A DAUGHTER'S LOVE

CHAPTER NINE - THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

If she had to be honest, Becky was seriously preparing herself for the worst when she sat down across from agent Cooper in the investigation room of the Twin Peaks police station. The reason of course was that she had to tell him a crazy tale that if anyone had told it to herself prior to her having lived through every moment of it, then she would surely have thought that the storyteller was at least a bit out of their mind, if not completely off their rocker! In a great stroke of good fortune on her part, Cooper had stayed behind at the station to near study some old case files, while sheriff Truman would be tied down for most of the evening with Hawk and Andy out on the opposite side of their fair town, thanks to (from what she could understand from talking briefly with Lucy) a four-car pile-up with at least a dozen injured people involved, some of them badly.

In a twist to the story that almost had Becky believing that some higher power must have been interfering, it had happened only mere minutes before herself and Laura had pulled into the parking lot outside. It all almost seemed too good to be true to her and the more that she thought about it, getting this rare opportunity to speak to Cooper alone was a gift from the Gods that she had to take full advantage of, without Truman and his rational thinking mind interfering in her confession. A confession that to a man that believes only in what he sees, would have seemed like pure crazy talk. She had a feeling in her gut though, that if anyone would believe an insane story like hers (apart for Laura, whose life was on the line, after all and probably didn't feel that she could afford not to believe her), it would be someone like Cooper, whom she guessed had seen a thing or two in his time.

Still, there was no denying that her hands felt clammy, and her heart was racing when it became time to confess something, where it could have horrible consequences if he didn't believe a word that came out of her mouth.

"Do you have any news for us, Becky?" Cooper asked her with a welcoming smile.

"You could say that" Becky vaguely responded before needing a moment to carefully consider what to say next. "Agent Cooper, do you believe in supernatural occurrences?"

"I do" Cooper answered her without a single flinch in his grimace at what many would have thought was an odd question. "Not all of it, it goes without saying, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there is far more going on between heaven and earth, than what the great majority of us humans can even begin to wrap our, let's be honest, rather simple minds around. Have you seen something that's unexplainable and that's why you're here?"

What an understatement, if there ever was one!

"Yeah, I ... I can remember a lot of things again" she continued, before she got an idea on how to break the news to him that she was some kind of inter-dimensional time traveler from a future that now could never exist like she'd remembered it, thanks to all of the things that she'd already changed for posterity in 1989.

"That's great news, for once. Like what?" Cooper asked her, sounding like he cared, if nothing else.

"Like my birthdate. It's October 13th, 1990. It was also a Friday, if you would believe it!" she tried half-jokingly telling Cooper, who looked as lost for words as Laura had been, if not more.

"October of next year?" Cooper asked her, not as much in a disbelieving of a way as Laura had, as much as it was in a slightly skeptical kind of way.

"Yep!" was all that she could come up with to answer him, as she studied his reaction to her revelation. It didn't look like it freaked him out at least, so that was something.

"Is there any way that you can prove this?" he answered her, quite logically, she supposed.

"Do you remember your dream about that giant, which was what first brought you here? Well, it all started when he visited me in a dream too and he brought me, or I should probably say, teleported me, to a previously invisible cabin with red drapes everywhere in the woods at night, to speak to a pair of much older versions of you and Laura. It was so incredibly freaky just being in there, like I'd stepped into a different world from our own where there's only true evil and the purest of goodness and they're at constant war with each other. If none of this makes any sense, feel free to stop me at any point" she began to recount to him, in the faint hope that telling him the entire truth about her journey so far would be enough to convince him.

"Who's Laura?" Cooper asked her.

"My friend Laura Palmer. Only, it wasn't her from now, it was a version of her, who looked like the age that she would have been in 2017. My time" she continued explaining. "She told me that ..."

"You have to save her from being murdered" Cooper more or less finished her sentence for her, and this time it was her turn to sit there with her mouth gaping wide open in sheer surprise.

"How did you ..." she began saying without knowing how to finish her sentence.

"I had a very strange dream during my first night after I'd returned from Seattle that I haven't been able to explain. Can you take me to see Laura?" he asked of her and soon after, they were out of the door and on their way over to the Palmer residence.

On the drive over there, Becky had wholly expected Cooper to be full of hard to answer questions for her, but he'd instead stayed eerily quiet and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the road. As they walked up the patio to the Palmer family house though, she was hit with a sudden and unfamiliar sense of foreboding, that once Cooper and Laura got the chance to meet for the first time (in this version of the world, anyway), all of the pieces would suddenly begin to fall into place and just maybe, Laura's life could be saved. After Cooper rang the doorbell and they heard it's familiar and almost cheerful ding-dong sound, there was a short moment of silent tension between them in the air before Laura's mother Sarah opened the door and less than a second later, got a distinctly puzzled look on her face.

"Yes?" Sarah apprehensively asked them, seeing as she hadn't met either of them before.

"Mrs. Palmer, I presume?" Cooper asked her and again got a "Yes" as his only reply. "Mrs. Palmer, my name is Dale Cooper and I'm a Special Agent with the FBI. My young counterpart here is Becky ..." he began introducing her before realizing that she hadn't told him her last name yet.

"McCauley" she told him, using only her middle name, so that the mention of her second surname Briggs (which she could easily guess would have raised some eyebrows among Laura's parents) wouldn't bring any further questions with it. "I'm a close friend to your daughter, Laura. We go to school together" she briefly introduced herself.

"Is it possible that we could talk to her? I'm well aware that this must feel to you like an unusual request, but I guarantee you that it is of great importance" Cooper convincingly said to Sarah, who still looked like her brain was trying in vain to compute why a Special Agent from the Feds had just turned up at her front door out of nowhere to speak to her teenage daughter.

"She just got home from work five minutes ago. Is she in trouble?" Sarah nervously asked them like any caring parent would in this situation, Becky supposed.

"Who are you talking to, Dear?" she could hear Leland saying, as they heard him coming towards the door. When he did, he greeted both Becky and Cooper with a heartwarming smile.

"It's certainly nice to see you again, Becky!" he blurted out and she couldn't help herself from smiling back at him. "Is this your father? Leland Palmer, pleased to meet you" he introduced himself to Cooper and shook his hand.

"It's a great pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Palmer. Although, as much as it would please me to someday become the father to a bright and considerate daughter of my own, who's just like Becky here, I can't personally take any of the credit for her creation. My name is Dale Cooper and I'm a Special Agent for the FBI. Now, I assure the both of you that Laura isn't in any kind of trouble with the law, but I can't stress how important it is that you allow me to speak to her tonight" Cooper told both of Laura's parents, who predictably looked worried all the same.

"Was she a witness to a crime or something like that? If she was, then she hasn't told me anything about it. Has she said anything to you, Leland?" Sarah asked her husband, who looked as dumbfounded as his wife was.

"No, not at all" Leland replied to his wife in a just as confused tone before calling out to Laura, to come to the front door and meet their "guests".

When she did however, and Cooper finally saw her in living color for the first time, Becky immediately knew that they would have a positively invaluable ally on their side from then on out.

"It really is you!" he couldn't help himself from saying out loud, as he smiled with what could only be described as childish wonder and glee at a somewhat confused looking Laura, just like if she was someone straight out of a vivid dream of his.

Like she legitimately was!

"You're telling me that this ghostly and older version of me visited you in a dream, too? Honestly, if I hadn't already seen and heard all of the things that I've seen and heard today, I would have thought that both of you were completely bonkers! Then again, I can't even say that I'm all that shocked, so how's that for crazy on my part? " Laura told Cooper and Becky with a small shake of her head to match. They were up in her room, after her parents had thankfully granted them some privacy and looking at her in that moment, there would have been little doubt among anyone that she looked like someone, who was one small step away from reaching her edge when it came to how much insanity that her brain could take for one day. Not that Becky could blame her at all. "What did she tell you?"

"I dreamt that I found myself in room with red curtains lining the edges, only I was a much older man than I am now" Cooper began to explain.

"Say, roughly twenty-eight years older?" Becky interjected and got a small smile back from Cooper.

"I suppose that it wouldn't be too far off. Going back to what I was saying, in there with me was a middle-aged and bearded man with one arm, who didn't speak a word, the same giant from my previous dream, a dancing dwarf in a red suit and finally you, Laura, only it was a, we can now assume, twenty-eight years older version of you. The dwarf told me many cryptic things, few of which that I can imagine are of any importance right now, before you, Laura, softly whispered into my ear that in order to save you, I need to search through my past" Cooper said directly to Laura, while he sent her a look of compassion.

"A dancing dwarf in a red suit? Just when I thought that this whole immensely fucked up day couldn't possibly get more fucked up, you have to throw in a fucking dancing dwarf in a fucking red suit!" Laura couldn't help herself from blurting out and suddenly, neither her or Becky could stop themselves from laughing out loud and even Cooper had to crack a smile at Laura's blatantly honesty.

In some odd way, it felt cathartic, and it must have to Laura especially, who was after all the one with her life on the line.

"For what's it's worth, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting either him or the one-armed guy yet" Becky informed the two others.

"If this means that it's someone from your past, who will come after me, do you have any clue who it could be?" Laura asked Cooper to get back on a serious note again, after their brief laughter had subsided.

"I really can't say. Not yet at least, but it should make it far easier to prevent your demise from taking place, now that I know in advance who the victim could be. Becky, I don't suppose that you can tell me anything else that could help us? Even if I'm well aware that you need to be careful about what kinds of information about future events that you give out in this time period, this is Laura's life being on the line that we're talking about here" Cooper asked of her in his imploring voice, now getting full-out back into "Special Agent Mode".

"If I remember it all correctly, as she the story goes ... or went, Laura's body was found washed up on the shore and wrapped in plastic, a short distance from the Packard sawmill on the morning of February 24th. Pete Martell found her, or so I seem to remember" Becky informed him.

"This next question is very important if we're going to save Laura, Becky. Did she or did she not, go missing before that day?" Cooper inquired.

"From what little that my dad has told me, I can gather that he must have talked to her sometime in the afternoon on that fateful day, meaning that it could only have happened during the night between the 23rd and the 24th" she replied to Cooper, who was listening to her intently and taking in the information like a human sponge, as she spoke. "Apart from that, I don't know what else to tell you, except perhaps that at first, there were a whole lot of people around town that suspected Leo Johnson of being the killer. I guess that we've finally disproven that rumor once and for all, though".

"Even if he didn't kill her, it doesn't mean that he can't have been otherwise involved. Do you know this Leo Johnson, Laura?" Cooper asked Laura, whose facial expression instantly turned to one of shame and she had to take a moment or two to compose herself.

"Laura, if you've done something illegal, you can still tell me about it. This is solely about saving your life, and I swear to you on my honor as an FBI agent that nothing else matters to me right now" Cooper deeply implored her and finally, it looked like Laura was ready to tell the truth for real this time.

"Becky, do you promise never to tell anyone else what I'm about to tell you?" Laura asked of her, sounding as nervous as can be.

"Cross my heart and hope to die" she swore to Laura, who was still a little apprehensive.

"My ex-boyfriend Bobby and I have bought drugs from him lots of times. It was only a bag of weed here and there to start off with, before we ... and by that, I mostly mean myself, started doing Cocaine around two years ago. Bobby didn't want to even try it and he only did it with me because I knew that I could always lure him with a promise of sex. God, I'm such a horrible bitch, aren't I?" she semi-rhetorically asked the two others. "I've also had sex with Leo up in a cabin in the woods to get free Coke from him and it's been so many times that I've long since lost count of it. The really sad part is that it isn't close to the worst thing that I've done. There's this girl named Ronette that I work with at the Horne department store, and I got her hooked on it too, all because Leo had promised me five grams if I scored another loyal customer for him. When I first became friends with her last year, she was your everyday teenage girl, who was far too naïve for her own good and now, thanks to me, she's become every bit as screwed up as I am" Laura confessed to them, while the tears kept gliding down her usually stubborn and youthful face that looked like it had aged a minimum of five years in the past minute. Seeing that she clearly needed it, Becky offered her a tight and long hug that was gladly accepted.

"Laura, will you help me with getting Leo sent away to a prison, where he belongs?" Cooper softly, but distinctly, asked Laura after her crying had finally begun to subside.

"Jaques Renault is in on it too. He's one of the bartenders down at "The Roadhouse" and Leo's right-hand man. I've heard Leo once mention something about Jaques having a brother, who runs drugs across the border for them, but I don't think that I've never heard him mentioned by name" Laura replied to Cooper before taking a deep breath with her eyes firmly closed. When she opened them again, she seemed filled with the kind of courage that only comes from a new-found resolve.

"You both must think that I'm the worst girl in the whole wide world right now" Laura said to both her and Cooper, although Becky could also tell that it had been a long time coming for a girl, who must have felt like she was carrying the entire weight of the world on her shoulders.

"What matters in the present isn't the mistakes that we've made, it's what we do to correct those mistakes of the past. Laura, Leo is only spreading sorrow and pain wherever he goes, and I think that you know it too. He needs to pay for his crimes, or he will only continue to do more of the same, unless you make a stand here and now to put an end to it. You won't have to be there when we arrest him or testify in court against him, but we need your help to catch him in the act. If nothing else, do it for girls like Ronette, who you can save from having the same thing happen to them that happened to you two" Cooper implored Laura, who only had it left in her to reply to him with a faint and solemn nod.

Before they'd planned on leaving Laura to deal with what Becky could only imagine would be a sleepless night for her, there was still one final thing to take care of in the upstairs bathroom of the Palmer house, where Laura had to flush the rest of her stash down the toilet. Cooper had on Becky's request, allowed the girls to share in this moment privately, while he tried to calm Laura's parents down and in the most diplomatic way possible, let them know that if that they saw anything that could even slightly been construed as suspicious, then they needed to notify the sheriff's station instantly.

"I don't know if I can do it" Laura honestly told her, while she stared intently at her small baggie that had two or three short and very thin lines worths of Cocaine left in it at the most.

"I know that it feels like it's impossible right now and I can't tell you that the next days won't be hell on you, but there is a light on the other side" she told Laura, who quickly put two and two together and turned her head to stare her in the eyes.

"You too?" Laura asked her.

"From the time that I was still just a big kid until roughly a year before I came here. You aren't the only one in here with some major skeletons in your closet, if that's what you're thinking. A few months after I did my first line, I got what I thought was a brilliant idea and I peer-pressured the best friend that I'd ever had into doing it with me and my boyfriend at the time, Steven. She seemed fine at first and it looked like she was enjoying it, until she started to convulse and have trouble breathing. Anyway, to make a long and incredibly fucked up story short, we were both so sure that she was one step away from dying that we dumped her off in front of the hospital, and after we'd raced away from there, we took a blood oath that we'd never rat the other out to the cops. To this day, I still couldn't tell you what the hell that I was thinking, but what I can tell you is that it's never stopped eating me up inside ever since, for every single second of each and every day of my life" Becky honestly spilled the beans to Laura, who looked more than a little shocked in spite of the numerous unbelievable things that the two of them had already experienced together and confessed to one another on that most memorable of days.

"Just when I thought that I'd already heard everything today!" Laura exclaimed, although it also seemed to Becky like it was strangely comforting for her to know that she was with someone, who'd stooped as low in her past, as she had. "Did your friend survive?"

"Only barely. The only time that she ever talked to me after I'd almost ended her life, was to tell me right to my hopeless face how much that she hated my sorry ass. Needless to say, it hit me like a ton of bricks to lose her and dumb as I was, I somehow managed to convince myself that it was all Steven's fault. Just between us, I'll be the first to admit that there was a far too long time during my darkest past, where I always took the easy route and constantly blamed him for the shadow of my old self that I'd become, when I never should have looked further than myself. Do you do that with Bobby?" she asked Laura, who was by now seriously starting to look like she was emotionally spent.

"Far too often" Laura admitted with a deep sense of shame in her quivering voice.

"The only thing that a pair of true to the word fuckups like us two can do after we've come out on the other side, is to try to make amends to those that we've hurt, but it has to start here for you. You can take the easy escape and continue down the short and wide road to your own imminent destruction in a drug-filled haze, or you can fight and claw your way uphill on the long and narrow road to sobriety, by facing up to the reality of your addiction and do the best thing that you ever could have done yourself. Choose death or choose life, it's that simple. If you ask me, it isn't much of a choice" she calmly explained to Laura, who (in a moment that made Becky extremely proud of her) instantly threw the baggie into the commode with disgust and pressed the flush button.

"I'm so scared, Becky and not just of what Leo could do to me. You've met him and could you in your wildest dreams imagine that he'll make an exception for me after I've betrayed him in the worst way, just because I've let him do whatever that he felt like to me?"

"I wouldn't think so" she agreed.

"Whenever that I'm having an especially bad day, I get dark thoughts in my head and I start fantasizing about how everyone in my life would have been so much better off, if I'd never been born. Donna, Bobby, James, my parents. What did they ever do to deserve being saddled with a self-hating basket case like me?" Laura semi-rhetorically asked, seemingly without expecting an answer.

"I used to think the exact same way. There's only one way forward and it's day by day, I'm afraid. Is there anything else that you want to confess to me, while you'll still get a free pass on just about everything?" she told Laura, who couldn't help but let out a small and nervous giggle.

"Only one thing and I probably shouldn't tell you, or you could end up in danger too" Laura replied, which only peeked Becky's interest even more. "Let's just say that Leo isn't the only dangerous guy in town and if I confess everything that I know to Cooper about some of them, I'll have people that are far scarier than him out to get me".

"Scarier than Leo? That's almost impossible to imagine!" she dark-humoredly joked.

"Leo is just one guy and none of their other contacts have ever seen me in person, so I should be safe from them, if Leo and Jaques get locked up. When it comes to the people that I'm talking about, it won't matter where I try to hide, they'll somehow find me and make me pay them back in blood. I've already screwed up so many things in my life and I won't be able to live with myself if someone that I love has to die, all because I couldn't keep my filthy mouth shut" Laura self-deploringly and tearfully said to her, and even if Becky had heard an unexpected thing or two that day, the way that Laura had said it still gave her the chills in an enormous way.

In what was one of the smartest decisions that Becky had made since she'd arrived in 1989, she'd asked Laura if it wouldn't be a sound idea that she slept over, an offer that her new number one confidant had gladly accepted. As it was, the two girls wound up staying up and having a rather wholesome time for most of the night, where they talked openly about whatever came to their minds and told true life stories about this, that and everything, until there was only a small handful of hours left prior to them having to get ready for school. One thing was what it did to cheer Laura up, still words could not express either what a load that it was off of Becky's collective mind and sanity to finally be completely open with someone again, after she'd had to constantly pretend to be someone that she wasn't for the past week or so. She'd already done that sad and tired old dance to death anyway, and if she was ever going to become the together young woman that she wanted to someday be, there was no turning back when it came to not living an almost schizophrenic double life anymore.

Surprisingly to her, Laura was the first one out of them to doze off and as Becky lied next to her in her bed with the tiniest of smiles plastered on her face, while she watched her fellow tortured soul angelically paying a short visit to Slumberland, it for perhaps the first time truly began to dawn on her what an incredible gift that this crazy adventure had been for her already. That said, she still sometimes felt like this had to all be an extremely vivid dream, which would mean that when she woke up, she'd be back in a 2017 where Laura wouldn't have lived past the 24th of February, only three weeks from then.

Now that she'd finally begun to truly understand exactly why Miss Laura Palmer was how she was, this dreadful thought alone was enough to make all of the hairs stand up perfectly straight on both of Becky's arms and legs.

END OF CHAPTER NINE