Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rebecca McCauley Briggs (formerly Burnett prior to her recent divorce) was feeling a kind of relief that she couldn't remember having felt since she was a kid, all of those years before this. She was now twenty-six years old and for the first time in years, she was in every sense of the word a free woman. Free from her highly drug-addicted husband Steven, who'd done such a fine job of pulling her down with him and whom, after she'd testified against him in court as the prime witness to his misdeeds, she'd now officially become divorced from. Best of all, thanks to a few months spent in court-ordered rehab, she'd also become free from her own drug addiction that had held her down since she'd first met Steven at the tender age of sixteen and in the following years, he'd kept her plenty supplied with whatever kind of escape from reality, she'd felt like getting. That she couldn't see then that she was basically following in her mother's tragic footsteps, annoyed the heck out of her to say the least, but there was nothing that could be done about it now where she was trying to live on the straight and narrow, while she also got her head back in order again. Not an easy feat, considering how extremely out of whack it had been when she'd truly hit rock bottom the year before this, prior to her parents talking some much-needed sense into her rebellious young self and no doubt saving herself from a long time behind bars as well.

Her own and her mom's stories were eerily similar too. Becky's mother Shelly had met her father Bobby when they were still just little kids, and they had in time become each other's first sweethearts. After he'd broken her heart in grade ten however, when she'd found out that he was secretly seeing Laura Palmer behind her back and had been for a while, they had a very public break-up at a school dance and was the end of them: part one.

Even if Becky had never claimed to be the wisest person on ways of the world, even she knew that a troubled teenage girl from a broken home, who had a lousy relationship with a mom that had never wanted to have her in the first place and had barely gotten to know her dad, before he'd skipped town on her (not to mention had just had her fragile, young heart crushed in the worst way possible by the first boy, she'd put any real trust in after her dad had abandoned her), would have been an easy victim for the absolute worst guy, her mom could have shacked up with: a trucker named Leo Johnson, who was five years her senior. From the moment that he began pretending that as the only one, he actually gave a damn about her, she was sold and with that had begun an over two year-long abusive nightmare for her. Not long after, he'd threatened her enough to make her marry him, move in with him and drop out of school and from then on, she'd essentially become his personal house slave and little more.

Substitute the names Bobby and Leo for Davey and Steven and you basically had Becky's own sob story neatly wrapped up as well, even if Steven luckily had never treated her anywhere nearly as horrible as Leo had treated her mom, whom he'd turned into a mixture of a punching bag and a non-paid maid, living in constant fear of what he might do to her (again). It wasn't even like he took care of her financially, she had to go to work as a waitress at the double R diner every day as well. Then again, that could very well be why she managed to stay sane through it all and to a part of Becky at the least, it comforted her know that her mom had a somewhat of a safe spot away from the near-daily horrors that monster must have put her through.

Even if Leo had thankfully been murdered (and from everything she'd heard about him, more than deservedly so!), just the frightening stories that she'd been told about him from her parents or one of the other adults, who knew them at that time, was enough to send entire waves of shivers running down her spine. To think that her wonderful mom, the closest thing she'd met to a real-life angel in every way, had been in such a horribly abusive relationship and had almost lost her life thanks to that thankfully deceased psychopath, only made her all the happier that after Leo had his "accident" (as if anyone actually believed that's what it had been and not yet another one, he'd made mortal enemies of trying to murder him and finally succeeding at it!), her parents had rekindled their fractured relationship and with no one around to get between them that time around, had also ended up tying the knot on a romantic weekend trip to Nevada, almost a year to the day after her mom had buried her first husband.

Around eight months later, Becky herself had made her entry into this world and for the first several years of her life, they'd been a mostly happy little family and, on the surface, at least, things were going swimmingly. Her dad had decided to become a cop, while her mom was more than contempt working at the same place where she'd worked since she was a young teenager, the double R diner. Then again, why wouldn't she, when she had her best friend Norma as a boss and probably wouldn't be able to land a better job in a small town like Twin Peaks, anyway?

Unfortunately, in time her parents had begun growing apart and she could still remember vividly from when she was eleven years old, the day where they'd told her that "daddy was moving into a place of his own" and that "she shouldn't worry over it, because it wouldn't change anything for her". Looking back on it now, it was definitely a negative turning point in her life and although, they'd tried to keep things as much on the normal for her as they could, there was still no denying that there was a fresh-faced innocence within her that had been lost during that first year afterwards and would never be coming back again.

That neither of them, all of these years later had managed to find someone to settle down with, was honestly just kind of sad to her and it made her wonder if it wasn't because they were still too hung up on one another to move on. Certainly, if you looked at the romantic history of either of them over the years since their divorce had been made final, it read more like a who's who of matches, they were never going to last with in the long run and not the kind of people, either of them should be looking into dating. Heck, her mom's last boyfriend "Red" had almost been a reversion to her old days with Leo in how much of an obvious bad guy, he was and if he hadn't been taken down along with Steven, who knows what would have happened to her dear mom by now?

With both of those men spending the next many years in prison however, this was their chance at a fresh start in many ways. Becky couldn't help being a little pleased to know that it was almost sure to go better than most of their latest attempts had.

As she sat there on the passenger seat of her mom's car and glared out of the window while they were driving back from Seattle and Steven's court sentencing, she started wondering to herself, who the perfect match for either of her parents could be, if such a thing existed. They both had a couple of exes in town, but she couldn't really see either her mom or dad getting together with any of them a second time.

"Do you think they went too hard on Steven? Thirty-five years is a long time!" Shelly half-asked, half thought out loud, breaking the awkward silence between them that had been more or less been in full effect, practically since they'd left the Twin Peaks city limits five hours earlier or so.

"I can't say, mom. It isn't like I'm an expert on the law or anything like that. I'm just glad that I won't have to see him again" she replied truthfully, getting a small smile from her mom in return.

"That makes two of us, Honey! What is it with the women in our family that we always go for the worst guys, we could possibly choose for ourselves? First it was your grandmother, then me and now you. It has to be something genetic, I'm sure of it!" her mom dark-humoredly joked and they shared a dry laugh over it.

"Can we honestly say that dad has had more luck in love than we have? First there was you and that didn't end all too well, did it?"

"I'm sure that all of those who saw our very public break-up at that tenth-grade dance got a good laugh out of it, so that's something!"

"Still, it isn't exactly how you want your first relationship to end, is it?"

"I guess not, Sweetheart".

"Does it ever make you angry when you think back on how he cheated on you with Laura Palmer?"

"Considering that we're talking about a girl, who was savagely murdered at the age of seventeen, I'm just glad that it wasn't me in her shoes! Jesus, that poor girl! You don't know the half of it and I'm not sure, you'd ever want to! Believe me when I tell you that any residual jealousy that my younger and far more selfish self might have had towards her, all disappeared in an instant the moment that I was told about them having found her dead" her mom told her from the heart, before needing a moment to recompose herself. "I don't know if you've ever discussed it with your dad, but it hit him hundreds of times worse than it did to anyone in Twin Peaks, except for maybe Laura's parents and her best friend Donna. They'd been about as close, as a pair of teenage lovers could be for a long time by then and I can tell you that he blamed himself thousands of times afterwards, for not having been there to protect her when she needed him to".

"Until he got back together with you, right?"

"I'd like to think that it helped him with moving on with his life after losing her in such a brutal way, at least. Anyway, that's all part of a very dark past now that I don't feel like revisiting any more than I have to. But yes, you're right. Your dad hasn't had much more luck in love than either of us have when it comes down to it".

"He never dated any other girls back in high school, with the exception of you and Laura?" Becky asked and it made her mother bat an eye at her question.

"Where's this curiosity coming from?"

"I'm just making conversation" Becky replied casually, so that her mom wouldn't pick up on what she was actually in the midst's of.

"The only one I remember seeing him sort of flirting with a few times was Audrey Horne, but I can't imagine that anything wild or crazy happened between them, even if he was probably as attracted to her as most of the boys that we went to school with were".

"You don't mean "Crazy Audrey", do you? What kind of power could she possibly have held over them?" Becky had to ask, since the few times that she'd seen Audrey when she'd been home on a short visit from the nut house that she'd lived in for the past many years, she hadn't exactly looked like someone, who would have had the guys flocking towards her back in school. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Trust me, back then there were a lot of girls, who envied her for how amazing that she always looked. Even I did too, a few times. There wasn't a single boy in that entire school, with the exception of perhaps James, that she couldn't have wrapped around her little pinky finger in a matter of seconds if she wanted to. I can easily see why it would hard for you to see now, but back in high school, she was the untouchable princess there".

"She must have had lots of boyfriends, then?"

"Not really. Any guy who did win her heart had to work hard at winning it first. The only guy that I ever saw her having a legitimate crush on was an adult FBI agent and from what I heard, it was only because he'd saved her life a time or two!"

"To each girl her own, I suppose! Speaking of James, why did you never go out with him? I mean, he's as nice as they come and you're always saying how he's always been cool! Did you think that too back in school or ..."

"I'm starting to think that this conversation has gone on long enough!"

"Come on, I'm curious! There must have been some part of you that liked him, even back then".

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"That going back as far as I can remember, the two of have been sending one another these "secret smiles", like you know something that the rest of us don't! And don't think that I haven't noticed how you sneak little looks at him, whenever we see him around town!"

"And how's that, my little junior psychiatrist?"

"You look at him with this sad "Why didn't I ever take a crack at that?" kind of look. Fess up, mom! Did you have a teenage crush on him and it's just never entirely went away?" Becky asked, while trying to look her mom in the eyes. Not that it was working, since Shelly was clearly trying to avoid her gaze and had her eyes firmly fixed on the open road ahead of them.

"He was my first crush, okay? Way back in grade six, before I'd ever begun flirting with your dad or any boy, for that matter. I had a feeling that he liked me back, but with how painfully shy that we both were at that time of our lives, nothing ever came of it. I've never told him this and I don't want you to either! Is that understood?" her mother finally answered her daughter, who nodded in reply.

"You didn't answer the second part of my question, mom. Do you still like him?"

"That's between me, myself and I and no one else! Not even my own daughter".

They didn't speak much on the last part of their drive, and it gave Becky a chance to think some things over. Even if her mom hadn't said so in so many words, she hadn't denied that she still had feelings for James, and if Becky was to choose a top candidate for a new step-dad among the otherwise rather sorry-looking pool of available bachelors around her mom's age in their small town, James would probably be at the top of her own list potential step-dads as well. More than anything though, she just wanted both of her parents to find happiness through love again and if she had to willingly take on the role of being the catalyst for that happening, it was a role that she'd more than gladly take on!

After having spent most of the day with her mom, Becky had already made plans to join her dad for dinner at his small house, located just a few houses down the street from the house that he grew up in. They rarely spoke about her grandparents on her dad's side and with good reason too. Her (highly decorated) Air Force Colonel grandfather would often disappear for days at a time without leaving any trace of himself behind, and what had actually happened on the day that he disappeared for posterity, still stood as one of the biggest unexplained mysteries in a town that had more than its share of them. There were even those, who said that he'd been abducted by aliens several times and that the reason why he hadn't returned was because they'd decided to keep him, although the sceptic in her had trouble believing this theory, just for how unlikely it sounded to her ears. In the following years after his final disappearance, her grandmother had become much more withdrawn and by the time she'd left this earth in the early 2000's, the only ones who could say that they still knew her was her closest family members and a couple of old friends, who'd refused to give up on her. That said, Becky still had lots of great memories from visiting her back in her childhood. Whenever she brought them up to her dad, it wasn't hard to tell that he still had a deep-rooted love for the both of them, in spite of the differences they may have had during his adolescent years, where it wasn't a secret that he was living up being the town's number one bad boy to the fullest and enjoying every second of it.

"Do you miss Steven at all?" he asked her while they were preparing the evening's dinner of oven-roasted potatoes and pork chops. As far as the culinary talent between the two of them went, that was about as far as it could be stretched!

"A little" she answered him truthfully. "I know that I shouldn't, because we were always terrible for one another going back as far as I can remember".

"It's okay if you are, Becky. He was a huge part of your life, so it's only natural for you to feel this way. I can tell you from personal experience that it won't go away anytime soon, I'm afraid" he answered her with the sort of warm dad-like kind of smile, which often made her wonder how someone like him once could have been a wild child, to where it even rivaled her own wildest days of her teen years and her early twenties.

"Was what I went through with him, kind of like what you went through with Laura? I mean, we both tried to save someone from themselves, and we ended up losing both ourselves and them in the end, anyway".

"That's very insightful of you! Did a few of those classes that you took in college before they kicked you out, actually stick?" he asked back and they shared a small smile over it.

"Maybe. I've actually been thinking about someday going back to school and getting myself an education. Don't tell mom, but I don't want to be stuck working at the diner for the rest of my working life, like we both know that she will be!"

"There's no need to apologize! It's nice for a dad to hear that his daughter is coming up with constructive plans for her future and isn't planning on spending them being high out of her mind. For you, that's a big step up!"

"If you could get over your bad boy days as easily, as you did, I'm sure that I can get over my bad girl days as well! Was mom ever a bad girl, back in the old days?"

"If by the old days, you mean back in the late eighties and early nineties, I'd say that she could be on the rare occasions when she wanted to and we'll leave it at that. I wouldn't want you to get any wrong ideas in your head here, if you know what I'm saying?" he rhetorically asked before putting their dinner into the oven, where it in a little over half an hour would turn from being just a bunch of produce thrown together, into becoming a pretty tasty dinner for the both of them.

"You didn't answer my question about Laura. But look, I completely understand if it's still too hard for you to talk about an ex-girlfriend, who was murdered while you were still together with her".

"It's okay. We've never talked much about her, have we?" he solemnly answered her while trying to keep a brave face on. Even if it wasn't hard to tell that just bringing up the memories of how distraught that he must have been after his high school sweetheart was found naked, murdered and wrapped in a sheet of plastic by the side of the lake that surrounded their fair town, weren't memories that he would want to think back on.

"Of course, I heard stories about her wild and crazy life in school or around town, like I think that everybody in my generation and the one which came before us, did. It wouldn't surprise me at all, if those stories are still in some form circulating at Twin Peaks High today. I just don't know how much of it was trustworthy information, considering that I heard by far the most of it from those, who were my own age at the time, and they had probably heard it from someone, who'd been told the story for the tenth time over, at least!"

"Maybe we should try talking about Laura for once. After all, if she hadn't been taken from all of us when she was, it isn't unlikely that you wouldn't have been born, so I guess that I can't blame you for being on the curious side".

"You're almost making it sound like I was brought into this world to take her place. Who knows? Perhaps that is the case and it's all a part of someone's big masterplan!" she lightly joked, easing the tension in her father a little and helping him to loosen up again.

"With this being Twin Peaks that we're talking about, we probably shouldn't rule anything out entirely! With all of the mighty strange things, I've seen or been told about over my many years living here, I don't think it would even make my top ten! So ... what do you want to know?" he calmly asked her, before taking a couple of cans of beer out of his fridge and handing one to her.

Before they sat down at his kitchen table, he took a big swig of his and as they did, he took a deep breath for courage to come clean about a time of his life that he'd always tried his best to hide for from her.

"Did you love her?" was Becky's first question, since it seemed to her like a good jumping off point.

"I did. I can honestly tell you that there wasn't a thing in the world, I wouldn't have done for that girl if she wanted me to. That was perhaps our biggest problem as well. She knew this all too well and she wasn't shy, when it came to taking advantage of it".

"It doesn't sound like she was a nice person, the way you're talking about her".

"You have to understand how troubled; she truly was. I'll be the first to admit that I was far too young and too naïve as well, to even begin to understand how deep it ran within her. Now, where I can look back at it with the benefit of hindsight and not the least, all of the baggage that all of my years on the force has offered me, I can see that I was more or less doing the opposite of what I should have done. If it had been me today, I would have tried to get her the psychiatric help, she so desperately needed, but I was too blinded by my intense love for her to see anything apart from perfection whenever we were together. By the time that we reached those last weeks of her life though, my sixth sense tells me that she knew, she wouldn't go on living much longer" her father confessed to her, and it made the hairs on her arms stand up, to hear it being said that way. Sure, she'd been a troubled teen herself with everything that entailed, but to have been seventeen years old and know that your life is coming to an end soon? She couldn't help thinking to herself, that it's no wonder that Laura was messed up beyond belief, if that's the sort of knowledge she was running around with in her head!

"What makes you think that?" she enquired, after a few seconds of letting what her father had just told her, sink in.

"She'd begun distancing herself from everyone around her, even me and her best friend Donna and we were the two, who were closest with her. I don't know if you've ever heard this part of the story, but she was seeing James Hurley too, without me knowing about it. I'm sure that he loved her as much as I did, but sometimes all of the love in the world isn't enough to save someone from their unfortunate destiny" he continued quietly, before taking another swig of his beer and having to wipe away a pair of small tears from the corners of his eyes.

"Didn't part of you hate her for cheating on you?"

"Oh, I did my share of hating her after she'd died. I hated her for how she'd lied and deceived me more times than I could count and how, when I looked back on it, I'd just been a pawn that she'd used until what little I could offer her wasn't enough anymore. I hated him too right after I'd found out, but even in my incredibly messed up head at the time, I'm sure that I knew perfectly well that he was just another one victim of her charms, like I was. She wasn't easy to say no to, especially to a pair of overgrown kids like him and I, who were both far too innocent and bright-eyed to ever have a chance of keeping up with someone like she was. Either way, we made peace over it a few years later, so that part is all moot now. When I look back on those days though, don't think that there aren't a million things that I would have done entirely differently, if I could do them over today. That's what's both the blessing and the curse of having all of these years of hindsight".

"I only have one more question. Do you think that you could have saved Laura?" she asked her dad, who had to take his share of moments to think about it, before answering her.

"I can't tell you for sure, but I can tell you that I sure as hell would have tried a whole lot harder than I did back then!" he answered her with a wry smile and for the rest of the evening, Laura Palmer's name was never brought up again.

On her short drive back to her room at her mom's house, she couldn't stop thinking about Laura and how horrible it must have been to be as young as she was and knowing that you won't make it to the end of your teens, before someone takes your life away from you. It also made her feel even worse for how she'd treated her parents and everyone else who loved her, during those months and years where her love for Steven mixed with an almost greater love of getting high, had led her to stooping far lower than she ever could have imagined doing, while growing up in the comfort of her family home. And at the end of the day, in spite of being someone, who still lives with their mom at her age not exactly being on her list of things that she wanted to have happen to her, by the time she was twenty-six, it still by far beat the uncertainly of essentially putting your life in the hands of someone, who has as little or less control over their own life as you have over yours.

Becky had gone to bed pretty much right after she'd come home, knowing that there was plenty of meals-on-wheels dishes for the area's recluses and senior citizens to be both prepared and delivered the day after and that if she didn't get a good night's sleep, then the workday would surely end up crawling along at a snail's pace. It was for that reason a little annoying to her, when she woke up in the middle of the night because she had to pee. After she'd relieved herself, she came back into her room and when she saw what awaited her in there, she almost jumped so high in the air out of fright that she would have bumped her head badly on her mom's ceiling!

There, in the middle of a room that he had no business being in, stood a thin and enormously tall man (at least seven feet and then some!), who looked like he would have been the natural choice for the monster, if you were shooting a Frankenstein movie, and stared at her as she came in.

"Who are you and how did you get in here?" she asked him, before grabbing her alarm clock to use as a weapon, in case that tried something. Not exactly the best choice for a weapon, granted, but it was the closest to it at her disposal!

"A friend" the gigantic man very slowly and calmly said, and something in the way he said it made her believe that he was telling the truth. Seeing how much bigger than her that he was, plus that her only weapon was an alarm clock, also gave her little other choice than to trust him, so she put it back in its place.

"Okay, so you're a friend! I'm Becky. What's your name?" she nervously asked him and instantly felt a little foolish for sounding so much like a six-year-old, who's trying to make friends on their first day in school.

"We don't have names in the sense that you know it, where we come from. It's different from here. Very different" the giant said as he took a look around at the posters of pop stars on her walls, most of which had hung there since her she'd lived there growing up. "Sometimes, this world confuses me" he continued, as his eyes momentarily fixed on a picture of Mötley Crüe, back in their 80's heyday.

"That makes two of us!" she joked, although it didn't get a smile out of him. It made her wonder if he was able to change facial expressions, because he hadn't so far at all in the minute or so that she'd known this strange man. "So, what made you decide to pay me a visit here in the middle of the night, friend?"

"BOB is dead. It means that she can be saved" the giant continued, only making her feel even more puzzled than she already did.

"Who is BOB and who is it that can be saved?"

"BOB was a killer. He killed Laura. You were born, so you could save her" he calmly stated as if he was someone reading out bingo numbers at his local YMCA.

"Ehm ... I need some further explanation here! You're telling me that I was born, so that I could save a girl from getting murdered, who died over twenty-seven years ago? Is there a mental hospital somewhere that you've escaped from, because it sounds utterly insane!"

"Your first love was a boy named Davey, but he deceived you with another girl. When you were a child, you had a dog named Patches that you loved as much as life itself. On your ninth birthday, you were hoping that a girl named Clarissa would come, but she never did, and it ruined the day for you. How would I know these things if I was, as it's said on this plane of existence, crazy?" he asked her without ever changing the tone of his voice in the slightest. Something that was becoming eerier to her, the more that she listened to it.

"How do you know those things? I never even told my parents how disappointed I was, when that little bitch Clarissa blew off my B-Day party!"

"We've been keeping an eye on you since you were born, Rebecca. This is your mission and no one else can take it on, except for you. Come with me and I'll take you to Cooper. He can explain it better than I can".

"Cooper, as in the FBI agent, who disappeared years ago?" she had to ask, since he was the only one named Cooper that she'd ever heard of and somewhat of a local legend in town, thanks to the several months that he'd spend up there finding out who killed Laura.

"He needs your help. Will you come with me?"

"You know, I'd really love to! But my workday begins in less than three hours and ..."

"Where we're going, time works differently. When you return, you'll come back to this exact same point in time where we are now" he explained, taking away the last excuse she had apart from "this sounds far too incredible to be true and I'm still half-way inclined to believe that you're some kind of insane serial killer!".

"Where are we going? Do we need a car to get there?"

"Close your eyes" the giant told her and in spite of being highly suspicious, she still did. Moments later, it was like she could feel a small breeze blowing against her naked arm, although that had to be something that she imagined, right?

"You can open them again" the giant calmly spoke and as she did, she now had to come to the conclusion that this was some sort of very vivid dream, she was having!

"Okay, this has now officially blown the lid off the crazy scale! How did you teleport us from my room to the middle of the god-damned forest?" she exasperatedly asked him since there was no way, this could possibly be true! The chill of the night air told her that it was though, and it was quickly making her wish that she'd put more clothes on before they'd left. If nothing else a pair of shoes, so that she wouldn't be standing there on the cold dirt in her bare feet!

"It would take an eternity to explain it to you and even then, you probably wouldn't understand it. Look" he told her, mere moments before a magical passageway (for lack of a better word) appeared in front them, with red curtains marking its entranceway.

"I seriously hope this is a dream or I'm officially completely out of my mind!" she whispered to herself before following the giant through this entryway, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, in a spot where she was a hundred percent sure and then some that it hadn't been when they'd first arrived there.

After stepping through the curtain, she followed the giant through one empty room after another that all looked the precise same. Empty rooms with red curtains and all of them with an eerie feeling to them, as if something that was pure evil had once stayed there and some of their "evil energy" was still lingering around. They passed through half a dozen of these rooms at least, until they came to one where a fifty-something man in a neatly pressed suit was waiting for her with a blonde-haired woman, who looked to be in her mid-to-late 40's. As they turned their heads to look at her, she immediately recognized the woman, even if she'd aged significantly from the picture they still had hanging of her at the high school, where she'd spent a good part of four years of her life.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" she had to ask, just to be sure that this was actually Laura Palmer, whom she was standing only a few feet away from and alive and in person! It only made Laura laugh however and it even got a small smile out of the man, whom she was guessing had to be FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who'd disappeared back in 1990, never to be seen or heard from again. As far as she knew, anyway.

"I am and I'm not. One version of me that existed in your world died, but another version of me was created shortly before she was killed. Dale came from the future and saved me".

"Only, I didn't" Agent Cooper continued on for her. "I thought that I could, but all I did was create an alternate reality. A purgatory, if you will, that none of us will be able to escape from without your help. YOU are the key to it all, Rebecca and no one in the entire world can do this with the exception of you".

"So, you keep telling me! What no one's told me is exactly what you want me to do. It would be really nice to know before I agree to anything!"

"Correct the passage of time" the giant said monotonously, making his small contribution to this already extremely strange conversation.

"You don't think that's asking a little much?" she asked while still trying to comprehend what he meant by it.

"It's asking a lot, but it won't only be to save my life. If I'm not murdered, then my cousin Maddie won't be murdered by the same man either. That wouldn't have happened either if she hadn't come to Twin Peaks after my death. You'll be saving two lives and if that's not enough, you'll be making the lives of a lot of people better by doing this. That includes your parents" Laura explained.

"That's actually one thing, I was worrying over. If I save you, won't that mean that I'm never born?"

"Although, I know that it isn't worth much to you right now, you have my word and personal guarantee as an FBI agent that nothing like that will happen, Rebecca. Leo Johnson might not have died exactly like he did, but he still wouldn't have lived on for much longer than he wound up doing and your parents still would have ended up together, no matter what. At the point in time when you will arrive in the Twin Peaks of 1989, they'd already begun secretly dating one another again".

"They've never told me any of this!" Becky blurted out, probably as a small internal defense mechanism to help her deal with the absolute insanity of this situation, she'd all of a sudden been faced with.

"It's time to make a decision, Becky. I'm begging of you. Save me and my cousin Maddie from BOB!" Laura implored her, making it all the harder to say no.

"Won't he just come after me instead?"

"When BOB died, so did his spirit. Without it, he can't influence the events on any plane of existence anymore. You'll be perfectly safe from him, I promise. He wasn't the only danger in Laura's life though, and while I can't tell you who will try to kill her in his stead, it's likely to be someone she associated with regularly" Cooper explained on, easing her fears a little in the process. Only a very little, though!

"Get to know the me of that time and it won't take you long to come up with a list of suspects. You'll be returning a month to the day before my death, so it should give you plenty of time" Laura said, giving her a hint at least of where to start off from.

"Use Sheriff Truman to help you if you can convince him to. Even if he's a man who only believes in what he sees, he's also compassionate and could be a vital ally to you. We don't have much more in the way of time here. We need your decision now!" Cooped asked of her, as if she hadn't already made her mind up minutes ago over what she would do.

"In that case, I guess I'm going back to 1989! I sure wasn't expecting this when I went to sleep a few hours ago! Oh, one more thing and I can't believe that it's already making sense to me to ask this kind of question, but will I be awake or asleep as I'm living through this?"

"When you wake up, it will be in the old Twin Peaks hospital as a girl, who was found unconscious by the side of the road, just outside of town. How you go about your mission after this, is all up to you" Cooper explained with a smile on his face, now that she'd agreed to this ... whatever it was, that she'd just agreed to!

"Thank you and good luck, Becky. Succeed and I'll owe you, my life. Remember that" Laura, as her last message to her, told her, before her and Agent Cooper faded away into nothing again.

"Do I need to close my eyes now?" Becky asked the giant, who hadn't had any sort of reaction at all to any of what had been said the entire time and had stood in the same stoic manner throughout it all, staring off into nothingness.

"You learn quickly. A skill that should serve you well. Close your eyes".

So, Becky did and when she opened them again, she found herself lying on a hospital bed in a hospital room that she knew, she'd been in years before. It had been when she was still a small child, where her dad had been run over by a hit and run driver and had been forced spend a couple of weeks recovering in the hospital afterwards. It had been the worst event of her young life up to that point and she could still remember like it was yesterday, how seeing her dear old dad banged up and connected to machines in order for his body to keep on functioning, had been nothing short of an earth-shattering experience to a true daddy's girl like herself. Glancing around at it now, it looked almost exactly the same as it had back then, with the only exception being that she was much bigger now and she was the only one in there.

This didn't last long though, until a nurse with one of the worst 80's perms that she could remember ever having seen, came in to check on her.

"Oh, good! You're up. Maybe now you can tell us who you are and where you're from" the nurse cheerily said to her, in a way that made little hiding of how curious that she was to find out.

"My name is Becky. What date is it?" she asked, getting a befuddled look on the nurse's face in return.

"Hon, it's January 24th, 1989! I should get Doctor Hayward for you right away. It sounds an awful lot like you could have head trauma".

The nurse quickly left her, and it gave her a few moments to let it sink in that hat she was now back in 1989 and before long, would in all likelihood meet her parents, even before they were close to being the same age as she was now!

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Chapter Text

"You don't have any memory of who you are and how you got here? Apart from your name, I mean?" Sheriff Truman asked Becky, who had settled on going with the easiest lie possible and hopefully also the one that would lead to the fewest questions being asked: Amnesia.

"None, I'm sorry" she replied to him and got a sympathetic look from both the sheriff and doctor Hayward, whom she could already tell was a kind and honorable man that no doubt cared deeply about all of his patients.

"It can happen if the brain has to process something that it isn't capable of" Doctor Hayward interjected. "A traumatic experience, or something akin to it. You can't deny, Harry, that it adds up with how Hawk found her" he continued, leading her to the conclusion that her lie at least wasn't completely falling flat with them.

"No, I guess not. Thanks, Doc. I'm sure that you have other patients, you need to attend to" Truman answered with a small smile of gratitude.

"That, I do. Do you have any idea of where she could be housed until she begins to recover? I'd love to offer her a bed here, but with how few bedspaces that we have ..."

"Don't worry. The Horne brothers still owe me a favor or ten and asking for a free single room for a sweet and polite girl like this, at a time where their hotel isn't close to full, shouldn't be an issue. They know better than anyone, who to stay on good terms with and they always have. You have to give them that much!" Truman dryly stated and seconds later, it was just the two of them left in the hospital room. He looked at her with a face full of sympathy and even if she had only "known" him for a couple of minutes, she could already tell that Cooper hadn't been lying about him.

"Thanks for taking care of me. I really wish that I could tell you more, but my mind is drawing a complete blank" she told him and although, it didn't feel right to lie to this kind man, she also had to keep it practical. Surely, if she'd told him that she was from the future and that her parents were a pair of local eighteen-year-olds, who were still nearly two years removed from having her, he'd probably look into having her committed in no time!

"None of this is your fault, Becky. Is that short for Rebecca, perhaps?"

"I think that it could be" she said, a little unsure of how much it would be in her favor to tell him and what it would be best to keep to herself.

"I'll be completely honest with you. You're the first amnesia case that I've had to deal with, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a few ideas on where we can start. I know that the FBI has a national database of missing persons, so if anyone has reported you as missing, that's probably our best option. We'll also take your fingerprints and try to match them up against our local print database but seeing as I don't remember having seen you around here before, I won't be putting too much faith into it. You really don't have any idea where you're from, or what you did before you suddenly appeared on the outskirts of our small town here?"

"Not a clue, I'm afraid".

"From what little that know about amnesia, the most common way to get your memories back is through small triggers".

"Triggers?"

"Like for example, if you see someone or something that reminds you of home or you talk to someone, who unknowingly repeats something that's been said to you in year's past and it stuck with you. It'll all come back to you in time, I'm sure of it" he assured her with a smile that spoke volumes on how kind-hearted, he had to be.

"There's just one more small issue. I don't have any other clothes than the ones I was wearing, when I came in and I'm pretty sure that running around in nothing except for an old t-shirt and my panties, isn't the way to be discreet around here!" she joked and it got a nice little chuckle out of him.

"The hospital must have a lost and found box with some clothing in it that you can use for the time being. You're in safe hands now, Becky. We'll help you all that we can, even if it's with the smallest of things like putting clothes on your body" he told her, and after she'd searched through a pair of lost and found boxes and picked out an outfit that while it was VERY 80's, also was one that she figured wouldn't make her stick out too much, they were soon on their way.

A few hours later, they were done at the police station and after a short drive and a handful of minutes waiting in the lobby, she'd been settled into a not overly large, but very cozy room at the Great Northern Hotel with a beautiful view out on the waterfalls below that was akin to a live-action painting. The sheriff had advised her to go and see Dr. Jacoby, their local psychiatrist, the day after and had given her his phone number for her to call. She'd seen the Hawaii-obsessed Dr. Jacoby around town many times before back in "her own time" and could easily tell that he was a weirdo for sure, but she'd never talked to him before and figured that there was no harm in trying it out, if nothing else to keep the momentum of her lie going for the entire month that she needed it to.

Seeing as her room also came with free dinner, lunch and breakfast in the fancy looking hotel restaurant, she'd made her way down there after taking a short shower first to both freshen up and try to come up with a plan. She didn't know all that much about Laura's life to be perfectly frank, and out of what little she did know, some of it wasn't of a whole lot of use to her. She knew roughly how her dad's ex would have looked around this time from having looked through her mom and dad's old yearbooks countless times. Plus that Laura would have been a Senior in High School (unless, she'd been held back, in which case she'd be a junior), that she volunteered at the Double R (to help out with the meals-on-wheels deliveries), that she dated both her dad and James Hurley at the same time and finally that her best friend was named Donna and was in all likelihood a school-pal of hers. Anything else that she'd ever been told or had overheard said about Laura, couldn't be considered reliable information and for that sole reason had to be ignored entirely.

As it turned out, Sheriff Truman hadn't been a hundred percent correct when he'd said that the hotel wasn't full, because empty tables were clearly in short supply in the buzzing dining room, which was nearly filled to the brink with guests at the highly esteemed hotel and oldest still standing building in Twin Peaks. A hotel that in many ways had become synonymous with the town itself, as much as the sawmills and it's long and storied history was. As she stepped up to the Maitre D, who looked like his head was about to explode with stress, she did so cautiously, so as not to antagonize him even more than he clearly already was.

"Another one? How many tables do those brothers think that we have in here?" he sighed to himself before turning his attention to her. "Table for one, Miss?"

"If you have one. I don't want to be a bother" she said in the friendliest way that she could, and it seemed to ease him up a little.

"If only all of our guests were as well-mannered as you are, Miss! Many of them seem to forget all about manners, the moment that they step through our doors. To be perfectly honest with you, the only available table which we have left is right next to the kitchen and it's with good reason that it's only used in emergencies. I don't suppose that I could perhaps persuade you to share a table with one of our other single diners? There's a girl, who's the daughter of a local lawyer and very well-behaved, I assure you, that we could ask. You look to be approximately the same age as her and just between us, she doesn't look like she'd mind having someone to talk to" he suggested with a small, if rather put-on, smile.

"If it's okay with her, sure. You really don't think that she'd mind?"

"She only eats here once a week and always by herself. From what I understand, she's a "Visiting Friend" to Mr. Horne's son, Johnny. I know that it isn't my place to pry into a young girl's life, but she always has this sad look about her like she could really use a friend to talk to" he continued and as the clues kept mounting it up, it also became clear to her who he had to be talking about.

It had to be Laura.

"Is Mr. Horne's son your boyfriend?" Becky asked Laura before taking a small bite of the fish, she'd ordered for her dinner. Feeling a little guilty that she was getting all of this for free, she'd made up for it by ordering the cheapest main dish on the menu card and even that, she had to admit, beat any dish that she'd been served before. With the exception perhaps of the pies from the Double R, but to her it was like comparing apples and oranges!

"Me and Johnny?" Laura rhetorically asked before letting out a small giggle. "I doubt that he could comprehend what romantic love is, let alone participate in it. I should explain, so that you get the full picture. He was brain damaged at birth, when he almost choked to death on the umbilical cord".

"That's so tragic!" Becky had to let out and it made the young and much more vibrant version of Laura than the one she'd met in her dream, nod along in agreement with her.

"From what his dad told me, they came within seconds of losing him, but the minutes that his brain went without oxygen was enough to permanently damage it. He remembers me and a few other people enough to remember our names, but how much he actually understands of what's going on around him is impossible to say".

"And you still come down to visit him every week? You're a saint compared to me! I don't think I could handle being around someone like him, no offense" she said, and it nearly got a giggle out of Laura, who had to fight a little not to.

"Trust me, I'm nowhere close to a saint! If you want the truth, a lot of the things that do out of the goodness of my heart, like coming here to hang out with Johnny or helping out with delivering meals for the weakest around these parts, is just as much to soothe my guilty conscience over other things that I've done".

"You don't need to explain. Haven't we all done things that we've regretted afterwards?"

"Yeah, but my guess is that I've done more of those things, than most of my peers have. How old are you, by the way? Are you my age, or ..."

"That all depends. How old are you?"

"Seventeen. You?"

"How old would you guess, I am?" Becky teasingly asked back and from the looks of it, Laura was liking her style of not giving her whatever she wanted, just because she'd asked for it.

"I don't think, you're out of High School yet. I'm guessing that you're seventeen or eighteen".

"Seventeen" Becky lied, while having to hide that she was a little gleeful, that she could still pass for someone that young.

"Where are you from, Becky?"

"That's the thing, I don't really know. I have amnesia" she "confessed" to Laura, who took the news in a rather cool and unfazed way.

"Isn't that where you can't remember anything?" Laura asked her.

"All that I can remember is my first name. One of the deputies found me by the side of the road a handful of hours ago and now, I'm here!"

"You could remember how old you were just now" Laura picked up on. "Perhaps, it's a sign that your memories are coming back to you".

"I guess, it could! I sure hope so! This whole "not having a clue why you're here or where you're from" isn't something, I can recommend!" she jokingly answered, a little relieved that she hadn't blown her cover already. Her lame little quip did get a smile out of Laura, so that was something, at least.

"You aren't like most girls our age! Are you, Becky?" the teenage version of Laura smilingly asked, without having the slightest clue of how right, she was!

"You could say that!" was all that she replied, hoping that it would end the topic for now.

By the end of her first day living in a year where she hadn't even been born yet, Becky could say that she'd gotten a decent start on her "mission". She'd already met Sheriff Truman and Doc Hayward and gotten a great first impression of both of them and she'd been fortunate enough to not just already having met Laura but also having begun to make friends with her. Now, where she was getting to know her a little, it was easy for her to see too what had attracted her dad enough to her that it would make him cheat on her mom. One thing was that she was attractive, but another thing that struck Becky was how there was a sadness hidden beneath her smiles that made you want to do whatever you could for this girl. Even if Laura hadn't said it in so many words and Becky hadn't already been told countless stories about the insane things, she'd gotten up to (most of which were probably stories made up by bored high school kids, anyway), it shone out of her that here was a girl that was reaching the end of her rope, and was desperately crying out for someone to save her.

If she was going to save her though, it all began with becoming closer with her and Laura inviting her to come over to Doctor Hayward and his wife's house the day after, to hang out with her and their daughter Donna, could end up being a major step in this direction. A month may have sounded like it was plenty of time when she'd first been told that it was how long, she had, but the more thought she put into it, the clearer it was to her that there wouldn't be much time to waste if she was to reach the finish line, before the preverbal buzzer on Laura's life went off.

END OF CHAPTER TWO

Chapter Text

Becky's second day in the year where the Berlin wall was torn down, The Simpsons debuted on TV and New Kids on the Block were the hottest of the hot in music, had begun with a quick shower followed by a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant and after she was done, using the old-fashioned phone in her hotel room to call the number for Dr. Jacoby that the sheriff had given her the day before. It was the doctor himself, who answered and told her that she could come down to his office right away if she wanted to. After thanking him, another problem presented it itself to her, though. Even if she was well fed and taken care of when it came to having a roof over her head, she was also as broke as your standard garden mouse and while she could call the Sheriff's Station and ask them for a ride, it felt like a very small reason to pull them away from what could be more pressing duties. That and she didn't exactly have the best memories of riding in the back of police cars!

After a few minutes of thinking about it, she made up her mind that she could try asking at the front desk and see if that got her anywhere. As she stood there waiting by the counter, a man with a cigar in his mouth, who seemed somewhat familiar to her, came up to stand next to her. In any case, he seemed extremely annoyed as he banged the clock on the table to get the staff's attention.

"Who the hell do I have to talk to in order to get some service at my own hotel?" he asked himself loudly, before turning his attention to her and flashing her a million-dollar smile that brought back memories of every sleezy movie villain that she'd seen in the past.

"My apologies for my language, Miss! Aren't you the daughter of that real-estate mogul from Las Vegas, who's rented half of the top floor for himself and his entourage?" he slickly asked her, clearly hoping that he could score some cheap points with whoever this millionaire or billionaire was that he was talking about, by sucking up to his daughter.

"Sorry, you have me confused with someone else" she answered him and could immediately see the dollar smile begin to fade, now that she was just another of his regular customers and not someone, he felt was worthy of his time. "Sheriff Truman put me up here".

"Ah, the girl with no memory! My brother Jerry told me about you. The Horne family has always assisted the police force any way that we can and sometimes, even beyond that! In fact, it's something that we've all put a lot of pride into, going back to my great grandfather, who was the first in our family to settle here in Twin Peaks, back when all there was here was an old-fashioned trading post with a handful of crudely built houses surrounding it!" he smilingly stated to her, not unlike if he was a crooked politician, trying to sell his pre-memorized election promises to unsuspecting voters. "If there's any other way, we can be of assistance to the sheriff, who does such a wonderful job for all of our benefits, it goes without saying that we gladly will!"

"Does getting a ride down to Dr. Jacoby's office and back count?" she asked him and it didn't take many moments for him to see that here was a chance to score cheap points with one of the few people around town, he actually gave two shakes of a rat's behind about.

"That, we can handle! I'll have my chauffeur drive you down there right away" he told her, right before the receptionist came out from one of the back rooms.

"Yes, Mr. Horne?" the receptionist, a shy looking girl, who looked to be in her twenties, asked him, also looking a little scared of what could be coming.

If this guy wasn't the biggest obvious con-man, she'd ever met (and she'd met her share already), she didn't know who it could have been but at the same time, she had to give him how much of an imposing presence that he also could be as he stared her down to where she must have felt five inches tall, at the most.

"What's your name?" Ben Horne menacingly asked the receptionist, who wasn't looking all to comfortable with the situation.

"Mary Williams, Mr. Horne" she quietly replied.

"And how long have you worked here?" Ben continued, sounding like he didn't really care what she would answer to any of his question.

"Four months, Sir".

"Do you like working here?"

"Yes, Sir. I'd wanted to work here for a long time before I got the job"

"Miss WIlliams, let me offer you a piece of advice. When the boss to your boss's boss is trying in vain for the better part of hour to call the front desk, it's in your best interest to pick up the phone! Are we clear?"

"Yes, Sir! It won't happen again, I promise!" the receptionist, who apparently was named Mary answered him, a little relieved that it looked like she was getting off this easy.

"You're right, it won't! We wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors, Miss Williams. You're no longer needed here. Do I need to have to escorted out or can you leave on your own?" Ben coldly and calmly told the poor girl, who was in tears at how ice-cold that he was being about firing her.

Becky couldn't help being a little disgusted at his honestly demeaning treatment of this girl, but at the same time she could also guess that if he was this quick to make an example out of any of his employees, it also meant that the rest of them only very rarely, if ever, considered straying away from the company line.

On the ride down to Dr. Jacoby's "office" (which also served as his house), it struck her how little and how much Twin Peaks would change over the next twenty-seven years and change. The day before when Truman had driven her up to the hotel, they'd taken a route that didn't pass through the heart of the town, so this was her first chance to get a proper look around at it. The Double R diner, where her mom worked, had clearly gotten a new sign since then and they'd expanded the parking lot out in front of it as well. The Roadhouse, the town's oldest and in years past also roughest bar, still looked more or less the same from the outside as it did back in her time, although she couldn't imagine that the music being played in there would be the anywhere near the same sounding as it was in "her time". The biggest change was that the trailer park was barely more than a quarter of the size that it would become in the future, where it would be housing almost half of the town's population (in by far the most cases also the poorest of them, if they weren't migrant workers, who needed a cheap temporary place to stay while they worked on some sort of project in the surrounding area). The driver seemed glad to have someone to chat to as well and he promised her that he would wait until she was finished for her, just so he could also drive her back again.

Dr. Jacoby was already holding the door open for her, when she reached it. Stepping inside of his home, it was almost like you were stepping into another dimension where everything you're surrounded by is either from Hawaii or some kind of homage to it!

"Have you ever been to Hawaii?" was the first thing he asked her, after politely asking her to sit down on his couch.

"I can't say that I have. I'm guessing that you have, though!"

"Fifty-six times. So far. I was expecting your call. Doc Hayward called me yesterday and we discussed your case. He told me that all you can remember is your name?" Jacoby asked her before firing up an incense stick that couldn't do much to hide what other kinds of "Plants from the Island", he was also clearly a huge fan of!

"I also remembered that I'm seventeen. It came to me yesterday during dinner".

"It's a positive sign. Here's the thing, Becky. Amnesia in real life doesn't work like it does on TV where someone gets banged on the head and loses all of their memory and then, when they get another knock on the nogging, they suddenly regain all of their memories in an instant" Jacoby began calmly explaining to her.

"I can't say that I'm too surprised! It doesn't make any sense when you think about it, does it?" Becky asked him back and it got a big smile out of him.

"I can see that we're speaking the same language here! Becky, there are several forms of amnesia, over a dozen of them, but we've limited it down to three that it could be in your case. The first is post-traumatic amnesia, the kind you hear about people getting after a heavy blow to the head. You don't have any visible bruises however, so that's a positive sign. Have you been feeling light-headed at any point since you woke up?"

"Not that I can recall".

"If only for that reason alone, I wouldn't call it likely that you have PTA. Any symptoms of head trauma would have shown themselves by now".

"What are the other two kinds of amnesia, you think I could have?"

"The most likely cause in my opinion, is what us psychiatrists call "Dissociative Amnesia", or said in a more easily understandable way, "Repressed Memory Amnesia". This almost always occurs when a patient has gone through some kind of experience that was so traumatic for their brain, that like a computer that gets overloaded with too much information, it quite simply shuts down and needs to be restarted, so to speak. If that's the case like I highly suspect it is, then the good news is that even though a near-complete memory loss like what you have is a rarity, it's still treatable and most patients make if not a full, then a near-full recovery".

"That's comforting to know. I guess that my only question now, is what's behind door number three?"

"The final option that we're looking at, in both mine and Doctor Hayward's professional opinions, is "Drug Induced Amnesia". I'm well aware that it has to be nearly impossible for you to know, but have you been feeling any withdrawal symptoms since you "came to" in the hospital yesterday?" Jacoby inquired and for a few moments, it sent her memories back to some of her darkest days a few months earlier, during the first weeks of her court ordered stay in rehab. Days, where she sometimes wasn't sure that she'd make it through, and only by pure willpower alone managed to avoid falling off the wagon again. Knowing that she was likely to get sent to jail if she did run away, helped too of course, but those first weeks were still the hardest times that she'd ever had to go through in her so far twenty-six years on earth.

"I haven't felt any out of the ordinary. Of course, I can't be sure but I don't think, I do drugs!"

"You don't look like the type either. I just wanted to make sure. How many skills do you remember? Can you read, for example?" he asked her before pulling a book out from his bookcase and handing it to her. "Read out loud what it says on the front cover".

"It's called "The Truth About Penis Envy and Lots of Other Psychological Mumbo Jumbo, that isn't remotely True Either". It was written by you. Don't you think that the title is a little on the long side?"

"Funnily enough, that's exactly what my publicist asked me too! You clearly have some skills that you haven't forgotten, which leads me to a suggestion. What do you say that we enroll you in our local high school? Even if it won't be a replica your "real school" back home, I would consider being back in familiar surroundings just about the best cure, you can find right now. Becky, what you have to understand is that your memories won't come back to you in an instant, and the reality of it is that there's a chance that some of them won't ever return to you. All you can do is work your hardest at it and continue working hard at it for years to come, even after most of your memories have returned" he suggested, making her think that at least there had to be some kind of method behind this eccentric's madness!

"What do I do? Just show up down there and ask if I can enroll in their school?"

"Or I can do it for you. I would only take me a minute. The principal has been one of my most loyal "customers", practically since he started in that job!" he told her bluntly while reaching for his phone, in a way that almost made her laugh out loud.

"Just tell me when and where and I'll be there!" she cheerfully answered him with a wide smile, seeing as this was much more than she'd expected to get out of this visit.

Becky wasn't sure what to expect, when she turned up at Donna's family's house that evening. She'd spent the rest of the afternoon talking a walk in the surrounding forest where she'd spend so many untold hours playing as a kid, back when the world seemed simple to her and there were practically no worries for her to fill her head with. Those hadn't started to come along until after her parents got divorced and for a few years afterwards, it had been like a security blanket to her that she had the forest to be a place where she could still pretend that everything was Honky Dory at home. That was a long time ago however, and this time she used her time there to make up a gameplan for the coming weeks, even if there were sure to be "variables" that would get in the way of whatever plans, she'd made in advance. Even before she'd left Jacoby's "office", it had already been set in stone that she'd be starting school the day after, at which time she would have to begin stepping up the pace if she was to save Laura from getting murdered a little under a month from then.

On her way back to the hotel, she'd had an unexpected run-in with Jerry Horne, the other Horne brother, who looked suspiciously like he'd "taken a time-out from work to have a little herbal refreshment" away from the gazes of the guests at the hotel and in his "altered state", had managed to get slightly lost on his way back there. As she talked to him, she could see that her dad (who'd had close relations for years with the Horne family through his job as a cop) hadn't been wrong or underexaggerating, when he'd called Jerry "The Eccentric One" out of the two brothers. To Becky, the Horne brothers couldn't have appeared more different to her if they'd tried, although she could also tell from the way that Jerry talked about things that if there was one thing the brothers clearly had in common, it was an intense love of money and especially all of the wonderful things, it could buy you. And food! By God, could that man spend a long time talking in the smallest detail about food of the most expensive kind, most of which included ingredients that she'd never heard of before! In any case, he seemed very thankful that she'd helped him with finding his way home again and as a token of his appreciation, he also gave her a very generous two hundred dollar tip, both for her trouble and just as much for not making fun of him for getting lost (again) so close to the place where he'd lived nearly his entire life!

Seeing as she now had a little spending money, she started out by spending the first few bucks of it on a taxi down to Donna's house. Even if Ben Horne had told her that they would help her how they could, something in the way he'd said it gave her the Willies and made her think to herself that at some point that sleaze-ball would probably start wanting some kind of payback for it, most likely in ways that she didn't want to picture in her head!

When she got there, she was greeted with a pair of big smiles from Doctor Hayward and his wife, plus their thirteen-year-old youngest daughter Harriet, who had just about the worst 80's haircut that Becky could ever remember having seen, if we weren't including the band members from "A Flock of Seagulls" on her list! Her main impression of them though, was that they seemed to her like a very friendly sort of family, and it wasn't many seconds later until she was introduced to Donna as well. What exactly Becky had pictured when she'd tried to come up with what a BFF of Laura's might look like, wasn't all that clear but it certainly hadn't been a girl, who looked like she would be every mother-in-law's wet dream for a daughter-in-law, like Donna clearly was. Then again, herself and her own best friend growing up, Vicki, had also been mirror opposites in some ways too and whereas Becky had pretty much gone straight from the high school benches into a life of hardcore drug addiction, Vicki had wisely stayed far away from all of that stuff and gone straight onto to college, where she'd finished with a 4.0 GPA and been the valedictorian at her own graduation. Probably for this reason, they hadn't talked to one another since the day that high school ended and it was one of the main parts of her former life that Becky had become the most eager to repair, now that she had begun to slowly get her life back in order again.

Laura was running a little late (which from what she could tell was on par for her), giving Becky a little alone time with Donna to try to see if she could get some clues as to who in Laura's social circle might be inclined to take things to the utmost extremes, like for example taking someone's life.

"Have you and Laura been friends for a long time?" she asked Donna, as they slumped down on Donna's very comfy bed.

"Since we were around eight or nine years old. Ever since, you could say that we've been inseparable" Donna answered her, although Becky could tell from the way she'd said it, that there was more between heaven and earth going on than what Donna wanted her to know about.

"Do you have a friend like that? I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking, asking you that!" Donna continued in a flustered way, once she'd realized her mistake.

"I'd like to think that I do!" Becky replied jokingly, and it got a rather cute and very innocent smile out of Donna that she'd been so nice about reacting to it.

"I can't even imagine what it would be like, not knowing any of what has happened in your past or where you're from! You're in good hands with Sheriff Truman, my dad and Dr. Jacoby, though. I know that Jacoby is ... not entirely like everyone else is ..."

"You can say that again!" Becky had to chirp in with!

"From what my dad tells me, his sometimes-unconventional methods actually work and he really does help a lot of people, in cases where my dad can't help them. You'll just have to put your faith in them and hope for the best, I'm afraid".

"It's my only plan so far! Dr. Jacoby has already helped me with signing up for high school here, so I guess you'll have a new schoolmate tomorrow! He seems to think that getting back into familiar surroundings is what's best for me, so I trust him on it" she cheerily told Donna, who seemed glad to hear it.

"I'm sure that it will help you, too. My dad explained what having amnesia really is like to myself and my sister, after I told him and my mom that you were coming tonight, just so we wouldn't make complete fools of ourselves. From what he's told me, it sounds like the right move to make at this time".

"I don't suppose that I could ... no, it's too much to ask for!" Becky began, knowing from having pulled this trick on both friends and family many times that it was sure to get the other party in the conversation talking.

"What is it?" Donna asked kindly and already Becky knew that she had her, exactly where she wanted her.

"It's just that I'll be starting there not knowing anything about anything, and I'm not only talking about the classes either! It would just be nice, if I had some guidelines to go by, when it comes to who to talk to and who to stay away from and so on".

"Oh, of course!" Donna said with a wide smile, that made it clear that she was ready to help, any way that she could. "I won't lie and pretend that I know everyone at our school, but I can give it a try. I guess, the ones we mostly hang out with are Bobby, who's Laura's boyfriend and Mike, who's my boyfriend. They're ... okay, I won't lie to you, they're both kind of immature, but they don't mean anything by it!" Donna explained and it once again made her curious, when it came to how her first meeting with the rebellious boy, who would one day become her almost overly responsible dad, would end up turning out.

"What about the other girls? Aren't you friends with any of them?"

"The only one that we sometimes hang out with is Audrey Horne, but it's mostly because Laura feels sorry for her that she doesn't have any friends of her own and she has to live with an older brother, who's severely mentally disabled. I don't know if Laura told you about Johnny".

"The poor guy! I can only imagine what it has to be like for his immediate family, to see him that way every day of the year. It doesn't explain why she doesn't have any friends of her own, though?"

"Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great things to be said about our little neck of the woods, but when it comes to jealousy against those better off than you, I have to think that we're in some kind of top ten somewhere! As far as I can tell and I've known Audrey since we were little, the only reason why practically no one at school talks to her is because of which family she comes from and nothing else. She can actually be very sweet when you get to know her. Even if you can definitely call her a dreamer! Then again, if it was myself having to grow up with a guy like Ben Horne for a father, I'm sure that I'd be dreaming myself as far away from here as I could, too!"

"I can guess then that I'm not the only one, who gets sort of a con-man vibe off of him?" Becky slyly asked and got a nod in agreement from Donna.

"Just between us, it's no major secret around town that the Horne family, going back to long before the two brothers, who run their business empire now, haven't always made their money in the most legal of ways. I've heard stories about their family running illegal casinos and brothels and who knows what kinds of other shady operations, but if you ask them, I'm sure that all they'll do is remind you of how they've never been convicted of anything. Some even claim that they have the law in the pockets, but my dad tells me that Sheriff Truman is too honorable of a man to allow that to happen".

"That's sort of the vibe that I got off him too. I feel bad for Audrey, though. It isn't her fault that she was born into a family that seemingly no one in town likes".

"Maybe, you could try to make friends with her, then?" Donna suggested, just as the door to her room opened. Looking over there, they'd expected it to be Laura or one of Donna's parents. In their stead, it was Sheriff Truman, followed by a very well-kempt man in a stylish dark trench coat with a finely pressed black suit underneath to match it.

"What brings you here, Sheriff?" Donna asked, looking a little confused as to who this other man with him could be.

"Actually, we're here to talk to Becky. This man ..." Sheriff Truman began before the other man, in the politest way possible, interrupted him.

"Harry, if you don't mind, I'd like to introduce myself to these young women. It helps to establish trust, as I'm sure that you're aware of" the man, whom Becky now recognized, said. Although when she'd seen him last, he'd been at least twenty-five years older than this.

"Go ahead" Truman said before stepping aside to let his compatriot have the floor.

"Becky, Donna" the man began, before removing his trench coat and after neatly folding it, placing it on a chair. He then quickly tidied the very few tiny crinkles on his suit before continuing talking. "My name is Special Agent Dale Cooper, and I work for the FBI. Donna, I'd hate to ask this of you, seeing as it's your room, we're in. I don't suppose, you could offer us a little privacy, just for five minutes?" Cooper asked, while addressing Donna, who didn't seem to have any complaints and soon the left the three of them alone in there. Even after she'd left though, Cooper made sure to check outside of the door, that no one was listening in before he continued.

"What I'm about to tell you two, stays solely between us. Are we all understood on this?" he told them, getting a nod in unison in reply from the two others.

"Almost precisely a year ago, the murder case of a troubled young girl named Teresa Banks, only a few towns over from here, was called to our attention thanks the mystical details the surrounded it. While I'm not at liberty to disclose all of the facts of the case, evidence was found that pointed to a possible serial killer, who could have been operating in this area dating as far back as the 1950's" he explained before taking a moment to gauge their reactions to this.

"As fascinating as that is, Cooper, I fail to see how it connects to Becky here" Truman dryly asked and in doing so, was also asking the main question that was filling her own head as well.

"The investigation was headed up by an agent named Chester Desmond. Chester and I trained together at the bureau training academy and during our first years in the service of our country, we also solved several cases together. He was one of the finest agents, we had. That was until he disappeared without a trace".

"Do you think that he was murdered?" Becky asked quietly.

"It's definitely possible. Especially considered that another agent, Philip Jeffries, who was working on a different case that we thought could have connections to the one, Agent Desmond was working on, disappeared in almost the precise same manner and at close to the exact same time as agent Desmond disappeared. For almost this entire past year and in spite of our very best efforts to locate them, we haven't been able to find even the smallest speck of evidence as to what happened or where they could be, should they still be alive. That was until last night when I was visited in my dreams by a nearly bald-headed giant, who spoke in short, slowly spoken phrases" Cooper explained and as he did, she could already see that this was going far beyond what Sheriff Truman saw as sound law enforcement. "He told me distinctly to "Go to the town of Twin Peaks and find the girl, who's just arrived there. Find her and she will help find the missing agents". As far as I can tell, you're the newest of the new around here, Becky".

"And you believed him?" Truman asked, sounding a little in disbelief that a guy like Cooper would believe so strongly in something, he'd heard in a strange dream.

"Harry, there are two kinds of dreams, as I see it. One is the classic sorting of the day's events by the brain and the other ... well, that's what even we in the Federal Bureau of Investigations have to file as being unexplainable. All we know is that this is the closest thing to a lead, we've had in all of this time and that as corny as it sounds, dreams do actually come true sometimes. We'll help you to find out who you really are, Becky" Cooper said before looking into her eyes. "And when we do, I'm absolutely positive that you'll have a tale that's nothing short of out of this world to tell us all!" he finished off with, leaving her with even more questions, that she already had more than enough of before this. What could the friendly giant possibly have to do with FBI agents disappearing into thin air, and why did he send Agent Cooper here to help her?

All of those were pressing questions that she couldn't wait to get an answer to!

END OF CHAPTER THREE

Chapter Text

High school. From the ages of fourteen to eighteen, it would have been hard to find two words in the entire English dictionary that Becky more wanted to avoid hearing said in conjunction with one another, than those two. High school to her at that age meant almost constantly feeling like an outsider, getting numerous unwanted daily reminders of how much of a nobody, everyone else there saw her as and classes, which were for the most part so mind-numbingly boring that she couldn't wait for them to be over with, from the second they'd begun.

A short breakdown of her high school years would go something like this:

Freshman Year: Started out by getting bullied by some senior girls on the first day and for that entire schoolyear, they wouldn't stop picking on her. As an added bonus, the only friend that she thought, she had, heartlessly blew her off their friendship a few weeks into the schoolyear to become part of the popular crowd, and the two of them never talked again. Just to make it all even worse for her younger and very naïve self, her first flirt with a boy wound up leading to another and far more popular girl, stealing him from right under her nose. After getting her young heart crushed like that (probably not all that unlike how it happened to her mom too), it had made her swear off boys as a whole for over a year afterwards. The one great positive part was that during spring break, her almost unbearably shy self at the time had somehow managed to make friends with a totally awesome girl like Vicki, the second favorite choice to be picked on by those senior girls and that the two of them had ended the schoolyear by (to some extent, at the least) getting even with them.

Sophomore Year: Now having a proper best friend again, her sophomore year turned out to be by far the best out of her four high school years. Her and Vicki during that entire year were like two peas in a pod, hanging out together nearly 24/7 every day that they could and thanks to the stories making the rounds of them getting even with those older girls, none of the older students dared to try anything against them. Other positives that year included getting her first romantic kiss (from a boy, who turned out to be a complete loser, but it was still a great kiss!) and her mom (the one time it had happened during her school years) telling her that she was proud of her, after she'd brought home the one and only A that she'd ever gotten, post-junior high. As a negative, especially in retrospect, this was also the year where she'd met Steven, who at that time was an eighteen-year-old high school drop-out, working on the town's road crew in the daytime and selling drugs for Red in the evenings. A few days after her summer vacation began, she'd also gotten high with him for the first time.

Junior Year: Or, as she'd called it at the time "The year of living two separate lives". Another way of putting it could be "Her year of living like Laura Palmer", just with more drug-taking and without any sexual adventures to speak of in comparison (going by the wild stories that she'd heard growing up about Laura). By day, she was keeping up appearances to those, who knew her and although, you couldn't say that she was popular in school, she didn't really care as long as she had Vicki there to help her through it all. That changed shortly before the year ended, when she'd convinced (or as some would call it: Peer Pressured) Vicki to try cocaine with herself and Steven. Her brilliant idea (as she actually thought it had been at the time), was that getting high together and inviting her BFF into that part of her life, instead of excluding her from it, would bring her and Vicki even closer to one another than they already were. Unfortunately, it hadn't taken long after they'd all done a few lines each, before things rapidly began to go all kinds of wrong. To make matters far worse, both herself and Steven had been so high out of their skulls that they'd panicked and in perhaps the poorest decision that she'd ever made, had dropped the by then unconscious Vicki off in front of the hospital after she'd become unresponsive, and they'd (in their paranoid minds) become sure that she must have overdosed.

After this, even if Vicki had never disclosed to the cops who was actually to blame for what had happened, she'd still called her the worst friend in the entire world and that had become the end, so far at least, to their friendship. From what Becky knew, and she believed it, when people told her, Vicki hadn't after that evening ever put any kind of drug in her body again that she wasn't expressly told to take by her doctor. The worst part was that Becky couldn't disagree with her former friend, on any of what she'd been called by her, and her own bright solution to dealing with her feelings of guilt was finally giving into becoming a couple with Steven and upping her drug taking to more than double of what it had been, prior to Vicki giving up on her. Arguably the low point of the last part of that schoolyear, was when she turned up so blasted in the brain on a heavy pill cocktail for one of her exams that she couldn't remember having taken it afterwards. Truth be told, it was only by some divine intervention that she passed her finals that summer, because it wasn't like she'd bothered to do any preparation for any of them.

Senior Year: Drugs. That's pretty much how simply you could sum up her senior year. Following after a summer where she'd far spent more time being high than sober, every moment of every day had become about avoiding the withdrawals that she suffered horribly from, whenever she tried to get clean. Pathetically enough, the longest she went without doing some kind of drug for that entire schoolyear, wasn't even a whole day. By this point, both the drugs and Steven had near complete control over her, and after they'd (a few weeks before the end of that calendar year) managed to convince her parents to let her move in with him, things had only gone from "Absolutely Disastrous" to "Couldn't be Much Worse", before she reached the end of her high school years. She only just graduated by the skin of her teeth, and whereas most other girls celebrate the end of high school with a party of some sorts, herself and Steven "celebrated" by trying crystal meth for the first time. For the next eight years and change, it would become the poison that controlled nearly every aspect of her mind and life and had led her down a veritable path of horrors, that could have so easily ended with her either dead from an overdose or, like it had for Steven, spending nearly all of the rest of her life behind bars.

Did she feel sorry for him? A little bit would be the closest thing to an answer that she could offer you. When she'd first met him, he hadn't been anywhere close to being as messed up as he would end up becoming by the time, they'd said their final goodbyes to one another (in a crowded prison visiting area, roughly ten years later). Looking back now, when they'd first talked to one another, he was just a dumb kid, who didn't feel like he fit in any better than she did in the Conservative haven that was and always will be Twin Peaks. The big change for the worse in his life had come when his visiting cousin from Montana had gotten him so high on what must have been some damn good weed when they were thirteen, that it soon began leading to an eternal quest for the ultimate high for that young boy. Even if Becky was somewhat of a sceptic when it came to the idea of weed being a "Gateway Drug", if there was ever a case to be made for it, it would surely be her ex-husband, whose "quest" had ended with him sentenced to rot away in jail for the next many, many years. If it wasn't still ongoing in "The Slammer", only with lower quality drugs like she highly suspected that it was.

For so many years, she'd seen him as the most important person in her life, even above her parents, but now that she'd left the utterly miserable life, she'd led with him behind, she could see the both of them for what they'd really been: Nothing but a pair of sad and pathetic drug-addicts, who were using one another as their best excuse to keep using when all common sense within them should have led to both of them admitting to themselves, where it was all going to lead to. They hadn't and therefore, he wound up getting thirty-five years and nothing more needed to be said, as Becky saw it. All that he was now was a best forgotten part of her past, one that she wished had never been a part of it in the first place and from the way that he'd sounded the last time they spoke, it didn't sound to her like he wanted her to be a part of his life more than she wanted him to be a part of hers.

Would school be a more pleasant experience for her this time around, though? There was only one way to find out!

Her "Return to School Day" began with a quick, but tasty, bit of breakfast in the hotel restaurant, before she was picked up in a car outside of the hotel by Laura and her father Leland, whom from she'd heard had (or, to be more correct, would, if she didn't succeed in her mission) killed himself with a single gunshot wound to the head in his car, on the one-year anniversary of his daughter's death. Meeting him for the first time, she'd therefore expected to meet someone, who might be on the brink of a depression or the like. To her great surprise then, he turned out to be just about the most friendly and cheerful man that she could remember ever having met before!

"Forget your troubles.

Come on, get happy!

You gotta chase all those cares away!

Forget your troubles.

Come on, get happy!

And get ready for the judgment day!"

As they drove towards the school, he also entertained the two of them by singing (in a wonderful singing voice, by the way!) an array of old show tunes, clearly all written to put you in the best mood possible. Laura, unlike most teenage girls in this situation, who would have been embarrassed at their dad acting this silly and carefree, just smiled to herself if she didn't join in his singing on a line or two now and again. Sitting there in the backseat watching them and occasionally giggling at their behavior, Becky couldn't for the life of her see them as a father and daughter, who (according to everything that she'd heard or been told about them) were both close to being clinically depressed and in another reality that hopefully would never come to pass, would both sadly be gone from this world in only a little over a year from where or when they were now.

"Have fun, girls!" Leland bid goodbye to them with a wide smile as they got out of his car in front of the school.

"Only if you'll do the same, dad!" Laura replied to him, mirroring her dad's smile for her.

"I'll sure try! Keep an eye on my daughter for me, will you, Becky? I'm not sure that I like some of the company, she's been keeping lately!" Leland joked, drawing an eyeroll from Laura.

"Don't you have a job to get to and clients, you have to meet with?" Laura teasingly answered him for her. Moments later, Leland drove off in the same direction that they'd just come from.

"You dad seems like a nice guy" she casually said to Laura on their way to class, both to make it clear that she couldn't help herself from liking him and also to see if she couldn't get some sort of dirt on him. Even if he seemed to her like just about the least obvious choice for a killer, especially considering his "fatal reaction" to Laura's disappearance, she couldn't rule anyone out entirely either until she was a hundred and ten percent sure of their intentions. Wait, why did she think the word "disappearance" and not "murder", just now? Laura was murdered, right?

"He is. Sometimes, I wonder why he married a stickler for rules like my mom, but that's another matter altogether. Now, he has to go and kiss butt on the Horne brothers, since they're by far his biggest clients and practically the sole reason why we have a nice house and unlike a whole lot of other families around here, never need to worry about money" Laura explained.

It suddenly reminded Becky of how her parents had told her about how the Packard sawmill completely burning down in the "Great Fire of '89", had also meant that there'd been nothing short of an exodus of former workers there, moving away from the town in the early to mid-90's, as the available jobs quickly dried up and there simply wasn't enough work to be found in the area to feed all of them, plus their families. It wasn't until it's reopening in the late 90's (which she could remember having attended with her parents as a kid) and thanks to a huge effort by the state over the years in between, to also create enough other new jobs in the area that Twin Peaks wouldn't be completely dependent on a few large places of employment anymore to keep them going, that things truly began to run around. By the mid-2000's, the town had gone from looking like it was slowly dying during the 90's to by the time, she'd gone back in time, having had such a large population growth over the past decade and a half, that housing all of its new residents suddenly became a bigger problem than the depressing unemployment figures around there once were.

"Someone at the hotel told me that he's a lawyer, I think?"

"They told you the truth. Allow me to explain in a few easy to remember sentences, how things work here in Twin Peaks. On the undisputed top, you have the untouchable and stinking rich Horne family, owners and founders of the Great Northern Hotel, part owners of the Packard sawmill, employers to at least a third of the town's population, and owners of so many other businesses both here and in the surrounding towns, that I'm guessing that half of those who work for the brothers, don't have a clue that it's actually them signing their paychecks! In the layer directly underneath them, you have a small handful of people like my dad, who in return for their loyalty and not the least, helping them with keeping their iron grip on the town, are handsomely compensated. Finally, there's the great majority of the town's population, who usually don't complain, as long as they're well fed on junk food, have a job that they can stand going to five or six days a week and a roof over their head that doesn't leak too much over the winter. It goes without saying that there'll always be a few, who fall outside of those categories, like Doctor Jacoby, Donna's dad or Bobby's dad, who's in the air force, but to most of the population here, those are the realities and there aren't any signs, that they'll change anytime soon".

"Speaking of your boyfriend Bobby. When do I get to meet him?" she asked, trying not to sound too curious, as to what her dad was like as a teenager.

"Soon, I'm guessing. He's probably just late again. It wouldn't be unlike him. If you ask me, he's probably ... no, forget that I said anything!"

"He's probably what? You can tell me. It isn't like I know anyone here except for Donna that I can tell, and she probably knows already, right?" Becky reasoned, drawing a small, but slightly sad smile from Laura.

"I guess not. If I tell you something about myself, where I don't come off all that great, would you hold it against me?"

"I'd never do that! Or at least, I don't think that I would!"

"I completely stole him from his ex-girlfriend Shelly. There's really no other way of putting it. Just to make it worse, she got so upset over it, that she allowed herself to be seduced by this guy named Leo, and all that I can tell you about Leo, is stay as far away from Leo, as you can! He isn't the sort of guy that an innocent girl like you would want to get herself involved with, trust me!" Laura warned her, and along with saying so confirmed the horrible things that she'd already heard about the psycho, who'd turned her mom's life into a living hell, prior to him thankfully meeting his untimely demise before this year was over.

"I'll take your word for it! If we meet him, will you warn me not to talk to him?"

"Luckily for all of us, he's a trucker and isn't seen around town all that often. Just remember what I told you, in case you run into him. I have to give Shelly that she's pretty good actor when it comes to keeping up appearances and she's told me that she isn't angry with me anymore, but it isn't difficult to tell how deathly afraid that she understandably is of him. Honestly, if it had been myself, I know that I would have felt the same way. I'm sure that he doesn't give a damn about her, apart from him liking having a maid at home, who he can beat on when he feels like it and doesn't have to pay. How's that for just about the worst thing, you can have on your conscience?"

"It was still her own choice to start dating him. If she were here, I'm sure that she'd tell you that it wasn't your fault" she tried to reassure Laura, although she couldn't be sure if the way that the far more together woman back in her own time than the messed up and still heartbroken eighteen-year-old that her mom was at this point, felt entirely the same way on the subject.

"Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but no matter how we try to twist and turn it, none of us can say that I've exactly been nice to that girl, can we? We actually used to be pretty close, her and I, back in those infinitely more innocent days in kindergarten, believe it or not. Sometimes, and it isn't that I don't like being with Bobby, but sometimes, I really wish to the bottom of my heart that I'd never gotten between them in the first place. They both would have been far better off now, if it hadn't been for a mix of my immature selfishness and teenage hormones getting in their way. I can tell too, whenever we see her down at the Double R where she works, that he still carries a massive torch for her and it's basically visible from the moon that she likes him back the same way, but she's probably too scared out of her mind of what Leo would do to the both of them if he found out, to say anything to him. Coming back to what I was saying, my guess is that Bobby's probably late because he's busy catching a fleeting glimpse of her when she arrives at the diner for work. So, does Twin Peaks still sound like a snug and cozy little town to you now?" Laura asked while making eye contact with her, probably to judge how she would react to a revelation like that.

"It sounds like it's just like everywhere else. Doesn't every town like this have it's good and bad and on occasion, things that you can't explain going on?" she asked rhetorically, getting a strange sort of giggle from Laura in reply.

"If it's the unexplainable that you're into, then you've definitely come to the right place. Becky!" Laura dryly joked, just before they headed into a classroom that Becky had last been in when she was eighteen and from what she could remember, had been so high on horse tranquilizers that she'd had to fight an extremely hard fight not to fall asleep throughout that last class in there. This time, she could actually say that she was there for the reason that schools exist: So that she could learn something!

If there was one thing that Becky had done in her life that she'd never thought would have turned out to be an advantage later on, it was to not have paid attention in high school. If she had, then taking lessons over again that she'd already taken once, would have been about as interesting as watching grass growing, but thanks to her having practically never paid attention in her classes the first time around, she actually found herself enjoying them quite a bit. Plus, having a pair of friends like Laura and Donna to hang out with in the breaks in between classes also made for a welcome change from the last of her original high school years, where (after Vicki had given up on her as a friend) practically no one talked to her and if they did, it was usually to pick on her for what a sorry excuse for a loser, even she had to agree with them that she undoubtedly was.

One major thing that she'd been looking forward to, ever since she'd first "set foot" in 1989, was meeting her parents when they were still teenagers. She finally got that chance just after second period when her dad came sauntering in for school, looking like an early 90's version of James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" in his jeans, army boots and black leather jacket and in what struck her most about this young version of him, as if nothing could possibly faze him and the whole world was there for his taking. As he came walking down the hallway towards herself and Laura, she saw several teenage girls swooning over him and if she had to be honest, it wasn't hard to see why. For nearly as far back as she could remember, he'd had grey hair and for as authoritative and respect-worthy that his cop uniform looked on him, seeing him this way with his youthful good looks and natural hair color still in full effect, not to mention so full of confidence in himself, there wasn't much comparison when it comes to what a girl in her teens sees as the guy of her dreams.

"Hey, babe!" he smugly greeted Laura and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. "Sleeping took a little longer than I'd planned".

"Is that what you're planning on telling the principal?" Laura playfully asked him back, obviously flirting with him at the same time. Which seemed a little strange to Becky, seeing as she'd already gotten her boy, but maybe that was just the way that most girls found themselves acting around him without thinking about it. It wouldn't have been anywhere close to the first time, she'd seen it happen before when it came to those of her own gender and boys of his type.

"Why do you think I keep a flat tire in the trunk of my car? Who's your, if she doesn't mind me adding, far more attractive than most of the females around here, friend?" he asked Laura, although it was herself, he made eye contact with. An eye contact that very quickly began to feel very uncomfortable! Was her dad actually blatantly flirting with her and not only that, doing it right in front of his girlfriend?

"She can answer for herself. Can't you, Becky?" Laura said, sounding more than a little amused at how uncomfortable that she must have been looking.

"There's really not that much to say. My name is Becky, I have amnesia and I'm new here" she quickly told him, while trying to avoid his flirty stare.

"It was all my pleasure to meet you, Becky. I have to catch up with Mike and find out how miffed the coach is at me for blowing off morning practice again. Later, babe?" he asked Laura, who smiled flirtingly back at him.

"Later. Maybe, while you're at it, you could help Mike with growing a brain?" Laura playfully asked him, just before he quickly made his way down the hallway to find his best bro.

"Does he flirt like that with all of the girls?" Becky asked Laura, while hoping desperately inside that she'd say yes. The alternative, that her dad had the hots for her, was simply too much to deal with! Even considering their very unusual situation at that moment!

"Only the pretty ones, but I've known Bobby far too long to know that he'd never do anything behind my back with them. You should take it as a compliment that you passed his "Prettiness Test". Just don't go getting any ideas in your head".

"I won't, believe me!" she blurted out, making Laura raise an eyebrow.

"Don't you think that he's hot? Almost every other girl here does, I can tell you that for a fact!" Laura puzzledly inquired, making Becky worry for a moment if she'd been out of high school for so long that she couldn't identify with high school girls anymore, the way that she once could.

"He's just ... not my type. Far too boisterous for my liking! Not that I'm looking for a boyfriend, but if I was, I'd be looking for the opposite of him. No offense" Becky explained, as Laura nodded along in understanding.

"None taken. I know that he can seem like he's way too overconfident and a sort of smug sometimes, especially to someone like you, who's only just met him a minute ago, but he has plenty of good sides to him to make up for it. Was that another bit of your memory that just came back to you, that you remember what kind of boys you like?" Laura asked, clearly satisfied with her answer and buying every lie, she was being sold by her.

"Could be! Thanks for helping me out like this, if I haven't made it clear already. I know that it isn't like someone is telling you that you have to" she gratefully told Laura, who gave her a small nod of appreciation for her nice words. It wasn't a lie either and compared to what she'd pictured when she'd heard all of those insane Laura Palmer stories growing up, she had to admit that this real and far more lovable version of Laura, who was quickly becoming one of the best girlfriends that she'd ever had, was practically nothing like how she'd imagined that she would be.

"I already have plans with Bobby, so I can't hang out tonight, but no one says that the two of us and Donna can't go down after school to the diner that I volunteer with meals-for-wheels deliveries for and see if I can't convince my boss Norma to give us three free slices of pie. Believe me, Becky! Nothing that you've ever tasted holds a candle to Norma's pies!" Laura suggested, once again unknowingly helping her out. As they say, there's no time like the present and why shouldn't that afternoon be the perfect opportunity to meet the girl, who in circa a year from then, would become pregnant with herself?

Setting foot inside of the Double R of 1989 could only be described as a trippy experience for Becky, considering that it had been a second home to her throughout a great part of her childhood. Back when she was little, she'd spent untold hours sitting at the counter and drawing in her coloring books, while her mom (who was working at the same time) would regularly check in on her in between serving customers and making sure that she didn't need anything. Years later, it had been the site of her first date and right outside on the parking lot was where she'd had her first kiss with a boy, the weekend after. As an adult, she'd followed in her mom's footsteps and said yes to Norma's job offer (which wasn't a hard choice, considering that with her already damning criminal record, no other employer in town would dare to touch her with a ten-foot pole!), and in many ways, Norma had become as much or more of a grandmother to her than any of her biological ones had been, up to them passing away. In other words, there were few people in the world, who knew every square inch of that place better than she did, so to come in and see it looking almost exactly the same, but not entirely, was a mind-blowing experience to say the least!

The jukebox was still clearly the same one that they'd had up until 2004, when they'd had a break-in and someone had stolen it (probably just to get something out of it, seeing as there hadn't been any cash or other easy-to-handle valuables to steal). She could still remember going from one store to the next in Seattle with her mom while they searched for a replacement of the exact same type for Norma, who'd had the original jukebox since she'd taken over the Double R in the mid 70's and had a great deal of emotional attachment to it. When they'd finally managed to find one and brought it back to the diner, Norma had been so ecstatic that everyone in there got to eat for free for the evening and the day after, they'd finally had an up-to-date alarm system installed. Most of the inventory or the equipment behind the counter hadn't been replaced either and if it had, then it wasn't in any notable way. Still, there was just something different to the entire feel of the diner and it wasn't just that the haircuts and clothing styles were different, or that the smooth jazz playing from the jukebox differed from most of the music that it would be coming out of it in the future, for those willing to put a nickel or two into it. The easiest way to describe it was that it felt like she was in an exact copy of the Double R. yet not the real Double R, if that makes any sense.

It only took her a few seconds of looking around until she saw the one girl, whom she'd arguably been looking forward to meeting a young version of the most: Her mom, who was grinning from ear to ear in her waitress unform while she was engaging in what appeared to be nothing more than a casual sort of conversation with James Hurley, who was sitting by himself at the counter and nursing a cup of coffee along with chowing down on the dish of the day. He looked more or less like himself, if you added a little more hair to the top of his head and subtracted the handful of wrinkles, which had made their way onto his face over the years. They clearly looked to her like a pair of dear old friends and if she didn't know better, then she might have even thought that they were flirting given how much they were smiling back and forth at one another.

"Shelly, Shelly, Shelly!" Donna sighed to herself, as they took a seat in one of the booths.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked while trying to take her eyes off her mom and James. If it hadn't been for herself not being born if her parents didn't wind up together, then she would have probably found herself rooting for those two crazy kids, just based on how adorably cute that they were looking together at this moment.

"It wasn't without reason that us other girls called her "A Victim of Her Hormones" back in Junior High! She must have made out with at least twenty guys before we got to high school!" Laura explained while trying not to giggle.

"Let's just say that there aren't many of the guys that you see in school every day, who she hasn't at some point swapped spit with!" Donna added, although Becky guessed that her new friends had to be exaggerating for maximum effect.

"Does it include the guy that she's talking to? They're looking all kinds of flirty, aren't they?" Becky asked, as she tried to take in that her mom had clearly been far bigger of an easy slut than she'd ever admitted to her daughter that she was!

"James? I don't think so!" Donna quickly interjected. "His standards are much higher than someone like her!"

"You'll have to excuse Donna, Becky! In her eyes, James never has and never ever will do anything that falls outside of her, if you ask me, far too unrealistic and glamourous picture of what he's like!" Laura grinningly said, making Donna immediately look embarrassed.

"I don't do that!" Donna pleaded her case, even if it wasn't exactly a convincing plea!

"He's just a guy, Donna! Ask him out! If you won't ask him, then I'll have to do it for you!" Laura "threatened" her friend.

"No, don't! I'll do it soon; I just need to work up my nerve first! Okay?" Donna timidly asked and from the looks of it, Laura was ready to let her off the hook.

"Luckily for you, I'm sure that James is sensible enough to keep his paws to himself when it comes to Shelly, so you still have time!" Laura stated, while trying to get the attention of the formerly mentioned waitress.

"What's so special about James?" Becky couldn't help herself from asking Donna, who smiled shyly to herself.

"He's just so cool!" Donna answered, as she in the most adorable way possible started blushing from saying it out loud. "He drives a motorcycle, plays guitar, he's really sweet and nice and he's just always ... so cool!"

"He's cool, then? Did I get that right?" Becky jokingly asked, drawing a giggle from Laura while Donna's face began to go into full-out "Red-Mode".

Moments later, she was let off the hook when a certain waitress came over to them, ready to take their order.

"Have I seen you in here before?" Shelley asked her directly. "There's something strangely familiar about you!"

"I get that a lot!" Becky quipped back and they shyly smiled at one another.

Their sweet little moment didn't last long though, before a huge man with long, dark hair that he kept in a tight ponytail, came barging through the door and steered angrily right towards them.

"Hi, Leo. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something to eat? We have an apple pie that's almost fresh out of the oven" Becky's mom meekly tried asking the man, who along with hulking above her, also gave her a stare so icy that it made every single hair on Becky's arms stand up instantly.

"I'm not here for pie, Shelly! You're coming home with me, now!" Leo ordered Shelly, who looked for all of the world like she'd be more ready to try to make a run for it than to come with him.

"But, Leo, I'm at work! I can't just leave Norma here to ..." she began explaining in a panicking way, before a pair of other men thankfully came to her rescue. One of them was James, while the other looked a lot to her like his uncle, Big Ed Hurley (a towering man with a nickname that he more than deserved!), who at this time must have still been married to that complete and total nut-job Nadine before she sold her idea for completely silent drape runners for a bundle of money, and in was probably the relief of a lifetime for both him and James (who was like a son to him), soon after divorced him.

"You're not welcome in here, Leo! Didn't Norma make it clear enough the last time that you came here to cause trouble?" Ed cold and calmly asked Leo, who for once was face-to-face with someone of his own size, and not just a hundred-pound-girl like her mom, who likely would have no defense against a guy of his size.

"Stay out of this, Ed! It's between me and my wife, who's coming with me now!" Leo fired back and grabbed her mom's arm so hard that it made her cry out in pain. Never in her life had Becky wanted to punch someone that hard, the size difference between them be damned, but in what was one of the hardest things that she'd done for a long time, all she could do was sit there and be a witness to this abuse of her mom, who deserved nothing less than a sainthood for how infinitely patient that she'd always been with herself.

"Get out of here or I'm calling the cops on you, Leo! You know that I'm not kidding!" Norma, who'd come out from the kitchen after hearing the commotion, steadfastly told this man, who looked like he was physically able to tear her entire diner apart if he was angry enough.

"And Shelly isn't going anywhere with you if she doesn't want to! You don't own her!" James also bravely chipped in with and now that a handful of more guys had come to Shelly's aid, seeing how many guys that he would be going up against apparently looked like it was enough to make Leo see reason.

"This isn't over, Shelly!" he angrily told off her mom before finally letting go of her arm. "You and I have a lot of things to discuss when you get home! A lot of things!"

Just as quickly as he'd arrived, Hurricane Leo was gone again and almost instantly, an eerie quiet quickly began to sink over most of the patrons in there, as if it had never happened.

"Are you okay? That guy was scary as ... you know what!" Becky asked the younger version of her mom when she finally got the chance to get a tiny bit of alone time with her, seeing as Shelly was wiping down their table after Laura and Donna had already left with their boyfriends. Now that she'd gotten a first impression of Donna's boyfriend Mike, by the way, she completely agreed with Laura that he seemed like a complete and utter dumbass, who seriously needed to grow a brain! Why a highly intelligent, albeit also clearly extremely naïve girl like Donna would give a guy like him the time of day, stood as a mystery to her when a sweetheart like her could obviously do so much better.

"Leo isn't a bad guy or anything like that, he just loses his temper sometimes, that's all. By the time I get off work, he'll have cooled down again. Really, you don't need to worry about me. I'm fine" Shelly, like a poster girl for every battered wife that makes excuses for the bastard, who beats them up, quietly answered her.

"Are you sure? I can get you a place to stay for the night, if you want to give him a little extra time to cool off?" she (in the friendliest tone, that she could use) asked her mom, who smiled back at her for being so kind to someone that she must have believed was still a complete stranger to her.

"Aren't you just the cutest little sweetheart in the whole wide world? I appreciate offer, but he'll only be that much angrier with me if I don't come home tonight. Again, I have to ask you. Are you absolutely sure that we haven't ... I don't know ... played together when we were kids or something like that? There's just something so familiar about you and I simply can't put my finger on it! It's annoying as heck, if you want the truth!" Shelly blurted out, once again trying to remember in her mind where they could possibly have met before!

"It could be. I woke up two days ago just outside of town with no memory of who I was, except for my name. Since then, I've been trying to find out again, who I am and regain my memories, but I can't exactly say that it's been going swimmingly. What I'm trying to say is that there could very well be a chance that we've met before, I just don't have any way of confirming it for you right now" she tried explaining to "her mom", who aside from batting and eye at her story, also wasn't freaked out by it.

"Some people would see it as an advantage. Getting to start over from scratch again in a new place with nothing in your past to hold you back. It all sounds kind of nice to be honest, if you ask me" Shelly sadly replied, and while her usually always plastered on smile for her customers was still there, it also wasn't hard for someone who knew her as well as Becky did to see that at this point of her life, it probably sounded like a far more pleasant alternative to the sad state of what her life had become.

"Excuse me. My log has something that it needs to tell you", a woman's voice that she'd heard countless times before, interrupted their little talk with. In the year 2017, Becky would be delivering food from the diner to her six days a week and out of all of the customers that she delivered to, the "Log Lady" (or Margaret, as her real named was) had quickly become arguably her favorite to visit, and she'd always plan her route so that she at least had time for a quick chat and cup of coffee with the somewhat odd (she did have an actual piece of lumber for a best friend, after all!), yet extremely kind and wise old lady.

"Your log?" she answered, while trying to look her best at being puzzled at what was going on, like any sane and normal person in this situation naturally would be!

"She gets these cryptic messages from it, from time to time. Take it from me, it's easiest just to roll with it!" Shelly dryly explained to her with an added eyeroll for extra effect, as the Log Lady held her log tightly up to her ear and listened intently.

"My log tells me that the world and your memories are changing, but that you shouldn't be afraid. That's all, it told me", the at this time middle-aged Log Lady cryptically said, before going back to her table and stroking her log. As in literally, stroking a piece of log wood as if it was her pet!

"So, the world and your memories are changing? For once, something she said actually made sense, even if it was like stating the obvious! I mean, isn't the world and our memories some of those things that are naturally constantly changing?" Shelly rhetorically asked, before finishing with wiping down the table and getting back to tending to her other customers.

After leaving the diner, she'd done as she'd agreed to with Cooper the day before and come down to the Sheriff's Station, so they could have a little talk one on one. When she got there though, Truman and Cooper were busy interviewing a suspect in a different case than hers, which also gave her a bit of time to observe the rest of the staff at the station, some of which that she already knew through her dad working with them and them occasionally having been over at their house, back when her parents were still married.

Like Hawk, the sole native American member of their small police force, who never spoke much, yet was still one of the most highly respected men around town and someone that even the rowdiest of high school students were willing to listen to, just for how cool he always carried himself and was with them. She'd never heard her dad speak a single bad word about him and she wouldn't have been at all surprised, if Hawk was one of her his colleagues that he respected the most.

You couldn't say the same about Lucy, their ultra-quirky and soap opera obsessed secretary/receptionist, who at this time was still clearly doing "The Mating Dance" with her future husband Andy, still she couldn't claim not to have been well entertained by sitting there and overhearing their highly awkward flirting with each other. Andy, whom the image of crying to the end of "The Lion King" at the cinema, still for some reason was imbedded in her memories, was still the same old Andy. Goofy and not to any extent looking like the kind of guy that you'd want to have on your police force, but at the same time as naturally kind and warm-hearted, as the day is long. And to his credit, she herself (like countless other children in town over the years) had grown up with a kind face as the face of law enforcement in their town, and no one deserved more credit for this than Andy, who probably in his own unintentional way had stopped many of them from ever resorting to committing crimes in the first place.

Of course, finally, there was their "Head Honcho", Sheriff Harry Truman, who'd later go on to be succeeded by his brother at the post. She could recall meeting him many times growing up, usually when he would come down to the diner for a cup of coffee and a slice of one of Norma's pies, but she'd never actually talked to him back in her own time, most likely because he was always too busy to waste his time shooting the breeze with the snot-nosed daughter of one of his officers. Her dad had a ton of respect for him, however, and had often referred to the sheriff as a father figure, who'd taken over that role in his life after his own dear dad had disappeared without a trace. In addition, he'd also been the one, who'd convinced her dad to join the force, so in that way he'd had a tremendous impact on her life, it just wasn't something that she'd ever thought about before now. In any case, he was trustworthy and only wanted the best for her, meaning that he was likely to prove a vital ally in the weeks to come.

By the time Truman and Cooper finally came out of the interrogation room, soon to be followed by the suspect being led to the cells in handcuffs by Hawk, she'd waited for almost two hours and to be honest, was starting to be more concerned with the constant rumbling in her stomach than she was with how she was going to keep up her lies in front of a man, who'd been trained by the best of the best on how to spot a liar, whenever he saw one.

"Becky, I have to offer my sincerest apologies to you, but I have to push our meeting forward a few days. We just got a huge lead on an important case, so I have to drive down to Seattle right away and stay there until it's been properly followed up on" Cooper explained, as he was putting his trench coat on and getting ready to head out the door.

"It's alright. I don't have so much amnesia that I can't understand that I'm not first on the FBI's list of priorities!" she quipped to him, before getting a kind smile in reply.

"You are important to us, Becky. This other case simply has to take priority right at this minute, but I'll be back here as soon as I can, you have my word. If there's anything that you need, I'm sure that Harry and his fine people here will more than gladly accommodate you" he explained, before turning his attention to Truman and the two men shook hands.

"Harry, it's been a sublime pleasure working with you! When I come back in a few days, you simply have to take me out to that fishing spot that you told me about!" a smiling Cooper told Truman, who almost didn't know how to react to someone being this overly friendly with him.

"Sure thing, Coop. Drive safely, you hear? The wise men say that it's going to start pouring down later tonight" Truman dryly answered.

"I always do, Harry! Hawk, Lucy, Becky, Andy, it's been a pleasure! I'll see you all again, before you know it!" Cooper bid his friendliest goodbyes in the world to them. Moments later, he was out of the door and heading down towards his car.

Truman decided to call an end to his own workday as well, with him driving herself up to the hotel being his final assignment of the day.

"How are you liking Twin Peaks so far?" he asked her, making small talk as he turned their police cruiser onto the mostly steep road that took you all of the way up to the top of the waterfall and the Great Northern.

"It's ... its own!" was the best way that she could think of saying it.

"That's one way of putting it! Did you know that the old natives used to shun the woods just north of the town because they'd become convinced that it was haunted by some sort of demon, who turned anyone that came face to face with it into insane murderers instantly? What am I thinking, of course, you don't! My point is that this place has had its share of strange occurrences, going back to long before a town was ever founded here. I was raised by my dad to be a guy, who calls it like I see it, but even I have to admit that we've had things going on here that can't be explained. If anything, you're just par for the course!" he dryly joked.

"Like the Log Lady?" she asked, drawing a small headshake from him.

"I pretty much only feel sorry for that poor woman, more than anything else. I don't know if anyone has told you, but her husband, who was everything to her, lost his life far too young in a tragic work accident many years ago and after he died, her mind quickly began to go off the rails. You've met her, have you?"

"Down at the diner. She told me that her log had a message for me":

"It did, huh?" he asked and couldn't help himself from letting a small grin creep across his face. "What did her log, in all of what I'm certain is all of its infinite wisdom, tell you?"

"That the world and my memories are changing, but I shouldn't be afraid of it. What to you make of it?"

"That it was the ramblings of a woman, who's very lonely and was using her log as an excuse to talk to someone, who didn't look like they'd instantly tell her to get lost like most people do. I wouldn't put any value into any of what she tells you, to be honest. She's harmless enough, it isn't that, but that mind of hers clearly isn't what it used to be" he explained to her, making it clear that here she was with a guy, who believed in the messages that people get from inanimate objects about as much as he'd be willing to believe that his neighbor had really been a Martian all of the time!

As she was getting ready for bed though, after she'd had a lovely late dinner in the hotel restaurant, the words that the Log Lady had told her kept repeating themselves in her brain. There was a substantial chance of course, that sheriff Truman was correct and that it had been nothing more than the rambles of a certified lunatic, and nearly anyone with a well-developed sense of logic wouldn't have considered any other option. With all of what she'd already seen and swallowed with a grain of salt so far however, was a woman receiving messages for her through a piece of timber really all that out of ordinary?

END OF CHAPTER FOUR

Chapter Text

With her fourth day in the Twin Peaks of 1989 being a Saturday, it also meant that Becky didn't have to go to school that day and could use it to put all of her attention on her main reason for being in a year where her "Other Self" hadn't been born yet. With her still not having much of a clue how she was going to end up saving Laura from disappearing, she'd decided to make out a list in her head of who the potential perpetrator could be, plus a shortlist of people, who could be of help to her in finding out.

There was that change of wording again! Laura didn't disappear; she was murdered! Wasn't she? Suddenly, Becky wasn't sure anymore, but at the end of the day it didn't make any difference because she still needed to be saved from someone, who wanted to hurt her.

On the top of her list of potential suspects was Leo Johnson, for the obvious reasons, since he was clearly a violent psychopath. It wasn't hard for her to picture that he could have brutally murdered an innocent girl and like an ice-cold monster gone on with his life, as if nothing had happened. The big question on the other hand was why he would go after Laura, unless she'd been unlucky enough to find herself in the worst possible place and at the absolute worst time possible. Through her infamous drug-use, perhaps?

Just coming up with a second name was a challenge, considering how strong of a candidate that Leo was, but if she had to name someone that could have done it and covered it up with relative ease afterwards, the two main candidates were the Horne brothers. When it came to Jerry though, after meeting him and in all honesty, kind of getting to like him, she couldn't in her wildest dreams see him as someone, who'd ever hurt a fly, let alone a teenage girl that he must in some ways have known for most of her life. This only left Ben, and after seeing the way that he'd relished in the feeling of power that he'd gotten off on having when he'd fired that poor girl in front of her, it didn't look all that unlikely to her that Laura, as someone who'd been far closer to the family than nearly everyone else in town was, could have gotten some dirt on him and had been kidnapped or murdered in order to keep her silent forever. Okay, so he wasn't as obvious of a suspect as Leo, but he was still a clear number two in the running.

For the third name, her attention turned to Leland Palmer, Laura's father, who'd apparently murdered her in the past timeline from what she'd always heard. However, this didn't add up with what the giant had first told her when he'd said that BOB (whoever that was) had been the real killer and just based on her first interactions with Leland, she had a very hard time believing that he would ever have it in him to hurt a daughter that he loved so deeply in the slightest, let alone take her life. Of course, she couldn't count him out entirely as a suspect either, still if she was going to go by her immediate gut feeling, it almost ruled him out entirely.

Then again, those were the obvious suspects, almost too obvious for her own liking, so she really and truly had to wreck her head to come up with anyone else in town, who could fit the bill. Sure, if she hadn't known him as well as she did, then her own dad would have been on her list too, but if anyone in this world believed that he somewhere deep down, even at this time of his youth rebellion, was an honorable man, it was her. And perhaps her "To Be Mom", but that's a different story altogether! This really only left one name, although even Becky had to admit that her suspicion of him was based on the flimsiest of evidence: James Hurley. She'd always liked him back in her own time and had seen him as being perfectly harmless, it wasn't like that, but he'd never been a guy that spoke much and he'd kept his private life strictly private, so she couldn't say that she knew him all that well, either. Could he have killed Laura in a fit of jealousy because she wouldn't leave Becky's dad for him? It wasn't completely unthinkable and for this reason, he took the final and unwanted spot on her suspect list.

When it came to the list of those, who could be of help to her in finding out for sure, the list came down to three local teenagers at this time: Her mom (who knew Leo better than anyone else, not that she'd wanted to), Donna (who'd, as Laura's BFF, had the greatest insight into Laura's life) and Ben's daughter Audrey (who must have had all of the dirt on her father, not to mention some of the other distinguished figures in the community).

As luck would have it, it wouldn't be long until she got the chance to get to know Audrey a little better.

Before then, however, on her way down to the hotel restaurant, she had the dubious pleasure of sharing an elevator ride with the one woman that she'd met in her life, whom she could honestly say scared the living hell out of her: Catherine Martell. In her own time, Becky had only been unfortunate enough to have to talk to the wife of the dearly departed Pete Martell (who, funnily enough, had been the complete opposite of his wife and been loved by everyone, who'd been blessed with knowing him) three times and all of those times without fail, something in the way that the "Tough as a Two-Dollar Steak" Mrs. Martell had a way of staring her down, had given her immense chills to the bone! Even for these few handfuls of seconds that Becky stood near her, she could feel Mrs. Martell's judging eyes on her and yet again, it made her feel around three inches tall, if that much!

After Becky's short elevator ride from hell had blissfully come to an end, she made her way into the hotel restaurant for some breakfast and some light planning for how to go about her mission from then on. As she'd expected though, the restaurant was packed to the gills and she let out a deep sigh, as she wondered to herself if she had the patience for it to finally become her turn to get some grub into her rumbling belly.

"Not again!" she heard a girl moan out loud right behind her and as she turned around to face her, she saw that it was Audrey, who was looking about as ready to give up as she was.

"Can't the only daughter of the hotel owner get the waiters to serve her first, if she wants to?" she asked Audrey back and got a rather adorable smile in return.

God, was this girl drop dead beautiful or what? Even if Becky was as straight as can be, denying it would have been downright delusional and she could now easily see why her mom (in the future) had told her why so many girls at their school at this time had envied her, for how much like a movie-star of the past that she always looked. Kind of like a young version of her near-namesake Audrey Hepburn actually, now that Becky thought about it!

"Let me guess. Laura or Donna told you about me" Audrey answered her with a cute as a button smile to add to it. "I've seen you around school. New in town?"

"You could definitely say that! It's a very long story ... well, actually it isn't! I have amnesia and your family have been nice enough to let me stay here for free for the time being" she somewhat ramblingly explained to Audrey, who took her ramblings with a rather adorable and in all honesty, sort of childish giggle. "I'm Becky, by the way".

"It's nice to meet you, Becky. My dad has already told me about you and made sure to tell me what would happen if I made fun of you. In fact, he advised me to try to make friends with you. Not out of the goodness of his heart, of course, but he never wants to miss out on an opportunity to kiss some butt, if he thinks that it'll be beneficial to us someday" Audrey informed her with a small eyeroll for added effect.

"Why would he think that you'd make fun of me?" Becky asked, seeing as Audrey seemed perfectly nice to her.

"Let's just say that I haven't always kept up the best track record when it comes to the right amount of showing empathy at the proper times! You know that tired old cliché about the poor rich girl with a ton of daddy issues, who'll do anything and everything, including some really dumb and far too childish stuff for her age sometimes, even if she already knows deep down that it's bound to be just another failed attempt at catching her uncaring father's attention? Well, you're looking at the walking embodiment of her! What do you say that we skip the wait and eat our breakfast out in the kitchen? I don't know about you, but I just don't have the patience to wait in line right now!" Audrey half-asked, half-stated and suddenly Becky had an immediate "In" with her.

What Becky quickly found out after talking to Audrey some more (over a nice breakfast with some pretty great coffee on the side) were basically three things: Firstly, that Audrey was exactly as naturally sweet and charming as Donna and Laura had described her as and secondly, that poor Audrey indeed was a painfully lonely girl, who deserved so much better than to be seen by her peers as a social pariah in their town, solely based on what her last name was. The final thing that had quickly struck Becky about her, was just how innocent and bright-eyed that Audrey clearly was for an eighteen-year-old. It made her seriously wonder to herself if this girl had been forced by her parents to lead such an incredibly sheltered life while she was growing up, that she'd never had the chance to experience any of the vital life lessons, which most pre-teen kids have learned by the time that they start to reach the beginning of their adolescence.

In any case, she rapidly found it impossible not to start to adore Audrey, who for her part seemed all kinds of delighted to finally have a friend to talk to and hang out with. Not to mention one that she knew wasn't trying to exploit her for her family's money, like many unscrupulous jerks probably would have done in a second with a very naïve and unwise on the world kind of girl like her.

"What's the deal with your dad?" she asked Audrey while they were entertaining themselves with their second activity for the day: A trip down to the old Horne department store that in her own time had long since been torn down to make way for a modern-day shopping mall (which, it almost goes without saying, was also exclusively owned by the Horne family), but in this time period was still bustling with activity.

"How do you mean?" Audrey asked back, as she browsed through some pretty dresses in the high-priced end of the scale for a place like this.

"I've only met him one time and he seemed kind of sleazy to me. No offense" Becky answered in an attempt not to step on any toes yet still keeping it honest.

"Trust me, you're far from the only one around these parts, who thinks that! He's just my dad, I guess. What else do you want me to say?" Audrey mused with a small hint of pain in her voice.

"Are you a close family?" she asked Audrey, hoping that she wasn't overstepping any boundaries by doing so.

"Hardly. My mom has convinced herself over the years that I'm destined to always stay an overgrown woman-child, who'll never really grow up and my dad is always too busy with some kind of business dealings to pay any attention to me. As for my disabled brother Johnny, I love him to bits, but sometimes I wonder to myself if he even remembers my name. So, to give you a short answer to your question: No, we aren't in any way what you could call close. Honestly, I think that if it wasn't for her fear of having to live as a poor person, then my mom would have left my dad ages ago. Is your family ... sorry, I forgot about your memory-loss for a moment!" Audrey corrected herself with an apologizing look on her pretty face.

"It's okay, Audrey. You can ask me any question at all that you feel like" she reassured Audrey, whose facial expression turned to one of relief.

"I'm sure that you've already been asked every question under the moon about it, since you got here. So, are there any boys here that you have your eyes on already?" Audrey inquired, switching back to a more usual topic of conversation for a pair of teenage girls, who were still getting to know one another.

"Audrey, I've only been here for a little under three days! In other words, just remembering everyone's names is still enough of a challenge without me having to add anything to it!" she told Audrey, who again let out a cute and very innocent giggle. "Is there an incredibly lucky boy here in Twin Peaks that you're crushing on?"

"I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell with him. Not with another girl in my way, who's obviously got him under her love-spell" Audrey sadly replied to her. "The worst part is that she's using him to cheat on her boyfriend, which makes her kind of a bitch in my book, pardon my French! Meanwhile, I still haven't been on my first date yet and she's off playing around with their hearts like it's all just a game to her".

"French hereby pardoned!" Becky quirkily answered. She could also quickly deduce that her new friend's crush had to be on James, seeing as Audrey, from what Becky knew, had never been close at all with either of her parents and for that sole reason, likely wouldn't have known the first thing about one of them sleeping with the other behind Leo's back. "How do you know for sure though, that she's seeing this guy, if she already has a boyfriend?"

"You can call it my sixth sense telling me that you don't look at someone like he looks at her, unless you're already fooling around. It doesn't exactly feel fair, does it?" Audrey asked her, prior to letting out a deep sigh.

"No, it doesn't. Although, if she's not serious about this guy, what's holding you back? The worst that can happen is that he turns you down, right?" she asked the youngest member of Ben Horne's immediate family, whom in turn appeared as if she liked what she was hearing.

"I like you, Becky! You're really a breath of fresh air around here!" Audrey exclaimed, as the pair of girls shared a smile between them.

"Thanks. You shouldn't sell yourself short, though. I was a bit of a late bloomer too before I found my first boyfriend and for some of us, that's just how it is" she tried to assure Audrey, but in doing so had also over spoken a little.

"Was that another bit of your memory that you just got back?" Audrey asked her, sounding interested.

"I guess so. I can't for the life of me tell you what his name was or how he looked, though" she answered, in an attempt to correct her own minor error. "My point is that sometimes, you have to show some initiative, or it'll never happen for you. You know, grab life by the balls and all of that hoo-ha!"

"You're definitely not like any teenage girl that I've ever met before!" Audrey bluntly stated, being brutally correct in more ways than one.

"I've been hearing that a lot lately!" she quipped in return.

"Do you want to take a taxi over to the Double R with me and we can grab a piece of pie? My treat" Audrey offered and soon after they'd left the department store, Becky made a small pledge to herself: To make sure that this adorably innocent girl known as Audrey Horne would be more than well taken care of in the friend department, by the time that she went back to her own time. And, maybe even with a devoted boyfriend, who could treat her sweet little self exactly like a piece of wonderfulness like Audrey deserved to be treated.

"Don't you just love this song? It's so dreamy!" Audrey asked her, referring to the slow and almost hypnotic jazz song that was playing from the jukebox at the Double R, while the both of them enjoyed a piece of cherry pie with whipped cream on top and some damn fine coffee on the side!

"Yeah, it's pretty cool" Becky conceded as she took a gaze out at the rest of the restaurant. Usually, the Double R would be filled with customers on a day like this and probably would have been too, if their local minor league basketball team weren't playing a home game at this exact time and it was one of the few things that the town at this time had to be proud of.

Instead, the only ones in there besides themselves were a pair of out-of-towners, most likely truckers who'd stopped in for a quick meal before they were on their way again, plus a few of the local pensioners that apparently weren't all that interested in basketball. Her mom had the afternoon off too by the looks of it, meaning there was only Norma to handle things by herself for the time being. This was until James walked in and was looking a little shaken up from what she could tell.

"Hey, Norma. Can I have a piece of peach cobbler and a Pepsi?" he asked Norma, who had her service industry smile plastered all across her face.

"No coffee today, James?" Norma asked him back before getting a Pepsi bottle out of the fridge and opening it, prior to putting in on the counter in front of him.

"I've been helping Big Ed out in the garage since this morning. You know how much coffee that he drinks, and I've nearly been following him cup for cup!" James joked back and took a small sip pf his soda.

"Enough said" Norma understandingly answered him, before turning a bit more serious. "James, if you need someone to talk to, you know that you can always come to me, right? I know that we aren't related, but I've known you for so long that we might as well be" Norma offered him, getting a small nod in return before he turned his attention to his culinary treat.

"He looks so sad" Audrey whispered to her, sounding like she genuinely felt sorry for him.

Perhaps this was why Becky made a snap decision to grab the bull by the horns in a figurative way on her new friend's behalf and offered James to sit with them.

"I don't want to impose on your private conversation" he first tried to shyly reject her with, only she wasn't about to give up that easily.

"You won't be, I promise, and we can talk about whatever you want to. You just look like someone, who shouldn't be alone right now" she told James, who batted an eye at her comment about him.

"Alright, I guess. Just to warn you in advance, I'm not really that good at the whole small-talk thing. I can never come up with what to say, past saying hello and talking about the weather" he, again very shyly, told her, like he was almost ashamed of it. A trait in him that she had to admit to finding somewhat adorable.

"You'll do just fine. I'm Becky, if you didn't know already. It seems like news travel fast around here" she joked back at him and could see that he agreed with her, as much as he possible could.

Barely had he sat down with them, before Audrey popped the question that was on both of her and Becky's minds: Why he was looking so mopey on what to the majority of people is the best day of the week.

"You don't want me to burden you with problems, believe me!" James told them while shaking his head, as he took a small break from chowing down on his pie to take a sip of his soda.

"James, you're sitting here with a girl, who almost can't remember anything from her past. Compared to her problems, ours have to be easily solvable" Audrey tried to convince him, while he sent a surprised glare Becky's way.

"Really? What's that like?" James asked her with a curious look on his face.

"Very confusing, if you want it bluntly!" she smart-assed answered him and managed to get small smile out of him.

"I can imagine that it would be. Do you really want to know the truth, and do you promise not to tell anyone about it?" he asked the two girls, who nodded back at him nearly in unison.

"The truth is that my mom left town two days ago to go on a bender, and I have no clue when she'll back again, and Ed, my uncle and the one guy that I can always count on, is married to and living with a certified lunatic! I'm talking balls to the wall delusional, out of her mind, bat-shit insane! Do you still think that my problems are "Easily Solvable" now?" he dryly asked them with an understandable shake of the head to match his feelings on the subject.

"You want to hear about my problems? I have a mom, who has absolutely no faith in my possible potential and has no problem with telling me to my face and I have a dad that I don't think could care less about me and only sees me as a burden. Just to add to the "Fun", I have a severely brain damaged older brother that I'll never be able to have a simple conversation with. I'm not saying that your problems are worse than mine, just that we all have them, no matter how easy that some ignorant people think that our lives are" Audrey replied to him and as the two of them looked each other into the eyes, Becky could swear that they were having a small moment, right in front of her very eyes!

"All I know is that the second that I've gotten my high school diploma, I'm leaving this backwater town behind for good! It's never brought me anything but trouble, anyway!" James dryly stated, getting a knowing nod in agreement from Audrey.

That evening, after she'd spent pretty much the entire day getting to know Audrey and constantly finding herself being enchanted by her natural inner beauty, which more than matched her outer beauty, Becky laid down to sleep thinking to herself that she could have done more to work towards her end-goal of saving Laura. Still, who was to say that she couldn't have set herself on the path to finding out something down the line that could make all of the difference in the end?

Apparently though, it wasn't everyone that was happy about the way that she'd been doing her job, seeing as she awoke in the middle of the night to see the giant looking down on her with a somber look on his face. Not that his facial expression ever changed, mind you, but he did seem to have a slightly sadder demeanor about him than he'd had, the first time that she'd talked to him.

"Is this another dream?" she asked him, trying not to sound too confused by what was going on.

"Laura needs to talk to you. Close your eyes" the giant asked of her and when she opened her eyes again, she found herself back in the red room, only this time there was only the much older version of Laura in there. Strangely though, there was music in the air of the same kind of smooth jazz that she'd heard at the Double R earlier that day.

"You're playing a dangerous game" Laura told her, only her voice sounded weird as if it wasn't really her and only an apparition of her.

"Why does your voice sound like that?" Becky tried asking her, if only to get a feeling of what the heck was going on!

"This version of me doesn't exist in this timeline" Laura answered her, as if it was the most natural answer in the world.

"What does that mean?" Becky inquired, probably sounding as befuddled as she genuinely was.

"That doesn't matter. You could erase your own existence, if you keep changing the futures of others. Your mother and father have to create you or this timeline will cease to exist, as will you" Laura warned her and soon after, Becky woke up in the "Real World" bathed in a cold sweat.

For the rest of that night, she didn't dare to go back to sleep either.

END OF CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Text

If Becky's Saturday had been a day to more or less do as she pleased, then her Sunday was the diametric opposite of it. To start off with, she had an appointment with Dr. Jacoby at noon, which she had to follow up by taking a trip over to the police station. With Cooper having called ahead to let them know that he'd be returning that day, she'd been told by the front desk operator of the Great Northern that he was looking to talk to her, and she had a gut feeling that it would probably take up a great part of the rest of her day.

First of all on her agenda though, was consuming a hearty and strength-building breakfast in the hotel restaurant, while she pondered some more over the things that "The Older Laura" had told her in her latest prophetic dream. To her positive surprise, she was even offered a ride down to Dr. Jacoby's by Jerry Horne, whom apparently was a patient of his too. Not that it surprised her in any way that the more eccentric of the Horne brothers saw a psychologist (that part made perfect sense to her, if anything did!) as much as it surprised her that Jerry didn't have a personal driver, whom he had on call 24/7. In any case, what she found out was that he had a vintage sports-car that he'd just recently bought and for this reason alone, had decided to take it out for a spin.

"What do you think of my new set of wheels?" Jerry asked her like it actually mattered to him what she thought of it, as they passed through a version of Twin Peaks that she was still getting used to calling her temporary home.

"I can't imagine that it came cheap" she jokingly answered and got a small chuckle out of him.

"You know what, Becky? If I ever have a daughter, I'd want her to be a wise-cracking smart-ass just like you!" he exclaimed, and she couldn't help herself from chuckling along with him. How it was possible that two brothers could be as vastly different from one another as the Horne brothers was something that went beyond her comprehension, although she could also tell herself that they probably had more in common than meets the eye.

"You don't have any kids of your own?" she asked him, just to make small talk.

"Kids come with responsibilities. I like that if I feel like it, I can jump on a plane to France or Mexico or Hong Kong for a day or two and get thousands of miles away from everything here. Have you ever been to Iceland?" Jerry asked her, somewhat out of left field if she had to be honest.

"Not that I can recall. I have amnesia, remember?" she asked him back and could see him facepalm at his own mistake, which in turn almost made them crash right into an oncoming car.

"My apologies. You should see it at least one time before you die, though. It's absolutely gorgeous up there and those hot springs! You haven't truly lived until you've been soaking in one for a couple of hours! Did you know that they're naturally heated by underground volcanoes? Knowledge like that fascinates me to no end!" he said and again, she couldn't help smiling at little to herself at this lovable and life-loving weirdo and how he saw the world like few other people did.

"I'll have to put it on my bucket list" she answered him just to be polite. "Is there anywhere else that I should put on my travel plan?"

"For the best eating experiences, you have to go directly to the source. Think of it this way: If you had to get some sort of surgery, would you want the master of performing that surgery to perform it on you or one of their apprentices, who's nearly as good but will never reach the same level of perfection?"

"The master, any time" she agreed with him.

"The same goes for top-class chefs. Sure, a few of the better ones come over here to work, but most of the best French chefs stay in France, because why would they want to live anywhere else than the culinary capital of the world? Don't get me wrong, I love it here and it'll always be the only place where I'll feel at home, but I can say for a fact that it would have driven me nuts on a daily basis, if I'd had to spend my entire life living here. How some of these poor saps go about it day to day with no end in sight will always and forever be a Bonafide mystery to me!" he mused to himself while at the same time showing the tiniest bit of appreciation for those, who'd made his family stinking rich to put it mildly.

After an all kinds of pleasant ride with Jerry, he'd dropped her off right in front of Dr. Jacoby's office and as she'd expected, the good doctor was excited to see an out of the ordinary case for him like herself. Then again, most of his patients were probably bored housewives, who just wanted someone to pay attention to them, so it wasn't any wonder to her that getting to treat someone like herself made for a nice change of pace for him.

"I want to try something on you. Close your eyes" he asked of her, and she did as she was told.

"How is this supposed to help me?" she asked him back.

"I want to see if I can't trigger a memory of your past by spelling out a situation to you. Imagine that you're a child, who's no more than five years old and you're frolicking in a meadow. It's summer and you're taking in the scents of nature while you don't have a care in the world. Who would you imagine is there with you?"

"My parents, I suppose. I can't picture their faces, though" she lied, although she also had to admit that this was quite a relaxing exercise all in all.

"Are their faces blurry to you?" Dr. Jacoby asked her.

"Yes".

"Describe everything that you can make out on how they look".

"I can kind of make out that my dad has grey hair" she answered, just to give him something.

"Are we talking dark grey or almost completely white?"

"Almost completely white. He's taller than my mom, too" she added, again to give off the impression that his healing technique was working to some small degree.

"What's her hair color?"

"A darkish blonde, I'm guessing. It's hard to make out" she told the good doctor, who moments later asked her to open her eyes again.

"Becky, even if it might not seem that way, you just took your first major step towards remembering them wholly. Is there anything else that has come back to you since our last session?"

"I was talking with this girl yesterday; who's a late bloomer and I was trying to convince her that it's okay. I guess that in doing so, I remembered that I was one, too" she told Dr. Jacoby, who smiled widely back at her like he was genuinely glad on her behalf.

"That's great!" the aging eccentric exclaimed in such a way that it almost made her laugh out loud. "In my professional estimation, it's critical for your recovery that you have friends and confidants that you can share your innermost feelings with. After all, us humans are social creatures and without your family or old friends in your life, you'll need to find some trustworthy people to act as their replacements for the time being".

After this, they tried the same technique a handful more times, with her shrink giving Becky different scenarios to play out in her head and her giving him small bits and pieces here and there to sink his teeth into. Okay, so it wasn't as if she wanted to lie to him or everyone else that she'd met in this time period, yet if there was one (positive or negative, depending on your point of view) thing that being a multi-year, hardcore drug addict with a double life to match it had taught her, it was how to sell a lie so much to outsiders that even she came close to winding up believing in it.

After she'd settled her affairs for the day with Dr. Jacoby, she'd called the sheriff's station from his phone to ask for a ride over there and luckily for her, it had been Andy who'd been sent to fetch her. She'd always liked Andy, ever since she was a little kid and something in the awkward way that he carried himself had always made it feel to her too, like she was in the company of a guy, who had a heart of the purest gold and would never hurt a fly. Of course, in her former time period, he'd become married to Lucy, the infinitely as lovable as she is quirky secretary down at the station, and if Becky had ever met two people, who were born to be together and completed one another, then it was surely the two of them. The son that they would end up having was a nice guy in the vein of his parents too from what she could tell, although she also had to admit to never getting to know him nearly as closely as she did his parents, in spite of the two of them being relatively near to each other in age.

In another small piece of luck, Becky had arrived at the station only shortly before agent Cooper had, following his short trip down to Seattle to take care of some bureau business. After discussing a bit about what was good on TV with Lucy (who was clearly obsessed with a soap opera called "As the World Turns" and knew everything that there was to know about it!), she'd been called into the investigation room for a one on three talk with him, Hawk and sheriff Truman. Or to be more exact, to be there for a presentation by Cooper, while he explained his theories to them.

"Harry, Becky, Hawk, thank you for being here. I promise that I won't take up more of your time than I have to" Cooper began his presentation before writing the words "Teresa Banks", followed by a large question mark on the room's blackboard using a piece of writing chalk.

"Who's Teresa Banks?" Hawk logically asked Cooper, who responded with a Colgate smile, if she'd ever seen one.

"That's a great question, Hawk, but the correct question would be "Who was Teresa Banks?". From what little that we've managed to track down about her, she was a troubled girl from Tacoma, who lost her parents in a car accident at age twelve whereafter she became a ward of the state and grew up over the following years in a group home, until she ran away from her state facility when she was fifteen. Yes, Harry" Cooper asked sheriff Truman, who'd raised his hand.

"How does this relate to Becky here, Coop?" Truman asked Cooper, who seemed unfazed at this little interruption.

"All of it will soon be revealed, if you'll allow me to finish what I was saying. Becky, if any of this becomes too uncomfortable for you to hear about, don't be ashamed to speak up. The absolute last thing that I'd ever want to do is to set you back on your long road to recovery, if it can be helped" he caringly told Becky, addressing her while looking her directly in the eyes. "Usually, I would never share sensitive information like this with a civilian, but in your particular case and with you being the closest thing that we have to a lead, it's my firm belief that it's the only wise choice of action in this situation. It goes without saying however, that none of what you hear in here can be shared again with anyone, who isn't inside of this room right now, understood?".

"I understand" she assured agent Cooper.

"Why am I here?" Hawk asked Cooper in his usual stoic manner.

"Hawk, I don't mean to sound like a bigot, but it's no secret that your people have always been far better in touch with nature than us white folks are. I hope that doesn't offend you. I also understand that you've lived here for nearly your entire life, which in my book makes you an expert on the forests that surround us up here" Cooper replied.

"It's never bigoted to speak the truth. Go on" Hawk calmly told the FBI agent in reply, before Cooper enthusiastically continued on with his presentation.

"After she'd run away from the state facility, what happened over the next two years of Teresa's life are somewhat of a mystery, but all signs point to her having been a drifter, living a short while here, then a short while there, before she found work at a place called Hap's diner in Deer Meadow, not far from here. We also have reason to believe that she worked as a prostitute on the side, probably in the hopes that it would eventually lead her to a better and more stable life. Sadly, all of those hopes were crushed when someone took her life from her, by savagely beating her to death with a blunt object in the trailer that she called her home. Now, how does this tie into you, Becky, is probably what you're all asking yourselves. This is where I come back to Chester Desmond, Phillip Jeffries and my dream of the giant, who spoke in short, concise sentences. It is my belief that he was warning me that the same thing that happened to Teresa will happen to another girl, someone here in Twin Peaks, if we don't stop it from happening before then" Cooper finally ended his explanation with, before opening the floor for any additional questions.

"In other words, you think that we have a would-be serial killer on the loose up here, did I get that right?" Truman asked Cooper, after a handful of seconds of everyone taking in the information that they'd just been fed.

"That's if he or she isn't already a full-fledged serial killer. I sincerely hope that my theory isn't correct, but if it is, then agent Desmond got too close to the truth, became their second victim and agent Jeffries could possibly be the third. Harry, I know that you can't know off the top of your head, but how many unsolved murders on teenage girls over the past thirty years do you currently have in this jurisdiction?" Cooper asked Truman, who clearly wasn't prepared to be put on the spot like this.

"Somewhere between five and ten. It could be more or fewer, but we're somewhere in that ballpark" Truman replied in a matter-of-fact way.

"I'll need to see every file that you have on each of those murders. Should my theory be correct, then we won't have much time until there's a good chance that the next victim lands on your table. This brings me to you, Becky. We need you to be our eyes and ears at the high school. As a newcomer there, you're in a unique position to be a fly on the wall and if you find out anything that could help us, I hope that you won't hesitate to come to either me or Harry with it, as soon as you can. Can you do that for us?" Cooper asked Becky, who suddenly found herself being uncomfortably stared at by everyone in there.

"What should I be on the lookout for?" she asked Cooper back, trying to sound as brave as she could and once again, got to see that wide Colgate smile of his.

After the meeting at the sheriff's station, Becky got a ride back to the Great Northern from Lucy, whom she chit-chatted with about this, that and everything on the way there. With no plans for her evening, she went up to Audrey's room and ended up enjoying the pleasure of her new gal-pal's company for the rest of the day. As hard as it was for herself to admit it, she was starting to royally enjoy being just plain old Becky, a senior in high school, who couldn't remember much of anything from her past, much more than she'd liked being Rebecca Briggs, a mid-twenties former drug addict, who through her past actions had already closed many doors for herself and every day had to live with the knowledge of it. "Becky" didn't have a dark and best forgotten past to hold her back and what's more, as her she could be the girl that she should have been and wanted to be back in school, instead of a friendless dopehead, who'd been high as a kite nearly all of the time and was otherwise an outcast among all of the other students there.

Perhaps, this was why she'd immediately seen so much of her own past self in the young heiress to a part of the Horne family fortune, that it literally pained her to her very bones to think of how lonely the poor girl must have felt, without the effects of mind-altering drugs to take her mind off of her misery. In some ways, the adorable and innocent young Audrey almost felt like a little sister to her already, albeit one that believed that they were roughly the same ages. If Becky could do anything to make Audrey's life just a little bit better, then it went without saying that she would, and even a blind man could see that a pair of tortured souls like her and James would be a perfect match for one another. Would it suck for Donna, who clearly had feelings for him too? Probably, but Donna had a perfect family and so much else going for her that compared to Audrey, she didn't need someone like James to be there for her as much as the other girl did. As for Laura, Becky still didn't know how she felt about James yet and if he was just a boy-toy for her to fool around with or she really loved him, but her sixth sense was telling her that it was the former. In any case, what she was doing by cheating on Bobby wasn't acceptable from an ethical standpoint, no matter what your excuses for it are.

How, on the other hand, this paired up with "The Older Laura's" warning to her that she could end up erasing her own existence, was still a question that she was constantly asking herself. After all, hadn't her and Cooper assured her that it wouldn't happen, a handful of days before when this had just begun? If one thing was for sure though, it was that if it was ever going to happen for this period's version of her parents, then Leo had to be out of the way first and preferably locked up in some maximum-security prison for the remainder of his life. Even if she'd instantly hated his guts and how he'd horribly mistreated the teenage version of her mother, she still had never wished anyone dead and wasn't prepared to start now, no matter how few redeeming qualities that they seemingly possessed.

END OF CHAPTER SIX

Chapter Text

After a Monday where little had happened, except for Becky attending school during the day and doing some more bonding with Audrey in the evening, she'd turned up school expecting little out of the ordinary to happen that day, but boy, would she ever be proven wrong!

It needed to as well, seeing as she'd already spent a week in 1989 and it didn't feel to her as if she was any closer to clearing up the big mystery of who would try to hurt Laura, than she had been when she'd first gotten there. Even if it felt like she'd picked up something resembling a clue here and there, with only a little over three weeks to go, she needed a breakthrough and soon or her "Mission" would turn out to be a huge failure.

The first thing that she quickly found out was that Laura and Bobby had some kind of big fight the day before, only Laura wouldn't tell her what it had all been about, which irritated her to no end. Especially since she had a sneaking suspicion that this bad boy version of her father was also the kind of guy, who probably kept up dealings with some shady people, to put it mildly. He'd never been keen on telling her too much about this time of his life (probably because of the shame that he felt was related to it), still she could easily guess that if Laura had been big on doing drugs, then a rebellious and testosterone-fueled young man like himself would have found it hard to say no, as would his rather unintelligent and immature bestie, Mike Nelson.

Another piece of drama, even if it was of a very minor kind, came from no one other than Audrey, who'd decided to take Becky's advice and grab the bull by the horns when it came to James Hurley. Normally this wouldn't be news that anyone there cared about, and it wouldn't have been if the hopeless romantic Audrey hadn't channeled her inner theater kid and declared her crush on him in a poem, in front of their entire English class. Of course, she hadn't directly mentioned him by name, but she'd mentioned that her crush in the poem rode a motorcycle and played guitar, which pretty much narrowed it down to one guy. What's more, in a move that was even more daring of the usually rather shy Audrey, she'd asked him head-on right after the class had ended, if he wanted to go and see a movie with her that evening and even to Becky's surprise, he'd instantly accepted her proposal.

Seeing Donna and Laura's different reactions to this, however, was what made the situation even more interesting from Becky's point of view, with Donna looking more upset than she should have been while Laura turned far quieter than she usually was.

"Do you think that Audrey and James will become a couple now?" she tried casually asking Laura while they were waiting to be picked up by Laura's father Leland, who was running a bit late.

Usually, she would be riding with Audrey, seeing as they lived at the same hotel, but she'd asked Laura if she couldn't catch a ride with her over to the department store, where Laura was working at the perfume counter with her work-pal Ronette that afternoon. Both as a chance to talk privately talk to her, but also as a chance to do a bit of shopping for some new clothes, to replace some of the ones from the lost and found box at the hospital that she'd been wearing so far. Was it a smart way to spend her meager funds? Perhaps not, but her and pastel colors had never been a pretty mix, no matter which decade that we're talking about! Plus, you clearly got a whole lot more for a dollar in 1989 than you did in 2017!

"They seem like a weird match to me. I can't see them going on more than one date" Laura briefly answered her. as she looked up the street for her father's overtly gas-sucking Oldsmobile to come into view.

"I don't know. I mean, they're both single, so there's nothing to get in the way there. Unless you know something that I don't?" she probingly asked Laura, who got a little uncomfortable at the question.

"Why would I know anything about the two of them that you don't?" Laura nervously asked her back, in a slightly lowered voice that was starting to speak volumes about her true feelings towards James.

"You tell me. I'm not the one who's known both of them since you guys were in kindergarten" she told Laura, again as a way to try to get her to give it up, when it came to revealing her true feelings.

"If you want a brutally honest low-down, here it is: Audrey is nearly full a year older than me, but she still has the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old! The one and only reason that I can think of why James would even consider saying yes to being her date, is to get back at me!" Laura, who'd seemingly lost herself in the moment and had over spoken, told her and not long after realized what she'd just said.

"Why would he want to get back at you?" she asked Laura, whom she now had right where she needed her.

"I ..." Laura began, before quickly coming to the conclusion that the easiest way out of this was to tell the truth, or at least some version of it. "Look, I know James like almost no one else does and he can be overly sensitive sometimes. Trust me, the last thing that he needs is to have an overgrown child such as Audrey, to have to be a babysitter and boyfriend to at the same time. He needs someone like me or Donna, who are on the same maturity level as he is".

"Don't you think that it's being mean to Audrey, when you're saying nasty things about her behind her back like this?" she asked Laura, who looked like she more or less agreed with her.

"I like Audrey, and I think that it's adorable how pure and innocent that she still is, but you can't deny that she lives in her own little fantasy dream-world most of the time. James is a storybook sensitive artist and if someone played around with his heart, like I know that she would just from her not knowing better yet, it could have dire consequences for him. Does that perfectly explain my feelings on the subject?" Laura asked her, sounding like she was hoping that she wouldn't have to answer more questions about Twin Peaks High's latest couple, who had no doubt been the topic of many gossip discussions at the school that day.

"I guess so. Only, why did you mention yourself first, when you talked about what kind of girl that you thought James would be the best match for?" she inquired, just as Leland's car finally came within eyesight.

"I just did, okay? Don't read more into it than that" Laura annoyedly said to her, putting an end to this little interrogation.

Following her little shopping trip (which had been insanely cheap compared to what it would have cost her roughly twenty-eight years later!), Becky's only plans for the rest of the day had been to catch a taxi back to her dwellings at the hotel and do some of the homework that she'd been assigned. Even if she didn't have to and was only there very temporarily, she still saw this as a small chance to prove to herself that she could have been more than a C-Minus student at best, had she applied herself to school and not coasted through her own final two high school years in a selfish, drug-fueled stupor. As it turned out on the other hand, it wouldn't take her all that long to finish what little there was of it. Thus, with it seeming like a waste of her precious time to lounge out on her comfy bed in front of the TV for an evening, she instead made the snap decision to see if she could sneak her way into "The Roadhouse", to score herself a couple of beers in there and hopefully, enjoy some fine live music.

Strange as it may sound, seeing as "The Roadhouse" was also one of the only bars in town where it wasn't much of a secret around town that they weren't big on enforcing the age restrictions on drinking, Becky could easily count the times that she'd been in there on one hand prior to this evening. One of those reasons was without a doubt that her parents had warned her early on that random fights breaking out were a common occurrence down there (a sentiment that they certainly weren't too far off with!), but it was just as much because herself and Steven had always been far more of a pair of heavy drug-takers than even a pair of occasional drinkers, plus if she had to be honest, there wasn't really any kind of alcohol that tasted all that pleasant to her tastebuds. Then, after she'd finally gotten herself clean, she'd stayed far away from all kinds of stimulants out of the fear that it could lead her to a relapse, which in turn made this the first time in over half a year that she'd indulged in any of them in the slightest, unless we're counting the occasional beer shared with her dad back in her "former life".

One positive thing that she could say about the largest bar in town anno 1989, was that it had a nice and darkly-lit atmosphere to it that fit well with the music, song by some kind of blonde, waif-looking girl with a live band, who had a very cute love song about wanting her ex-boyfriend to be "Rocking Back Inside Her Heart" that Becky (even if she didn't know it yet) wouldn't be able to get out of her brain for several days after this evening was over. Honestly though, it felt a little surreal to her to have this kind of slow and dreamy pop music playing in front of their mostly rowdy looking patrons, yet there was no denying that they were all eating it up like it was the second coming of sliced bread.

Even the beer wasn't tasting all that bad to her, although after only two of them, she was already starting to feel the effect of the alcohol. In fact, she was thinking about calling it an evening early, when another student from her high school came over to her, looking like he was more or less drunk out of his skull.

"Laura's friend! I didn't even see you there!", the very drunk teenage version of her "Father To-Be" greeted her, all the while he was clearly fighting a hard fight not to stumble over his own legs.

"Do you even remember my name?" she smart-assed asked him back and could easily see that he was having trouble remembering it, no doubt thanks to the state of his soaked-in-booze brain at this moment.

"Sure, I do! It's ... something with "Y" at the end of it! Okay, I'm officially throwing in the towel! What's your name again?" he drunkenly asked her, before he wisely took a seat on the vacant barstool next to hers.

"It's Becky" she reminded him.

"See? I wasn't too far off, was I?" he got out to her with a voice full of drunken slur, as he tried to look into her eyes. Something that clearly was a challenge for him, seeing as his wandering eyes were obviously having all kinds of trouble keeping their focus on anything.

"Have you been doing a little too much celebrating tonight, Bobby?" she asked him and saw him shake his head.

"Tonight, it's more like drowning my sorrows. Want to drown them with me?" he asked her, and although she couldn't imagine that he'd last more than another beer or two, she still saw no harm in accepting his proposal.

They say that you're only certain to get the truth and nothing but the truth from children and drunk people and as she'd hoped from the second that he'd chatted her up, the boy who would soon into the future become her father was a veritable fountain of information, once she'd gotten his vocal cords going into a state of overdrive.

"Laura has never really loved me!" he complained to her, right after they'd had a pair of Vodka shooters that had her own head spinning a little as well.

"I'm sure that she does!" she tried to console him with, like a proper drinking buddy should.

"She's only with me because she knows that I can never say no to her. Don't tell her this, but the biggest mistake that I've ever made in my life was cheating on Shelly with her. What the hell was I thinking?" he scolded himself before taking a large swig of his beer. "If I'd played my cards right, then I would still have had her on my arm right now and she never would have given that jerkoff Leo a second glance. Have you met him?"

"Yeah, I've had the displeasure" she answered him in a tone that made it clear how she felt about him.

"The guy is a frigging psycho, but what can I do? I can't just break up with Laura in the hope that Shelly will be willing to risk her life and leave Leo for me. Even if I'm sure that Laura has at least one more guy on the side. Girls, man! Present company excluded, of course!" he gallantly added, just so that she wouldn't feel too offended by his outburst.

"Easy there, Tiger! I'm not into making out with guys, who are so drunk that they can barely stand up if that's what you're fishing for" she told her would-be dad, who simply smiled to himself at her rejection of him.

"Do you want to hear something strange?" he asked her.

"Anytime" she replied.

"It's like there's this voice in the back of my head that's telling me that hitting on you would just be plain wrong, for some reason! I've never experienced that with any girl that I wasn't closely related to before! Instead, I ... and I have no idea why I'm saying this, feel like I'm supposed to protect you right now! You aren't in any danger, are you?" Becky's drunken "Father-to-Be" asked her, as she had to fight not to smile to herself at what he'd just told her.

"I sure hope not!" she answered him, trying to sound as cheerful and carefree as possible. "So, what do you make of the latest couple at school?"

"James and Audrey? I wish him all of the luck in the world with her, because if anyone will need it from now on, it will be him! As long as he stays away from my girl, that's all that I care about. Do yourself a favor and stay single, Becky. All of this heartbreak of being in a relationship just isn't worth your trouble!" Bobby bluntly stated and for a moment or two, she couldn't help feeling sorry for this version of her father that his many girl-troubles all went back to one wrong decision, a few years earlier.

More than that, it also made her realize why he'd never remarried after his marriage to her mom had failed. After all, who would want to put themselves through that kind of emotional turmoil again, considering that it had already come this close to completely breaking the poor guy this one time before?

Stepping back into the hotel lobby after an evening where she'd had more drinks than she'd had in the past year combined (and after having shared a taxi with her to be father, whom she'd managed to convince that it wasn't in any way, shape or form safe for him to drive a car in his questionable state), Becky had to make sure not to look too inebriated on her way up to her room, considering that she in this world was officially a minor and was only living in such pleasant quarters thanks to a personal request from the sheriff.

Getting to know her dad again in this way had in any case been a trip for the ages, and she had to admit that there was something endearing about him that already showed shades of the man that he would someday become. Even if he had this put-on "Rebel Without a Cause" attitude going on most of the time, he was clearly a very sensitive guy too just like James was, he just showed it in a different way. She couldn't help feeling some disdain for Laura either, for how she was playing them out against one another in a battle for her heart that it was likely that neither of the two boys had ever stood a fighting chance at winning, anyway.

As she laid her head down on her pillow, she had to agree with her dad on one thing: Sometimes, the heartbreak of being in a relationship just isn't worth it.

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN

Chapter Text

If there was one thing that Becky hadn't tried and she figured most high school students of this era had, it was coming to school with a hangover from drinking far too much the day before. From the moment that she'd dragged herself out of bed the morning, after getting a bit too tipsy the evening before and practically stumbled into the shower, if she could have had one wish fulfilled, it would have been to have skipped those Vodka shots and only stuck to drinking beer. But hey, you live, and you learn and seeing as she was still pretty much a rookie in the alcohol drinking department, she could chuck this down as an experience that she had to learn from and not do it again. And if she did, then at least not on a school night.

Her memories of the events of the past evening were slightly foggy as well, although she could vividly remember that her father almost had what you could call a drunken breakdown over the horrible misery of his romantic life. Which wasn't any wonder, when you consider that the girl that he was still truly in love with and had allowed to slip through his fingers, was solidly pressed down under the thumb of a violent psychopath. Not to mention that his so-called girlfriend was obviously only staying with him out of convenience and little else, something that was only adding to the pile up of misery for the poor boy. "It's no wonder that he feels like he has to put on such a ridiculous macho act, if he's constantly feeling that miserable inside", she thought to herself many times that morning and it made her want to confront Laura head on, to let her know face to face what her devious and cheating ways were doing to him. Even if Laura had more than enough reasons to be miserable too, Becky (as the true to the bones daddy's girl that she was) would always be on her dad's side, no matter what, and what Laura was doing to him wasn't just terrible from an ethical standpoint, it was downright killing him slowly. Had it been herself, then Becky surely would have found it hard to live with herself, let alone to look at herself in the mirror.

One girl that she'd figured would be sure to cheer her up was Audrey, who was as excited as could be to tell her all about her date with James. Although, they were more than a little bit of an odd couple on the surface, according to her they'd had a splendid time at the movies, and she was clearly holding up hope that their second date wouldn't lie too far into the future. Was this just Audrey imagining something because she wanted to believe it, however? Knowing her like Becky did already, it wasn't hard to imagine at all, but in any case, it had given Ben Horne's sole daughter a well-deserved evening's worth of escaping from her somewhat depressing life. There was definitely something to be said for that, regardless of how the immediate future would turn out for her.

As it played out, Becky wouldn't have to confront Laura about Bobby, seeing as Laura wasn't about to wait with confronting herself, on the first chance that she got to after she'd been sure to check that no one was in the girl's room with them.

"Did you do it with my boyfriend last night?" Laura accused her with an unmistakable scowl to match her rather poignant question.

"Do you really think so little of me, Laura?" she asked Laura back to try to diffuse situation, if she at all could.

"Why then, did he out of nowhere turn up at our house this morning to break up with me? I heard that you two were seen getting drunk together down at "The Roadhouse" last night, so what exactly happened between you two?" Laura sternly asked her, sounding like she didn't have the slightest clue why her now former boyfriend had decided to grow a pair of balls, all of a sudden.

"What happened was that someone finally took the time to listen to him! Jesus, Laura! Can't you see what you're doing to him, you selfish bitch?" Becky fired back, clearly to Laura's surprise.

"I'm a selfish bitch? You don't know the first thing about me, Becky!" Laura practically shouted back at her.

"I know that the only reason why you do things like the meals on wheels deliveries and play visiting friend to a brain-damaged guy, is to make yourself feel better over what you've turned into" Becky replied, now defiantly staring her adversary square in the eyes.

"And what's that?" Laura asked her, even though she must have known the answer deep down.

"A girl, who hates herself so much that the only way to relieve her pain is to make those that care about her feel almost as bad, as she does. But they never do, do they, Laura?" she stubbornly answered Laura, who for once was entirely lost for words. "Is that why you get off on emotionally hurting your boyfriend, just so that he'll eventually fall even lower than you have?"

Apparently, hearing the truth spoken like this was too much to hear for Laura, seeing as she practically sprinted out of that girl's room moments later, looking like she was on the verge of a total meltdown if anyone was. Honestly, at that point, Becky wouldn't have been surprised if Laura had never spoken a word to her again, which would have made her mission to save the same girl that she'd just told off in the most brutally honest way possible. close to being impossible. Still, at the same time she'd felt like it needed to be said, although she also had to concede that it could and perhaps should have been done in a far less accusing and much more of a supportive way.

If you'd told her then that it wouldn't be more than a few hours later before Laura had asked for a private conversation with her, she probably wouldn't have believed you. Nevertheless, this was exactly what had happened.

"I'm sorry that I accused you of sleeping with Bobby. He can be an immature jerk sometimes, but I know that he wouldn't dream of sleeping around on me with anyone, except for perhaps Shelly. I just keep asking myself what suddenly made him man up like that, when he's usually such an easy push-over" Laura confessed to her, again out in the girl's room, only it was now roughly three hours after the two girls had their small verbal bust-up earlier that day. As an added and unwanted bonus, she could also see tears beginning to form in Laura's eyes.

"I guess that I'm sorry for calling you a bitch earlier. It wasn't fair of me to judge you like that" Becky apologized, even if she wasn't sure that it came out all that sincere.

"All that you did was call a spade, a spade. Do you think that I want to live my life like this?" Laura sobbingly asked her, probably sounding far more earnest than Becky herself just had.

No matter what, she found herself taken aback by the way that Laura had just said what she said, and it only served to make her feel worse for having judged a book by it's cover, like she admittedly had.

"Why do you do it, then?" she asked the girl in front of her, who finally looked like she was prepared to spill some veritable beans to her.

"Do you think that you can handle hearing the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Laura asked and although, Becky nodded back at her, she wasn't sure if she could. "The truth is that you were spot on about me. I hate myself, okay?"

"Why do you hate yourself, Laura? You have so many people in your life that love you and would do anything for you! We should all be so lucky!" she imploringly said to Laura, who looked like she was searching her brain for an answer, as much as she was fighting a tough fight not to have a complete nervous breakdown.

"None of them know the real me. How could they when I barely know who I am anymore? The only times that I've ever been able to be the good Laura that I've always wanted to be, is when I'm with James Hurley. Something about him brings out the best in me, I guess" Laura admitted, something that even came to Becky's surprise, in spite of her having already known (albeit only in broad details) what was going on between them.

"How long have you two ..."

"We haven't slept with one another yet, but I can't say that we haven't been building up to it. I still don't think that him and Audrey make any sense as a couple and it's because he belongs with me! There, I said it! I wish that I was her right now!"

"Then, tell him! Be honest about something for once in your life!" she implored Laura, who giggled nervously to herself at her suggestion.

"You really are still new around here, aren't you?" Laura semi-rhetorically asked her, prior to getting a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and lighting one up to calm her nerves. "I'm sure that there are high schools out there, where no one would think twice about it if the homecoming queen and a quiet outsider shack up, but it sure as hell isn't here. I can just imagine how my folks would react when I introduce them to my new boyfriend, who's a motorcycle riding and guitar playing hunk without any plans for his future, apart from getting the hell out of here! Anyway, he deserves to be with someone, who won't try to ruin his life like I almost did to Bobby, don't you think?" Laura reflectively asked her and took a deep drag of her cancer stick.

"Why can't it be you, Laura? Help me to understand!" she asked of Laura, who looked like she'd been hit with a wave of self-loathing, now that the floodgates had been opened wide.

"Because I'm broken, Becky. I'm broken and I don't think that there's any way to repair me anymore" Laura somberly told her, sounding as defeated as Becky herself must have, back when the drug addiction and her unhealthy dependence on her ex-husband Steven ran so deeply within her, that it felt like her only eventual salvation would come in the grave.

If she could do it though, then she was sure to her bones that Laura could do it too, and she sure as hell wasn't about to give up on her now. Especially not when she'd just been sent a clear-cut cry for help like this was.

After Laura's tearful confession, Becky made a solid decision to spend the rest of her day on cheering her up. This was something that she figured that her karma could use too, given that she was lying her butt off most of time and feeling guiltier over it by the day. In her younger days where the drugs had such a heavy stranglehold on her, she'd always had a simple reason for lying and it was the only reason that a true addict will ever need: To stop the withdrawals from getting too bad. She knew all too well from having felt how bad it could be at its worst on her own body that once you've crossed that line into full-out addiction, there is almost nothing that you won't do to feed your habit, including lying so much that you start believing in your own lies. Without that sickening catalyst to keep her going, she now felt guilty every time that she had to tell a lie, and there was no denying anymore that constantly living on a one was slowly eating her up inside.

Perhaps for this reason, it felt nice to get back to doing something that she loved doing back in her own time, this being delivering the meals on wheels dishes to the town's weakest souls with Laura, who'd had the same job as her years earlier. At its essence, the job was still the same, even if the great majority of the people that they delivered to wouldn't be the same as they'd been by the time that Becky would get hired, roughly twenty-seven years later. It was obvious too that Laura was a much-beloved girl among the recluses, handicapped people and elderly people, who made up the clientele on their route and she could remember all of them by their first name, something that Becky couldn't claim to be the best at.

One of the recluses on her route, a sweet and kind-hearted guy (according to Laura) with a bad case of agoraphobia named Harold, even seemed to have a somewhat of a crush on her, probably because she was one of, if not the only person that he spoke with regularly. More importantly, Laura had told her that she'd been careful not to appear like she looked down on him, in spite of his hidden illness that no one could see with the naked eye. In turn, Becky could only imagine how infinitely much it must have meant for a tortured soul like his to have a kindred spirit like Laura in his life.

Eventually, they reached the final stop on their route, an elderly lady named Mrs. Tremont and her young grandson, who lived with her. Laura had warned her in advance that the kid was more than a bit weird and that his grandmother seemed to be a bit senile, but Becky figured that she'd tried worse and as they walked up to the door, she was genuinely curious to see just how strange this kid could be. When they rolled their food trolley into the living room though, she was a bit shocked to see that it was a nearly bare room, with only a worn out couch, a coffee table and an armchair that the little boy (whom she figured was around nine or ten years old) was sitting on, as seemingly the only piece of furniture in there. The way that he stared at her too, gave her the willies and it made her want to get out of there as soon as possible.

"Hasn't anyone told you that it isn't polite to stare at people?" she couldn't help herself from asking the boy, who seemed generally unfazed by her question.

"Who are you?" the boy asked her, in an eerily monotone voice for someone his age.

"This is my friend Becky. She's helping me out today" Laura introduced Becky to this strange boy, who was looking at her like she was some sort of alien lifeform that he was intently studying to see what it did next.

"You're here, yet you're not supposed to be here. You don't belong here, do you?" the boy asked her without a hint of expression in his voice, while he kept staring intently at her.

"Have you met him before, Becky?" Laura asked her, now sounding more than a bit freaked out too.

"Not in this time" the boy answered for her before Becky could get an answer out. Not that she would have any idea what to reply at that moment, even if she'd been allowed to come up with some sort of lame excuse.

In any case, all that she could think of was to run out of the door in record time, while thoughts of how she was going to rationally explain her way out of this one filled her head.

"What did he mean when he said that you don't belong here, Becky?" Laura inquiringly asked her, sounding desperate to get some answers, after they'd met up again out in the delivery van.

"I don't know" was the best answer that she could come up with, albeit not exactly a great one.

"He said that you haven't met in this time. Is ... and I can't believe that I'm saying this. Is it possible that came here ... from the past or the future and you just don't remember it?" Laura asked her.

Perhaps it was the fact that she hadn't gotten nearly as far as she'd wanted to, when it came to getting closer to Laura's eventual killer (or kidnapper, whichever it was), or it could simply have been that she was getting sick and tired of lying her butt off all of the time. In that moment though, Becky made a snap decision to go for broke, the consequences be damned.

"2017, if you want to be exact about it" she told Laura, whose jaw literally dropped in what Becky had to admit was a pretty natural response.

"You're absolutely sure that you aren't some escaped mental patient, who's imagining all of this?" Laura finally asked her after a good couple of minutes to digest what she'd just been told.

"If I am, then why did that strange boy say what he did? I still haven't figured that part out yet!" Becky admitted, while Laura kept shaking her head in disbelief.

"Why are you here, then?" Laura asked her, still not sounding all that sure if she believed her own ears.

"To save you from being murdered. Or kidnapped, I'm still not sure yet. Maybe it would help if I took you to the spot, where they could potentially find you dead and wrapped in a sheet of plastic" Becky told Laura in her softest voice and even if it hadn't been her intention to, her words only served to freak out poor Laura even more than she already was. Not that you would have thought that it was possible.

No matter what, it filled Becky with a sense of inner peace to finally come clean to someone and if it had to be anyone, then Laura really was her only logical choice.

"Let me get this straight: You're Shelly and Bobby's daughter and if they don't have you, then this whole world ceases to exist. Did I get that correct?" Laura inquired on the short walk from the parking lot, down to where her body had washed up in a reality that now hopefully would never come to pass.

"More or less. An older version of you warned me in a vivid dream that I would completely cease to exist if it happened, which I guess means that I'll get erased from all of the other timelines too. The whole thing is severely confusing if I have to be honest and it's only bound to get worse, now that I'm telling you about what'll happen in the future. Or rather, what could happen. You know what I mean, don't you?" she asked Laura, who was looking as confused as Becky was feeling it.

"An older version of me? Didn't you say that I get murdered?" Laura logically asked.

"The way that I understood it, an alternate version of you was dragged out of one timeline by an FBI agent named Dale Cooper right before you were about to meet your doom. That version of you was then put into another timeline and she was the one that visited me in that dream, while the other version of you in the original timeline was still murdered. If this sounds like pure gibberish, then I was right there with you, but when you do a bit of hard thinking about it, it's the only explanation that makes any sense" she tried to explain to Laura, whose brain was clearly still trying to process it all. Not that Becky could blame her at all.

"Remind me to thank him, if I ever meet him! What if you change other things here in 1989? Won't this have a direct impact on the future too?" Laura brought up, like Becky could easily guess that anyone would in this most unlikely of situations.

"It has to, doesn't it? Anyway, I wouldn't start buying gifts for Cooper just yet, if I was you. Apparently, the two of you get stuck in some sort of limbo in between two timelines, from what I understood. The only way to get these future versions of the two of you out if it again, is to stop you from being murdered on February 24th" she continued to explain to Laura, as the pair of girls made it down to the riverbed where Pete Martell, on his way out on a fishing trip and in another timeline, would find Laura's corpse only twenty-two days from then.

"Does the name "Bob" mean anything to you?" she thought to ask Laura, as they stood and stared out at the picturesque scenery that Twin Peaks and the surrounding area was ever so rich on.

"Should it?" Laura asked her back.

"The giant that first visited me in my dreams, told me that "Bob" will be the one that kills you. It doesn't ring a bell at all?"

"The only one that I've ever known, who's named Robert, is a friendly old widower on my meals on wheels route and he's far up into his nineties plus he's been stuck in a wheelchair since the late seventies, so I can't imagine that it could possibly be him. Can you tell me anything else about this guy, so that I'll know what to watch out for?"

"Not really, but now that I think about it, the giant said that "Bob" was dead and he couldn't use his influence in any dimension anymore. Work with me here for a minute. What if "Bob" has only ever existed in the "Other Reality", the one that I come from, but because a new reality was created when I arrived here after his death, he can't be the one that kills you anymore, seeing as he's never existed in the first place here?" Becky theorized to Laura, who was one big question mark, going by her facial expression. "I know, it's very "Meta", but can you come up with a better explanation?"

"I guess not. What's "Meta"?"

"This whole thing is! Do you want to add another layer of strangeness to this day, or is your head already full of everything that it can take for one day?"

"Try me" Laura softly said, before she turned her head and they looked one another in the eyes.

"My memories of what happened in my own time are changing too. I think that it could be the future that's realigning itself through my new set of memories, but I still have my old set of memories too, so I'm becoming less and less sure all of the time which is the correct set anymore" she tried to explain.

"But you still remember me as having been found dead, don't you?" Laura asked, now becoming serious again.

"Either dead or disappeared. Until I start to remember it differently, you're still ..."

"Toast" Laura finished Becky's train of thought for her and for the next minutes, the two of them shared in some deep-rooted reflection.

"Are you sure that this is a good idea?" she nervously asked Laura, as they pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff's station.

"You tell me. If he's as open-minded as you say that he is, I can't imagine anyone better for you to come clean to" Laura answered her, while parking Norma's delivery van in one of the (strangely enough) many vacant parking spots that they had available to them.

"You don't think that he'll immediately have me committed in a nuthouse?" Becky dark-humoredly said to make what she was about to do seem less scary to herself, although it wasn't an entirely unlikely prospect.

"The only thing that I can wrap my head around for the rest of this day is that I have to get Norma's van back to her, before she sends a search party out to look for both of us! Talk about one for the ages, huh?" Laura darkly joked in return and Becky could only agree with her wholly. "For once, I plan on letting the rest of the world be what it wants to be and staying cooped up in my room until my bedtime. You have no idea how creepy it is to know that someone will murder me in a little over three weeks, if we don't somehow manage to stop it. Honestly, it's enough to make you lose your mind!" Laura said and yet again that day, struggled not to start crying uncontrollably.

"We'll find a way. With Cooper and Truman's help, we can ..."

"I'm seventeen years old, Becky! I don't want to die!" Laura exasperatedly told her and if anyone was feeling her pain at that moment, it was the girl in passenger seat next to her.

Who, as she stepped up to the sheriff's station, had to take a deep breath of fresh mountain air for courage, before she stepped through the door to do what had to be done if she was going to save Laura's life.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT

Chapter Text

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 a 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 what 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

Chapter Text

After a hectic day that would always stand out in infamy in Becky's memories, she figured that the best thing that she could do for her horribly self-hating friend Laura was to give her a proper and well-needed dose of sheer normality, plus more than anything to make her feel loved and wanted again by those that truly cared about her. For this reason, she came up with the idea to tell everyone at school that she'd gotten to know so far, that she'd suddenly remembered that it was her own birthday, seeing as no one could know that it wasn't the truth unless their name was Dale Cooper, and they happened to be a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With the great chance of even crazier times being on the imminent horizon too, if there was ever a last chance to just kick back, enjoy some pleasant times and cast off their worries for a day, then this would surely be it.

As for the location, there was really only one place that it made sense to have a fake birthday party at, and it just so happened to be the same place that the soon to be born version of Becky ever since her very first years in the world, had always felt was her number one safe space, the Double R diner. When she thought back on her life so far, most of the monumental events in her life had happened either in there or around there and with her own grandparents either having died at a fairly young age (like her paternal grandmother had), suddenly vanished without a trace and never returned (in the case of her paternal grandfather) or being generally unlikable people to begin with (in the case of her mother's parents, whom she'd only met one time each and wouldn't want to ever see again, no matter what), the owner Norma had always felt like a spare grandmother to her. Not to mention the only one in town out of the many that she'd handed her embarrassingly bare CV out to after she'd gotten clean, who'd been willing to hire her or even give her a second glance, as far as potential employment was concerned. More than that, there was absolutely no denying that the love between them went both ways and in the case of her mother, Norma had been infinitely more of a caring parental figure towards her than Becky's maternal grandparents had ever come close to, even if they weren't related by blood in any way.

At first, it had only been herself, Donna, Audrey and Laura there, but to her great surprise, Bobby had turned up too to offer his well wishes and, as she'd expected from the moment that she saw him, to talk things out with Laura after their recent break-up. Before him, James had even briefly popped in to give her a small present, which (somewhat fittingly, she thought) turned out to be a keychain with a pendant that had a picture of the town sign on it, reading "Welcome to Twin Peaks" in large letters and its number of residents written in smaller ones underneath it. Okay, so it definitely was about as of a cheap a gift as could be found anywhere in town, but she was honestly rather surprised that he cared about her at all and of course had made sure to thank him many times. Even if he'd claimed that it was just some old piece of junk that he'd had lying around and it wasn't anything to make a big deal about, it still felt to her like it was a rather thoughtful gift all the same. Donna, who'd readily admitted earlier in the day that her worst pet peeve in life was having to buying gifts for people, because she never had a clue what to get them, had settled on buying her a sweet greeting card with twenty dollars inside of it and with a lack of spending money being one of Becky's biggest minor issues, she made sure that Donna understood how handy that it would come in for her. When it came to Laura, she'd (even if Becky had insisted that she hadn't needed to get her anything) given her a small bottle of gorgeous smelling perfume that her new closest friend had gotten at a nice discount at the Horne department store. Something that she could also only imagine that Audrey had for the pair of jeans and the warm sweater that she'd chosen as her gift for her and again, would come in handy seeing as Becky only had two pairs of pants and one sweater to her name and without easy access to a laundry machine, she'd had to wear them far too many days in a row for her own liking. Audrey shone too, when Becky hugged her tightly as thanks for her gifts, and it seriously made her wonder to herself if this was the first time in Audrey's entire life that she'd been invited to any birthday party, where it didn't involve celebrating herself or a close family member.

She also couldn't help noticing that Shelly was constantly keeping an eye on them from afar and she would have asked her to join them, if she didn't also have a half-filled diner to tend to.

"How old are you turning today, B-Day girl?" her future mom smilingly asked her while Becky was giving her a helping hand with clearing their table, exactly like it over time had become second nature of her to do back in her "Own Time".

"Eighteen" she lied to the, all kinds of wonderful, yet sadly just as short on self-esteem, girl that within a few years would be giving birth to her, who in return looked rather pleased on her behalf.

"And I'm betting that you have all of the cutest boys in town already lining up around the block to get a date with you, am I right?" Shelly sweetly asked her. "Anyway, you really don't need to help me with this. It is my job here, remember?"

"It feels like the least that I can do with us sending so much extra work your way tonight. As for those boys, I don't know what to tell you. I guess that what they're looking for isn't someone like me" she replied to her would-be mom, who (like she would become such a master at in the future that no one else could rival her) sent a heartwarming smile her way that like it always did in her daughter's case, made it feel to her like everything would somehow work itself out.

"An adorably sweet and stunningly beautiful girl like you? Somehow, I find that hard to believe!" Shelly stated and in turn, gave Becky a small boost of self-confidence. "Believe me when I tell you that girls like you are exactly the kind of girls, who lots of boys your age want to bring home to show off to their mothers".

"I've only had one boyfriend and let's just say that it ended in a way that no one would have wanted their first relationship to. I guess what I'm saying is that unless we're talking about a guy that I can see some perspectives for the future with, I'd rather stay single for now and wait for Mr. Right to come along" she "confessed" to Shelly, even if there was a hint of truth to it as well.

"How do you know that he isn't some shy boy at your school, who's been admiring you from afar and has been too nervous to chat you up? Those are usually the ones that made for the best boyfriends, if you didn't know already. In any case, you've only barely begun on your long road to adulthood, and you have your entire life ahead of you, Honey!" Shelly told her, coincidentally using almost the same phrases that the mother version of her would use around seventeen years and eight months later, on Becky's actual sixteenth birthday. "You have plenty of time to have lots of fun with playing the field first, before you need to think about settling down with one guy. It's what I would have done in your situation".

Shelly would have been right too, if it wasn't for the fact that the girl that she was talking to in reality happened to be twenty-six and not just turned eighteen, like she was pretending that she was. Not that being in your mid-twenties means that you're old at all, it goes without saying, but after the multi-year-long fiasco of her marriage to Steven and not the least, the depths that it had taken her to, Becky had learned enough about herself to know that in her own somewhat sad case, being in love comes with a high price to pay.

"Did you?" she asked Shelly while at the same time, hoping sincerely that she wasn't overstepping some invisible boundary by doing so. What it did though, was bring a facial expression full of regret on the mug of her mother, who obviously would have done a lot of things differently if she'd been given a chance to do them over gain.

"Does it look like I did?" Shelly asked her as she briefly showed off her wedding ring to her. "Do yourself a huge favor, Sweetie Pie, and don't marry the first guy, who tells you that he'll always love and protect you. The last thing that you want is to be left with a head full of regrets, believe me!".

"For what it's worth, Bobby has just broken up with Laura and I'm pretty sure that he's still carrying a big torch for you" she said to Shelly, if nothing else to test the waters on if the feeling was mutual on her mother's part.

"I'm guessing that Laura has told you about what happened between the three of us. Look, if things were different and I wasn't married already, then I'd jump into it with both legs instantly. It just isn't the world that we live in" Shelly told her with a tone of deep regret being evident in the way that she'd said it.

"If your husband wasn't around, what then?" she asked her dear mother, who put on a fake smile to pretend that it wasn't a big deal to her, like it clearly was in every sense of the words.

"You're sure a nosy little "Snoop-Arounder", aren't you?" Shelly lovingly asked her back, suddenly sounding a whole lot more like the mother that Becky had grown to love as much as life itself, than the insecure and understandably scared for her life girl that she was in 1989, who'd only made one terrible mistake in her life, yet in a cruel twist of fate had been made to pay close to the highest price imaginable for it.

"Life doesn't have to end just because you got married too young. My mom and dad got divorced and if they've managed to move on just fine, so can you" she reminded her would-be mother, who thankfully took her words in the kind way that they were intended to come off and not in a condescending way.

"Says the girl, who's eighteen and going on twenty-eight!" her mom teasingly replied to her and was far closer to being correct than she knew. "You really are a true to the word little sweetheart that just wants the best for everyone, aren't you?"

"I owe most of it to having had the most amazing mom that I ever could have asked for" she affectionately answered the teenage version of her mother that of course had no idea that she was the mother, whom her daughter was referring to.

After a splendid evening spent in the company of her new friends, who between them had made this version of Becky's teenage years everything that she'd wished that her real ones had been, it became time to call it a night. Until she caught a cab ride with Audrey back the Great Northern and her room there though, she got the chance for a short one-on-one talk with Laura, while Donna waited for her in her parents' car.

"Are you absolutely certain that you'll be okay by yourself for the rest of the day?" she worriedly asked Laura, who almost looked like she was expecting the question to be coming up.

"I don't need you to be my around the clock guardian, Becky. Anyway, we can both easily agree that if you slept over, we'd just wind up talking for half of the night again and if I don't get some proper sleep tonight, I have zero clue how I'll get through school tomorrow" Laura answered her and if there was one thing that Becky would readily attest to, it was that getting some serious shut-eye was desperately needed in her own case as well, after first having a wild night out with her fairly soon to be father and just to top it, the most eventful day that she'd perhaps ever had with her new best friend, the day before.

"Have the withdrawals been bad today?" she inquired, seeing as she'd felt on her own body how tough that it can be to go cold turkey.

"It hasn't been a picnic, but you've given me enough resolve to fight my way through them. If I don't say it enough, then it's only because I've always hated sappy speeches, but I simply can't come up with any words that can express what you're doing for me" Laura told her with a grateful smile that was more than enough in the way of repayment, as Becky saw it. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you actually? You can't be seventeen, I know that much!"

"Does it matter? All that I will tell you is this, Laura: If I'd been fortunate enough to have you by my side when I was seventeen, I wouldn't just have loved being that age, I would have savored every single second that I got to spend with you like they were the most precious thing in my life" she honestly admitted to Laura, who almost had to shed a tear again, only this time it was for a completely other reason than it usually was.

"I wish that I had a way with words like you do" Laura readily admitted back to her.

"I wouldn't be saying it, if I didn't mean it. I won't let you die either, if that's what you're afraid of. Anyone, who wants to get to you has to get through me first and I can be tougher than I look" she assured the girl in front of her that as the only one that she'd ever met, had a literal death verdict hanging over her head.

"No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. I shouldn't keep Donna waiting any longer. Sleep tight and don't let those nasty little bedbugs bite you" Laura bid her goodnight, only moments before her and Audrey's ride home pulled into the Double R parking lot.

After they'd arrived back at the hotel, she excused herself to Audrey, who claimed that this evening, which to most people would have seemed pretty mundane, had been one of the best evenings of her life, probably because she'd finally felt accepted by her peers and not like an unwanted outcast among them. Audrey would be another one that it would be close to impossible for Becky to leave behind in this time period, that much Becky was a hundred percent sure of. Yet still, her sixth sense was also telling her that what Audrey had needed all along was just someone to truly listen to her and show her some much-needed love and affection, for her eternally lovable self to be brought out of her shell. Now that she had been and just as much, had slowly begun to believe in the enormous wealth of untapped potential that was so evident within her, there was truly no limit for her as far as what she could achieve in the rest of her life.

As she laid down on her bed at the Great Northern that was also far more pleasant to lie on than her old one back in 2017 had been, all that she wished for was to fall asleep in an instant. As it so often happens however, when you've crossed that border of just being plain old sleepy, to being so over-sleepy that you start to feel fresh as a daisy again, it would take her a good while to finally get the one thing that her dead-tired body needed the most to keep on functioning.

While she laid there and tried to clear her mind to the best of her ability, it began to occur to her that more of her memories were starting to get foggy in the same way that it had happened, when she first couldn't remember if Laura had been murdered or had disappeared. Sure, there was a part of her that had to know what the real answers were to the things that she was now in doubt over. Still, with my muddied that her memories had become over the days since her first arrival in the Twin Peaks of the 80's, she legitimately couldn't tell you for sure if she'd imagined that Laura was murdered or if it was the other scenario that was just a figment of her imagination.

Honestly though, for as much as she'd feared not coming back to her own time period when her mission had begun, there was undeniable part of her that was beginning to dread leaving her new life behind too. Just when she thought about it purely objectively, there was little denying that if she continued to be Becky McCauley, a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old high school student without a dark past to hold her back and with the world at her feet, it would give her a once in a lifetime chance to start over without any of the scary amount of baggage that the former drug-addict Rebecca McCauley Briggs would have to go on living with for every remaining day of her life.

More than that, it was as if something deep within her was telling her that this (at least on the surface) cookie-cutter version of Twin Peaks was where she belonged and not the one that she knew from the future: A Twin Peaks where the influx in the meantime of a large number of mostly desperately poor outsiders had turned it from seemingly being a small slice of heaven, into a one of the most crime-ridden small towns in the North-West, in which there were parts of it that nearly all of the locals knew to stay away from after nightfall. Or, at least, if they knew what was best for them. Even if Becky was enough of a realist to know that this time period must have had its share of problems too, and that what happens behind the long lines of white picket fences in suburban America isn't always pretty, anyone could see that what had happened to this once quaint and charming little lumber-town over the years since couldn't be called progress by any stretch of the imagination, it was that purest kind of regression in its most untamed form. To add to it, there were all of the general problems that most people of her time worried about, be it the long-term effects of global warning that could one day wipe all of humanity out, the fall of the lower middle class with its resulting crime and homelessness problems, or a drug epidemic in their country that had been allowed to run rampant to such a degree that the people of her current time wouldn't understand it, because they simply had no reference point to help them understand. Heck, with what she knew would happen across the world over the coming years here in this timeline, wouldn't it be certifiably insane to wish yourself back to a time period where it had all changed for the worse and there was little in the way of signs that a turnaround was in the making anytime soon?

In any case, she still had no way of knowing if it would be her choice to make, or if it had already been made for her and no matter how you twisted and turned it, the future had two things that the past didn't. Two things that she didn't know if she could ever do without and not just because they'd been two of the only constants in her otherwise somewhat tumultuous life so far.

Her real parents and not just the teenage versions of them.

END OF CHAPTER TEN

Chapter Text

To Becky, the next three days were honestly rather uneventful with the most interesting part being a visit to Dr. Jacoby, to whom she still had to keep up the act of having amnesia or questions could begin to be asked by the wrong people, as far as she was concerned. Then again, she wasn't the one that had the extremely dubious pleasure of having to go undercover, in order to find out when and where that Jaques and Leo's next drug shipment came across the border from the Great White North. It was easy to tell by Laura's constantly jumpy demeanor that she couldn't wait to get this wholly unpleasant part of her life over and done with. From what Becky could assume, a great part of it must have had to do with how much Leo now scared her immensely after the drug-fueled haze that she'd surrounded herself in for so long had subsided, and she could see him for the true menace to society that he was.

Back in Becky's own days of being just like Laura used to be, it would be Steven's main job to keep both of them constantly high and to interact with the dealers, most of whom she would stay as far away from as she could, if at all possible. If there was such a thing as something that could be said to his credit, it was that he'd cared only barely enough about her to never force or allow her to prostitute herself to complete strangers, like several of the girls that she'd been in rehab with had in their desperation to stay constantly high. Sad as it was, Laura had already stooped that low far too many times for someone as young as she was, and while Becky couldn't entirely put herself in her shoes, she could only shudder to think of what kind of traumatic memories that Laura (if she lived past the 24th) would go on to have running around as a never-ending bad dream in her mind for years to come, thanks to those best forgotten times.

Speaking of bad dreams, if there was one thing that had changed for Becky over the past couple of days, it was that she was having legitimate nightmares for the first time since she was nine years old. Back then, she had been left home alone for a couple of hours one evening and in what in retrospect was huge tactical mistake on her part, she'd decided to test her own bravery and had popped the taped from TV copy of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" that her parents owned, into their old VHS player. Even if she'd hadn't made it halfway through the movie before she couldn't handle seeing more knife-gloves being wielded and terrified teenagers getting slaughtered on the screen, she had legitimately been haunted by bad dreams of Freddy Krueger for a while afterwards. Finally, though, after she'd confessed the whole thing to her dad and he'd managed to explain well enough to her that Freddy wasn't real, her bad dreams of him had begun subsiding almost instantly. Funnily enough, she would actually go on to become a fan of the series during and immediately after her time in rehab (greatly thanks to her roomie Heather being a huge horror buff, if she'd ever met one!) and especially part three, where the similarities between herself and the lead heroine Kristen (who was also a troubled girl that was temporarily confined to an institution) were as plain as day to her.

In contrast to those nightmares from her childhood, she could never remember much of anything from this new set of them when she woke up, but there was no doubt that they were wreaking hell on her sleep pattern. She'd quickly gotten used to that if she managed to sleep past four in the morning, then it counted as an alright night's sleep for her. One sentence that kept repeating through her head, however, was something that someone had said to her in one of her nightmares:

"The greatest trick that the devil has ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist".

She knew exactly where she'd heard it said before this, seeing as "The Usual Suspects" was ranked in the top three of her personal lists of all-time favorite movies and just art in general, which was also why she didn't know if she should pay any mind to it. Okay, so having prophetic dreams now and again was apparently something that she just had to live with, at least until Laura's destiny was settled in one way or the other, yet when she'd woken up from them, she'd been able to remember even the smallest details in them and with these ones, it almost seemed like something or someone was trying to force their way into her dreams without entirely succeeding at it.

Thankfully for Laura, she wouldn't have to wait longer than those few days until Cooper, Truman and the rest of the Twin Peaks P.D. would get the chance to take Leo and his cohorts down in the best way possible, with their hands planted deeply in the cookie jar. What exactly that Laura had been forced to do in order to get this information out of Jaques, she wouldn't tell her, and, in all honesty, there was any tiny part of Becky that wanted to know the slightest bit about it, in any case.

"Let's just say that I'm unbelievably lucky that Jaques is exactly as dumb as he looks!" Laura dark-humoredly quipped to her as they were heading to their last class of that school day (which almost fittingly was social studies), referring to a guy that Becky had only seen one time in person (on her "Little Excursion" to "The Roadhouse") and admittedly hadn't come close to impressing her with his obvious lack of wit either.

"Did you make sure to warm Bobby to stay away?" she reminded Laura.

"Him and Ronette. From what she's told me, she's planning on giving rehab a shot, anyway, so there wouldn't be any reason for her to be there" Laura informed her, and although Becky had only briefly met Ronette one time, she was still downright stoked on her behalf. "Honestly, I think that what she's most afraid of is telling her parents".

"My mom must have found out when she found me after I'd taken a speedball, lying on the floor of my room and completely unable to move. After I came to, I tried to convince her that I'd fainted thanks to low blood sugar" she confessed to Laura at a low enough volume that no one else would hear it.

"And it didn't ruin your relationship with her, forever and ever?"

"You wouldn't believe the things that I've put that poor woman through. On the other hand, it's only made us closer than we've perhaps ever been. It's the same with my dad and the way that he's become my biggest cheerleader, who praises me way, way, way too much for every little thing that I do right, is just so adorable that I want to die!" she said to Laura with a small smile in remembrance of them, until she suddenly remembered who she was talking to. "I'm so sorry, that was the worst choice of words in the history of mankind!" she apologized to her (still to be decided if she was doomed or not) one and only true confidant in this year's version of Twin Peaks.

"I instantly forgave you, so don't sweat it for a second. I still can't in my wildest imagination picture Bobby of all people, someday becoming the poster guy for picture book dads everywhere, sorry!" Laura semi-jokingly told her, just as they came up to their classroom and would have to save any further heartfelt confessionals for later.

In a wise move on their part, Becky and Laura had already made plans the day before to spend most of their evening and night hiding behind a locked door in Becky's hotel room, with the sole time that they would leave it being when Laura convinced her to go and see Johnny Horne with her. To be honest, Becky was expecting the worst based on what she'd heard from Laura or Audrey about his brain damage, yet those fears were quickly put to shame from the moment that he lit up in a huge smile when saw Laura and they would up spending almost two hours with him, until his mother claimed that he'd had enough for one day and very rudely kicked them out. As she should have almost expected however, her daughter Audrey was more than up for a good old fashioned slumber party and after they called up Donna and asked her to join them too (like she excitedly did), it would end up being the four of them for the rest of that day and coming night. Most importantly, she could tell from Laura's body language that this was exactly what she needed to take her mind off what was going on somewhere up near to the Canadian border and now, had been left to be entirely out of her own control.

One topic of conversation that hadn't come up and was hanging like a looming crowd over seemingly every interaction between Audrey, Donna and Laura, was the topic of one James Hurley, who (to what she could only imagine was Audrey's disappointment) hadn't asked her out on a second date. When it turned out to be Donna that broke the ice, Becky couldn't help being a little impressed by her sudden show of Moxy. That it would happen during something is childish as a game of truth of dare wasn't the most obvious scenario either.

"Okay, Audrey" Donna began her question, after Audrey (like all of them had so far in the one round of it that they played before deciding that the whole thing was too much of an immature activity for them) had chosen truth. "How far did you go on your date with James?"

"Just between us girls, I didn't even get a kiss goodnight. He really doesn't say much, does he?" Audrey asked the other three, who all had to agree with her. "After an evening where I did nearly all of the talking, it took me less than a day to see that I was grasping at straws to finally find myself a boyfriend, whom I hadn't made up in my head. You'd think that it has to happen for me at some point, right?"

"You made up a boyfriend in your head?" Donna asked Audrey in a most unexpected of follow-up questions.

"Haven't you girls ever done that?" Audrey asked the three others, who all shook their heads in both unison and denial. "I knew it! I'm officially crazier than my brother, aren't I?"

"Sweetie, by this town's standards, you're as run of the mill as they come!" Laura reassured Audrey, who suddenly got a cheeky smile on her flawless face.

"Have you seen that FBI Agent, who's staying here? I've had little friendly chats him every day since he came back from Seattle and he's ..." Audrey began to say, before Becky had to cut her off.

"Old enough to be your dad!" she reminded Audrey, who looked like she got the intention of what was said.

"Plus, he's an FBI Agent, so he'll always be busy with some sort of crime fighting mission. In other words, he would be your absolute worst choice for a boyfriend!" Laura, in her best dead-pan manner, told Audrey to drive the point home.

"It doesn't mean that a girl can't still do a bit of window shopping, now does it?" Audrey slightly smart-assed replied and if Becky had to be honest, she would guess that Audrey's very innocent and adorable (yet slightly messed-up at the same time) puppy love crush on Cooper would last at least until he'd left town and probably for a good while afterwards.

The only part of that all kinds of wholesome and in the best of ways memorable evening and night that she'd rather have been without, was that she had another nightmare and as usual, had woken up in the middle of the night with little to no memory at all of what her dream had been about, only that it had been a thoroughly unpleasant one. Really, the only thing that for some reason stuck to her mind was a phrase that sounded somewhat ominous, but at the same time had to be something that she'd heard before somewhere, only she was drawing nothing but blanks on when it could possibly have been:

"Fire Walk with Me".

The morning after, they'd been woken up by a hard knock on the door and after Cooper had announced through it that it was him, all four of them had scrambled to quickly to make themselves look somewhat decent before the door was opened. When Becky did, she could see from Cooper's expression that he had something serious to tell them or discuss with them.

"Good morning, ladies" he gentlemanly said to four girls that all bad cases of morning hair and can't have been a too pretty of a sight at this time of the morning.

"Good morning, Agent Cooper!" Audrey made sure to cheerfully greet him and with a very flirty smile to match.

"I'm delighted to see that you're making friends like these three, Audrey" Cooper responded to Audrey before turning serious again when he turned to Becky and Laura, who followed him out to the hallway where they could talk in relative private.

"There's no easy way of saying this, so I won't beat around the bush. Leo Johnson was shot point blank in the head and died on the spot last night. Jaques Renault pulled the trigger on him, presumably after he thought that Leo had sold him out to us" Cooper calmly explained to them and looked a shocked Laura in the eyes.

"How ..." Laura began to ask but was still too out of it to be able to finish her question.

"So far, Jaques has refused to reveal anything to us and my guess is that he won't, until we can get a hold of his lawyer. From what little that we've found out so far, it would appear that his and Leo's business relationship had been highly strained, to put it mildly. It goes without saying that I can't give out sensitive details here and now, but one thing that I can tell you is that his first words after his arrest were: "If I hadn't done it, then that son of a bitch would have done it to me". Are you holding up alright, Laura?" he asked Laura directly after finishing his brief explanation.

"I guess so. It's hard to explain right now" was all that Laura got out and in return, she got a sympathetic look from Cooper.

"If you need to talk, then my schedule will always be open for you" he assured Laura, who was clearly still reeling in a big way. "On a positive note, we also managed to catch Bernard, the brother of Jaques, with enough Cocaine to send him away for almost as long as Jaques will get for the murder on Leo" Cooper told them before bidding them goodbye.

"Are you really okay?" she asked Laura, who looked torn on what to answer her.

"I should be glad, shouldn't I?" Laura semi-rhetorically asked back.

"No one is telling you how to feel right now. Maybe, I shouldn't be telling you this, but ..." she began saying, before starting to stop herself from it.

"Tell me, Becky" Laura implored her and it made her give in.

"To make a long story short, I knew that Leo was going to die" she confessed to Laura.

"How?"

"Cooper from the future told me when I said yes to coming here, that Leo wouldn't have gone on living for much longer than he did in my time. Look, I know that this must feel strange for you to hear right now of all times, but he was murdered only around a month after you were. Maybe Jaques did the same thing in the other timeline too and all that happened this time was that it happened sooner"" she speculated to Laura, while also hoping to her bones that neither Audrey or Donna or both of them had their ears pressed up to the door on the other side.

"I guess that you wouldn't know for sure who did it, would you?" Laura inquired.

"From what very little that I know about it, they never found out who the killer was, but I'm really not sure, so don't take it as fact. Honestly, I've spent most of my life trying to forget that my mom was ever married to him. Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore what happened in the old timeline, does it?" she asked Laura, who was still looking a little on the sad side, but looked like she agreed with her as she stood there in deep thought for an uncomfortably long while, making Becky curious about something.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked Laura, who snapped back to reality.

"Does the phrase "Fire Walk with Me" mean anything to you? I had this ... I think that it was a nightmare, but I can't remember a word of it except for those four words" Laura said to her and instantly, Becky began to feel a wave of paranoia rush through her body and soul.

The reason was that immediately after Laura had mentioned the exact same phrase that Becky remembered from her dream, one more word from that dream suddenly began repeating itself in her brain like if it was on a broken record that's stuck in the same groove and can't get out if it again.

BOB!

END OF CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chapter Text

Fear. Such a simple word, but also a feeling that far too many people throughout history have been forced to live with, usually thanks to the greed, ambition or plain cruelty of others. In Becky's case, she had been blissfully spared from it throughout most of her life, with a few notable exceptions, one of which that she'd more or less managed to entirely erase the memory of in her brain. It had happened when she was still a small child of only four years old and in some ways, she knew that she had every reason to be thankful that she hadn't been traumatized for life after she'd been kidnapped by a crazy man, who'd been shot dead right in front of her by sheriff Truman (an event that according to her father had taken Truman several years to get past as well, if he ever honestly had). In truth, she couldn't remember much of anything from it and the whole ordeal had only lasted less than two hours from when she was taken, to when she was safely returned back into the custody of her parents, yet she could still recall all too well how over the next handful of years, she would suddenly and out of nowhere get frightening PTSD flashbacks that every time without exception had left her childhood self freaked out for hours afterwards. Who the guy was or why he'd taken her, she had no recollection of, still in some ways his face was permanently engraved into her memories and she was sure that if she saw a picture of him or heard his voice ever again (which, while it was unlikely to happen, could take place in this timeline where he would still be alive), then she would immediately be able to recognize him.

In the years afterwards, her mom, who'd always been the one out her two parents to almost fuss too much over her well-being, had in the end become the main factor in helping her to more or less fully recover and for her daughter, this only added to the feeling that she'd been truly blessed in the parental department. Speaking of said mother, Becky decided to spend part of her Saturday on paying her a visit at the house that she now occupied alone after Leo's untimely (or timely, depending on how you looked at it) death only a few days earlier.

"How did you know where I live?" Shelly asked her after the two of them had sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of Chamomile tea each.

"I asked around at school until I found someone that knew" she threw a little white lie at her birth giver. In reality, of course, she'd known precisely where it was since she was a kid, seeing as her mom would sometimes mention to her that she used to live there, whenever they'd driven past it.

"Or you could have just asked Norma" Shelly told her before taking a sip of her tea. "I'm guessing that you've heard about what happened to Leo".

"I hope that you don't think that I'm being imposing, but of the people that I've gotten to know here, you're one of my favorites. How are you holding up?" she sweetly asked her mom, who couldn't help herself from smiling a little in spite of the circumstances.

"Shaken up, but I can't say that I was all that surprised. If you live by the sword, then you die by the sword, isn't that what they say?" Shelly sadly asked her as they shared a sympathetic smile. "It'll be a very small funeral too, since he never had any friends to speak of and he was cast out from his family long before I met him. Why, I don't have a clue, but it speaks volumes that when I managed to get a hold of his father on the phone and told him what had happened, his very brief response was saying "Good Riddance" before he hung up on me instantly".

"He must have had some good sides to him too, didn't he? I mean, doesn't everyone?" Becky asked and funnily enough, this was the closest that she'd ever come to having an honest conversation about Leo with her mother, in this or any time period.

"Leo disliked nearly everyone else as much as they disliked him back and he never made any attempt at hiding it. Jaques was the closest that he had to anything resembling a friend and we both know how that so-called friendship ended, don't we? In any case, all that I want right now is to get his funeral tomorrow over and done with, so I can start to rebuild my life. I just hope that I won't be the only one there with the priest, even if something tells me that I probably will be" Shelly confessed to her, sounding both sad and relieved in equal amounts.

"If you tell me when and where, I can be there with you" she offered to her future mom since it felt like the least that she could do, considering what her mom would end up doing for her over the next many years.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't want you to feel like my problems are your problems. You really are a sweetheart though, in case that I don't say it enough. To talk about something else, you've become pretty close with Bobby, haven't you? After all, he did turn up for your birthday party" her mom shyly asked her, most likely just to talk about something far less depressing than death and destruction.

"I've only really had one conversation with him, and it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't both had more than a bit to drink first. Why are you asking?" she inquired to Shelly, whom she could tell had something on her heart that she wanted to ask.

"It's just ..." Shelly began saying before she had to stop and search for the words for a moment. "He came over here late in the evening the day after Leo was murdered and fired off this whole big speech about how I'm the only one that he's ever been in love with, and why the biggest regret of his life was cheating on me with Laura, all of that time ago. Just between the two of us, he both looked and smelled like he'd had to use plenty of "Liquid Courage" to work up his nerve to say those things to me" Shelly explained to her and it wasn't hard for Becky to imagine that it couldn't have been all that pretty of a picture.

"You aren't entirely sure about him, is that it?" she asked the teenage version of her much-beloved mom, whom in turn gave her a small nod as a reply.

"That's one way of putting it. Becky, when we were in the seventh grade and we shared our first kiss, it was natural for him to still be an immature kid, and I was precisely the same. Just a big kid, who didn't know much about anything yet and too often acted before thinking first. Since then, I've become something resembling an adult and he's still stuck in the same mindset that he had when we were thirteen. Sometimes, I seriously wonder if he'll ever grow up, and I can't rebuild my life around someone that I can't be sure if I can count on when things get tough" Shelly half-admitted to her, half thought out loud.

"You still can't stop yourself from liking him though, can you?" she asked back, seeing as she also was a true master at reading her mom like an open book.

"If he would just give me something, or anything for that matter, to make me believe that he won't stay an irresponsible manchild for the rest of his life, I'd be making out with him right now, but I'm just not sure if I see it in him. Not to mention that he's already cheated on me before, so how can I trust him not to do it again? I guess what I'm asking is what you would do in my shoes" her mom asked her before suddenly realizing how low she was sinking. "Look at me, I'm asking for love advice from someone, who can't even remember who she is!" she blurted out and perhaps it was a reaction to all of the doom and gloom that had been building itself up, but Becky could help herself from laughing at Shelly's outburst and soon after, her mother couldn't either.

"I didn't mean for it to come out like it did, sorry!" her mom apologized after their laughter had begun subsiding.

"It's perfectly okay" she assured Shelly.

"By the way, I really needed to laugh again, so thanks for that. Honestly, if you were me, wouldn't the logical choice for you be to tell Bobby to get lost and see if you couldn't find someone better?"

"The way that I see it, love isn't and has never been about following logic, it's about following what your heart tells you and what I would do doesn't matter, because I'm not you. I can't sit here and hand out advice on exactly what you should do, but what I can tell you is that I used to know a guy, who was a spitting image of Bobby and believe it or not, he turned out to be most responsible person that I've perhaps ever met. Sometimes people surprise you that way and who's to say that it won't be the same for da ... Bobby!" she quickly corrected herself after her near blunder of epic proportions and thankfully, it looked like her mom was too lost in her own thoughts to have picked up on it.

"Maybe, I should give him a second chance. One thing that's for sure is that I won't be getting married again anytime soon, I can guarantee you that much!" Shelly dryly stated and took another sip of her tea that must have begun to get a little cold, with how much they'd become lost in deep conversation.

Okay, so it wasn't a glowing guarantee in any way that her parents would not only become a couple again, but also one that stayed together for the long haul. Still, by the time that Becky said her goodbyes to her soon-to-be mom, she left with a feeling that one way or the other, those two crazy kids would find a way to make a relationship between them work.

With Becky not knowing anything about BOB, except for him being a killer and having begun suddenly appearing in both her own and Laura's dreams, she figured that the only place that it made sense to start (since it was 1989 and the only place that anything resembling what would later become known as the internet existed was in the books of sci-fi author William Gibson) was the town's library. In the future, their local library still existed of course, but she'd never seen that many people down there at any one time before and while she'd never browsed through the section on their town's history before, it quickly turned out to quite helpful, at least if you were looking for little tidbits to bring up in a casual conversation.

She already knew the basics from what she'd been taught during her early years in school. This being that an explorer named Dominick Renault (whom she guessed was likely to be a direct ancestor to the one that had committed the latest murder in town) had essentially become the founder of what one day would become Twin Peaks, when he'd opened a trading post shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century, pretty much exactly where the Great Northern Hotel now stood. Of course, he couldn't build the town by himself, and most of the town's early residents were either glory seekers that had brought their families up there or in many cases, outlaws, who'd outstayed their welcome just about everywhere else and saw the remoteness of the town as a chance for a fresh start in their lives. Throughout the majority of the 1800's, it had then very slowly grown to a population size of a around three to four hundred, until the Martell sawmill (later to be known as the Packard sawmill) had opened its doors for the first time in 1891. With this one action, Twin Peaks had instantly become a veritable hub for the lumber trade and as such, one of the most important small towns in the furthest parts of the North West, a position that it would go on to hold for most of the twentieth century, right up to the mill fire that would (or perhaps wouldn't, now that a few things had been changed by herself) mark a distinctive negative turning point in the town's history.

One thing that she found out rather quickly after she'd begun turning pages in a book called "Lumber Town: The Written and Illustrated History of Twin Peaks", was that Ben Horne had been bending the truth more than a little when he'd told her that the Horne family had basically built the town by themselves, seeing as the first Horne ancestor to settle up there (going by the closest that she could find to official records, anyway) had been Orville Horne in 1905, who in time had opened the Horne department store. Then again, she also figured that the other story had no doubt been a better selling point to potential investors and it wasn't like all that many people would care enough to look through large volumes of books to find out the actual truth, in any case.

Most of what she managed to dig up wasn't all that interesting though, at least if we were talking about finding some sort of connection to this mysterious murderer with a three-letter name. All of the few occasions where several lives had been lost also had a natural explanation to them (like the blizzard from hell that had wreaked havoc and cost over fifty people their lives in 1889, in what by far was the biggest natural disaster to have ever hit the town in its storied history) and as for finding just the slightest mention of any resident evil spirits, all that she got out of her efforts were a big, fat zero. On the other hand, she also had to think to herself that if any such thing existed, then it probably wasn't something that was spoken too loudly about in social circles and to most rational thinking residents, it would have undoubtedly seemed entirely too unbelievable to have the slightest hint of truth to it. Plus, who was to say that BOB had ever been there prior to murdering Laura and if he had, why would anyone have paid any kind of attention to yet another new face up in an area, where it for the past century at least had been commonplace for unskilled laborers to move from town to town in search of employment?

After a couple of hours, she'd given up on her fruitless search (not that she had much of a choice, seeing as the library was closing for the day) and had made her short way over to the Double R for a piece of one of Norma's highly delicious pies, with a damn fine cup of Joe to compliment it, it almost goes without saying. Sitting down by the counter, she'd only barely noticed that her father-to-be was there and not only that, also in the company of her grandparents, no less. It almost felt weird to her to finally see her grandfather on her dad's side for the first time, given that he'd disappeared during a fishing trip just a handful of weeks after this and in spite of a major search for him having been conducted by the Twin Peaks PD, the FBI and the US Airforce in conjunction with one another, not a single trace of him had ever been found, from what her dad had told her. Of course, she'd heard him talk about his old man many times before and always with a tiny hint of hope in his voice that he would someday see him again, but sitting there and eavesdropping on their conversation, it was clear to her that the two of them had the same sort of differences in opinion that most (if not nearly all) rebellious teenagers have with the ones that they're rebelling against.

She wound up spending the evening just hanging out and shooting the breeze with Laura, Donna and Audrey (or the three musketeers, as she'd begun calling them in her head) over at Laura's family's house. While she'd had a wonderful time with "Her Girls" again, it also sent her to bed that evening once again wondering how she would be able to go back to her life in the future, where she could count the remaining friends (who weren't also her parents) that she had in town on two fingers, with one of them also being her employer that had known her since she was born and the other being an old woman on her last legs, whose BFF for the past forty years and change had been a piece of lumber. When it came to everyone else that she'd had in her life in the past, they'd either given up on her due to her drug-addiction, were in jail and would be there for a long time to come or were raging addicts themselves, which was why she'd had to cut them entirely out of her life out of the fear of relapsing.

Following what thankfully had been a dreamless night (from what she could remember), she'd woken up the next day determined to be there to show support for her mother, who was burying a husband that afternoon and, in all likelihood, would be the only one at the funeral, if Becky didn't turn up there to show support for her. Even if her mom had told her that she shouldn't feel obligated to and that Leo, the "Star" of the day's proceedings, had been about as unlikable as they come, what it came down to was that she wanted to be there for someone, who had selflessly been there for herself more times than she could ever begin to make up for. As she could have easily predicted too, Shelly was all kinds of grateful that she'd shown up, although she hadn't been correct in her assumption that no one else would come. Then again, how many of the ten people or so that had decided to be there to pay their last respects were actually there to revel in the fact that a major menace to society was finally gone, was hard to say, but Becky would have guessed that it had to be a minimum of a handful of them.

Seeing as Leo hadn't been religious in even the tiniest sense (as far as what her mother had told her), they'd skipped the part of the funeral that would have taken place in a church and moved straight on to when Leo was to be lowered down into his final resting place. After the priest had given a generic eulogy, if she'd ever heard one before (not that she'd heard that many, if she had to be honest) the rain began pouring down in what in some morbid way was a perfect send-off to a guy that had been constantly miserable and whose only love in life was making others feel as lousy as he did. As the priest had rambled on, she'd taken a look around at the other attendees, and while close to all of them were the kind of rough and tough types of guys with huge, bulging muscles and plenty of tattoos that no doubt made up a part of the regular patronage at "The Roadhouse", one of them stood out to her, a man in a long trench coat and wearing a wide-brimmed hat that hid most of his face when he had his head bent forwards. She'd only made eye contact with the man one time during the proceedings and only for a handful of seconds at most, but something about the cold, yet strangely untamed look in his eyes unsettled her to such a degree that she almost felt on the verge of fainting right there and then. Luckily for her, the scary guy had left quickly and instantly after the funeral had ended, after which it felt to her like she could finally breathe a deep sigh of relief.

"That's the end of that part of my life, I suppose. Bye, bye, Leo" Shelly bid a final goodbye to her husband before they started to walk away from the grave.

"Try not to think of this as the beginning of something, rather than the end of something. My mom told me that once upon a time, when we were leaving my grandmother's funeral" she told Shelly, trying to sound as sympathetic as she could.

"It sounds like you have a very clever mom" her mom told her, without having a clue that she was the mom in question.

"For as much as I've fallen in love with the town and all my new friends here, I can't deny that I miss both her and my dad in an insane way too. Even if we've had our ups and downs as a family, this is the first time that I've tried what it's like to not have them close to me all the time. I'm destined to end up as one of those girls, who still calls her mom ten times a day when she's fifty, aren't I?" she joked to her mom, just to lighten the mood a tiny bit.

"Just be glad that you have a set of parents that love you unconditionally. Most of us aren't that lucky. The one that fathered me never wanted to be a dad and left me and my mom when I was still little and to her, I was a constant reminder of him, so she treated me as you would expect in her case. Honestly, I can't tell if half of the reason that I jumped far too soon into marrying Leo wasn't to be sure that I'd never have to see her again" Shelly sadly confessed to her.

"The best way to show her that she was wrong about you is to create a better life for yourself than she could ever have dreamt of, if you didn't already know. If nothing else, I believe as much as I've ever believed in anything before that you can do it" she tried to cheer her mom up with and it seemed to work as intended.

"It's sounding like you've been regaining more of your memories" Shelly noted.

"I guess, but I'm still not remembering the most important things like where I'm from, as a gigantic one" she blatantly lied to her mother, who looked sympathetic with her, but also a little glad at the same time.

"Can I tell you about three ways where I'm incredibly selfish?" Shelly asked her, to her surprise.

"You, the tiniest little bit selfish? Have you looked in the mirror lately?" she quipped in return and saw a sweet smile on her mom's face in return.

"You know how I said that Bobby came over to my house and professed his love for me? Well, it didn't come out of nowhere, if that's what you were thinking. I slept with him over ten times while I was married to Leo" Shelly confessed to her and looked a bit shameful, as she did.

"For real?" her daughter asked her back, while trying to appear shocked, like this was brand-new information to her. Whether she was doing just a half-way decent job at it, however, was an entirely different matter and one that she wasn't all that sure about.

"When Leo was alive, I could justify to myself that I needed a guy in my life, who adored me and gave me the feeling of being loved that my husband didn't. Now, I'm starting to feel like a grade A bitch for doing the same to Laura that she did to me years ago, when I know better than anyone how hurt that I was when I found out about them. Only, she had the excuse of being two years younger than me and still relatively new to the ways of love and I'm only a few steps away from being a grown woman, who should have known far better than to use his crush on me to selfishly put him at risk and make myself feel slightly better for getting one back against my piece of you know what husband. I can't exactly say that it's been fair on Bobby either, how I've basically been treating him as my personal boy-toy and making him feel like his feelings for me don't mean anything to me. That still isn't the worst part, though" Shelly continued her confessional for the ages. "The worst part is that I completely selfishly don't want you to get your memories back, because you've become the girlfriend that I never had back in school and always wished that I'd had. Sure, I'll still have Norma, if you leave, but she's so much older than me and I could never tell her my deepest and darkest secrets like I can with you. Please don't hate me for it".

After having to swallow a lump in her throat, all that Becky could get out was a faint "I could never hate you", before her eyes saw that someone was scribbled with chalk on the road in front of Norma's car (that Shelly had borrowed and had been parked in the church parking lot the entire time) a word, and when she saw what it said, an ominous feeling rose up in her.

"Why would someone write "Fire" and right there, of all places?" a puzzled Shelly asked her as they both stood and stared at what was left of it, until the rain had washed enough of it away that it soon became unreadable and just a blur of white mixed with the color of the tarmac.

Suddenly, Becky could remember exactly where she'd seen the man at the funeral before, even if he'd long since been shot dead back in the world that she came from.

While she still couldn't recall his name, what she could now remember in detail was his face and more than this, that she hadn't seen him since she was four years old when his life had been ended right in front of her young eyes.

END OF CHAPTER TWELVE

Chapter Text

Even if was a long shot at best, Becky figured that it couldn't hurt to swing by the sheriff's station and both see how Cooper's investigation was going, as well as to tell him about the guy that had scared her half to death at Leo's funeral. When it came to the first part, it didn't surprise her at all when the FBI Agent of Audrey's dreams was very vague in his answers, and she had to think that it was something that had become second nature to him when it came to dealing with civilians, even those in an extraordinary situation, to say the least. He was very interested; however, in what she had to tell him about the "Scary Guy" and not only asked her many oddly specific questions about his appearance but also had her look through a dozen or so mug shots to see if he matched with any of them. After she'd given him a no on the last one that she'd looked at, just like she had with all of the others that in some small or larger way matched the description that she'd provided, he drew a deep sigh that made her curious as to why.

"You have an idea who he could be, don't you?" she asked Cooper, whose grave look on his face spoke louder than a thousand words ever could have.

"Can I trust that if I tell you something, then it won't leave this room?" he asked her back, sounding as serious to the bone as he'd ever done to her ears.

"Here I thought that you knew me well enough by now, to know that it won't" she answered him while staring him in the eyes and could see that he needed a moment to compose himself, while he no doubt tossed and turned in his head how much that he could tell her without breaking some cardinal rules of the bureau that he represented.

"If it's who I think that it could be, we can consider him the biggest threat that has perhaps ever faced this town. When I started at the FBI, he wasn't only my mentor in every sense of the word, but the very reason that I chose the path that I have for myself. I would never in a million years have imagined at that time, that he would someday become public enemy number one, as far as I'm concerned" Cooper informed her, although all that his explanation gave her was even more questions than she'd had before.

"What happened to him?" she asked Cooper, who was clearly somewhat reluctant to say more to her at this time.

"To try make a very long story short, he completely lost his mind and shot his wife in a jealous rage. I was the Agent assigned to protect her from him and luckily for me, he prematurely left me for dead after he'd shot me first and the doctors saved my life. Sadly, she was long gone by the time that my colleagues found us, and I can guarantee you that there isn't a single day that goes by, where I don't wish that I'd managed to save her like I should have. He was caught soon after and sent to a facility for the criminally insane, while the story got the hush treatment in the media, and I spent the next year recovering from my injuries. Somehow, he managed to break out of there around a year ago and he's been on the loose ever since. Becky, if you see this man again, don't even think about approaching him or talking back to him if he tries to initiate any contact with you. I mean it" Cooper imploringly told her and after the information that she'd been just been fed with, it would have been close to impossible to be more fearful of him than she already was.

That night turned out to be an entirely sleepless one for her, while one impossible question after another kept piling up and absolutely no answers presenting themselves to her. Before, she'd pretty much assumed that it would be one the residents of Twin Peaks that would come after Laura, but with this wild card having made his presence known, all bets were off the table and literally anything could happen from here on out. What made the whole situation even more petrifying was that he had to have been tracking her movements for at least a day, or he wouldn't have known about her friendship with Shelly. Unless of course that he'd already had some sort of dealings with Leo and had wanted him dead, which in Leo's specific case wasn't entirely unlikely considering the criminal circles that her mom's thankfully deceased husband had no doubt moved in, still it didn't come close to explaining why he'd written the word "Fire" on the ground in front of her mom's car. Had he been trying to write "Fire Walk with Me" and been disturbed in the process of it, perhaps? Did BOB have anything to do with all of this, if he indeed still existed in spite of not being supposed to be alive? With so many deep-rooted questions in her head and zero definitive answers to find guidance from, it was no wonder to her that any attempt on her part at falling asleep would be entirely futile.

When she checked her alarm clock for the final time before calling quits on her attempt at sleeping, it was almost half past five and she quickly made the decision that she had more important things to do with her time than spend it learning about algebra and how to speak French in school. At first, she wasn't even going to bother with calling in sick, but after having a shower and an hour or so to think about it, she went down to the front desk to look at their phone book and used their land line to let the school know that she was feeling under the weather. After all, what did her telling one more lie mean anyway, with all of the ones that she'd already told over the past three weeks and change? Audrey, whom she was supposed to drive to school with, readily believed her explanation too and told her to feel better soon, which only left one major question that she kept mulling over while she chewed down on her breakfast in the (thankfully not overcrowded on this day) hotel restaurant: Who, if anyone, could give her just a hint of an answer to any of those many questions that she had?

Really, the only one that came to mind was the strange little boy that was living with Mrs. Tremond, who'd been able to somehow tell that she wasn't living in the time period that she was supposed to. She could still remember exactly too, which house that they lived in, as if it had only been a few minutes and not almost two weeks earlier that her and Laura had been there. Then again, considering his very young age, wouldn't he logically have been in school at this hour, like she was supposed to have been too? All the same, it was the only possible lead that she had and if he wasn't there, then she could still see if she could get anything out of the slightly senile (Laura's words, not hers) Mrs. Tremond, herself.

Seeing as she could use a brisk walk to clear her head and get it back in the game despite her lack of sleep, she took a route down through the woods to the "Twin Peaks Retirement Village", as it was called by a majority of the locals, that she hadn't taken since she was around twelve years old, yet still knew like the back of her hand. One thing that she'd learned to appreciate in life after both getting clean and feeling like she'd gotten her life back on track, was the little joys in life. With being out in wild nature having been such an integral part of her childhood, it always brought back sweet memories of simpler times to be surrounded by the sounds and smells of nature, even if those fragrances weren't as evident in February as they would become in the spring and summer months.

If nothing else, getting a good stretch of her legs made her feel approximately as wide awake as she would have been after ten weapons-grade strong cups of coffee and when she reached the house that housed the old woman and her grandson, she checked their mailbox and was almost a little surprised to see that they had relatively normal names, with Mrs. Tremond being named Alice and what she assumed was her grandson being named Pierre. Unfortunately for her however, there was no response when she rang the doorbell or when she knocked on the door and not even a hint of a sound coming from inside, leading her to the conclusion that she'd made the trip down there in vain.

Since she was down in that general area though, she figured that there was no harm in stopping by the small house that belonged to Margaret Lantermann, better known around town as "The Log Lady" and no doubt the butt of an untold number of jokes over years, to see if she would give her five minutes of her time. In many ways, Margaret hadn't just become someone that she cared for deeply in her future life, she was also the wisest woman that Becky had been fortunate enough to get to know. Granted, though, she could also easily guess that Catherine Martell had to have had an incredibly sharp and quick-thinking brain too, considering that she was nothing short of world-class at dishing out sharp-tongued insults on the fly and giving glares that made the blood run cold in whomever, she was glaring at. Still, the very thought alone of trying to initiate a conversation with that terrifying old witch, somehow made sticking her head right into the gaping open mouth of a hungry as hell Tigershark feel like not all that unpleasant of an alternative!

After she'd knocked on Margaret's door, she almost lost her nerve in the time that it took for the door to be opened, but when it did, she was greeted with a warm smile by her old friend.

"My log has been expecting you to stop by for some time now. Come in" the log lady invited her and soon after, they were seated next to one another on the exact same couch that Margaret would still have twenty-eight years on and by that time was looking far more worn down than it was here, where it was practically brand-new.

"What has your log been telling you about me?" she calmly asked Margaret, hopefully without any hint in her voice of looking down on her.

"It likes you" Margaret replied, like it was a perfectly natural answer. "You don't seem as unnerved by me talking to and with a log as you did the first time, we talked. Why is that?"

"I guess that I must have seen enough things since then, that have made me aware that almost anything is possible" she answered and truthfully, it wasn't entirely a fib either.

"Nature has many things to hide from us and only lets us know what it wants to. Tell me, are you religious, dear child?" Margaret warmly inquired, using the same simple term of affection for her that she would use in the far-off future as well.

"I don't believe that there's a God, if that's what you're asking, but I don't look down on people that are religious. If I have to get philosophical for a moment, I guess that what I believe is that it's one of those things that we're not supposed to know the truth about" she replied to Margaret, who seemed to like her answer.

"You're clearly wise beyond your years. Some people choose to think that I'm convinced that God is speaking to me through my log, but it isn't God that speaks to me through it" Margaret told her.

"Who is it, then?" she had to ask out of sheer curiosity.

"How should I know? I'm purely a messenger that relays what it tells me to those that it wants to hear it. It could be God, that's telling it what to say to me, I suppose, yet my sixth sense is telling me that it can't be. It wants me to tell you something" Margaret said before holding the log up to her ear and listening intently for a few seconds. "It wants you to know that what you expected to be entirely true was only half of the truth".

"And?" she had to ask, seeing as she'd been expecting to get a little more out of this mysterious and apparently talking, inanimate object.

"It has something more to tell you. Just a moment" Margaret told her before again putting the log up to her ear, as if she was listening through an old-fashioned phone receiver. "It has a warning for you. It's telling me that "He" will do anything to stop you. It won't tell me who "He" is, though".

"Do you have any idea what it all means?" she asked, not that she didn't have a faint idea of her own.

"As I've already told you, I'm only it's messenger. That's all that it has to say to you right now, I'm afraid" the log lady politely told her and offered her a cup of coffee or tea, whichever was to her liking, that was more than gladly accepted.

Seeing as Becky didn't have more clues to go by and still most of the day ahead of her, she tried to make the most of her afternoon by taking a walk around the town, and taking in just how different the Twin Peaks of 1989 was compared to the version that she had grown up in. Certainly, the largest difference was how much smaller it was, but more than that, there was a difference to the entire vibe of the town and how it at this time almost felt like everyone there were a part of one large family, at least on the surface. From what she'd always been told, when Laura was murdered (in that other timeline that now would hopefully never come to pass) it had hit just about everyone there like a ton of bricks because things like that just didn't happen in a peaceful town like theirs, or so everyone had led themselves to believe.

Of course, the town had seen several murders over its long and storied past, and it wouldn't have been hard for anyone to believe that with the general poverty that reigned up there during its first century of existence, it wouldn't have been all that uncommon for simple disputes to be settled with either fists, knives or guns. By 1989 however, those days were far in the past and the common belief was that the few that had met an early demise were probably the kind of people that had done something to deserve it, like Leo had for one. By 2017 on the on the other hand, it would hardly even be frontpage news whenever yet another untimely death happened, and a lot of it came down to how desensitized that everyone had slowly become to it over time. Sure, if it was someone that had in some way distinguished themselves, then it would raise some eyebrows here and there, but she couldn't imagine it ever becoming "A Big Family" again where everyone looked out for one another, like you would for a loved one.

Clearly, the big talking point on this day among the locals was the news that on this day was plastered all over the front page of the Twin Peaks Gazette (the town's oldest newspaper that in her own time had still existed, albeit only in an on-line version), of how Jaques Renault had pleaded self-defense in the shooting of Leo. From what she knew about her mom's ex too, she wouldn't have been surprised at all if it had been Leo who'd fired first and Jaques had only returned fire to save his own life, still it was obviously a very divisive point in many conversations and from what she could tell, the constantly judging court of public opinion was close to being split down the middle. As for herself, she didn't really care in one way of the other what happened to some grossly overweight and ugly as sin bartender at "The Roadhouse" that she'd only seen one time in her life, but as she would find out later that day, there was a pair of extremely influential brothers in their small town that in no way shared in her indifference.

How did this happen, you may ask? As it turned out, it was more through blind luck than anything else when Audrey (who, being the adorable little sweetheart that she was, was thrilled on her behalf that her friend's "illness" wasn't anything too serious) decided to show off her "Secret Hiding Place" to her, which in reality was a narrow crawlspace in between the office of Ben Horne and Audrey's own room, where you could only just fit in if you weren't too overweight or suffered from claustrophobia. Luckily for Becky though, you could hear pretty much everything that happened on the other side of the plaster wall, if you removed a small and loose section of the wall on their side to reveal a peephole and listened intently. Granted, she hadn't expected to hear anything of interest and had mostly just expected to hear the brothers chatting away about business dealings that were of little concern to her, but maybe it was fate intervening that made it so that her and Audrey were listening in on their conversation at just the perfect time.

"If that loathsome tub of lard goes public about "One-Eyed Jack's", we're screwed, Ben!" she could hear Jerry exasperatedly tell his brother.

"I have it taken care of, Jerry" she heard Ben trying to assure his far more likable brother, at least from what Becky had experienced so far.

"Do you, Ben? Or will this be like when you took care of that little problem of yours down in Deer Meadow?" she heard Jerry ask Ben.

Deer Meadow. The name of that town rang a bell within her and not just because it was one of the nearby towns, although she couldn't entirely place it at that moment.

"That wasn't my fault, and you know it, so stop bringing it up!" they overheard Ben scolding his significantly shorter and undoubtedly more eccentric brother.

"Ben, the way things are looking now, sooner or later there will be a trail of evidence against us that will lead Truman and that pesky FBI Agent straight to our front door. How hard can that be to understand?" Jerry argued.

"This will be the last time; you have my word" they heard Ben trying to reassure his brother. "A guy came here yesterday and offered to take care of Jaques for free for us, so I told him to do his worst, as long as he left our names out of it".

"And you believed him? Was there a sudden and steep drop in intelligence around here and I was never told about it?"

"We can trust him".

"Do you mean like we could trust Leo? That didn't work out too well, did it?"

"Leo was far too unpredictable to be trustworthy. It's my fault for trusting him to follow simple instructions, but this new guy is different".

"How exactly is he different, can you please explain that to me?"

"He isn't doing it to get paid, and he claims to be a former Fed. Anyway, it isn't us that he's got it out for, it's that other FBI Agent, Cooper".

"Ben, I'm sure that I don't have to remind you that if this blows up in our faces, then we won't only have disgraced our family name for all eternity, we'll both be spending the majority of rest of our lives behind a set of bars".

"Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot, Jerry! After this, we'll keep every single one of our business affairs as low-key as possible, you have my word, but this isn't a mountain-sized problem that will magically go away, just because we need it to. We need outside help and with Hank Jennings in jail and Leo resting six feet under, we'll need to look towards alternative solutions".

"What if this guy uses what he knows about you already to blackmail us, what then? Can you tell me that, Ben?"

"If that happens, then we'll deal with it in due time. Have I ever steered you wrong in the past?" they heard Ben ask Jerry and right afterwards, they could hear the sound of a door slamming, which must have put an immediate end to the argument between Audrey's father and uncle, seeing as her and Audrey didn't hear another word for the next several minutes.

"Have you heard of this One-Eyed Jack's that they mentioned?" she asked Audrey after they'd made their way to pleasanter quarters, also known as her hotel room.

"Legend has it that it used to be an illegal casino and brothel up here way back in the prohibition days of the roaring twenties, but I've always thought that it was nothing more than a folktale from the old days" Audrey informed her, looking as surprised as she was that it actually still existed.

"You don't have a clue where it could be, then?" she asked Audrey, who shook her pretty head in reply.

"No, sorry. This is all just as new to me as it is to you" Audrey answered her with a small shrug of her shoulders.

"Deer Meadow. I know that I've heard it mentioned somewhere before" she asked herself, while trying to wreck her brain to come up with where and when it could have been.

"It's a quaint little town, a few dozen miles south of here. I'm pretty sure that my family still owns a beachfront house down there that we rent out to tourists, but I haven't been down there since I was a kid and I've only slept in that house a few times, if my memory serves me right. All that I can really remember about the town is that it's very idyllic, so if you haven't seen it before, I'd say that it's well worth a visit" Audrey informed her, as if she was pretending to be a tourist guide, before doing some thinking out loud of her own. "I wonder if Hap's Diner still exists. We used to always stop by there on our way back from visiting my grandparents in Tacoma, back when they were still living, and my parents if nothing else were pretending that they gave a damn about me. Then, my mom and I would either get an ice-cream sundae or a piece of apple pie with lots of whipped cream on top and my dad would have a beer, while him and my mom took in the joys of anonymity. They used to tell me that the biggest advantage to being outside of Twin Peaks was that no one knew you or had a set in stone opinion about you, like pretty much everyone does about us here. Come to think of it, it's kind of funny how I can remember little things like that, as clear as it was yesterday, and I couldn't tell you for sure whatever it was that I had for breakfast earlier today".

Deer Meadow. Hap's Diner. Tacoma. What did those three things have in common? It took her the better part of an hour to put the puzzle together, but when she did, the answer was so clear in her head that it left no doubt.

The brutal murder of Teresa Banks and the strange disappearance of FBI Agent Chet Desmond.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chapter Text

Becky liked to think that she'd tried her share of things for someone in her age group. Plus, of course, quite a few things that she guessed had to be reserved for a very tiny and select group of people, with time travelling between dimensions undoubtedly being by far the strangest and most mind-blowing out of them. Still, one thing that she'd never imagined herself doing was willfully taking on an active part in law enforcement, yet this was exactly what would soon be taking place as she sat next to Laura in the Twin Peaks sheriff's station while she was waiting to be fitted with a miniscule-sized, hidden microphone.

How did her and Laura and end up in this situation, you may be asking yourself? To make a long story short, it all began the day after her and Audrey had overheard the Horne brothers having their argument where she'd first heard the name "One Eyed Jack's", and on an evening that was supposed to be spent on creating something as simple as a game plan for how Laura was going to come clean to everyone in her life about her rampant romantic feelings for James Hurley, that clearly went far beyond a usual teenage crush. Of course, that's if she still survived another week, it goes without saying, seeing as they'd already reached the 16th of February, meaning that if nothing changed over the next week and change, then Laura would be, as she herself so eloquently had put it: Toast.

"How do you think that Donna will react? It's pretty much obvious from space that she likes him too" Becky had brought up while they were up in Laura's room and indulging in eating far too much rich chocolate cake for a pair of girls, whose growing days were long since behind them.

"That's the one thing that worries me. Well, that and brutally getting murdered less than a week from now, but I have to deal with one thing at a time, don't I?" Laura dark-humoredly asked her back in dead-pan fashion, clearly using that same well-developed sense of dark humor to shield the fact that she must have been getting more petrified with each passing day that her looming and untimely end could be coming far too soon. "I don't know if I should be asking you this, but have your memories of what happens to me changed at all?"

"If they do, then you'll be the first to know" she assured Laura, before bringing up another, possible pressing question. "By the way, have you ever heard of a place called One-Eyed Jack's?"

"Hasn't everyone up here heard about it at some point? Unless they're kids, of course" Laura replied in a slightly nervous way, and now that she'd gotten to know her close to as well as the back of her hand, Becky could instantly tell that her possibly doomed friend was trying to avoid the question by speaking in broad terms.

"From what I gather, it's supposed to have been the Twin Peaks version of "Crime Central" going back over sixty years. I wouldn't have known about it at all if Audrey and I hadn't overheard the Horne brothers having a loud argument where they mentioned it" she informed Laura, who was looking more than a little too uneasy for comfort.

"It must have been before your time" Laura briefly replied and needed a few seconds to compose herself before she continued. "If I tell you something, do you promise that it won't leave this room?"

"Absolutely" she readily answered and unknowingly set in place being told a story that if it had come from anyone else, then she probably would have taken it with a large grain of salt, if not an entire ten-pound bag of it.

"It isn't something that I'm proud of in any sort of way, but back when I always needed money for drugs, I used to work there. It wasn't for very long though; I need to stress that!" Laura confided in her, although it only raised even more questions in Becky's mind.

"As a ..." she tried saying leadingly, in the hope that Laura would fill out the blanks for her.

"As someone, who was practicing the oldest profession in the world" Laura confessed to her and Becky could instantly see the shame written all over both her face and her entire body language. "I even helped them to recruit Ronette as well. I really owe that girl the apology of a lifetime, don't I?"

"It sure sounds that way. How were you "recruited", if you don't mind me asking?"

"They go after easy victims among the girls that work at the Horne department store. One of the managers there scopes out the kind of girls that they're looking for, which is basically code for being either poor as dirt or as desperate as I was to stay constantly high. Once you've fallen in with them, the only ways out are to either move far away and never come back again or if they kick you out on your butt, like I was for turning up a few times so blasted out of my skull that I could barely stand up. Thank the heavens for small blessings in disguise, am I right?"

"How many guys did you ... service?" she asked Laura, even if she really didn't want to know the answer.

"Usually, it was three or four in an evening, so I can't tell you for sure. Thankfully, nearly every part of that whole royally fucked up period of my life is one giant blur in my memories, and I'd definitely prefer to keep it that way, if I at all can" Laura told her with a voice full of regret and if anyone understood where she was coming from, it was the girl that she was confessing even more of her sins to than had already seen the light of day between the two of them. "Unfortunately, I can still remember every second of my horrible experience with my first "customer" like it was yesterday, not that I want to. Every time that I've seen him since that day, it's made the hairs stand up on my arms".

"Who is he?" she asked Laura, who seemed reluctant to answer her. "Laura, if he was an adult, then it could have been statutory rape and whether he paid for your services or not doesn't matter. Don't you agree that creeps like him deserve to pay for what they've done?"

"It isn't that simple!" Laura tried to convince her and almost did so loudly enough that her parents could have listened in on it from down in their living room. "Becky, this isn't just a one-man wrecking crew in Leo that we're talking about anymore, who was bound to get taken down by his own greed sooner, rather than later. These are people that I'm a hundred percent certain have deep ties to the criminal underworld and if you mess with them, they're sure to get theirs back at you in one way or the other. In other words, making yourself number one on their shit-list isn't exactly a smart thing to do if you value staying alive!"

"I get that and I'm the number one supporter of you not getting murdered, remember? I just think that it could help you to rid yourself of a lot of those inner demons of yours, if you came clean to someone about all of this stuff and if I'm not the right one to tell it to, then pick someone else. Laura, do you know what the hardest part of being in rehab is?" she asked Laura, who had to pass on giving an answer. "It isn't dealing with withdrawals or getting used to the idea of living a life without the source of your addiction to get you through the days, it's facing up to all of the shitty ass shit that you did to those that love you and just as much, to yourself. That's the real price that every addict has to pay when they're getting clean and I get why so many fall in again, because it's so much easier to go back to classifying yourself as a drug addict rather than as an asshole, who did what they did because they stopped caring about anything else besides getting high. I consider myself blessed that I never had to sell myself, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't have done it, back when the one thing that I cared most about was escaping reality. What I can tell you for sure is that the body heals a whole lot faster than the mind does, and nothing there helped me more than the group therapy sessions and spilling all of my beans to someone that won't judge you, because they felt what it's like on their own bodies. I hope that you know in your heart that I would never for a moment consider doing that to you".

After her little "Extended Monologue", which wound up being far longer than she'd planned it to be, she could tell that it was hitting home with her troubled friend, who'd already gone through so much more crap in her short life than someone her age ever should have. It would take a good couple of minutes of quiet contemplation for her friend to get the truth out though, and when she got the answer, it only took a pair of seconds until it suddenly didn't surprise her anymore.

"It was Ben Horne" Laura admitted with a sound of loathing in her voice, which said all about how she viewed Audrey's father with nothing but sheer and utter disgust.

Over the following days, she'd slowly but surely worn away at Laura's resolve and gotten her to come clean about what she knew to sheriff Truman and Special Agent Cooper, including about her short time as a "Valued Employee" at the most infamous brothel and casino in the area. On Laura's personal request, she'd been by her side and literally held her hand through the confessional and whereas Truman had looked like his world had just been rocked and been too shocked to ask any follow up questions, Cooper had somehow kept it strictly professional all the way and asked Laura plenty of questions, most of which were simple yes or no ones. By the end of it though, she could tell that, yet another massive weight had been lifted off of Laura's shoulders and as far as major steps towards healing for her, this was clearly a huge one.

As fate would have it too, another big point had been checked off on Laura's list later that day, when they'd met James by chance down at the Double R (not that it was all that much "by chance", seeing as it was no secret to either of them that James was an enormous fan of Norma's tasty pies, if there ever was one!) and Laura in private had confessed her true feelings for the boy that she was so crazy in love with. Okay, so it wasn't like they came out as an official couple to the entire school the day after, but they'd told those closest to them and with the exception of Bobby's friend Mike getting a bit peeved on his pal's behalf, until Bobby (in an admirable move on his part) took charge of the situation and told his buddy to leave it be, it hadn't stirred up any sort of hurt feelings so far. Not even with Audrey, who'd become so lost in her infatuation with Cooper that her only reply to the news was a small shrug of her shoulders and her wishing the two of them the best or Donna, who was probably way too much of a natural people-pleasing girl to speak up for herself, in any case. If Becky would have had more time in 1989, then this would probably be her next project, because she could easily see a far too nice for her own good girl like Donna getting positively trampled out in the harsh realities of the adult world, if she didn't learn soon how to take a hard stand on something and stick to her guns. With bigger things on her palate however, she would have to leave it be and just hope for new and extremely lovable friend that it would eventually start to come natural to her, like it eventually had with herself after enough instances of blatant injustice had been thrown in her face.

On that same day, herself and Laura had been summoned to the sheriff's station, where Jaques Renault (who'd worked as a croupier in the casino part of "One Eyed Jack's") apparently had decided that if he was going to go down in flames, then he would be taking everyone that he could down with him, especially if it meant that it helped him in his own upcoming murder trial. A far braver than it was clever move for certain, still as Laura had stated bluntly several times before (and Becky wholly believed based on what little that she'd seen of his rather disgusting self), Jaques wasn't exactly what you could call the sharpest knife in the drawer and with little to nothing to lose anymore, she could only imagine that he would have made for just about the easiest target in the entire North-Western United States for a pair of highly experienced, not to mention far more intelligent interrogators like Cooper and Truman. Heck, with how utterly unsophisticated that Laura had described his sorry butt as, they probably could have asked Donna's very innocent thirteen-year-old little sister Harriet to get the truth out of him, and she would have found it pretty damn easy! In turn, Laura had admitted to Truman and Cooper about her own past working at the combined casino and brothel, however brief it might have been, and Becky could tell that afterwards, it felt like another small weight had been taken off Laura's narrow shoulders that had been holding so much of it for so long, that she'd long since lost any sense of when it had all begun for her.

However, being told about this wasn't the only reason why they'd been called down there, seeing as they needed to use Laura's knowledge to get an overview of the layout of the place, in preparation for a joint action with the Canadian police (due to One-Eyed Jack's being located just across the US-Canadian border) to strike at them when they were hopefully at their fullest. Laura told them all that she could remember of course, yet there were many small and important details that she was heavily in doubt over, likely because she (by her own admission) had never been anywhere close to not being in an altered state on her few dozen workdays there. Owing to this, Cooper and Truman had agreed that they needed to send a pair of spies in there to scope the place out and with Becky being more or less still a complete unknown in Twin Peaks, it only made sense that she took up one of those parts with Cooper playing the other.

"And you're absolutely positive that the Horne brothers won't be there tonight?" Laura concernedly asked her, just before the two of them would have to bid goodbye for what in the worst-case scenario could have been the final time.

"Going by what Audrey told me, they'll than have their hands full with entertaining some potential big investors from Iceland, I think it was. I wouldn't ever have said yes to this, if I thought that there was even one percent chance that my life will be on the line" she tried to assure Laura, who'd clearly been more worried over what could happen to her than Becky herself had.

"You don't think that anyone else there could have seen you around town before?" Laura brought up.

"If they did, then so what? The only ones that I can imagine could have seen me before are from my one evening down at the Roadhouse, and I can't imagine that many of those guys gave me a second glance, let alone still remembers me over a week and a half later. Anyway, I'll have Cooper there to hold my hand me throughout most of it" she told Laura, who was continuing to look uneasy on her behalf all the same.

Arriving at One-Eyed Jack's with Cooper, she couldn't help feeling a sense of history surrounding the place, albeit one that spoke volumes about the seedy things that must have taken place there over its many years of existence. Surely, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine that in year's past, it would have been a perfect place for a summit between mob bosses or the like, who needed a place far away from having the eyes of law enforcement constantly looking over their shoulder, to discuss their business dealings and no doubt indulge in some horizontal fun with the "Pleasure Girls" that worked up there. Predictably, they were both frisked by a pair of gigantic-sized bouncers at the door and for a moment or two, she almost began to panic when she thought about what would happen to them if those same bouncers found her hidden microphone, until she got a hold on herself and managed to keep up the act that she needed to.

"Nice job back there" Cooper whispered to her, as they got an overview of the casino part.

"I just hope that I won't ever have to do anything like this again. What now?" she asked him, keeping it at a low enough volume that no one would be suspicious of them.

"We play some games" he cryptically told her with a small smile to match. "Have you ever been to a casino before?"

"No, this is a first for me" she readily admitted to him.

"Just follow my lead and you'll do fine. If anyone asks you, we're ..." he asked leadingly, so that she could fill out the rest.

"A wealthy entrepreneur father and his daughter from Missouri, who are up here to scout out locations to put up a new shopping mall in. Why Missouri?" she asked him, not that this was the right time or place for it.

"How much are you willing to bet that no one in here has ever set foot there?" Cooper asked her and she could instantly see what he meant.

Basically, the plan was brilliant in its simplicity. They would start off by doing some gambling and after a short while, Cooper would excuse himself to go and scout out the rest of the place, while she served as his distraction and would stay at the table until it was time to leave. If everything went according to plan, they'd be out of there again in an hour at the most and whatever her hidden microphone picked up could hopefully be used to prosecute some bad guys and in time, get them sent them to the kind of prison that they belonged in.

Seeing as the only casino game that she'd ever played before was poker, and the version that they played here was far different from the one game of strip poker that she'd played for fun with Vicki way back when they were still in grade ten and best friends (and she'd lost in an almost pitiful way), the logical choice was for her to learn how to play roulette and only to bet on the fifty-fifty choices of odds or evens. She could quickly see why it would be addictive to someone that has "The Greedy Gene" and although it quickly began to feel a bit tedious to her to see that small metal ball whizzing around on the roulette wheel, she had to admit to feeling a bit excited whenever she won on one of her bets, in spite of it being the FBI's money that she was gambling with and she wouldn't get to keep any of the winnings.

As they'd planned, Cooper had excused himself after only a handful of minutes to go and take care of his own business of scouting out the rest of the premises in lieu of the forthcoming raid on the place, which left her by herself to be stared at by the rest of the gamblers, most of which were men between the age of forty and sixty and in nearly all cases, dressed in fine suits that no doubt cost as much or more than she made in a year in her menial job at the Double R, back in her own time. While this made her rather uncomfortable, it didn't compare though to when a dark-haired and middle-aged woman dressed in a long black gown came over to her with a pair of large bouncers by her side, of the kind that anyone with any common sense wouldn't want to start anything with, or when they dragged her away to a somewhat quiet place on the edge of the casino where none of the many gamblers could hear what was said between them.

"We don't get many single women coming up here to gamble and especially not those, who look like they're barely out of high school, if that" the pretty imposing woman told her with a hint of swagger in her voice, that she probably used as a defense mechanism to deal with having to stay strong in this man's world that she from the looks of it was an integrated part of. "They call me Blackie. You are?"

"My name is Rebecca. I'm here with my dad" she tried telling the woman, whom it looked like she was more or less buying her explanation, if nothing else.

"And he just left you alone in a place like this? He must be a brave man, considering all of the trouble that a lost little lamb like you could quickly find herself in" the woman, whom apparently was nicknamed Blackie, said in a somewhat menacing manner while she stared into Becky's eyes in a way that only served to make our young heroine even more nervous about the whole thing than she already was

"He knows that I can take care of myself" she quickly responded to the woman, albeit not with much conviction in her voice, if she had to be honest about it.

"Can you now, little lamb? Honey, I've never been one to beat around the bush and I don't know who you really are or why you're actually here, but I have my ways of finding out soon enough. Are you going to come willingly or do I need to have to have my two associates here helping me? Either way, I'll get what I want, so it's your choice" Blackie told her and only a minute or two later, Becky found herself being interrogated by both her and a man with a thick French accent, who was dressed in a fine brown suit and instantly made chills run down her spine, just from the way that he stared her down like she was a piece of livestock, who was being prepared for slaughtering.

One thing that she was sure of however, was that she suddenly found herself in deep trouble, perhaps deeper than she'd ever been in before and when she saw Cooper being dragged in after having clearly been beaten up, even she had to admit to being on the verge of going into a full-fledged panic.

END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chapter Text

Becky had been afraid before; it wasn't like that. She could even claim to have been downright terrified before, like when she thought that she could have unwillingly caused the death of her former best friend, Vicki. Still, the situation that she found herself in at this present moment was taking it to a new level and just the thought of what would be done to her by her captors if the hidden microphone on her was found, was enough to make her fear for her life.

After she'd been "captured" along with Cooper at "One Eyed Jack's", she'd instantly been filled with a sense of dread, and it hadn't subsided in any sort of way after she'd been taken to one of the rooms that she guessed was being used to "Service" the clients, who didn't come there to gamble as much as they came there to indulge in excesses of the most erotic kind. As the minutes passed in what felt like hours as she awaited what would happen next, all that she could hope for was the police raiding party would be making their presence felt soon and preferably before something befell her that she would possibly never recover from happened to her.

As she heard the lock on the door that she was trapped behind being opened, all that she could do was brace herself for what was to come, whatever it might be, although she could easily guess that it wouldn't be something that she would ever want to look back on, in case that she survived what was to come.

"Relax, I'm not here to hurt you, only to talk" the man with the thick French accent told her, even if she had a hard time believing him. "Blackie though, she doesn't have any mercy in her, like I do. So, why don't you tell me who you really are and what exactly you're doing here" the man continued, all the while staring her down and making her feel even more in a sticky situation than she already had.

"Why should I trust you?" she asked the man back and got a small, albeit also quite unnerving smile in return.

"If I wanted you gone and didn't have any use for you, then you wouldn't be here. Allow me to introduce myself. Jean Renault is the name. You might have met my brother Jaques before" Jean introduced himself. "I'm also a busy man that hates to have my time wasted, so are you going to talk to me willingly, or do I have to take the kind of actions to make you talk that you don't want me to have to take?"

"Like?" she couldn't help herself from asking back, even if she didn't actually want to know.

"Do you really want to find out?" Jean menacingly asked her back and as she shook her head, he smiled devilishly to himself. "I thought not. So?"

"I've come up here with my dad to ..."

"Scout out locations for a shopping mall. I've already heard that lie once before, so don't try to use it on me again or I could get angry with you. Believe me, you wouldn't want that to see that happen, any more than I would want to have to hurt an innocent girl, who's found herself in the worst place at the worst possible time. Do you know what the term "Quid Pro Qou" means?"

"Something for something, isn't it?" she replied, all the while considering if she could actually trust anything that came out of this (admittedly well-dressed and quite sophisticated sounding) scoundrel's mouth.

"Tell me the truth and you can walk out of here unharmed, like nothing had happened. Try to lie to me again though, and I'll let Blackie's goons do whatever they want to you. From what I hear, they can be quite brutal when no one is around to keep a leash on them and as for Blackie, I wouldn't expect to receive the same sort of mercy from her that you would from me. I can't tell you what it is with her or what happened to her in the past to make her like she is, but I've never been scared of anyone in my life and even I know better than to get on her bad side. So?" Jean asked her in an eerily clam tone, which only made the chills that were already running down her spine, increase to a nearly unbearable level.

"You wouldn't believe me, if I told you", she told bluntly Jean, whose smile suddenly turning into the most unsettling laughter, she'd ever heard.

"I can believe in more things than you can imagine. My own father, damned his rotten and cursed eternal soul, believed with every cell in his body that the forests up here are filled with evil spirits, who want to inhabit our bodies and make us do unspeakable things to those that we love. It sounds insane, I know, but then again, what else would you expect from a miserable bastard that never cared about anything except for himself and only saw evil, where everyone else could only see good? As a child, I never believed him and didn't want anything more to do with him than I had to, still as I grew older, I began to realize that maybe, he wasn't entirely wrong. Evil is everywhere and all lifeforms have it in some form inside of us, it's only a matter of how great we are at hiding it and whether we want to hide it in the first place" Jean, for some odd reason, felt the need to explain to her.

"The truth is that I was sent here to stop a girl from being murdered, but the longer that I've stayed here, the more I believe that I was chosen to save the town from itself and what it could become, if nothing is done to stop it" she answered her captor (or one of them, at least) and why she decided to come clean in this way and to someone that could, and probably would, use it against her if he had the chance to, stood as a mystery to even herself.

Honestly, she had no clue how Jean would react either, and the seconds that he just stared at her and didn't say anything felt nothing short of never-ending, until he finally spoke again.

"Sent by who?" he asked her, sounding interested in her like he hadn't before this.

"I don't know exactly who they are or if I can trust them. All that I can tell you is that if I don't save this girl, then it will also lead to the death of both you and your two brothers, Bernard and Jaques. Save me and you'll save yourself" she replied to Jean and while where the words were coming from or how she'd suddenly found the courage to say them still wasn't known to her (especially considering that she'd never acted this brave before), what was clear was that they hit something within Jean, who didn't say a word until he exited the room again, as quickly as he'd entered it.

Thus, the following couple of hours passed and while she felt all kinds of relieved that she'd managed to fool death the first time around, she was still filled with an ominous feeling that all she'd bought herself was a brief reprieve from something even worse that could befall her. In truth, she hadn't even noticed the ruckus outside of the place at first, until it grew to such a degree that it had to be her salvation that was on their way, or to put it in simpler terms, the raid that the Twin Peaks police department had planned with the Canadian police that was finally taking place. She even heard a few gunshots being fired, but with there being no windows where she was and a solidly locked door separating her from everything that went on outside of it, she'd lost all control of her own fate and when it opened again, she had no way of knowing if it would be a proverbial knight in shining armor that was coming to save her, or someone with far more sinister plans for her. With nothing resembling a weapon at her disposal either, she would have little chance of fighting back and would be at their mercy, unless she happened to find some sort of inner strength that hadn't shown its face in her before this.

When it did and Cooper entered, followed by Truman and Hawk, she could finally breathe a sigh of relief from knowing that at least for now, her brief brush with death had come to a peaceful end.

Another hour or so later, as the Canadian police were busy arresting anyone that hadn't managed to flee out into the woods, things were beginning to calm down to the point where the Twin Peaks PD were ready to leave the scene and head back to the station for a debriefing, before they could call an end to a long day. This apparently also included herself, although she could only imagine that it would take a day or two to get the last feelings of imminent dread out of her system.

"Did they hurt you?" Hawn asked her in his usual near-stoic tone, while they were sitting in his patrol car and waiting for Andy to join them after he'd had to take a minute or two to answer nature's call.

"No, but they sure scared the living daylights out of me!" she honestly admitted to the friendly and quietly intelligent native American, who in the years that came afterwards would end up being one of the best friends that her dad would ever have.

"No one expected you to be a hero in there. It's to your great credit too that we can finally close down this place and hopefully, put those behind it in front of a judge to meet their fates. You should be proud of yourself" Hawn told her with a knowing look to match and where dread had been what had filled her mind for the last couple of hours, his words still managed to make her feel just a little bit taller than she usually did.

"Thanks, but from now on, I'm leaving the law enforcement in this town to the professionals and staying as far away from the action, as I possibly can. I have far too much to live for now; to foolishly put myself at that sort of risk again" she told Hawk, who took a moment to reflect on and mull over her answer prior to speaking again.

"You didn't before?" he asked her and suddenly, she remembered that he could have been listening in on everything that had been said between herself and Jean, including her confession about who she really was. Of course, there was no way to find out for sure, apart from asking him head-on.

"Did you hear what I said to Jean?" she tried asking Hawk, just to test the waters.

"Only small parts here and there. Probably not enough to get a conviction against him, but all of that remains to be seen. Becky, I've never been a religious man nearly as much as I'm a spiritual man, still if there's one thing that my people believe and I've always held onto, it's that the world we inhabit is full of so many mysteries that we couldn't begin to wrap our heads around it, if we tried. All of things that I've seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears during my lifetime has only made me all the surer that just about anything is possible. If you believe that you were sent here to save someone from being murdered, then I believe you, is all that I'm trying to say. Do you know who this girl is?" Hawk asked her and she could instantly tell that he wasn't lying, when he'd said that he believed her.

"She's someone that I've become close friends with. Sometimes, it feels like she's the twin sister that I've never had" she admitted to Hawk. "If I don't manage to save her, I don't know how I could live with myself afterwards, but since I don't know who will try to do it to her or how it will happen, it's impossible to prepare myself for it".

"Truman knows now. He'll make sure that we keep her safe" Hawk tried to assure her before they were interrupted by a call over the police radio.

"Is anyone there?" she could hear Lucy saying over the radio in her sweet and as girly as could be voice, that Becky had always found all kinds of adorable in its own quirky sort of way.

"I'm here with Becky, Lucy. Everyone is safe and we'll be on our way back to you soon" Hawk told Lucy, whom she could hear letting out a sigh of relief on the other end.

"You'd better hurry. Someone came here while you were all away and he had a gun. He didn't do anything to me, but ... he's dead, Hawk. Jaques Renault. He's dead!" a clearly massively shaken up Lucy informed them and they could now easily detect more than a hint of fear being left in her voice.

"Is he still there?" Hawk asked, just as they could begin to hear Andy's footsteps, as he walked up to the patrol car.

"No, he left right away, after he was done. He left a message for you, though, written in Jaques' blood on the wall of his cell. He wrote the word "Walk". I don't know what he means by it, however. Do you?" Lucy asked them and instantly, the fear began to fill every cell of Becky's body again.

"Let me see if I have this right. You heard the phrase "Fire, Walk with Me" in a dream and now, someone is stalking you and spelling it out one word at a time and in places, where he knows that you'll either see it or hear about it?" Truman asked her after they'd rushed back to the station, breaking every speed limit along the way to get back to the horrific scene that awaited them there.

"Those are the basics of it, yes" she confessed to the sheriff, who was the only one in the interrogation room with her, apart from Cooper.

"I know that it sounds crazy, Harry, but if this stalker is who I think that he is, then he's as tangible of a threat as you'll find anywhere. His name is Windom Earle and he's a former colleague and mentor of mine, who lost his mind and has been on the run from the law ever since he escaped from the mental asylum that he'd been locked up in" Cooper interjected, not that she minded it at all.

"And they shared the same dream, Becky and this Windom Early guy? Can't you hear how unlikely that all of this all sounds?" Truman asked both Cooper and her, clearly in some sort of attempt at making sense of all of this new insanity that he was suddenly being faced with.

"I would have been a sceptic too, if it wasn't for Becky and me more or less sharing a dream as well and in my dream, I saw and talked to the older version of a friend of Becky's, whom she believes is her stalker's real target. A girl named Laura Palmer" Cooper explained to a still disbelieving sheriff Truman.

"Leland's daughter? How on earth is she involved in all of this?" Truman had to ask.

"I wish that I could tell you, but I don't have the answer to it. Harry, I swear to you on my honor as an Agent that I had never in my life seen this girl before until Becky took me to see her, but there she stood right in front me, young and vibrant and an exact younger copy of the woman that was in my dream. I can't explain it either or for that matter how my deranged former mentor got involved in all of this, but one thing that I'm a hundred percent sure of is that the lives of both of these girls are in danger and we have to make their security our number one priority until Earle is captured and behind bars again. If we don't manage to stop him this time, there's no telling how many bodies that he'll leave in his wake before we catch up to him again" Cooper said almost imploringly to Truman, who if nothing else, was looking willing to believe that he was dealing with a dangerous criminal and someone, who could potentially end up killing one or more of those that he's sworn to protect.

"If you'll give me a description of him, I can have Lucy put out an APB in the morning, if she isn't too shaken up to come in tomorrow, the poor girl!" Truman gave in with a small shake of his head. Luckily, the murderer had only locked Lucy into the office that they were now in and hadn't hurt her physically, plus Jaques had been the only one in their holding cells, but it didn't mean that what had happened hadn't greatly affected the little sweetheart emotionally and after Andy had kindly offered her to spend the night at his house, she'd gladly accepted his invitation. "Apart from that, I don't what else we can do right now. We'll keep both you and Laura safe from any harm though, you have my word on it, Becky" he told her directly and turned his head slightly to look her in the eyes.

"Like you kept Jaques safe from harm?" she couldn't help herself from asking back, even if it was a bit smart-assed of her to ask such a question to someone, who was only trying to offer her words of comfort.

"We'll set every sail in motion to make it happen, don't you worry. If you see him or you experience anything suspicious, I want you to come down here and tell us about it right away. Are we clear?" Truman asked of her and assured her at the same time.

"Crystal" she told him back, albeit not with as much conviction in her voice as she would have wished.

After all, if Earle could get to Jaques in a supposed safe place like a holding cell in a police station, how hard would it be for him to strike against herself and Laura when they were at their weakest?

END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Chapter Text

With only two days to go before Laura either met her untimely end or was saved from it, Becky was feeling the time pass by far too quickly for her own liking. Of course, she could have already by pure chance done what she'd travelled back in time to do, still her sixth sense was telling her otherwise and with a completely out of his mind former FBI Agent being on the loose in their fair town, something within her told her that the worst was still to come.

She could tell as well from spending as much time around Laura, as she could (if nothing else just from how many cigarettes that her friend went through in a day, which had gone from a minor habit to more than a pack a day) that what had become arguably the closest thing that she'd had to a BFF, at least since her old pal Vicki had told her to get lost and rightfully so, was becoming more and more of a nervous wreck with every hour that passed by. In all fairness though, she couldn't imagine that she wouldn't have acted the exact same way, if she'd practically had a death verdict hanging like a constant dark cloud over her, following her around wherever she went. It goes without saying that she tried all that she could to keep poor Laura calm, still with neither of them knowing exactly what was to come, calming words had also been harder to come by than they had when she'd first arrived in 1989 and it had felt like she had all of the time in the world to do what she came there to do.

With Laura still trying to keep up the appearance of everything being normal (and probably in good need of a sense of dreary normality, if nothing else for a short while) however, her friend had decided to turn up for what could be the last day that she'd ever work in the perfume department of the Horne department store. For Becky, this gave her a chance to tie up a few loose ends before she either did or didn't travel back to her own time after Laura's day of reckoning, and which better place was there to start than her own parents? Even if she had a nagging feeling that those two crazy kids would figure it all out one way or another, she still wanted to be sure that they were heading in the right direction, as far as ending up as a couple was concerned.

"How is the "Bobby Situation" progressing?" she asked her to-be mother, who was having an easy shift down at the Double R thanks to tarmac reparations being done on a large pothole in the parking lot just outside of the diner, which aside from being as loud as could be expected, had also chased the great majority of their usual customers away until the road crew were done with their work.

"I still can't say for sure" Shelly confessed to her, with a small shake of her pretty and youthful looking head for extra effect. "On one hand, there's this huge part of me that wants to forget everything that happened in the past and give him a second chance, but at the same time, it's Bobby! With how much of a macho goofball that he always acts like, how can I take anything that he says seriously? Let's be honest here, he isn't exactly the kind of guy that most mothers would want their daughter to marry, is he? Not that my pathetic and dreadful excuse for a mom would ever care for a second what happens to me, but you know what I mean".

If only she knew, Becky couldn't help thinking to herself, while also having to fight hard to not crack a grin at a time where one wasn't warranted.

"You can't be sure that he'll always stay that way, though" Becky argued on her dad's behalf, seeing as he wasn't there to it. "People grow up and they change, don't they?".

"Be honest with me, Becky. If you were in my shoes, would you even for a moment consider giving him the time of day?" Shelly emotionally asked her back and to be truthful, at this time of his life her daughter wouldn't have, if she hadn't known what kind of trustworthy and constantly supporting guy that he would in time transform into.

"The more that I've gotten to know him, the more I'm starting to think that it was Laura getting into his head that had him acting out of control. Deep down, I don't think that he wants to remain a rebel without a cause for the rest of his life. Anyway, it isn't like the eligible bachelors that you could see yourself with are hanging on the trees around here, is it?" she argued to her mother, who seemingly had to admit that she wasn't entirely off in her assumption.

"You're sadly right on the money there!" Shelly conceded. "I know that his heart is in the right place, but again, it's Bobby! I can't help myself from still seeing him as either the dumb kid, who stuck a crayon so far up his nose back in kindergarten that he had to go to the hospital to get it pulled out, or the untrustworthy piece of dirt that cheated on me with Laura when he knew how much that it would tear me apart, if I found out about them. I just don't know if I can look past all of that, in spite of how good the lovemaking is with him and trust me, it's pretty damn great!" Becky's mom confided in her, something that also had the adverse effect of making a tiny bit of bile rise up in her daughter's throat.

"That's something to build on, isn't it? Look, I can't tell you exactly what you should do and if it had been me, then I most likely would have passed on him, but I'm not you and I never will be. What does your heart tell you?" she imploringly asked this young and somewhat confused version of her mom, who needed a few moments to mull over her answer before she could give one.

"It's telling me to give him another chance" Shelly seemingly agreed with herself. "If he cheats on me one more time though, that's it between us forever! I mean it this time!".

Even if it wasn't the surest answer that Becky had ever heard, it was still close enough.

With her mom having been checked off her to-do list, the next one on it was Donna, her almost too nice for her own good friend, whom she wanted to teach how to stand up herself, if she wasn't going to be a doormat when the real world was sure to hit her like a ton of bricks in the near future. In this way, she practically felt like she was Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz".

"You can't tell me that you're a hundred percent fine with James and Laura being thick as thieves now" she half-asked and half-stated to Donna, while they were up in Donna's very girly looking room that had posters of the most popular pop stars of the day lining the walls, and enjoying some rare one on one time with Donna's wonderful self, while she still had the chance to.

"She needs him so much more than I do" her kind and caring friend meekly and only barely audibly answered her, although Becky could also tell (like most people would have been able to, whether they knew Donna or not) that a lot was being left out by the way that it was said.

"Says who? How long have you had a crush on him?" she asked back, not that she couldn't easily tell herself that it must have been a solid while, at least.

"Since forever" Donna confided in her. "But why would he choose to be with a quiet mouse like me, when he could have someone like Laura, who's everything that I'll never be?"

"Like what?"

"Confident and self-assured. Cool guys that play guitar and ride a motorcycle like him, don't ever fall for painfully shy and insecure girls like me and that's just how it is. Maybe somewhere out there, there's some kind of parallel universe where him and I are a scorching couple, but in this one, I'll have to settle for being with him in my dreams. I'm fine with that though, so why can't you be?" Donna asked her back, although even the most casual observer could see the blatant pain hiding behind her words.

"Because I don't believe that you are. Donna, please don't take this the wrong way and I'm as sure as I can remember having been of anything that I've been that I've never said this to a girl before, but you desperately need to grow a pair of big, hairy balls and the sooner, the better!" she felt like she had to say to Donna, who couldn't stop herself from giggling a little at how it was said. "Not literally, of course, but if you keep on quietly accepting that it's just the way things are, then you'll never get any of the things that you want. You're an amazing girl that I know for sure will blossom, once you allow yourself to come out of your shell and you deserve happiness too, just as much or more than everyone else does, don't ever forget that!".

"You're almost sounding like this is the last time, we'll talk to one another" Donna remarked.

"I mean it, Sweetie" she told Donna imploringly, while looking her dead into the eyes. "You're deserve much better than settling for a immature half-wit like Mike and in any case, if you really like James like I know that you do, don't you think that he needs to hear it coming straight from you, so he can decide for himself who of you that he wants be with?"

"I can't do that to Laura, like she doesn't mean anything to me. She's been my best friend since we were little and if I don't have her in my life, then what am I left with? Not a whole lot, I can tell you that much" Donna, somewhat stubbornly, replied.

"Laura will forgive you for close to anything and do you know why? It's because she will always love you as much as life itself and like me, she only wants the best for you. I've never been surer of anything in my life. Just do me a favor and think about it, okay? Even if I'm aware that you're going through a terribly confusing and often self-deprecating time of your life right now, and it doesn't always feel that way, you're one of a kind" she stated to Donna, who smiled to herself at this sudden burst of confidence that she was clearly being filled with in front of Becky's very eyes, and all thanks to these words of encouragement that she was perhaps hearing for the first time ever.

After she'd enjoyed a rather wholesome dinner with Donna and her wonderful family, she still had one more name on her list to visit before she called it a day and headed back to the hotel that she'd called home for the past close to four weeks, this being Dr. Jacoby. During the sessions that they'd had, it had never felt close to right to her to lie to him and even if he was somewhat of an eccentric, Hawaii obsessed oddball, he'd at least sincerely tried to help her. For this reason, she'd been filled with an inner desire to come clean to him about everything and offer up something resembling an apology for having been so full of it.

"What brings you by my humble abode this late?" the dear doctor asked her, after he'd readily invited her inside without a moment's thought.

"I have something to confess to you, so try to keep an open mind, okay?" she answered him, while trying to come up with the right way to confess her sin to him.

"You won't find a more open mind in all of Twin Peaks" Jacoby told her with an inviting smile.

"I never really had amnesia. The truth is that I came here from the future. 2017 to be exact. I want you to know that it wasn't like I wanted to lie to you, and I only did so because I had to keep up the appearance of being a somewhat normal girl from this time, but I'm still very sorry that I did. You seem like a really nice guy, who really wants to help people, and I shouldn't have taken advantage of it" she (in her friendliest and calmest tone) told Jacoby, who didn't look like he was entirely believing what he was hearing.

"Have they invented the flying car in your time?" he asked her back, although she couldn't be sure if he was joking or not.

"No, we're still waiting patiently for that one! You don't believe me, do you?"

"You hopefully understand why this seems more than a little implausible to me" the doctor said to her, sounding as skeptical as he ever had to her ears.

"And there's no way that I can prove it to you right now, I get that, so you'll just have to take a leap of faith here. I wanted you to know the truth, that's all. Actually ..." she said, as she suddenly remembered something that could potentially prove that she wasn't lying and wasn't making up just about the most unbelievable story that anyone could come up with. "I know some things about you that my parents have told me back in my own time".

"Like?"

"That you're getting tired of waiting around for things changing for the better and want to do something about it. Which you actually do in the future, when you start your own podcast. It's very popular among those that are likeminded to you, in case that you were wondering" she told Jacoby, going by the best that her memories had to offer her.

"What is a podcast?" Jacoby asked, bringing up a point that she for a moment hadn't considered.

"Kind of like a televised radio show, only it's on the internet and don't make me explain to you what the internet it, because that would take me a small eternity and I don't have that long!" she bluntly told Jacoby, who now looked like he was starting to believe her.

"I've never told anybody that it's my dream to have my own radio show. People like it, huh?" Jacoby asked her with a small gleam in his eyes behind his multicolored sunglasses.

"I don't think that you're counting your listeners by the millions, but if less than that is enough for you, then I'd call it successful. What else do you want to know about the future? I'm guessing that our client/psychologist privilege is still in full effect, right?"

"I guess so. Who's our president in 2017?"

"You wouldn't believe me, if I told you!" she headshaking answered the good doctor, whose day and possibly his entire week most likely would have been ruined if he'd been told. "What I can tell you is that things are basically the same as they are now. People still go to work, have families and care far too much about all kinds of dumb stuff that it isn't worth wasting your time on, but they still for some reason do. Sure, it's more technologically advanced, yet some things never change, I guess".

"Is the garbage that they show on TV still as bad, as it is now?" Jacoby inquired, in a more humorous way than anything else.

"Let me put it this way: You'll get used to hearing the words "Reboot" and "Reality Television"! Oh, and someday far into the future when a show called "Jersey Shore" starts airing, do yourself a huge favor and don't watch it! I still deeply wish that I hadn't!" she semi-jokingly told the town's one and only shrink back, as they shared a wry smile.

After what had been a pleasant day, which in some ways had felt like a final farewell to this time and these people that she'd come to know and love, she took a taxi back to the hotel where there was quite a commotion outside and when she saw what was happening, she could barely believe her eyes. There was Ben Horne, the richest man in town and in some ways, the town's king and ruler, being led out of the hotel in handcuffs by Cooper and sheriff Truman, while shocked guests at the hotel gathered around to catch a glimpse of the whole thing.

"I haven't done anything! Let me go!" Ben protested, while his brother tried to keep up with them.

"You can tell it to the judge, when he gets here in a day or two" Truman sharply told Ben back, before loading him into the back of his police cruiser.

"What are you arresting him for?" she asked Cooper, who'd barely noticed her walking up to them.

"Ordering the murders of Teresa Banks and Agent Desmond. We wouldn't even have looked into him, if it wasn't for you, but after we showed his and Leo's pictures to the grizzled old supervisor of the trailer park that Teresa lived in, he recognized both of them instantly. You should give yourself a pat on the shoulder, Becky" Cooper replied to her and filled her with a kind of sense of accomplishment that she'd rarely felt before, if ever.

It was with this feeling still reeling in her body that she made her way up to her room, and for a brief moment, she thought that she could have stopped Laura from being murdered already. Something that quickly changed when she stepped into the room and saw the one word that had been spelled out in red rose petals on her bedsheet: "With".

Barely had she gotten over the shock too, before she heard approaching footsteps behind her and turned around just in time to see the same man that had kidnapped her as a four-year-old, dressed like an employee at the hotel and holding a soaked rag in one hand, while he stared in a devilish way at her.

"Me!" was the only word that he said to her, before this deranged man overpowered her and pushed her down on the bed, where he was quick to press the soaked rag down on her face and mouth.

"BOB sends his regards. Sweet dreams" he scarily told her and as she began to lose consciousness from the chloroform on the rag, all of the fight that she thought that she had in her faded into obscurity and was solely replaced by the one overpowering emotion that filled her entire body and mind.

The purest kind of fear.

END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chapter Text

Terror. A feeling that Becky thankfully hadn't felt many times in her life and until this evening, she'd only felt that horrible feeling once before and that it was the same man who was causing it for her again, only served to make the whole thing even more terrifying than it already was.

When she woke up after being sedated with chloroform, she found herself in a place that she'd never been before, although she had a gut feeling that it had to be the cabin where Laura (in another reality) had been taken with Ronette Pulaski by Leo and Jaques for what could best be described as a drug-filled orgy that had turned into a nightmare, when BOB had shown up to make his presence known.

"Why?" was the only word that she could get out, as her blurry vision slowly began to get back to normal. Her hands were tied behind her back, that much she could feel clearly, but as for anything else that was going on, her mind was drawing a blank.

"Did you think that you could escape the wrath of BOB? Who do you think brought you here?" she could hear Windom Earle asking her in his insane sounding voice.

"Him?" she drowsily asked back and got to hear Windom's cackling laugh, which brought chills down her spine like no other sound ever had. When he came into sight, it didn't help much either and as far as escape routes went, the only one went through him.

"BOB has always been and always will be, as long as the evil that men do exists in this world. Laura was always meant give in and accept that he owns her soul. What a silly girl, she is! You can never escape BOB and like a willing pawn, you brought her right to him" Windom explained to her much like a Scooby Doo villain from the cartoons that she loved so much as a kid, who'd been caught at the end of the episode. "If it wasn't for him, I never would have been freed from that hellhole that Cooper and FBI commissioner Cole put me in, but when he gets his hands on Laura, I'll finally become my own man again".

"You're insane!" she told off Windom, whom it seemed wasn't interested in listening to her and cared more about what was happening outside of the small wooden cabin than anything going on inside of it. Not that much was yet, mind you.

"Probably, but I'll still be alive after today, which is more than I can say for you" Windom chillingly replied and for the next several hours until nightfall came, neither of them said a word as they waited for the rest of "The Party" to arrive.

Hours that felt like days.

While she waited, she found herself dozing off again and before she knew it, she found herself back in the red room with only two people for company, a man with one arm and a greying beard and the dwarf that she'd been told about and until now, hadn't had the dubious pleasure of meeting yet.

"I am the arm. This is Mike" the little man (who apparently had a rather strange name too, yet one that somehow seemed to fit him) introduced himself and his "friend" in a strange sounding voice that seemed to come from a world that wasn't this one.

"BOB tricked all of us" Mike told her in a voice that sounded similar to the one that the little man had used.

"Who are you?" she asked the two men.

"Where we're from, there is always music in the air and the birds sing a pretty song" the little man informed her, not that his answer was of much use to her.

"What ..." she began saying before the little man cut her off.

"Listen" the little man implored her and moments later, an almost hypnotic sounding soft jazz music could be heard that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

"BOB cannot be killed, but we and only we have the power to contain his wretched soul. You must to bring him to us, or we might never get the chance again" Mike said to her over the sound of the admittedly rather relaxing tune, or it would have been, had it been played under any other circumstances.

"How can I, when I don't know what he looks like?" she logically, or so she thought, asked the pair of them.

"Earle and BOB have become one and the same, like Leland and BOB were in the old reality. You must bring him to us" Mike told her.

"Only you know where the entrance to here lies, so only you can find it again. Search your soul and it will lead you there" the little man explained to her.

"And if I fail?"

"Then BOB will roam free forever and Laura, Cooper and anyone else that get in his way will fall victim to him. You will cease to be and no one will ever remember that you existed, even your parents" Mike explained, as a white light seemed to overcome all of them and take her back to the one place that she would never in her life have wanted to come back to.

As she slowly woke up again, she could see that it had become nightfall and as for anyone coming to save her, there were no signs of them. Earle however, seemed like he was on the verge of losing his mind (more than he already had, if such a thing was humanly possible!) and was pacing the room as he tried to make sense of it all.

"BOB said that they would come! He can't have lied to me!" Early exasperatedly said, seemingly to himself, seeing as there wasn't anyone else in the cabin with him, except for her.

"You have the wrong day, dumbass! Laura wasn't supposed to die until tomorrow" she told Earle, in what she had to admit was somewhat of a daring move on her part, given that she was dealing with a Bonafide lunatic here.

"You're lying to save your own hide" Earle shortly replied, albeit with a hint of doubt in his voice that she knew, she could use to her advantage.

"What would I have to gain by lying to you? You're holding all of the cards here" she reminded her captor, who didn't seem too interested in offering up a reply.

Thus, most of the night went by with nothing except for complete silence between them, before they finally heard a sound coming from outside that they recognized as the sound of a search party, who were no doubt out looking for her. Earle was quick to react to their presence too, and got out a knife that he pressed up against her chin.

"One word and whoever it is will be resting six feet under right next to you. Got it?" Earle warned her, before moving her out of sight, in case that someone looked inside through the dirty windows that looked like they hadn't been cleaned in months, if not years.

"Is anyone in there?" she heard Andy's voice cry out after he'd knocked on the door a few times. A few tense minutes followed, while they listened to the search party rummaging around outside of the cabin and she faintly heard more voices talking amongst themselves too, among them Sheriff Truman and Hawk, as well as a few voices that she couldn't recognize off the top of her head.

"No one's here. We need to move on!" she heard Truman ordering the rest of them and as soon as they'd arrived, all of them were gone again and all that was left was her, a raging lunatic that may or may not have been possessed by a possibly ancient, evil spirit and the silence that seemed to engulf the both of them for the rest of the night.

The morning after, Earle left her without saying a word and clearly without caring if she had anything to eat or drink in his absence. Then again, she thought to herself, if he was only going to murder her anyway, then taking extra time out of his already pressed schedule to care for her well-being probably hadn't even registered in his warped mind.

"She's mine! No one can take her from me!" an evil sounding voice inside of her head told her, as if it was screaming it right into her ears.

Was this BOB perhaps, or just a product of what remained of her own sanity being pushed to the brink, like it had never been before?

"Laura, Laura, come out and play! BOB wants your soul!" she again heard the voice say and this time, she felt to her bones that it had to be the worst entity known to man, at least as far as those that had up to now managed to keep their identity hidden from nearly all of them go.

"Why Laura?" she tried thinking to herself, as if to ask it a question, yet without getting anything in the way of a reply for a long time until she got one and when she did, the answer made chills run down her spine.

"So the rest of can go on pretending that true evil doesn't exist, except in storybooks and on your precious TV screens! I never made the rules, you all did!" BOB "answered" her and once more, she was left with far more questions than she'd had to begin with.

Now was not the time to search for any kind of definitive answers though, and what she needed was a way to free herself from the chair that Earle had tied her to and preferably before his insane self returned to finish what he'd started.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw what could be her salvation, an old nail file that had at some point been abandoned there and probably thanks to it being so small, had missed the eyes of everyone else that had set foot in that cursed cabin. It wouldn't be easy to reach it, but it was the only option that she had, if she wasn't going to suffer a fate like Laura had in the "real world of 1989" or perhaps even worse, the same fate that Ronette Pulaski had, where her body might have recovered from what she'd experienced on that fateful night in that old train carriage, yet her mind never had and it had left her a hollow shell for the rest of her life.

Which of the two fates were worse, Becky couldn't decide with herself. All that she knew was that she didn't want it to be herself, who wound up suffering through one of them.

As the hours passed and even after she'd managed to somehow free herself from the ropes that had bound her, doubt upon doubt began to creep into the twisted corners of her mind. Would she even be able to find the spot in the woods that the giant had taken her to, during the night where this downright insane and out of this world adventure had begun for her? Sure, there was still a part of her that basically had a map imprinted on the inside of her brain from all of those thousands of hours that she'd spent playing in the woods as a kid, but it wasn't like she had recognized it instantly when she'd been brought there, quite the opposite, in fact. Another pressing and even bigger question was how she was going to lure Earle there and what if he'd gone to town to kidnap Laura and bring her back to the cabin? After all, if Laura still died, then all of her hard work would have been for nothing, not to mention that she would have to live on for the rest of her life knowing that BOB would always be coming after her, lurking in the shadows like a thief in the night to strike against her when she was at her most vulnerable. Neither her father, Cooper nor Truman would be able to save her by that point, should either of them survive BOB's initial onslaught.

"Save me! Only you can do it, Becky!" another, far more feminine voice that sounded distinctly like Laura's rang out in her mind, albeit not the voice that she'd gotten so used to hearing over the past month that it had become second nature to her to be around it close to constantly. The older Laura, perhaps? By this point, she'd learned enough about all of these "alternate dimensions" not to count anything out, even the most extreme possibilities and ideas that she could possibly come up with.

This was when, as if it had struck like a bolt of lightning directed straight at her subconsciousness, an idea came to her and as she began to gather up twigs and small, loose branches outside of the house, a comforting thought began making it's way from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

That this plan, crazy and simple as it was, just might be enough to save not only Laura, but also herself.

It wouldn't be until the sun was setting that Earle finally returned in a car so fancy that she figured he had to have stolen it somewhere, unless he'd suddenly decided to follow the laws again that he'd long ago sworn to uphold to the best of his abilities, until his jealous insanity had taken him over completely. As she'd suspected and feared too, he wasn't alone and it made the bile rise up inside of her throat to see a barely clad Laura being dragged by him out of it by the (most likely stolen too) handcuffs that he'd used to keep her hands tied behind her back. Looking at her like this, scared out of her mind and nothing like the confident girl that she'd first seen her as, prior to her finding out about all of the many major insecurities that had been so carefully hidden behind that put-on confidence, she could only imagine that it wouldn't have been far off from what the "other" Laura had looked like when she'd been dragged off to meet her maker.

Tactically, she quickly made a decision to hide enough of eye view that she wouldn't be seen, yet not so far out of earshot that she would still be able to hear what was said between Earle and Laura, as they made their way inside of the cabin. God, how easy would it have been to find a large enough branch that she could have used it to knock that aging and deranged nut-job hard enough in the head with it, that it would have been easy as pie afterwards to give him a taste of his own medicine and tie him up like he'd done to them, before they drove him back to the sheriff's station where they could leave him in the hands of the law? However, this wasn't what the little man and Mike had told her to do and if they knocked him out, it would also mean that they'd have to drag him all of the way to the entrance to the strange place by themselves. Something that even in the best of cases would have been nearly impossible and in this one, had to be considered too much of an off possibility, given all of what was on the line.

Predictably, the first thing that came out of Earle's mouth was an almost outer-worldly scream of rage when he must have seen the chair that she'd been tied to, standing there by itself in the middle of the cabin's front room with the cut through robes that had bound her, lying in tatters by its feet.

"Hey, Earle! Find me if you can, you sick son of a bitch!" she bravely called out to him and as she ran away from the house and further into the woods, she could faintly hear the sound of two pairs of feet following after her in the distance.

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Chapter Text

IMPORTANT NOTE! I RELEASED BOTH CHAPTER SEVENTEEN AND EIGHTEEN AT THE SAME TIME, SO IF YOU HAVEN'T READ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN YET, DO IT BEFORE THIS ONE OR YOU WILL BE VERY CONFUSED!

Becky had never claimed to be brave, quite the opposite, in fact. She could still vaguely remember how, back when she'd still been a little kid and her parents had brought her along down to shop at the Horne department store (a place which she knew for sure that she would never be able to look at in the same way again, now that she'd found out more than she wanted to about what kind of downright greasy things had taken place behind closed doors there in years past), she would always and without exception start clutching her father's hand whenever any adults that she didn't know looked at her directly, and it wasn't as if she'd grown to become all that much more courageous with age. Sure, it had helped a little when she'd been with Steven and she'd had him to protect her, along with having nearly constantly been so high out of her mind that barely anything registered in the fogginess of her brain, but it had been a purely fake kind of bravery that she'd temporarily put on like a mask and it hadn't given her any ballast in regards to dealing with the possible horrors that she was facing now.

Her idea had been to take a page out of an old fairytale that she remembered from her childhood and leave behind arrows that she'd made with the twigs that she'd gathered, but as daylight began to fade far too quickly for her liking, she wondered to herself how long that Earle and Laura would be able to follow them. Just to make sure that they did, she made a big deal out of making enough noise as she made her way through the forest that it would hopefully be enough to lead them to the entrance, where again hopefully, she would be able to leave everything in the hands of the little man and Mike, whoever they might be at the end of the day.

As for how she found her way there though, not even she could tell you, yet with every new crossroads that she faced, it almost like she instinctively knew which road to take and once she had, there wasn't anything resembling a shadow of doubt in her mind that she was on the right track. As for what she would find when she got there, that part was still as up in the air, as it possibly could be.

She knew that she had to look for a clearing and could sort of remember what the trees that surrounded it looked like, even if she shouldn't have, and as she came up towards it, she drew a deep breath of courage for whatever would be coming next.

"This can't be! I have to be in the right place!" she kept telling herself, as she stared blankly into where the opening had been when she'd first come to this place with the giant, just a month before this. What was worse was that she could hear Earle and Laura coming ever closer and without much in the way of time on her side, if there was ever a time for a plan B to be put into effect, then this was surely it.

"Scream these words out as loud as you can" the female voice inside of her hear told her, making her listen intently to what it had to tell her. "Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds, fire walk with me!"

As she did, the passage between the two worlds slowly began to appear before her eyes as if it had always been there and only now had become plain to see for the naked, human eye.

"It's here! It's really here!" she heard Earle cry out as he dragged a bloodied, crying and screaming Laura along with him and for a moment, she wondered what to do next, until the voice inside of her head told her so.

She had to lead both him and Laura in there, or neither of them would ever be free of BOB, for as long as they lived.

After taking another deep breath for courage, she entered into the unknown, not knowing what would await her there.

The first room had Cooper in it, yet it wasn't him and instead some evil version of him with shoulder length hair and a dead stare in his eyes. The music in there (that for some strange reason was always in the air, like the little man had claimed) had turned dark and twisted too, as if to signify that this was BOB's realm and only his, with no one else being welcome in it, save for perhaps the poor and unfortunate souls of his untold number of victims. Running away from him and the room, she heard Laura screaming in terror behind her and could only hope that she hadn't done exactly what BOB had always wanted her to do and led her straight to him.

Entering the next room, she therefore had no way of knowing what would await her and was surprised to see a child version of herself, who had to be at least twenty years older than she was now, ready to greet her with a comforting smile.

"Continue! You're getting closer!" the very young child version of herself assured her, giving her a dose of confidence that if anyone could use right at this moment, then it surely had to be herself.

The third room wasn't like the others however, and instead like a large cinema where she found the giant along with both a huge woman, Mrs. Tremont and her grandson, and where the same black and white movie had to have been playing on repeat for what had to have been decades. With no time to waste though, she made her way to the next room in the hope that it would finally be where her and Laura's salvation awaited the both of them.

"You've been a naughty boy, BOB!" the little man told off Earle, or at least she guessed that it was still him, even if he'd changed into a much taller and slimmer man with nearly nipple-length grey, shaggy hair and a smile so evil that it would have brought months of night terrors to her, if she'd seen it when she'd still been far more impressionable than she was now. Then again, seeing as his cackling laughter was enough to make her blood run cold, she also sincerely had to doubt how much braver that she'd actually become with age.

Laura was still alive though, and that was the main thing, even if she looked like she'd just gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson back in his heyday, going by how bloody that her face and most of the rest of her was looking.

"You think that you can stop me? I am eternal!" Bob proudly declared with a wide grin to match that showed off his yellowing teeth and a smile so dastardly that not even a mother could ignore it.

"It stops here, BOB! Let them go!" Mike seemed to implore BOB, who only had even more laughter left over for him, for even suggesting it.

"Never! The girls are mine! They're all mine!" BOB yelled out, but as he did, something happened that not even Becky with everything that she'd already seen, could have ever predicted would have happened.

"Stay away from her!" Laura yelled out in an unexpected showing of strength and moments later, after her handcuffs (as if by magic) fell off, she threw herself upon BOB and began wailing on him with the kind of untamed fury that Becky would have never believed could have been inside of her. With every punch, scratch and kick, he began to disappear little by little, until all that Laura was punching was thin air with no BOB in sight. Seeing that she needed it, Becky rushed to her side and soon after, held a sobbing Laura in her arms.

"It's over. We're safe now" she assured Laura, while the little man and Mike looked on, just as expressionless as they'd been throughout the whole blasted affair.

In truth, neither of them had even noticed when the two "Men from Another Place" had disappeared and left the older versions of Laura and Cooper in their place. When they looked up at them, Laura was naturally more than a little freaked out to suddenly be in the company of a far older version of herself, a sentiment that Becky surely would have shared, had it been herself in Laura's shoes, but her best friend soon calmed down when she asserted that they didn't mean them any harm.

"It's time to choose, Becky" the older Laura calmly told her, with what appeared to be a relieved smile on her face.

"You can stay here or go back to your own time. The choice is yours" Cooper continued, as if to finish off the older Laura's sentence for her.

"I never knew that it was an option" she told the two ghostly figures that were in her and the young Laura's presence.

"Time has already been changed once and it can be changed again. Here, you can start off with a fresh slate and not have to be constantly haunted by the mistakes that you made in the past. Everything will simply go on, as if you'd always belonged in this world" the older Laura continued explaining to her and as she did, the temptation to leave the past behind in more ways than one seemed to be more appealing to Becky than it perhaps ever had been before.

If there was one thing that she was in that split second of her life, it was completely and totally torn in half when it came to what to do next.

"You don't have to stay here for my sake, Becky. I'll be fine now, all thanks to you" the young Laura told her, almost as if she'd read her mind and known exactly the right words to say.

"Are you a thousand percent sure? I can't leave you behind now, if I know that you'll still need me. I love you as much as life itself, Laura" she told Laura, who (in spite of everything that she'd gone through over the past hours) still had enough left in her to shoot Becky a warm smile.

"I love you in the same way, Becky, but I think that you already know deep down that it's what you have to do. Life can't be lived in the past, no matter how nice that past may seem compared to the present" Laura told her and for as little as Becky wanted to admit it, she knew that Laura wasn't wrong. Okay, so the world of 2017 wasn't a picnic in any sort of way, but her sixth sense was telling her that it was where her fate laid, whatever that might entail.

"What will happen to you three now?" Becky asked the two ghosts, in the hope that they knew.

"Laura will return to her old life and within a few days, she'll mostly have healed up and will forget about you and everything that you did together, just like everyone else that knew you in this time will too. In essence, it'll be like you were never here and only you will be able to recollect any of it" Cooper explained to them and while it saddened her to think that it had to be that way, in some ways it made sense too or her life back in 2017 would have been filled with all kinds of new complications that hadn't been there, when she'd last been back in her own time.

"What happened to BOB?" Laura asked, bringing up a pressing question that Becky wanted answered as well.

"The second that you leave this place, you'll forget all about him, this place and Windom Earle, for that matter. All that you'll remember afterwards will be suddenly and for no discernible reason finding yourself in the middle of the woods at night time" the older Laura explained to her younger self, making for yet another meta moment, if Becky had ever seen one!

"Sheriff Truman should already have a search party out looking for both you and Becky, so with any luck, it won't be long until you're found" Cooper continued explaining. "As for BOB, all that you need to know is that he'll never be able to leave this realm again. Even if he can't ever be truly killed, he can now finally be wholly contained".

"And you two?" she asked the two ghosts or spirits (whatever you want to call them), whose sad smiles told her everything that she needed to know. "You can't ever leave this place, can you?"

"Not until the real Cooper and the real Laura pass away, hopefully many, many decades from now. Only through their deaths can our scattered spirits be joined together as one again" the older Laura explained and as she'd seen it happening a few times already, they soon faded into thin air, leaving only her and the real Laura behind as everything around the two girls began to turn to the purest of white.

"See you in twenty-eight years" Laura bade her farewell with a small smile, at least for then.

As Becky woke up in her own usual bed, she thought for a moment that it all had to have been one extremely vivid dream that she'd had because after all, could anyone have come up with a crazier story if they'd tried?

In all honesty, it wasn't until she came into the kitchen and saw her parents (dressed in their usual uniforms) kissing like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be doing and her jaw dropped, that she finally believed that it couldn't have been her craziest side that had played itself out through her subconsciousness.

"Are you two ... forget that I said anything!" she began to say before deciding that she honestly didn't care enough to find out why, as long as her parents were back together where they so clearly belonged!

"Good morning, sweetie. Are you in the mood for breakfast?" her mom asked her and why Becky did what she did next, she didn't know, but she surprised both of her parents with a pair of gigantic hugs!

"What's this all about?" her dad asked her and while she wanted to tell him, the sheer scale of happiness within her wouldn't allow her to get the words out.

On the drive to Twin Peaks High, where this version of herself that had been soundly scared off from doing drugs in the first place by a certain Laura Palmer from a very early age (by telling her stories that she now had a vivid memory of being told), worked as an English and history teacher, she managed to piece together through a sly interrogation of her mom what had this time happened between her parents. Once again, "Auntie Laura" had been heavily involved in helping them to stay together by constantly reminding them of how much they meant to one another and not only that, but she'd actually become so close friends with her mom that she'd been the maid of honor (along with Norma) at their wedding. A wedding which this time had been a well-planned affair that had taken place in a church with their families and friends present, and not just been a case of a pair of slightly immature and feeling pressed up against a wall teenagers, who probably didn't know exactly what they were getting themselves into, doing it on a whim during a romantic getaway to Vegas, like it had happened in the "Other World", only a small handful of weeks after Becky herself had been conceived.

What shocked her almost more was to find out that Audrey, after her father's no doubt top-priced lawyers had gotten him off with only a few months behind bars in a minimum security prison for his massive part in the murder of Teresa Banks (with the fault of what had happened being conveniently placed ninety-nine point nine percent on the already deceased Leo's shoulders) had decided to leave the highly immoral life of being a member of the Horne family behind and used her huge trust fund to support herself through college, and afterwards, to go into business for herself. Funnily enough, this was also how an at that time still hopelessly single twenty-two year old Audrey had suddenly found herself going into business with none other than a just as hopelessly single James Hurley (who'd bought a half share in his uncle Ed's garage and gas station), and with a few years of extra dating experience in the bag for both of them, not to mention without the stress of what everyone at school would think to drag them down, the two of them had gotten married and adopted both a boy and a girl from third world countries in the meantime. More than that, she'd even managed to win the respect of her parents and going by what Becky's mom had told her, it sounded to Becky as if she'd actually begun to steer him and her uncle Jerry in the right direction as well. Jerry, whom it practically goes without saying, was still seen as perhaps even more of an eccentric around town than he'd ever been before, yet with what Becky knew about him, she wouldn't have wanted him to change too much either or he wouldn't have been same lovable weirdo that she'd somehow found it simply impossible not to take a liking to. Audrey's disabled older brother Johnny had sadly passed away only a few years after Becky had left though, and although her mom couldn't tell her exactly when or how it had happened, she could remember that a great sadness mixed with a feeling of relief that he was finally at peace had hit great parts of the town in the days afterwards.

As for Donna, she'd never grown the courage to come clean to James about her feelings for him (from what little that her mother knew), but had been both her class valedictorian and graduated with honors from Yale, which had led her to following in her father's footsteps and taking a high-level job for Doctors Without Borders, where she could help many times more people than her father ever managed to. When it came to Donna's little sister Harriet, all that Becky could hope for was that she'd at some point finally done something about that God awful haircut of hers, that she'd had back in 1989!

Most of those that she'd known back in the late 80's still lived in the town too and as for the town itself, she honestly couldn't tell you how it had happened or how much of a part of it that she'd personally played in it, but something had clearly changed for better and she figured that it had to have something to do with the great mill fire never having happened back in 1989 either. Why is this? Who could honestly say for certain, but she gathered that a great part of it was that the lack of a mass exodus of middle-class folks from the struggling town of the other reality in the early to mid-nineties, had also meant that they'd been hit with far less of the large scale poverty that all of the day-laborers had brought into the town during the boom period in the 2000's (with all of the crime and other assorted problems that they had brought with them) and she had to admit that she liked the general feeling in the air in this infinitely safer and cozy feeling version of Twin Peaks anno 2017 a whole lot better than the old one. Heck, even if she didn't believe in the doubtful half-truths behind the idea of the American dream further than she could throw them, if there was such a thing as a place on God's green earth where those dreams were being exemplified to the fullest, then it surely had to be their little picturesque neck of the woods.

Of course, her dear mother couldn't tell her exactly what had happened to Agent Cooper, but then again (as she'd learned from the man personally) bureau business isn't something that you discuss with just anyone! She did find out though (after quickly looking it up on her phone), that the suspected murders on the FBI agents that Cooper had been looking for had become somewhat infamous cold cases, leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories about them being floated around in the always paranoid world of the internet. Still, for all she knew, they could just as easily have been found alive and well and no one (apart from the very few that absolutely needed to be in the know) would ever have to be the wiser. The name Windom Earle yielded no search results at all however, something that she could only take as a highly positive sign, knowing what she knew about him.

Another minor shock came when she got to school and saw her former husband from another timeline Steven, who was wearing a wedding ring and barely gave her a second glance as she passed by him, looking clean as a whistle while he was working as a janitor's assistant by the looks of it, but nothing could have prepared her for when she came into the teacher's lounge and was greeted with a huge smile by her old friend Vicki, whom she in this timeline hadn't almost caused the death of in their teens and after all of those years, was still the best friend that she had in the entire world.

With perhaps the exception of one girl, of course, or should we say, grown woman.

One thing that thankfully hadn't changed at all appearance wise was the Double R, yet there was still one main difference, this being that Norma (who'd, after almost being pushed into it by Becky's mother and Laura combined between them, had finally confessed her love for Big Ed and married him) had stepped back to allow the now middle-aged versions of Laura and her mom to run the diner mostly by themselves, while she raised the six children that her and Ed had been blessed with after his crazy wife Nadine (who'd apparently gone completely off her rocker, soon after Becky had travelled back to her own time) had left him for some high school football player.

Just for old times' sake, Becky even decided to come down and help them to close up, after she'd spend most of the afternoon and evening in the company of the friend, whom she wished that she'd never lost in the first place.

"So, is there finally a special boy in your life, sweetheart?" Laura, who since she'd decided to cut James loose back in her late teens still had never been in a serious relationship with anyone again, asked her while they were helping one another with putting the plates and cutlery away and kind of like the fun aunt that she'd always been in Becky's eyes, who's just casually engaging in a bit of girl talk with her favorite niece.

"Nah, but I'm not in a hurry to shack up with just anyone. Right now, I'm doing fine as I am, so why rock the boat too much?" she replied to Laura, who gave her one of those "it's time to listen up, missy!" looks that she'd shot her so many of since her childhood that Becky had long since lost count of how many it had been.

"Don't you want to know what it feels like to be in love?" Laura inquired.

"I guess so, but I've seen what being in love with the wrong person can do to someone and it usually isn't a pretty sight to behold. Why should I risk that, when I don't have to?" she asked back.

"Because you never know what taking a chance on someone can lead to. Okay, so me and your dad were never meant to last, but your mom and him have been two of my best friends since high school and I wouldn't trade that in for the world" Laura confessed to her. "Just between us, there was a far too long time in my teens where I felt so lost and alone that I didn't know what to do with myself, until a friend pulled me out of it. I just wish that I could remember what her name was or what she looked like, but for some strange and unexplained reason, I simply can't! She was someone very special to me though, I can remember that much. I just hope that she's living a fantastic life, wherever she may be in the world right now".

Becky didn't reply to her and instead, allowed the words to linger in the air for a moment, while she smiled to herself.

THE END

Afterword:

Thanks to all of you, who gave this story a chance and decided to read it all of the way through. It's certainly been a long journey into the deepest and darkest corners of my mind to write it, and one that took well over three years from when I wrote the first couple of chapters to when I finally managed to finish it off in a way that I can personally call myself satisfied with. For a long time, I honestly didn't think that I had it in me to both put together such an elaborate story and execute it on the page like I wanted it to be and it would wind up as yet another unfinished project of mine that I started out with great enthusiasm, until I got lost along the way to completing it. Hopefully too, it wasn't far too easy to tell either that English isn't my first or main language that I speak every day, although I'm guessing that it inevitably shined through in a few spots here and there.

I wanted to keep it relatively short as well and not going on season after season either and sure, it meant that some parts of the story had to be cut down to close to the bare minimum of what I could have done with them, but then again, I've always felt like there's something to be said for leaving a few things to the imagination of the readers too, instead of going into too many in-depth details. With me only writing the story from one character's point of view as well, it almost had to be that way. As for where I found out most of these fictional facts about the town and many of the townspeople that were mentioned here and there throughout the story, all of that came from the two Mark Frost "Twin Peaks Companion Books": "The Secret History of Twin Peaks" and "Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier". Nearly all of the parts about Becky's past were purely of my own creation though, seeing as she'd only barely been mentioned in any of the books and we never got any real resolution to her story in season 3.

Why did it end up being Laura that defeated BOB, you may ask? Because even if the story was told from Becky's point of view, it was always meant to be Laura, who was at the center of it and it had to be her final act against him to metaphorically finally break free of the abuse and insecurity-laden shackles that she'd put upon herself, like Becky had already done her part in doing before the story began. Of course, like it should be with Twin Peaks, it (like many other things in the story) was also a metaphor for something else, but what those metaphors were based on, I'll leave purely up to the interpretation of all of you, my dear readers. I know what they meant to me, but that's not to say that they have to mean the same to you.

As for the super-happy ending, what can i say? I guess that I just love a nice and neatly wrapped up, happy ending as much as most other people do and if this was going to be my version of a final farewell to the whole Twin Peaks universe, why not give these characters that had been through so much their happy-ever-after's?

Most of all, this story was my personal love-letter to not just my favorite TV series of all time, but really the entire filmography of the two men, who took what was originally supposed to be a bio-pic about the tragic life of Marilyn Monroe, and somehow ended up turning it into the magic that was Twin Peaks. Or as David Lynch once called it: "The Show About Everything". Of course, it's mainly the works of Lynch that have influenced me and I can still recall how blown away I was when I first watched movies like "Blue Velvet", "Wild at Heart" and "Mulholland Drive" (to name a few) and how much it made want to try to do what he did by telling stories in a way that no one else before him have or ever will do. Okay, so I know that I'll never even come close to reaching the heights that his writing did, yet I still feel like there's something to be said for trying to keep his spirit alive and as long as there are those of us that are willing to give it a try, then in some ways it'll never truly die.

I'm glad too that we'll never get a season four, because it was so much in David's dearly departed spirit to leave it up to our collective imaginations how the story that him and Mark Frost began for us should end.

Again, thanks so much to each and every one of you for having spent your valuable time on reading the story and not the least, the absolute immense amount of patience that some of you must have had with me! Any comments that you have will as always be appreciated and who knows? Maybe, I'll "Pull a David Lynch and Mark Frost" too and give you an unexpected follow up twenty-five years from now in the year 2050!