Notes: no profit garnered, not mine. First line from typingtess. Post finale, I assume some changes in the timeline and despite Peter calling for Etta in the series finale end scene, I changed her name here, and Charlie is alive. Because Charlie should always be alive. Open quote and title from Marty McConnell's the fidelity of epitaphs (20 days later). For the gwyo settings bingo, setting spot seen below. Thanks to the jam for beta! All knitting mistakes mine, but I did consult a real knitter, swears.
maybe you'll figure out
what binds you to this planet
is not a magnet, but a cord so fine
you can slide it across one hand, fold
your fingers around the slippery
umbilical. pull. here is sorrow.
pull. and here is bread. pull. some light
breaks across the linoleum. pull.
where do we go from here.
Peter stared at Olivia. She looked over at her shoulder back at him. He had their daughter Clara in his arms, her head on his shoulder. Olivia could hear Clara's soft snuffles of almost sleep. Olivia said, "What?"
"It's 9pm, someone in this room should already be in bed," Peter said.
"I don't control your bedtime," Olivia said, turning back to her computer. "I finally figured out what these victims have in common. They all posted at this knitting website. But there are all these groups to talk about everything else but knitting and they never posted in the same ones. Three posted in one, two posted in another two, but I can't find one they all posted in."
"Trade off," Peter said. Olivia stood up and took their sleeping beauty from his arms. He sat at the computer. "I can do this. They were all active in one place for that guy to find them, but I bet some of them were lurkers or using PMs."
"I know," Olivia said. "But it's so much knitting and I don't knit. They're not speaking my language at all. I don't think I have the capacity for this."
"I knit," Peter said.
"No, you don't," Olivia said.
"I'll take it up and start posting here. I'll go undercover for you. I can post as myself, just me as woman. Stay at home mom, just started knitting, desperate for adult conversation," Peter said, smiling. He was already creating an account. Apparently his name was Penelope.
"You're not desperate for adult conversation," Olivia said.
"It's my undercover identity," Peter said. "Take Tiny Bishop to bed, I'll catch up with you soon."
Olivia carried her daughter down to her bedroom. They carried her too much, apparently. While grocery shopping the week before, a white woman had come up to Olivia after she'd put Clara down and let her go pick out an apple. The woman had said, "It's not good for kids to carry them everywhere. She can walk on her own."
Olivia had glared at the woman until she turned away, muttering. As soon as Olivia could, she had Clara back up in her arms. "Cause I love you near me," Olivia had said.
The tiniest Bishop had just smiled and leaned back into Olivia's arm.
Maybe the woman from the grocery store would come to their house to yell at them next, OIivia thought. She didn't show between Olivia tucking Clara in, arranging the stuffed animals in the right order around her pillows and kissing her blonde hair.
She turned on the nightlight Walter had made for Clara. She thought Peter needed it more than Clara. She would find him in the middle of the night watching the light's gentle arcs and ebbs and flows. It had been a long year of missing and mourning Walter.
One day, even before Walter had disappeared, Olivia had started remembering her old self. Not the one that knew Peter, but the other one. Now she had both in her head, warring sometimes, but it was mostly peaceful.
She laid on their bed and waited for Peter. He was against her working late, but he almost always said nothing. This was the first time he'd taken over for her. Maybe he was bored being at home. She doubted it.
There was something else, too, in her head recently. There was a ghost of another memory, sometimes.
He got in bed next to her, taking a moment to touch her cheek. They'd been together years now, she didn't get blown away every time their eyes met. Every once in awhile, though, she felt how much she loved his face. She could imagine another baby with his unruly hair and maybe her eyes.
She said, "If you actually learn to knit and catch this guy, we can talk about having number two. If you want."
"You really want to?" It was never a question if he wanted another. He would have had three or four if he was the one who could get pregnant. Thank God they'd never asked Walter about that.
"I do want," she said.
He pulled her to him and she was sure she would wake with her arm asleep still tangled with him.
He was already up when she woke up. She found him with his laptop at the breakfast table with Clara. Clara was arranging the cereal in patterns and then Peter would move around all the cheerios on the table and Clara had to recreate the pattern. It was one of her favorite games. Sometimes Olivia thought her kid was weird. That's okay, she told herself. Olivia had loved memory games when she was young, too.
She went to work, and sat next to Charlie. Something whispered to her, she could almost remember something. She was unsettled. She said, "I think I told Peter we're ready for another kid."
"Are you?"
"Aren't you wondering if Peter is?" Olivia smiled.
"Nope," Charlie said. "So you're ready to get pregnant again?"
"I think I am," Olivia said. "Am I crazy?"
"I think that's a separate issue," Charlie said. He passed over today's new case. The dead knitters would have to be Peter's priority.
When she got home, he already had needles and yarn. He'd set it all aside while he and Clara watched Sesame Street. "Did you have dinner?" Clara sounded very concerned.
"I did," Olivia said. "I bet yours was better."
"I ordered pizza," Peter said. "It was organic wheat crust from that place."
"You're too engrossed with your knitting," Olivia said. She sat down next to him. "Made a sock yet?"
"I just started," Peter said. "I had some nice conversations. Apparently, socks are for more advanced knitters than even what I'm pretending to be."
"I didn't have any nice conversations today," Olivia said. "But I did make a doctor's appointment."
"A doctor's appointment?" Peter had that same expression when he'd said nursery all those years ago.
"Doctor's appointment," Olivia said. She remembered, for just a moment, the view of Bell's universe, the hyperreality look of it. "I keep, I feel like I'm having memory issues."
"Too much or not enough?" Peter was instantly concerned. His immediate concern was comforting.
"Too much," Olivia said.
"I can run some tests," Peter said. "We can go to the lab this weekend."
Clara turned towards Olivia, her plump little hands on Peter's knee. "Can I come? I love the lab."
"You can't," Peter said. "But we'll go another time."
That night, after Clara was asleep, Peter ran his hand down her back, squeezed her ass. She said, "We can't make babies until after the doctor's appointment."
"I can't just want sex?"
She smiled as she took off her panties.
Saturday at the lab, Peter took blood samples and ran a number of tests using lights and putting on Walter's old brain machine on her head. She said, "So."
"So," he said. "Every time the timeline's rewritten, your body is rewritten, too. When I got pulled back into this timeline, you didn't remember anything until you had all that cortexiphan in you."
"Because, according to Walter, I was subconsciously attracted to you," Olivia said, smiling.
"But not my fault," Peter said. "Then you only remembered my timeline."
Olivia looked around the lab, she could almost see it twice. She said, "Isn't it weird that this timeline has no observers? Do you ever think that?"
"No observers, living Charlie, all of that, the timeline was changed. But most of the cortexiphan is out of your system. Of course, some of it is bonded to your cerebellum, so it will never be completely gone."
"Cortexiphan is regenerative, maybe it's regenerating."
"I don't see it in your blood work," Peter said. "But you started remembering this timeline, with Nina as your mother, after you were in a coma from that fall. Did these memories come when you were shot a few weeks ago?"
"When I had that bonk on the head," Olivia said.
"When you were shot at and got winged in the head," Peter said, seriously. "Does the timing work?"
"It's not even memories, Peter, it's more like almost memories, like something tugging at me. But yes, the timing works."
Peter reached out and took her hand. "I'm going to schedule you for serious brain scans, right after your doctor's appointment."
"I'll just take the whole day off, then," Olivia said, frowning.
"The thing is, it wouldn't surprise me if the timeline's been written over again and your so-called bonk on the head is letting you see snatches of that other timeline," Peter said.
"Why?" She hated that thought. She wondered what she lost this time.
"Walter disappeared, out of the blue. He left messages. There's a chance he did something that changed our timeline again," Peter said. He started cleaning up the equipment they'd used. "Maybe it's not that big a change. Unlike when I went in the machine, this was more of a jog left than a whole leap."
"Why do I remember at all?"
"Cortexiphan works on perception, etc, don't make me give you this lecture again," Peter said. He kissed her forehead. "The brain scans are just in case. I'll be there, don't worry."
He showed up early, like she did. He said, "How was your doctor's appointment?"
"I'm fine, everything's fine. The doctor said given that I'm now of advanced maternal age, we should come back if I'm not pregnant in three months," Olivia said. "So now you want to irradiate my brain."
"Absolutely," Peter said, kissing her quickly. "Glow in the dark baby sounds great. It's not like Clara wants to give up her night light."
While she was in the machine, she wondered if he'd brought his knitting. When she got out, she saw he had. He stuffed it in his backpack.
"You're fine, no long term injury from all your head injuries," Peter said. "I can let the real doctor tell you, too, if that will make you feel better."
"You're the one who was worried," Olivia said.
"You should be worried," he said. "Are we going home now or are you going back to work?"
"Eh, Charlie can handle it," Olivia said.
A week later when she came home from work, Peter put a yellow and green marbled scarf around her neck. "You made a scarf," Olivia said. She rubbed it against her cheek. "Soft."
"Better be," Peter said. "It wasn't my brightest idea to just let Clara pick what yarn I should use. I had to rip it out and start again three times before I got it right. So, really, that was very expensive yarn that I messed up and had to buy another skein of to finish this. Not the yarn a beginner should use for their first project at all."
Olivia was home late, Clara was already in bed. She unwound her scarf as she went to Clara's room. Maybe it was silly to have another child whose life she would barely be part of. Clara's eyes fluttered open as Olivia walked in. "Mommy," she said, smiling.
"Baby," she said. She tucked Clara in all over again to Clara's delight. Thankfully, she fell right back to sleep.
Olivia found Peter on the couch, knitting again, with his laptop open to the knitting website. She touched his new yarn. "Is this blood red?"
"Please," Peter said. "It has a much more clever and twee name. I let Clara pick again, so I had to buy multiple skeins of this very expensive yarn."
"Why are you letting her dictate this?"
"It's going to be a blanket for her. A small sized blanket, but a blanket nonetheless. I had already decided I would make baby number two a matching baby blanket in this color, so I was doubly screwed," Peter said.
"We're going to wrap our second baby in a blanket the color of menstrual blood for the first pictures? First trip home?" Olivia grinned. "Behold our BLOOD."
"The BLOOD of our suffering," Peter said. "Yes, that's the plan. Speaking of second baby, I think I figured out which group all these women were in. Today I joined the TTC group, because my DH and I are trying again."
Olivia just looked at him. He caved. "TTC is trying to conceive, DH is darling husband. Here's the thing, once you conceive, you can join the due in October 2017 group. When the baby comes, there's a born in October 2017 group. I checked, all five women would have been in the due in June 2014 group. One had a stillborn baby and another had her baby early, but that's about three months they were all there."
"The same group for three months two, three years ago?" Olivia frowned. "But they all died now, or in June of 2016, so a month ago."
"Right, but that was their point of intersection. I'm going to look through their accounts more tomorrow and see if maybe they all received similar PMs, or there was someone who was posting there who sought them out," Peter said.
"Do you miss it?"
He didn't ask what it was. He smiled as he kept knitting. "All the time. Your daughter can drive me up the wall."
"Saying that makes us bad parents," Olivia said.
"I said it, not you. The bar is way lower for dads," Peter said. "I'm still Father of the Year for all my babysitting and helping out."
Olivia laughed. Then she said, "I'm a bad parent."
"You're a mother, whatever you do, you're a bad parent," Peter said. He put his knitting down and took her hand. "I think you're a good mother."
Olivia shook her head to get out of her mood. She said, "It's too late anyway, I think I'm pregnant."
He glanced at her and squeezed her hand. "Even if you are, you're two days along or something."
"I knew the morning after with Clara, I just didn't tell you," Olivia said.
"Is that the cortexiphan?" He saw her expression and said, "Sorry."
"It is," she said, sighing. "I'm pretty sure."
"I know you hate it," he said.
"Every timeline, I'm someone's experiment," Olivia said. She rubbed her eyes. "I'm sleepy."
"I think we should still have sex," Peter said. He let go of her hand and gripped her thigh.
"Good idea," she said. She really loved having sex with him, she hoped that was a constant in every timeline.
Peter discovered all five women had been approached by someone claiming to be a herbalist, who had roped in another 15 women and had been sending them all special 'samples.' He passed it all over to Charlie and the FBI.
"15 dead, and we never connected any of them," Charlie said.
"Broyles put Astrid on finding the living ones," Olivia said.
"I hope he put the other agents in New York on it, too," Charlie said.
Olivia shook her head. "I know there are other agents in that office, Astrid's my favorite."
"Your BFF," Charlie said.
"You're my BFF," Olivia said. "Explain to me what he was doing with the samples."
Charlie rolled his eyes. "Ask Peter, he and the Massive Dynamic people figured it out."
"I bet he knit a whole scarf on the plane ride there and back," Olivia said.
"He's still doing that?"
"He's still doing that," Olivia said. "He loves it."
"Your stay at home dad husband now knits," Charlie said. "If I weren't your BFF, I'd make a joke about that."
"I think you're refusing to make a joke because you're a better man than that," Olivia said.
She met Peter at the airport and he'd finished a bright green hat that he immediately put on her head. "Thank you," she said. "How was New York City?"
"Eh," Peter said. "Is Clara home?"
"No, I left her on a street corner, told her to work out how to get home," Olivia said. "I have a text from the babysitter, she's already asleep."
"Any luck finding the bad guy?"
"We don't rely on luck," Olivia said. Peter had already linked arms with her.
"That's a no," Peter said.
Later that night, Olivia waited for him in their bedroom. He came in, and he sat down next to her. "What's up?"
She handed him the pregnancy test. "I told you."
"Yes, you did," he said, smiling. "You're happy about it, right?"
"I am," she said. "I just, the cortexiphan, or whatever is wrong with me that I knew I was pregnant, now I have these dreams."
She felt a wave and something rushed into her head, like when she'd woken up and remembered her life before. She pulled at Peter and he was holding her tight. She said, "Before, our daughter was Etta." Peter ran his hand through her hair.
"I think it was all awful," Olivia said, her voice wasn't steady.
"Every time the timeline changes, your whole body is written over," Peter said. "What we are now is what matters."
"Charlie stayed dead, and the Observers were everywhere," she said.
"Why would we name our kid Etta?" She knew Peter was trying to distract her and sooth her.
"Henrietta," Olivia said. "I don't remember why."
"That's okay," Peter said. "I like Clara better."
"I know," Olivia said. "You would have been named Clara, that's what your mother told you."
"Middle name Dunham, perfect name. I like it a lot more than Henrietta," Peter said. "I'm sorry about your head."
She tried to breathe evenly. "I don't want this. The memories, I mean."
"I thought you meant the hat," Peter said. He rubbed her back. "I make some mean drugs if you ever want to forget things."
"I think I'll wait until the baby's born and I'm done breastfeeding. But as soon as that's done, you can hook me up," she said. "Are you going to knit me a pill bottle cosy?"
"That's a fantastic idea," Peter said. "I know where I can get the pattern, actually."
"Oh, God, Peter," Olivia said.
He babbled about knitting, his fingers drumming on her back like he already had needles in his hands. It was exactly as calming as she needed. She fell asleep in his arms. For once, she didn't dream at all.