What Child is This?
Disclaimer: Fringe belongs to JJ Abrams and Fox and a bunch of other people that surely aren't me.
Summary: AU version of The Day We Died. The End of Days is nigh, so Alt!Livia makes the ultimate sacrifice.
It starts with a ticking clock. And while the Amber strives to settle in her bones, Olivia knows that time is running out. She briefly wonders whether the other Walter, the one who loves strawberry milkshakes and cows with funny names, heard the ticking sound the day he ripped the universe apart.
She wonders if he even cares.
But, the Amber is going to fail and the world is going to fall apart.
She'll be damned if Henry falls apart too.
o0o
Olivia is eating Walter's pancakes when she feels a pull to the Other Side. She barely registers what is going on when her body is ripped into a million pieces. She looks upwards and lo and behold, there are zeppelins in the sky.
Exactly twelve minutes later, she is rustled into black van and she recalls a time where she sat in the front seat and was a woman who had a mother. It's quarter to midnight and even without the view of a city of Amber, Olivia feels it in her blood. This world is dying and the universe wants to take her with it.
Ninety minutes later, she is in a room with a view and wondering why that bedroom is painted blue and there are pacifiers in the kitchen where she made her double's favourite breakfast. She isn't in the dark for long, as the Other Olivia brings her a child that is unmistakably familiar.
And even though She is alone and Her world is dying, Olivia can't help but tick off another item on her imaginary list of Things That She Took From Me. There is a tear, just outside Her window. And while Olivia blocks out the fact that the Other Olivia redecorated her apartment, the sound of destruction is in the air.
"He belongs to Peter," Olivia states and it's something that she already knows, even if the Other Olivia wasn't pleading with her, her ratty auburn hair tacked up in a ruthless ponytail.
Olivia's was always neat and tidy.
"Yes," She answers and Olivia doesn't even ask.
The Other Side is falling apart and Other Olivia has a child she is placing into her arms. He fits like a round peg fits in a round hole but feels like he's the wrong colour or the wrong weight because it doesn't feel like a son in her arms.
"You owe me," Other Olivia says and maybe it's the dirt on her face or the desperation in her eyes or the fact that the tear is getting bigger, but Olivia doesn't disagree. Her Walter did this and Their Walter, (Walternate, she reminds herself, the man who drugged her and nearly killed her) started it but now it was their universe that was ripping apart at the seams.
The boy in her arms belongs to Peter and to some version of Olivia so how can she begrudge him a lifetime of blueberry pancakes and a cousin called Ella? She wonders if it was her double that called her through the curtain, but the face on this child tells her that even he knows his world is dying. Other Olivia leans forward and plants the softest kiss on her son's forehead.
The clock is at midnight now and just before the tear rips her new son in two, the Other Olivia bids goodbye to a Henry and pushes her back through the curtain. She lands back in her chair, half-eaten pancakes still at the table, but now, she is clutching a child that isn't hers. He wails and, like the swinging pendulum of the doomsday clock, midnight has struck and every hole in her universe is fixed because the tears now lead to nowhere.
Peter walks into the room and drops his plate and the crash punctuates Henry's cries.
"Olivia?"
She can't answer him because she's holding another woman's son and he's crying and for a split second she thinks that it's Walternate walking through the door.
"What child is this?" he asks and she can't answer him.
o0o
Peter has no problem getting up at three-thirty in the morning to feed his son, but Olivia can't help but shudder in their bed when she hears his cries. He wants his mother and although she looks like her, he knows, just as Peter once knew, that the woman who holds him is not his mother.
As the months fly past, she can see his features blend perfectly between Peter's and Other Olivia's. If she's being honest, she can even see a bit of herself in there. She revels in the right moments and watches him take his first step and say his first word.
She tries to ignore it when, one day she finds Peter dancing with Henry in the dark, and she shivers with realisation that they both shimmer when they are just supposed to glow.
One day, she finds herself sitting in Walter's lab while Peter (she should get used to calling him her husband by now) takes his son for a walk. And, finally, she asks her Walter, the one who loves strawberry milkshakes, how he brought himself to love another man's son.
Walter doesn't answer and in that moment, she has clarity. She can't love another woman's son, but the truth finally grips her heart. She can love her own. And that night, she cries as she dances with Henry, because he was named after a man that gave her hope and she saved his life and is raising him. She doesn't love another woman's child because she loves her own.
o0o
The clock stopped ticking at three seconds until midnight. The holes manage to seal up themselves and in joyous days of freedom, the Amber finally dissipates and there is a sun shining in the sky. Olivia paints over the blue bedroom with an off-white so she doesn't remind herself that, while the clock keeps ticking, her heart resides in a world where zeppelins are absent from the sky.