Disclaimer: Fringe owns my heart for the rest of my life, but I do not own Fringe.
Spoilers: This goes off canon after 3x09 Marionette.
Rating: T (will switch to M)
A/N: I've been working on this for a month now. Posting it on our beloved show's 2nd anniversary feels appropriate.
The story itself is complete, although still in the work. It will be 6 parts long, because (GASP) it's huge. I've been rewatching Fringe, and what can I say, there is just something special about Marionette and the P/O angst that resulted from it. Furthermore, I was always a bit disappointed by the fact that Olivia's ordeal was so swiftly 'brushed off', considering all the things she was put through during her time Over There. This is how I deal, combining angst, UST, and PTSD. EXCITING! :D Thank you to Meg for her help. Enjoy ;)
SHIVERED BONES
I.
Astrid first points out the obvious.
"How do you even begin to make amends for something like this?"
Her tone matches her demeanor. She's pale, her eyes reddened and bloodshot; she was still crying by the time Walter and Peter reached the hospital, a short while ago. There was a smile on her face then, quivery, but there. Her relief was genuine as she quickly recollected how Olivia had emerged from the tank.
The elation is gone; so is her relief. Any good feeling she might have had seems to have been replaced by its perfect opposite. Her question is the first thing any of them says since the doctor left, a minute ago. He left them standing in silence, trying to process what they were just told.
Signs of abuse. Needle tracks and scarring on her arms, some old, some very recent. Bruised chest and puncture mark seem to indicate the use of adrenaline on her heart earlier that day. Tests being run on her blood to insure nothing harmful is left in her system.
Eight weeks. Fifty-six days. Two whole months, and none of them knew.
None of them knew.
"Yes, I somehow doubt homemade pies will be much help, in this case" Walter says quietly, without sarcasm. "Although if you do feel the urge to bake in the upcoming days, I will gladly help with the consumption."
In some part of his mind, Peter knows he should say something, call out his father for being tactless, but that part of him, like most of him, is...distant.
Muffled, irrelevant, useless.
Walter isn't even mocking Astrid's tendency to over-bake when overwhelmed, but they cannot afford to make light of the situation in any way at the moment.
Not now, not ever.
Peter doesn't call him out on it. He remains silent, the way he's been ever since the paralysis wore off, saved for the times he had no other choice but to speak. To Broyles, to Walter. To her. He's too shell-shock for speech. Acid burns at the back of his throat; he's been tasting bile from the moment he became able to swallow again, a discomfort that isn't merely physiological.
Shame and guilt started growing inside of him as he sat frozen in that armchair, until they swallowed him whole. He'd been stripped naked, left raw and exposed, made a fool, an absolute, sickening fool of himself. Latching onto anger in that train station was easy. Anger was all that was left. Now that this feeling is gone, too, he's got nothing.
He's empty.
"Is one of you named Peter?" The doctor had asked. Upon half-raising his hand to answer the query, the man smiled reassuringly, mirroring his words about Olivia, and how she will be alright. "She said your name a few times. You'll be allowed in very soon, one at a time."
She's blissfully ignorant, unaware that the man she's been calling for in her daze is also the person who betrayed her the most.
Eight weeks, and they didn't know.
He didn't know.
How do you begin to make amends for something like this?
…
The truth is, she can barely stand to be in her apartment.
Everywhere Olivia looks, she sees him; them.
Last night, she was so focused on washing everything washable that she didn't truly notice all the other signs, these other proofs of her stolen life. When she'd first come back to her apartment after leaving the hospital, she'd seen that her mail was opened and that some of her belongings had been moved, but she hadn't thought much about it. Details, all of it; insignificant details, compared to the thrill she felt at simply being back, being home, alive.
Breathing.
So what if there was an old message from Peter on her answering machine, left less than ten days ago, telling her he would be there to pick her up in twenty minutes? Of course they'd interacted, she had lived her life for two months. That was okay; fine, really. Lincoln and Charlie had picked her up a couple of times during her weeks Over There, hadn't they?
Olivia hadn't slept with her boyfriend, though.
Maybe she should have. Maybe she should have pinned Frank to her bed, and made him forget about the breakdown, about the little inconsistencies he seemed to notice. Isn't it what she had done with Peter? Fucked his brain out, so he wouldn't care if she laughed too much or suddenly hated the taste of alcohol? Plus, the laughter and the smiles weren't all that bad.
Less intense was good, refreshing, exciting, even.
No, Olivia didn't notice all the other details, on that first night; granted, it would have been hard for her to see anything at all, curled up as she'd been against her washing machine.
She only moved when one of the machines beeped, washer or dryer, forcing herself up to her feet just long enough to switch the laundry. She'd dumped every freshly clean batch onto the ground, right next to the heap of tainted clothes, so that several times, she ended up rewashing the same items over and over again.
With the exceptions of those briefs episodes when she made herself get up, or that one time she went to the kitchen to grab her whiskey bottle –miraculously untouched, she'd stayed on the ground, right where she first broke down.
Her tears had long stopped coming, or she was too far gone to even feel wet streaks on her face. At the very least, the sobs had subsided. She had let the vibrations of the machine carry her through this endless night, numbing her entire body and soul, until she was nothing but a cold, empty shell.
Upon coming home tonight after her confrontation with Peter in that garden, the last lingering traces of her denial gone for good, Olivia sees everything, every sign. Even what she doesn't see, she seeks. Armed with a trash bag, she roams her apartment, searching for these things that don't belong.
One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong.
At first, she's looking for traces of her, and there are plenty of these to be found. Olivia guesses the FBI already combed the place when her alternate was on the run, looking for obvious evidence that might lead them to her, but they couldn't see what she sees. Having another set of memories in her head and some leftovers from her double's personality makes her uniquely perceptive to such things.
Every note pinned to her fridge, she trashes without reading; she throws avocados out, even though they feel ripe to the touch, and knows they would taste rich. Cereals she doesn't like, junk food she hasn't eaten in years, cans of soup she would never have bought; everything goes.
Her fridge is filled with take-out boxes that are too recent to be her own. She recognizes Mr. Iyers' chicken tikka masala, and she throws that away with a bit too much force, orange sauce plastering the inside of the bag. She briefly allows herself to mourn a food she will never eat again.
She's moved on to the bathroom when she becomes aware of Peter's lingering presence, too. Rationally, she should have expected it after finding his sweater and his MIT shirt in the wash, along with a couple of boxers. Unfortunately, rationality has become hard to achieve, these past few days.
She finds his shampoo in the shower.
The brand is generic, but it's a product for men, from the color to the shape of the bottle; she doesn't even have to open it and breathe in a waft of its scent to know the bottle is his.
Almost against her better judgment, she gets another bag, then, a cheap plastic one, in which she starts putting his things. The shampoo, the clothes, a couple of DVD boxes that look too battered to be new, a pair of shoes, his shaving cream.
Other items, such as their toothbrushes and the half-empty box of condoms she finds in her nightstand's drawer, she throws in the trash.
One of these things just doesn't belong.
As she roams her apartment again and again, ridding her place of hints of her, and him, Olivia gets the nagging feeling that she has become that thing that doesn't belong.
…
Even after more than two years spent as a Civilian Consultant, Peter doesn't feel at ease walking through the FBI's headquarters. If at first, it had something to do with his previous occupation and his desire to stay as far away as possible from the federal system, the reasons behind his unease have changed.
Today, he blames it on the looks he gets.
The Fringe Division isn't what you would call 'big'; compared to some of the other agencies that occupy this very building, their operation is ridiculously small. Only a few people working with them are aware of what they are truly dealing with –alternate universes and dopplegangers, for one thing.
Yet, judging by the way some of these agents stare at Peter as he walks to Broyles' office, they know just enough to feel the right to judge him.
Peter walks on, head high and jaw clenched, looking straight ahead, resigned to the fact that 'this' will take a while to blow over. Considering some of the other aspects of 'this', being judged by a couple of smug people is the least of his worries.
He knocks, entering the office without awaiting a say-so, eager to put an end to the stares anyway. Broyles is sitting at his desk, from which he offers Peter his trademark look, stern and unreadable.
"Bishop," he greets him, and there's an ominous quality to his tone Peter dislikes right away.
His discomfort intensifies, as it dawns on him that he has never been in Broyles' office without Olivia before.
Not that her absence by his side is surprising.
"Why am I here, exactly?" he asks, his voice harsher than he intended it to be, but he can't exactly help it. Broyles merely blinks at him, and Peter sighs. "You don't usually request my presence in your office. Usually, I just go wherever my father is needed."
In other words, wherever Olivia asks him to go. The perfect sidekick, docile and complaisant.
He would rather not use her name if he can help it, though.
"I wanted to talk to you about Agent Dunham," Broyles says, having apparently decided Peter's wishes can go to hell, along with the rest of him.
Peter closes his eyes for a moment, swallowing hard. This is going to be more difficult than he anticipated. Everything is harder and gloomier, these days.
"Alright," he says. "I'm listening."
The two men hold each other's gaze, a few more seconds passing before Broyles speaks again. "How does she seem to you?"
Peter frowns, startled. "What do you mean?"
"I want your opinion on how you think she's coping," Broyles replies tersely, probably thinking Peter is being thick on purpose. He's not.
Unfortunately, on occasions, Peter simply happens to be very, very thick.
"Technically, she should still be on leave, considering what she's been through in the past couple of months," Broyles adds.
The familiar burn at the back of his throat has returned; it never stays away for long. "You re-instated her less than a week after she came back," Peter points out, not even trying to conceal how he feels about that particular decision.
"I know that," Broyles sternly replies. "She's…persuasive, as you very well know." In another lifetime, Peter might have laughed at that understatement. "I don't believe letting her go back to work so quickly was a mistake, but I do worry about her psychological state."
Peter's confusion is worsening by the minute, along with the usual assortment of self-loathing feelings he always drags along wherever he goes, his stomach churning. "It still doesn't explain why you're asking me. I'm sure you're forcing her to see one of the bureau's shrinks. They're the ones who're supposed to let you know how your agents are doing."
Lies.
Lies, lies, lies.
Peter understands with perfect clarity why Broyles is asking him; he's asking him for the same reasons he asked him the same damn thing, over a year ago, after Olivia's accident and brief coma. Because even Broyles had been aware of the dynamic that existed between the two of them, of that ability they had of reading right through each other.
All Peter can think about right now is Olivia as she was a few days ago, when she handed him a plastic bag, not even daring making eye contact with him.
"These are, uh, yours. I found them in my apartment."
Broyles thinking that she and Peter might still have some kind of trusting relationship would have been laughable, if it hadn't made him feel nauseous instead.
"She's indeed meeting with a psychiatrist on a regular basis," Broyles says. "I am not at liberty to discuss it, of course, but I will say that the conclusions drawn from these sessions are…inconsistent, not to say inconclusive. I need your opinion on what you've observed."
Peter clenches his jaw again, his heart thumping against his ears, now. Turning his guilt and shame into anger is something he does frequently, these days, a self-defense mechanism he hasn't lost through the years.
"Okay, here's the thing," he says, one of his hand raising, already hearing the sarcasm taking over his voice. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but I told Olivia everything about what happened while she was being tortured Over There, including the part where I slept with another version of her for a few weeks. Believe it or not, she did not take it well. So, it's kind of sweet of you to think she still lets me hang around as often as she used to, but the truth is, I'm mostly confined to the lab these days. When she goes out on the field, she either goes alone, or asks Astrid to join her."
Peter has lost count of how many hours he has spent in the Harvard basement, simply sitting there, not even pretending to be doing anything useful. All he wants to do in moments like these is what he always used to do when cornered into a difficult situation –run.
Run away from this forsaken place, the way he'd run a few months ago after learning the truth about his origins.
For all intends and purposes, he still has every right to do just that. The few awkward discussions he had with Walter haven't exactly cleared the air on the matter; beyond that, no one seems inclined to think much about how Peter was once again deceived, in one sickening, fucked up way. He can't blame them for not acknowledging his pain. He himself feels too ashamed to think he truly deserves any kind of sympathy, and certainly not absolution.
Because of this, Peter cannot run. Even pushing aside his sense of obligation toward Olivia, he cannot ignore the fact that he's at the center of this damn universal war. He has nowhere to go, no place to run to.
He doesn't belong here, and he doesn't belong there. Olivia certainly made it clear he doesn't belong with her anymore either.
So no, he doesn't run, and on a smaller scale, doesn't get to follow her around the way he used to.
"I am well aware of what she does on the field," Broyles says in answer to his small monologue. Then, after a brief pause, he asks: "Have you read her report? The one she wrote about her time Over There?"
Peter lets the silence stretch for a few seconds, before nodding shortly. He isn't supposed to have read it, but there is no point in lying about it now.
"What was your impression of it?" Broyles asks, not surprised in the least by Peter's rule-breaking.
At last, Peter is starting to get a general idea of where this might be going. "It was…professional," he answers. There is no other way to describe Olivia's account of what she experienced during the weeks she spent on the Other Side.
"Exactly," Broyles says. "She did not omit anything of what she remembers, or what she discovered about their intentions, but her recollection of what happened to her personally was…slim."
Peter fights the urge to ask him if he's honestly surprised by it, by the fact that Olivia Dunham is pushing aside what happened to her, choosing instead to be as detailed as possible about everything else; everything else but her and her wellbeing.
Who cares about me?
At the moment, Peter isn't the only who cares about her. Phillip Broyles is not the most expressive man, but his concern is obvious.
"What's this really about?" Peter asks.
Broyles sighs, before getting to his point. "Since you haven't been accompanying her these past couple of weeks, you are probably unaware of her newfound tendency to shoot at suspects."
Peter stares at him, stunned. In the past two years, he has seen Olivia shoot at suspects many times, but from what he remembers, she always did it in self-defense. Broyles is making it sound like she has become 'trigger happy', which seems ridiculous.
"Alright," he says, shaking his head in confusion, hands once again raised. "This cannot possibly be as bad as you make it sound, or it would have landed her into some kind of big trouble with you guys. At the very least, I would have heard of it."
Another lie.
"Each of them were guilty," Broyles continues, "and in the process of running away. None of her shots were fatal, merely incapacitating. She has a good aim."
This is not exactly reassuring. "If you think she's not fit for duty, have her psychologist put her on leave."
Broyles shakes his head, his face grave. "I can't. Even though I believe she's probably suffering from some form of PTSD, which is to be expected given the trauma she's experienced, it doesn't show on her psych exams or sessions reports."
"What do you want me to do, exactly?" Peter asks, losing patience.
His irritation isn't simply caused by the fact that, generally speaking, he doesn't have much patience for anything these days. His main problem right now is being told Olivia needs help, and knowing that he cannot offer it to her.
That makes him feel spectacularly shitty.
"If you expect me to talk her into taking some time off, you really don't understand how dysfunctional our relationship is, right now."
Another blatant understatement.
"Stay by her side, Bishop," Broyles tells him, his voice low, insisting on every word. "I know you've been something of a voice of reason to her, these past two years. All you have to do is keep on doing just that."
The two men stare at each other, united in their concern, but divided in their faith. "I don't really think my judgment can be trusted anymore," Peter eventually says, unable to make it sound derisive.
Broyles slowly shakes his head again. "On the contrary. After what happened with the Other Olivia, I believe your judgment is more trustworthy than ever before."
The message is clear. Peter is a smart man. An oblivious man at times, but smart nonetheless.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
Peter will not be fooled again.
…
"What do you mean, you own Massive Dynamic?"
The silence that follows Olivia's question is thick, heavy with tension and discomfort.
Even the couple of local cops still present at the scene are now staring at the three of them in turn.
They're investigating a murder in a town in the outskirts of New York City; for all intents and purposes, those cops shouldn't have any reason to be intrigued or to eavesdrop on the rather tensed Dunham/Bishop(s) discussion, the way some officers in Boston do.
Whether they want it or not, their little trio –or family unit, as Peter once described it to her- has become somewhat infamous in the Boston area over the past two years. Fringe files are obviously classified as top secret, but the people who are first called to the scenes cannot exactly forget what they see, and their Division's name definitely isn't a secret.
Like anywhere else, rumors have a way of spreading like wildfire, especially juicy ones.
Since her return to this universe, Olivia has received enough pity-filled looks to get a good idea of the kind of rumors that now surround their freak show of an operation.
Does everyone know?
They should have been safe here, away from the gossip; yet, these two cops are intrigued. She guesses the smothering tension that hangs heavy over their heads whenever she and Peter are in the same room is hard to dismiss, no matter where they go.
Right now, the problem isn't Peter. She's staring at Walter, who looks more than a little uncomfortable. She'd made a comment; that's how it started. She'd made a comment about them needing to go to Massive Dynamic to check if they had any information on the technology that had been used to kill that woman.
Almost as a joke, trying to prove to herself more than to the Bishops that she could still make light of a situation, she'd said: "I missed going there and having them pretend they'll cooperate completely."
To which Walter had replied, with unmistakable satisfaction: "Considering that I now own Massive Dynamic, I believe they will have to be as cooperative as possible."
Hence Olivia's valid question about his presumed ownership. Had she been anyone else, or had they been any other messed up family unit, she might even have joked again. "When did that happen?" she would have asked.
Olivia doesn't ask; she doesn't need to. She knows exactly when that happened.
Her initial and genuine surprise is short-lived. Even before Walter answers, her demeanor has shifted, back to uncomfortable and tense awkwardness.
"Well," Walter says, tentatively, and she sees him throw a nervous look at Peter; she keeps her eyes on the old man. "I don't know if you're aware of this but, after we were…separated a few months ago, at the Opera House, Belly died." His words are cryptic for a reason; the two cops are still eavesdropping. "In accordance to his will, I became the sole shareholder of Massive Dynamic."
Olivia stares at him for a few more seconds, unsure of how to feel about this new piece of information. For the most part, she feels the way she often feels, nowadays; out of the loop.
Invisible, cold, and unsubstantial.
She averts her eyes at last, turning her light back to the mutilated corpse she's been hovering over, not seeing it at all, mouth pursed.
"I'm sorry, Olivia," Walter adds, his voice lower, honest. "I thought someone told you."
She shakes her head, eyes still cast to the ground. "It's fine," she says. And it is.
Except that it's not, and they all know it.
Soon, she's unable to keep her eyes on the body, as familiar prickles sneak up the back of her neck, drawing her gaze back up, making her look across the room.
As she expected, she meets Peter's eyes dead-on, his stare intense, unrelenting. Just as predictably, the prickles soon morph into shivers, the kind that spread under her skin and all the way down her spine, forming an electric current that coils in her guts.
Olivia doesn't avert her eyes right away, letting the feel of his gaze twist her insides instead; she often does.
He and Walter have been accompanying her out on the field more and more often, lately, something she wasn't exactly happy about at first, but she didn't have the authority to keep them locked up in the lab. The truth is, no matter how uncomfortable most of those moments are, part of her almost craves them.
Obviously, Walter's presence isn't what troubles her. He's actually tried apologizing to her a couple of times, stammering miserably, talking about how that 'devious temptress' had blinded him and softened him up with food. Since Walter always initiated these discussions in the presence of both Astrid and Peter, however, Olivia hadn't been able to bear it, to bear the shame and embarrassment talking about the Switch always filled her with. She offered him fake smiles instead, shaking her head and raising her hands in dismissal.
"It's okay, Walter," she would say. "It's fine. We're good."
She's lost count of how many times she's uttered these words, or to how many people.
Olivia is making every effort to move on, and she does feel herself becoming more and more at ease around some of them again. She's particularly calm around Astrid, whose naturally soothing aura and quiet compassion have been a bit of a blessing in the first couple of weeks following her return. Her relationship with Walter has always been complicated, more tensed than comfortable given their history, so in that regard, nothing has changed much.
The elephant in the room, obviously, is Peter.
If he didn't do anything more than accompany her on almost every case, maybe things would be easier. Maybe whatever feelings she still have for him, the ones she's trying to rid herself off the way she got rid of his shampoo, would eventually fade away, if they both agreed to let them die. He doesn't.
Peter stares at her.
Not all the time, but to her, each of these stares is one too many. Because in those moments and in their aftermath, the intensity of his gaze makes it impossible for her to let her heart flush him out. Every time she feels the prickles and meet his gaze, that treacherous heart of hers beats faster instead, her body still aching for something she never had, and never will.
With the exception of these stares, Peter does give her space. Even when they're in the same room, he tries to avoid standing too close to her, which is why she usually meets his eyes from across the room, like today. Olivia wishes it helped, but it doesn't.
It simply makes her more aware of how they haven't touched since that kiss, Over There.
Somehow, she doubts that holding her hand and briefly pressing his lips to her forehead while she lay on a hospital bed counts. Of course, in Peter's case, he has touched her, although not the right her.
Olivia wonders sometimes if he's as aware of it as she is; if these long, penetrating stares are any indication, he must be. He's always been too comfortable around her, always invading her personal space, almost from the day they met. When at first, he might have done it just to unnerve her, aware that she wasn't completely immune to his proximity, the nature of their touches changed over time, along with the rest of their relationship.
She learned early on that Peter is a tactile person. He shows support through touch, offering warmth and comfort with his body language and presence alone, always at hand's reach. In the weeks that preceded the events on the Bridge, when he realized where he was from and ran away from them –from her, he had been prone to touching her; she had been prone to letting him do it, even in her conflicted state.
Standing too close to her in the lab, arms brushing, leaning, none of them moving. Hand on the small of her back while entering buildings, sometimes briefly resting it on her arm after a long day or a hard case.
You okay?
Fingers on her cheek, palm sending searing heat into her flesh.
He'd brought his hand to her face, that night Over There. Soon, he was cupping both her cheeks, and his grip was both eager and tender, pulling her more firmly to him.
Olivia had clung to the memory of it, of that kiss. She had let it unfold and unravel in her mind during long hours spent in the dark, feeling frozen to the core. The thought of him, of his body pressed against hers, solid and real, of his scent filling her lungs and head, of his lips and mouth, blazing hot against her own, had kept the cold from consuming her whole.
Most of all, what stayed with her, tethered her, was the memory of his touch when he'd let go, soft, gentle fingers moving again, the back of his nails brushing her flushed cheek, his eyes darkened yet more alive than she'd seen them in weeks, months even.
I'll come back for you.
Even now, Olivia cannot forget that kiss; every time he looks at her the way he is now, she's back Over There, with his hand on her face and that broken promise in his eyes. She lets him stare at her, lets her inside twists in need and loss, because that's the only thing resembling warmth she's felt since she came back. The only thing she's got left.
Peter hasn't touched her in weeks.
A/N: Updates should be fairly regular. Reviews always help a lot, so don't be shy :')