Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Characters: Peter/Olivia
Rating: T
Summary: He merged two universes with his mind, but this is the hardest thing he's ever had to do.
Spoilers: Speculation on the future.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own Fringe.
He merged two universes with his mind, but this is the hardest thing he's ever had to do.
Peter helps with Fringe Division cases during the day, doing his best to gain (regain?) their trust, respect, and – hopefully, one day – their love, with what little latitude he's given. He spends his nights in a tiny studio apartment in Mattapan, wasting long, dark hours feeling sorry for himself. For the last fifteen years, he's been accustomed to sleeping beside his wife, and it feels all wrong, knowing that she is across town when she should be in his arms.
When he followed the Machine pieces into the wormhole, he did so with the hope that he would see Olivia again, that he would hear her voice. There's this tone of her voice that Peter knows only he has ever heard (low, conspiratorial, laugh-laced), and he'd have done anything to hear it again. And even though she is so close, so alive, Peter still doubts.
He'd cheated his way around his sacrifice, dragging himself back into existence; maybe this – watching her, loving her, but getting nothing in return – is his true burden to bear.
He tries not to scare her, but sometimes it's hard.
Every day, thousands of thoughts cross his mind that he wants to share with her, but can't.
I found those yellow apples you love at that fruit stand on campus. You know that perfume drives me crazy. You look as beautiful today as you did the day I married you.
Sometimes, the little things just slip out, though.
She pulls over in front of a coffeeshop, and as he opens the car door to make the trip inside, she calls out her order: "Black with—"
"One sugar. I know." He smiles at her, but when she looks up at him, there is apprehension in her eyes. He can tell she's curious about him, but her life has taught her that there are no coincidences, and this familiarity is not to be trusted.
"Olivia, I'm sorry," he says. She tries to brush it off, shaking her head in forgiveness, but he can tell that he's pushed her one step further away.
He sighs. The irony – hurting her feelings by getting her coffee order right – is obviously lost on her.
"I've seen what the two of us together looks like, and it's beautiful."
Once, years ago, in a timeline that exists only in his memory, he pleaded with her to move forward with him, and it worked. Sometimes, he considers laying it all out for her – what he's seen, what he's done, maybe repeat his wedding vows verbatim – but something stops him every time.
She is wonderful, brilliant and beautiful and all of the things he has loved about her for so many years, but she is different. Her life, her choices have all been different, and he wonders if this Olivia could ever love him back. Maybe he doesn't love her.
She argues with him. Challenges him at crime scenes. Almost makes it seem like she's trying to prove he doesn't know her.
She goes on dates, her first dates since John died, just to show she's not interested in the stranger. (Oh, she'll tell him why she's leaving early, but the next morning, she won't tell him she left the date early, too.)
One night, working late at the lab, she is clearly exhausted.
"Go home, Olivia," he tells her.
Of course she refuses, swearing she's fine and gulping down another cup of coffee. "If you're staying, I'm staying."
"Can't get enough of me, huh?" he jokes.
She rolls her eyes, but when she looks back down at the file she's studying, Peter can tell she's smiling.
Oh, yes, this is his Olivia. And there is nothing he can do about loving her.
Maybe it's better this way.
He's also afraid, afraid that changing the timeline won't change the ultimate outcome, and that he'll still get a call on a sunny morning fifteen years from now, bringing him the worst news imaginable. If she never loves him, maybe she never ends up in front of Walternate's bullet.
When he's grieving their life together, he tries to remember all of the bad things – Walter's absence, their reluctant decision not to have children, Detroit – and he hopes that staying away will prevent these things from happening. Sometimes he thinks about leaving, about getting out of their lives and letting everyone move on, instead of hanging around like a ghost.
But then this happens:
They're having a hushed conversation while Walter putters loudly around the lab, arguing about who's going to watch Walter tonight. The old man's latest experiment with ketamine has gone wrong, and he's having what appear to be some pretty frightening hallucinations. It's been a frustrating day altogether, and they're no closer to cracking this case than they were this morning. Peter has been looking forward to going home for a change, if only for the silence of his apartment.
"You're responsible for him – you should stay," Olivia whisper-yells, fists clenched at her sides. They are practically nose-to-nose, bickering back and forth.
"What? No! You're the one who checked him out of St. Claire's – you're responsible for him, Sweetheart."
"Excuse me, were you there? You checked him out, Sweetheart. He's your father, after all."
Peter cocks his head, amused, and watches the realization – and subsequent panic – cross her face.
"Why did I just say that?"
"Because it's true."
"No, it's not. I checked Walter out of St. Claire's three years ago. I've only known you for six weeks, and you're—you're not Walter's son." She says it so matter-of-factly, it's like she's trying to remind herself what's true and what's not. And then she just looks scared.
He can't resist hugging her, pulling her toward him and burying a hand in her hair. "Olivia, please. Please remember," he whispers. It's so familiar, for both of them, this feeling of being close to one another. And this does nothing to allay her fears.
She pulls away, somewhat reluctantly, to look at him. "Who are you?"
He swallows hard, quickly debating, before looking her straight in the eye and answering honestly. "I'm your husband, and I love you."
Walter sends an instrument tray clattering to the floor, and it takes both of them to calm him down. Although they don't talk about this anymore, they both end up staying with Walter through the night, and Peter knows—he's not going anywhere.
Three days later, she shows up at his apartment with a bottle of bourbon.
He laughs and quirks an eyebrow at her – is this coincidence, or does she remember?
She doesn't remember, but it doesn't stop him from recalling that night, the way her eyes looked when she shyly presented a similar bottle to him – or how they looked later, staring up at him as she lay beneath him in bed.
"Tell me the story," she says as he pours.
"What story?"
"Our story. You and me." Sensing hesitation, she continues. "Unless you're worried that telling me would unravel the time-space continuum or something."
He chuckles. "Pretty sure that would've already happened if it was going to."
She clinks her glass to his. "Then tell me."
He takes a long drink, then begins. Iraq, Walter, John. The details he knows are uncanny. She wants to find a hole, or find evidence that he's just gotten his hands on classified documents, but everything makes sense. The other side, her doppelganger, the machine; he knows so many things he shouldn't. Knows about Ella, knows her personality, knows Olivia's favorite shoes and her favorite dish at her favorite restaurant. And when she lets him get a little closer, knows exactly where to touch her to make her crazy with desire.
"Wait, but how are we married?" she asks.
"See, this is where it gets complicated."
She looks skeptical. "Try me."
He does. They sit together on the couch and he tells her everything he's seen. He tells her about the machine and the future – about Walter's sacrifice, and about his own. Peter describes their wedding, their home, weekends spent at Reiden Lake working to focus Olivia's powers.
Slowly, as always, she begins to trust. "Did we have children?" she asks quietly.
Peter shakes his head sadly and touches her hand. "We wanted to, very badly, but the world was very broken."
"I see."
"I saw it wear on you. I know that's something you want. And one of the reasons I did what I did is so that you never have to feel that longing. Whether it's with me or with … someone else, whoever, anyone … I just want you to be happy."
She is – actually, completely – speechless. Having been alone her whole life, even when she was technically part of a family, she's unaccustomed to having someone notice her, care about her. She's beginning to understand how a person very much like her could fall in love with a person very much like him.
"What about you? What do you want?"
"Olivia, you're sitting here, and you're breathing. I have everything I could ever ask for."
As she begins to understand the depth of Peter's love, Olivia wonders if keeping her distance is just prolonging their inevitable fate.
Peter is extremely respectful, but the more time they spend together, the more she can see he's hurting. She tries to be professional, if only to assert her free will. Peter makes it abundantly clear that their marriage isn't predetermined, that in this new timestream, they can make whatever choices they please.
But she can tell, just from the look in his eye when he tells her stories or when she does something that reminds him of them, that he only says things like that because he doesn't want her to feel obligated to be with him.
He wants her to choose him.
And it's getting harder not to.
Peter is pulling Walter back into reality at a surprisingly quick rate, and the three of them (plus Lincoln) become a team before they know it. She'll get flashes, sometimes, things that feel like memories but aren't – almost like déjà vu. When it happens, she'll stop in her tracks, and it's impossible not to notice the look on Peter's face, so heartbreaking in its hopefulness.
He can see it slowly come back to her – she knows about Naked Tuesday without having to be warned, for instance – and it gives him hope that one day, maybe soon, her love will come back, too.
And then, one day, it does.
They're alone at the lab while Astrid and Walter are on a food run. (Three years with Olivia, and Walter .rarely left the lab; two months with Peter, and he's moved into an apartment on campus.) Olivia says something amusing, and Peter laughs, and she just stops resisting it. She leans up and kisses him, and it's like fire and ice and, for a second, he glimmers so strongly she almost loses her balance. But then he's just Peter, and it's as if she's been kissing him her whole life.
It is a new love, and it is an ancient love, and it is uniquely theirs.
She is still afraid—of things like fate, and destiny, and timestreams. But she thinks, hesitantly, that this man could very well be her soul mate, and if what he's saying is true – and now she believes that it is – then there's nothing they can't overcome together.
"Aren't you going to be bored?"
She asks him this later, days later, lying in her bed beside him for the first time. Well, the first time for her.
"I mean, you've already lived our life together. Won't you get tired of all the repeats?"
He just laughs and pulls her closer. "You are a constant surprise, Olivia Dunham, and I will never get tired of you." Then, serious: "And I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it different for you."
And as she allows herself to trust this man who came from nowhere, she curls into his embrace and falls asleep to the steady beat of his heart.