don't do this," MacGyver says, slowly. "I don't kill people."
"If anybody can duck the obvious solution, make the miraculous happen...why. Talk to Becky for me, that's all. Convince her- and I swear, nobody needs to die."
He believes her. Not implicitly- but because she's so blunt about her craving for more power, more scope for discoveries. It makes sense what she wants Becky's abilities for. And because blood is blood, and he is positive that like her brother, she'll keep to a spoken oath.
"You're positive it won't hurt Becky."
"Well, she'll never remember another dream in her life," Ashton says. "But then, many people don't. Anything else?"
"I guess not."
All he has to do is go home, and wake up his princess.
Easiest job of his life.
