In That Moment, or Blindness, a P/O post-finale fanfic
For piratesmiley, in the op_ficathon. Inspired by "Blindness" by Metric. Mainly Peter's POV.
Send us a blindfold
Send us a blade
When they make the exchange, when he stands there as the fabric of the universe shifts and someone escorts her over, she's wearing a blindfold, and she's thinner than he's ever seen her, so thin his words catch in his throat. He watches Broyles taking her from the other Charlie, and he watches as her legs collapse under her, as Astrid rushes to hold her up, and she's close enough now that he can see her limbs shaking, the goose bumps on her skin. He watches the air shimmer and swirl again, and suddenly there's nothing there but trees, the open window closing as suddenly as it had appeared. Still, he finds no words as they ease the blindfold from her face, and the bruising around her eyes and a long healing gash on her head scream things at him he can hardly comprehend.
He should never have let this happen in the first place.
He should have noticed sooner… weeks sooner.
He should have found something else, something better to offer up… he should have found a way to get her back.
His whole body tenses as he remembers her with the long dark hair on the other side, and the words she said to him, only hours before he would lose her.
You belong with me.
She finally looks up and meets his eyes, and he's not sure whether it's by chance or not, but once those eyes find him, they hold, the only part of her holding steady. That was what he was missing, all along. The other Olivia, the Olivia who'd worked her way into his life, into things that should have just been theirs, her eyes weren't quite that shade, weren't quite that dark. He watches, still uselessly silent, as she takes a few shaky steps, leaning on Astrid, not looking behind her once, not tearing her eyes from his.
It's then that he knows she knows. She knows he didn't notice early enough, she knows he took the other Olivia back with him, she knows he was too caught up in dealing with his own identity that he didn't notice that something had changed so drastically, so painfully with hers. She knows it's partly his fault she's spent these months in a cold, bare cell, tormented by the thought of the usurper in her place. He knows she knows, and the guilt overwhelms him.
He finally manages to take a few steps towards her when she reaches him, and despite everything, despite the emotion in her eyes he reads as somewhere between pain and blame, she transfers her weight from Astrid to him, and his arms wrap around her shoulders and he holds her tight. He can feel the difference with his arms around her, can feel how her collarbone juts out, the sharp corners of her elbows, the slight ridging of her spine, even through her loose, dirty prison clothing. He folds his arms almost neatly across her back, tightly affixing her to him, and presses his face into the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her, mixed with something else, something more acrid, something that makes him feel slightly nauseous, and he realises it's the smell that lingers when crossing the universes. The innate sense of wrong that follows at the thought of Olivia's ordeal encourages his movements and he presses his lips to her hair subtly, feeling her relax into his arms and lean on him. He allows himself a sigh of relief.
Somehow he knows it's all going to be uphill from here.
Tell the survivors
Help is on the way
After a hideous debriefing in which she shivers despite the three or four coats they've wrapped around her shoulders, in the FBI's humourless office, and she's been endlessly watched by everyone who works in the building, desperate to see Agent Dunham dethroned in some kind of morbid curiosity, someone passes her a cup of sweet coffee and she sips it, her hands shaking, her eyes darting, looking for Peter.
No one will really speak to her, it seems, no one will really give her the answers as to what's been happening here. She knows she was traded in, and Broyles has managed some kind of shaky treaty with Walternate, but the thought of her captor, her torturer, makes the nausea rise in the throat, so she doesn't ask. She sets the coffee down and folds her hands in her lap, looking down at them, the skin dry and cracked almost to the point of bleeding. She hasn't had a chance to look in a mirror yet, but she knows, from what she's been through, from the look on the faces of all her colleagues and Peter more than anything, that she must look terrible, beaten down, defeated.
Then, just maybe, the fact that she's standing up, breathing, looking like that, makes her a survivor, after everything.
She feels him sit beside her before she strains all the fatigued muscles in her neck to turn to face him. He's still wearing that grim mask over his features, she still has no idea what he's thinking, she thinks she sees any number of things flickering behind his eyes, guilt, fear, rage, despair… but she can't find the energy or the inclination to decode it all, not today. He says nothing, but reaches out and wraps one of his big hands around one of her thin, pale ones, and leans close to her face to whisper.
"It's over now, 'Livia, it's all over…"
She finds herself closing her eyes and sighing, realising that if she displays any more emotion then that the finely constructed survival she's created around herself will crumble. She lets him whisper words that probably go further to making him feel better than work on her, and she leans into his palm when he cups her cheek, keeping her eyes closed, hoping that this isn't some manifestation of her delirium and no matter how much pain she's in, she's nearly home.
I was a blind fool
Never complained
She won't come and stay with him and Walter, but as he opens the door to her apartment he realises he should have fought harder, that this was a mistake. Debris from when she still lived here litters the place in the subtlest of ways, and again the wave of guilt hits him… he should have known.
Olivia, his Olivia, doesn't say anything, but he knows what she's thinking as she sees the empty rose wine bottle on the table – she drinks red – the files strewn across the floor, the bedclothes rumpled on her bed, through the door. He watches her swallow visibly, and he notices then that she's taken her weight off his arm, that she's leaning on the couch, staring at him.
"She was here, wasn't she?" her voice is cold, clipped, and his heart catches. He's known he was going to have to face this eventuality at some point, but he was hoping he could delay it for as long as possible.
When he doesn't answer, she grips the back of the couch, cracked knuckles turning white.
"Why was she living in my house, Peter?" her voice cracks on his name, and he feels nauseous, but he can't tear his eyes from hers.
"Liv, I'm-"
Her eyes, so dark and finally familiar, are accusing. "I was in there for months, Peter… how much of that time did you actually spend looking for me?"
He takes a step towards her; she takes one back, like some sort of twisted dance. He remembers her words, and he remembers his own betrayal.
You belong with me.
She glances again at the tousled bedclothes, the two wine glasses beside the sink, and when she meets his gaze again her eyes are full.
"How long did it take you to miss me? To realise she wasn't me?"
He has so many things he wants to say, he wants to beg her to forgive, to disregard the last month, he wants to tell her that the other Olivia wasn't so unlike her, maybe she would have made the same mistake in the reverse position, and somewhere in the recesses of his mind, turned with guilt, he almost wants her to understand that the other Olivia, his other Olivia, wasn't all that bad. She was simply following orders from the people she trusted in the same way her counterpart would, she was far from home as well, far from the people she loved.
"I'm sorry." He whispers, and he's never felt this bad, not after anything he's done.
"I feel sick." She mutters, dragging herself around and sinking into the couch, and once again he's struck by how small she looks as she folds her legs underneath herself and stares pointedly at the floor.
"Did you and she… did she… did you...?"
He understands her, and he winces at the thought of it. In that moment he's eternally grateful he's able to take steps towards her, shaking his head, reaching a hand out and clasping hers, however passive and unresponsive she remains.
"Olivia, I…"
"I think you should leave." She says, staring him directly in the eyes. "I don't think you should be here."
He feels a lump forming in his throat, quashed emotions rising, and he realises in that moment exactly the impact she's had on him, the place she holds in his heart, how her pain becomes his pain, indirectly. He also knows how well he knows her, and discovers then that he's all too aware that there's no part of her, no matter how bruised and broken she's feeling, that will keep him here with her tonight, after his betrayal.
She doesn't struggle, doesn't move, simply tenses every muscle in her body as he firmly kisses her forehead, touches two fingers briefly to her lips and murmurs her name, and another apology. He feels her gaze on his back as he leaves through her front door, hearing it close softly behind him.
He waits in his car that night, right outside her building, not caring if the general concept of that is odd. He can't sleep – he knows Walternate uneasily well and doesn't trust a word he says – and there's something to be said for his affection for Olivia speaking loudly in terms of her safety. He doesn't sleep, but he daydreams.
He finds himself thinking about her, her wide, paler eyes, her slightly brighter smile, coloured less with pain of the past. There'd been moments when he'd considered the other Olivia stronger, but it hadn't taken him long to realise that it was the hardships his Olivia had overcome that made her stronger, the extra strain in her smile, the slight saddening of her eyes. He remembers how he'd treated the woman's indifference towards him when they returned to their Boston as a changed mind, a decision rethought. He imagined those brief moments of truth and something not unlike love in his rooms on the other side as the heat of the moment, the eye of the storm, both of their temperaments and psyches so violently frayed that it seemed the only logical option.
He berates himself again for what he failed to see, the slight quirks the other Olivia was missing, the subtle nuances she wore. The way she smiled at him, with less guardedness, with less to lose, the way she spoke to them all, especially to Walter, with a forced familiarity his Olivia would never have used.
His Olivia, sat up there now with tears tracking down her face and bruises dotted all over her skin, courtesy of his father but in reality partially his fault. The one man she'd let in far enough to really know her, the one that should have spotted the difference.
The sense of failure is overwhelming.
It begins to rain.
All the survivors
Singing in the rain
As he sees her walking towards him, barefooted, rain plastering her hair to her face, he climbs out of the car and steps towards her. She's shaking, and he doesn't know whether it's from the icy rain or something quite different.
She stops centimetres in front of him and waves her hands awkwardly in the air for moments before clutching at his shirt, looking up at him with frightened eyes, water running in sheets down both their faces.
"I still need you." She says simply, and his hands find their way to her arms, gripping her tightly, levelling his face with hers, locking their eyes.
"'Livia…" is all he can manage to breathe before she puts her head down on his shoulder, sobs wracking a now fragile frame, half-collapsing into his arms, fisting his shirt like he's a lifeline.
In that moment, he's surer than he's ever been that he's irrevocably in love with her.
"What have they done to me?" she whispers into the sodden fabric of his shirt as he presses light kisses to her hair, pressing her against him, "What has she done to us?"
"You're home now, you're safe now…" he pulls her face up to his and kisses her mouth, the heat of him searing against her. "You're where you belong."
The words echo to both of them, of words spoken lifetimes ago, before complications they couldn't even imagine. Peter remembers how the other Olivia felt in his arms, the day she broke down, the day he confronted her and she told him the truth about everything, and he remembers how rage had turned to sympathy when he had realised that all that had led her to this ruination was the loyalty he loved in her counterpart. He remembers how small and pale she looked, life drained from her, bleeding out on the ground.
He grits his teeth. He couldn't help but care about her; for all their differences, she was so alike his Olivia – but she wasn't his, not in the end. His Olivia was in his arms now, beaten and half-destroyed and terrified of everything this meant.
"She wasn't my Olivia." He breathes in her ear, twining his fingers with hers, "You're my Olivia, I'm here now."
He holds her in the rain until the sobs cease, and then he half-carries her into her house, into the bathroom, pulling her soaking clothes over her head and laying them in the bath, wrapping her in a towel as she stands, shaking, every so often fixing her fingers with his. There's nothing romantic, nothing arousing about her nudity tonight as the purplish bruises scream at him of his betrayal on every inch of her pale skin, and he feels guiltier than ever as he hurriedly hands her dry clothes, praying the evidence of her ordeal will soon be covered. He towel dries her hair as gently as he can, Olivia burying her face in his chest, shuddering with every movement.
He sets her on the couch then, tucks a blanket around her and kisses her cheekbone lightly, just below the bruising. In the huge Midwestern T-shirt and the oversized sweats she looks hardly bigger than a child, and almost ethereal with her pale skin, bruised eyes and blonde hair.
She's like a child, too, when she clutches his hand and begs him to stay.
I was the one
With the world at my feet
It's painful, slow progress in the following weeks, but he watches her eat again, the skeletal appearance fade from her face along with the bruising, the sharp angles of her joints soften a little; she stands up straight and steady now, she's the old Olivia again.
He stays with her every night from thereon in, holding her hand, her hair back from her face as she violently throws up everything she eats those first few days, her whole body in his arms when she cries at night.
She doesn't talk about what his father did to her, she doesn't explain her bruises, simply lets them fade. He'd like to imitate this silence without talk of the other Olivia, but he owes her more than that, and answers her every question. She wants to know everything, eventually, and he won't lie, no matter how many times she's forced to look away from him, no matter how many solitary tears she sheds.
Her alternate, her counterpart, the other woman was Peter's friend, and he saw the qualities in her that he loved in his Olivia, and he was blinded to the differences, blinded to her trickery. He heard her confession, he comforted her in his arms, he advocated for her among the FBI, he watched her die.
He grits his teeth and she knows he's trying not to cry as he tells her this, the final puzzle piece, and despite the pain it causes her, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers.
She goes back to work, they deal with things that would have gone forgotten if the war was still raging between the universes, but the shaky peace seems to be holding, for now. Peter, the uneasy feeling of trepidation about the nature of his father never leaving, preaches vigilance against an attack – he's finding it harder than ever to trust anyone. Peter and Walter seem to have buried the past, and although she sometimes catches him staring blankly into space and she knows he's thinking about his mother, she'll never accept that Peter might have a place in another universe.
Their relationship reaches a sort of stalemate, as he doesn't seem to dare to give her anything more than a light kiss to her hairline, to hold her stoically in his arms. She wonders if he's thinking about the old Olivia, if he doesn't want her, never really has, and he sees himself as her Judas, his penitence their separation.
They go on surviving, just about.
Got us a bottle
Leave it up to me
One night, after a dark case with a few dead children – someone playing with some spiced-up Cortexiphan with no regard for the consequences – instead of going straight to bed she pours them both a straight up Scotch, and they swill and sip in silence, content to be sat close.
And then Olivia says "I love you" at the same time as Peter offers her another drink and for a moment they stare at one another, the stalemate broken, but neither of them sure whether there's safety beyond the impasse.
He watches the tears well in her eyes and one roll down her cheek before he bites the bullet and pulls her closer to him, tasting her again, memories flooding both of them. He feels her arms fold around his neck; he feels her body meld to his, as if it was built solely for that purpose. He lifts her up in his arms and leads her to her bedroom, pressing kisses along her jawline, down her throat, a dam having burst – she's his Olivia.
"I love you too," he breathes across her skin, "I love you too," as if there's ever been any question of it, and they move together clumsily and they learn everything there is to know about loving one another.
And he realises then, in that moment, that they're both going to survive this.