Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe-verse nor the characters. I just like to break them out and play with them.
Spoilers: All seasons (you'll hopefully recognize the episodes) and especially this current timeline. Is a companion piece to my story 'What's Not Meant to Be'. If you haven't yet, you might want to read it first. This ficlet would make more sense that way.
Like most of us hopeless romantics in the Fringe-dom world, we just want back the love-dovey our Peter and Olivia have. So I tinkered around a bit, and tried to get it back.
This story is dedicated to Eliays, Elizabeth Dunham-Bishop, angelcakes, Sofia, fourfortyseven, dancerforlife5, Amy, AriOreo24, Kayla, Psycho Snicket, wobbedygook and E Salvatore.
Thank you for all the wonderful feedback! It means alot to me. It makes me deliver on these drabbles for you guys and your love of Fringe-verse.
You're all awesome! :)
What's Not Meant To Be Lost.
As she's driving, he's staring out the window. A deep, lost in thought concentration, that's filled the car's cabin with a bereaved and quiet atmosphere.
He's holding his coffee cup on his lap, blindly picking at the fiber-plastic lid with the underside of a fingernail, mindlessly teethering himself to this world before he can get lost in his own projected abyss.
Since she picked him up, twenty minutes ago, he's been this way, subdued, and stand-offish, caged into a personal prison of silent dissection that make his eyes light grey with a powerful sadness.
When he climbed into this car, she felt it; his despair, bouncing off of him like vibrations on a soundwave, and she'd blame it on a day ago, on their hallway moment outside her apartment if she didn't feel, hot in her veins, an overwhelming certainty that this was bigger then her doorway admission.
What's causing his misery, is hissing in her bloodstream, stabbing at her marrow; reminding her, painfully, of the truth that left dried tears in her hands, and her exhausted facial flesh.
Reality is it's own master, a hateful, conspiring offense to the things that it hurts both of them to want.
They haven't spoken, not really, not besides two greetings said in the politeness of early morning. Broyles called her, an hour ago, reminding her and her passenger to check off on a warehouse involved in thier latest case. It was a dud, their investigation, another abnormally suspected normal crime disguised as a Fringe event to early eyes. They get one or two in a handful of six.
And they had to close it, and they had to do it together, because Walter left behind his ion microscope and Peter promised to retrieve it.
And even after forty-eight hours, she can can still feel his fingerpads, burned into her neck, a whisper of a soft caress on her face and lips that left her sleepless; her mind, unable to settle after his attack on her self-resolution.
If it's more possible then before, he's shattered her entirely.
In comparison she pails to the her of his world; he'd all but said so when he'd wished with words she was a different Olivia, and those words have cut her down, forced her self-importance, extinct, and her significance, gone.
The heterodyne he's created, the beat under her rigcage tuned-in to his, and only his frequency, overpowers her self-recognition now to know only him.
All of his pieces, all of his pain and longing and confusion and fear dig into her and she feels the bruises, phantom hints of his green and purple hurt left on the top-side of her skin.
This world is a hell that life's thrown him in. And he's torn, mercilessly, between where he stands and where he can go.
And she didn't help matters, two days ago, when she gave up keeping to herself by pouring her heart out.
It was the final gunshot to the head of what breaks him.
She tastes his affliction in the back of her throat. And plenary anguish has an acrid lethal flavor. He's gripped his knee, when she dares look at him, curling his fingers into the flesh and bone as though the pain would lesson somehow the linger of heartache.
It's a self-torture to compliment a despised subsistence, and he can't try hard enough -with his genius and her team and the Wave-sync- to get out of it.
And it's now she feels an invader to his private hell, an unwelcome guest to his personal torment. It makes her feel small, bantam, her thoughts and bones and body expendable in the weight of his air.
She was nothing now besides an invisble conductor of his dynamic energy.
Painfully, she wonders, how the her of where he's from deals with such a forcefull violation; what that her would say, if she vows to give it back.
How deep he pulses under her, through her, can mean nothing now, because he'll never love her. She wants to tear his roots from her body and give them back to who they came from.
She grips the wheel tighter, in the power of it, and her head spins with a need to counter-attack his collusion.
So she rolls over her tongue a silent apology before she braces herself and says it aloud.
"Peter, I'm sorry, for what happened. For the position I put you in. It wasn't fair."
She winces on the loud sound of her own voice, a plunderer that's broken the air and his self-dissention along with it.
She feels him turn to her, can imagine the tiny, forced smile at the edge of his mouth he attempts to hide every leg of his pain with.
If he only knew how much it coursed through her.
"You have nothing to be sorry about."
He says, but she's not accepting his easy forgivness this time. Not when she's desperate, so desperate, to be liberated from what clutch she could be placing him in.
"I shouldn't have put you through that, you didn't ask for it. You didn't ask for any of this."
"Neither did you."
He says it swiftly, somberly, and she feels the resonance creating a new pulse, beating it raw.
For all of this, everything, he blames himself. Even how she feels, to him, is somehow, his fault.
The weight of creating this world is the pestilent inner torment of a beautifully fucked up man.
"I can handle it."
She says, trying to copy the same, facade of a smile he wears out in society.
He doesn't respond, and when she looks at him, finally, his eyes are dark grey and lost somewhere only he knows, betraying the curve of his mouth with the sad line of his brow.
"She'd say the same thing."
Olivia can't reply to this, doesn't know how. Only feels herself diminish more from the mention of a her he can see.
Then he turns back to the window, and his dominon of the cabin's air begins again.
"Maybe I never deserved to love her."
His voice is quiet, so quiet in it's matter-of-fact tone, that she thinks for a moment if he'd really said it. And then she feels drained completely, submissive again to his ascendance, and she knows for sure that he did.
With the same certainity she knows for sure, that he's wrong.
"Peter, no. That's not true."
The breath he lets out is heavy, despairingly so.
"It has to be."
"No, Peter, you're extrodinary." She feels her own vigor come alive now, under the surety of her words, coloring her voice in the stern of her conviction. "You're brilliant, you're determined, you're caring and you're head-strong. You're amazing, and everything amazing is deserving."
Brimming under her skin, is the strength of her affection, making her sick again with an ache she can't heal.
"And what if you're wrong?" he questions, his voice, hoarse, but she doesn't give in to his self-rebuttal.
She knows better.
"If I'm wrong, and that isn't true, then none of this would be hurting me so badly right now."
It's the last thing said, the last painfully scratchy, heart-rendering words uttered before they arrive and she all but runs out of the car, and away from his massive, crushing atmosphere.
Outside of the warehouse, she's three legs behind him, picking up his footprints with the approach of her own.
He'd brought out the microscope when she'd checked over the building, then she'd re-latched the door as they stepped back into the snow.
Here there and everywhere, there's remenants of yellow tape, filthy ribbons of the two-day ago crime scene marked off by the law. It's ground in ice from trodding feet, off-setting dirtied patches of snow that cover a vast concrete lot.
This place is quiet, desolate, much too much like the comradery they've shared since the car.
He remarked on the case and the gloom and the cold, deflecting tense air with a guise of proficiancy. And she'd nodded, responded, because afterall, they're professionals first.
But the underline of shared trepidation was there, and back out here, it's rose the down hair on the back of her neck; a heated-static revolt to their momentary facade.
Hot and heavy his silence pushes through her in waves; his air of self-deliberation he's consummed the whole of him up in.
Again she feels intruder to his personal party.
He reaches the car, and opens the trunk, sets down the machine in a swift move of black wool and routine.
But he doesn't back away or close the hatch, simply stares down at the device, as though it's eating him alive.
And now, as she inches closer, his hidden hollow raps on the base of her spine.
He runs his gloved fingers over the worn metal case and it's silver-etched personalization of the last name he shares;
Property of Walter. E Bishop. Hands off or return.
"Even in this world, the consequences of what all he's done are to dire to imagine." His eyes are far away, green and blue and deeply lost somewhere between knowledge and secret.
These words are the culmination of his private cogitation.
"And I'm his son. I share that same blood."
She understands this thought though, the self-deprecation of being defined by what you didn't ask for.
Lucky for her, she was five when she ran away from the trials.
And she can accept what he's said because the genetic evidence is there. Somehow the twenty-five- years- ago presumed-dead son of a now resigned, empathetic mad professor, is standing in beautiful flesh, since five months past, right here before her.
And she wants to step closer, instantly helpless in the need to super-charge her own air in the jaw-dropping glory of his, but given her mental delicacy and their fragile exchanges, she thinks better of it.
Still, he's almost motionless against the cold he's averse to, staring at the case, stunned into stillness by the power of his own reflecting.
"Peter, I know you and whatever you're thinking, you're not defined by his name or the outcome of his choices." She tells him, hoping, somehow, to lighten the private hell he's pulled himself into. "You're a better person then who he use to be."
This makes him turn, look at her, and his eyes aren't lost anymore but abruptly aware, a pale blue surprise of her words, beautifully contrasted against the red-winter flush of his cheeks.
"...what?"
He asks as though he's misheard her, so she re-iliterates.
"You don't live by the same reckless curiosity, or human abandon that he once did." she licks her lips, pushes her hands deeper into pockets that hold her self-solace infront of him. "Peter, you're a better man then your father."
This seems only to astound him more, what she's said, not out of an offense to Walter, but it's something more profound, something deeper, and it glimmers for a second in flecks of dark blue retina to fall into the realm of his painful past secrets.
In response, something fortifies in her blood, a subtle under-course of what feels like unsuspecting recognition that's charring her cells. But she tries not to deduce it, or pay to much mind, because this under-coursing is his, so she re-directs her attention by shoving the tip of her boot into the snow dusted ground.
Then he says thank you, softly, but it's a simple appreciation she feels holds more magnitude, more meaning then mere reply to her compliment.
She reads it in the sad, forced lift of his mouth, the profound of his brow's beautiful muscle.
It's as though she's just solved for him, a millienia's old puzzle with nothing but her words.
And it makes her feel again what they'd left in the car, a strangled pressure hinged on his inner-mood, an under-line to things he won't come outright and say.
So she closes her eyes for a moment to breathe in fresh, icy air. She's growing tired of this, exhausted from every invisible mark he has on her.
And somehow instantly, hotly, she feels a more integral mix of his blood in hers, a deep-surging of an undeniable certainty she couldn't negate if she tried. And it makes her eyes rush open, as winter bites in her lungs.
Everything under her skin isn't a stolen connectivity; it's a biological acceptance to his gene-specific seduction, his magnetic made-for-her enchantment.
This, what she feels, is made for her and her alone. And he belongs here, right here, in this world with her.
There's a skip in her heart's beat telling her it's so.
But he may never be so sure, so accepting or willing or convinced, because he may never love her with the cadence he reserves for that other her's same name, and she's knocked back, and heartsore, from the ever-constant and painful hit to her chest.
So she has to breathe deep and full to steady her nerves.
And she can't look at him, can't risk her undoing under the silence he's now favored, so she bites her lip and turns on her heel.
They needed to leave, get back to the office because she had to run away now from her own private hell.
"It's hard for me too."
Her teeth dig into thin flesh, a clench of her bit lip against his voice in the cold air. He's pulled her back into his moment, his silence, his hold.
And she feels, against her ribs a quiet anger, a self-aggravation of desperation and ire because no matter how hard she could try, he'd never accept the truth that beats under her sternum.
No matter how usually persuasive, she held no power here.
And she's grieved and enraged by it.
"What is?"
She questions, and her voice is harsh to her ears. She doesn't want to turn back and face him, but with his invisible force-field, he's pulling her around.
He's braced his weight on his arms, she sees, to lean against the trunk door, has dropped his head against the window to close his eyes against hurt.
He seems defeated, spent dry, exhausted from the quiet analysis he'd caged himself into. And more then angry now, she's worn down with him, tired from the strength of his emotional favor.
His voice is hoarse when he finally speaks.
"All of this, us. What you said in the car, couldn't have come easy and I want you to know this is destroying me too." He lifts himself now, looks to her, and there's a sea of wet pain caught in the grey-blue of his irisis, a stigma of sadness echoed in the pained set of his brow-line.
"I'm split, Olivia, torn,and I don't know anymore what I'm supposed to do, where I'm supposed to be."
Hinged on the end of his words, is a blood-awakening assult, a could-be of the power she'd thought lost to her before.
And this attack refreshes her, re-convicts her of a reality that makes her melt from the fragments of every radiant piece of him.
Like no one before him she loves him, with a dedication that connects even the sky and ground to the magnitude of how she needs him.
And she's passionately intent now on making him see her.
Not Olivia. Not Agent Dunham. Just her.
Because this, them together, is fate or it's destiny or maybe it's even the collison of both.
Either way, she's sure of it.
"I know where you're supposed to be." she answers, her voice soft, but steady. "And you're standing here."
This doesn't seem to sway him, instead his face is pained in a skeptical ache, an uncertainty that directs his vision to the side in a catch of wet heat.
"I'm not supposed to belong here."
He directs this at nothing solid, not her or the ground, but his own frustration.
"Yes you are. Peter." She says, and now she steps closer. "I can't describe it, and I can't explain it, but somehow everything you are is the strongest thing I've ever known." Her voice cracks a little, from the strength of her words, and she feels only determination sinking through and into her bones.
"I feel you, I see you, all the time everywhere, and I can't understand it and it doesn't make sense, but it's happening and it's real. And it kills me inside, everyday knowing you don't want to be in this world with me."
On this, she finally breaks, a twin of her earlier ache emanating from the core of her chest, raping it bare and helpless till it hurts her to breathe.
And it's this that fixes his eyes on her, sets them not just in sadness anymore but a steel-blue of an egg-shell empathy.
"You know all of this, all of this is so different from what I knew." He tells her, his voice a tad louder then before. "You're different, Walter's different, this world and it's chaos is different. But no matter how wrong all of it seems at times, one thing is still true..."
His gaze softens, and she thinks for a moment it's because of affection.
"Somehow, you're the feel right in this whole mess I came into. I know you're not her, you can't be, but you feel like it now, you taste like it. And you're right. It doesn't make sense, and it shouldn't be this way. And it's not fair."
From the injustice of it all, he's as molested as she now.
"I shouldn't feel what I feel for you if my home is somewhere else."
She won't accept this. She can't.
"What if it isn't Peter? What if the world you thought was real, was just a matter of perception?" The strength of her question resonates to her fingerips. "And it's why you can't go there, you can't get back. What if all this is happening because this is your real home?"
In response to this, he lifts his eyes to the sky, obviously holding back the array of emotion she feels again surging through her neurons, a palpitation of his intimate pain, permeating through and into her.
Time again and again, he's pondered for himself this same thing. And time over, he's been ripped apart by the violent answer.
This is the hand he's been dealt, and he can't escape from the dealer. There isn't sanctuary where there's none to be found.
"If that's true, then it would stand to reason none of this is really happening either." he says, in contrast, "That you're not real, and that I'm not really here."
But he doesn't believe a word he's just said, because an under-current of magnatism, washes over spoken doubt.
And it courses through, in and around her, in a whisper of his everything felt.
"Tell me, standing there, feeling what you feel, that you really believe that." she says, "Tell me you can't feel that I'm the only her you're meant to have now."
Something idelible rips under her skin, targets her thoraic conclave and squeezes it's nerves numb.
This battle inside her is his, and for the first time, she craves to feel it, wants to.
And the weight of her gun digs into her back, chafing the flesh, and her badge and attire feel too heavy too because the rest of her is growing boneless, void of real being because his grey-blue sadness is sucking it from her.
"If I knew that for sure, then I wouldn't be standing so far away from you right now."
It's overpowering, the burrow of his stare, boron diamonds under the lot's lights in growing dusk, burrowing into her soul with a yearning to believe in something he can reach out and take.
He's eager, she can feel it, so eager to be convinced of words that last left her mouth, and she's so willing to oblige him with the doubtlessness of realized truth.
"Peter, you're supposed to stay, you're supposed to be here, because you belong with me."
Seconds pass, as if he's replaying her words and she expects him to say something, anything, but he only frowns.
And she feels his question, in the brute force of his furrowed brow, the "...what?" he didn't ask this time, that's written in the beautiful lines of his forehead.
As before this word carries a known-only to him recognition, not a question to her phrase but a question to his ears. And like before she doesn't know why the swift excitement of her atoms, or heat along her sternum, but it's there, and it's his because he's realized something big.
And he won't say what.
So she puncuates her confidence because it's all she can do.
"You belong with me, because I love you."
There isn't pain anymore, or anguish or hurt or sadness looming over the planes of his face, because what she's said has washed them away.
And before she can breath, think or move anywhere, he's sucking in her air, standing so close in her space, she takes in expelled heat. Then his mouth curves, a tiny pleasurable, genuine smile that turns his eyes pale blue under winter thickened lashes.
This is a new gaze, a new concentration of his soul that's darkend ocular epithelium.
He finally sees her. Not Oliiva. Not Agent Dunham.
Only her.
Then he reaches out his hand, and burns her cheek in the same hot way as in her hallway, but he's steady this time, not torn, and there's obisdion flecked in the half-lidded stare of his desire.
"Prove it."
Is all he says, all he has to say, before she gives in to herself and tugs on his collar, clashes her mouth against his to take for herself everything she covets, everything she wants. And this flavor spectrum tastes of burbon and danger and passion and fear, adjectives swelling thin flesh and need. And she isn't satiated enough when he pulls away, leaves her lips red and paunched from fevered devour.
He rests his forehead to hers, closes his eyes, and his chest rises and falls above hers; gasped air heated with want, lust and future.
"Okay, Olivia." he says between a heavy inhilation. "Okay."
And for the first time in weeks, she feels herself relax, be satisfied.
It still pains him, this clusterfuck he's been handed, but he's going to try to see it her way, he's going to try because like her, he's tired of trying, searching for things unable to be found because they no longer exist;
She, a way from his magnatism and he, a way back to his past.
And maybe she doesn't share with him three years of memories he confuses her with, but they can create more, live in more, because somehow, this all is what he was meant to have in the first place.
She feels that truth under her wrists, tastes it in the aftertaste of his kiss.
"Good." she says, pulling on his jacket, melding him into her and her need because she'll die without him. "Because I can get use to this."
When he chuckles, he holds her tighter, and she feels an outright certainity, an unnegotiable bout of confidence vibrate through her body to combust in her chest, heat her bloodstream with promise.
It's his quietly taken, new-found trust in circumstance that's fused into and through her.
And she feels that his whole body, every tensed muscle is finally calmed. At last, he's let go of the torture of the world's crushing weight.
He simply exists now, relishing in her air.
"I know you can."
He affirms, and she feels his smile radiate through the cold.
He knows, because that she did, and maybe she said the exact same thing in a moment not too unlike this, and though she doesn't want to be compared, endlessly, to the her he's tucked into memory, it's a small price to pay for the expensive of his glory.
Beacuse she loves him, ruthlessly, and there was nothing more she can do about it.
"I can too."
He's so sure when he says this, it brings goosebumps to her flesh.
And then against her lips, he smiles, before seizing hers once more.