His memories change every day.
There are all there, the images, the sights, the sounds, the smells… all sharper than ever, almost like he were reliving them in flashes. Tactile, rich, real…
But the feelings are disappearing.
Time is no longer linear, it's cumulative, a sum, a fragment, an illusion and material all at the same time.
His mind jumps through past, present, future in a continuum that makes sense only to him. Disparate non sequiturs that he tries to align logically.
Like an observer, he pulls up the memories and watches his life, struggles to understand the man he was, the man he is, the man he is becoming.
He's failing. He remembers everything. But he doesn't remember what makes him human anymore.
Etta…he loves her, he reminds himself again and again. He loves her, that's why he does what he does.
He loves her. He loves her. He loves her.
He loves the idea of her even before he knows her. Three generations of Bishop boys is quite enough, he thinks. The world won't survive a fourth. (It almost didn't, the thought sting at his consciousness.)
He hopes their baby is a girl. He wants a daughter desperately; he wants her to look just like Olivia. He wants to spoil her senseless and lay the world at her feet.
He wants a girl so that he's not reminded of the son that never was…
He asks Olivia what her guess is one night. She simply shakes her head at him, taking his hand and slips it under her shirt to her still small but firm bump and gives him a bewitching smile.
"That's our little girl right there. Do you feel her?"
And just like that Etta's in his life. Etta is lovely, Etta is everything. Etta is more beautiful than anything he could imagine.
Etta is small and he's scared to hold her because he might drop her. He almost wants to refuse as the doctor places her in his arms but he can't, because he needs to hold her more than he needs to breathe.
His fingers are trembling and his heartbeat is erratic and he's shaking to boot and he's terrified.
But he doesn't let her fall.
"She has your eyes." Olivia mumbles with a tired and dazed smile, as she runs gentle hands over her crown and counts ten fingers and toes.
She does. She has his eyes, they're blue, blue like the ocean on summer days when he stands on the beach outside their house at Reiden Lake and watches the sun kiss the surface of the water.
It's like a mirage. A glimmer that calls to him.
The sand is warm under his bare feet, it tickles, he can feel the metal of his lucky silver dollar in the pocket of shorts and he plays with it, rolling it between his fingers. He hears his mother call his name, asking him to come inside for lunch.
His father will be here tomorrow and there'll be whale shaped pancakes for breakfast. He wishes his father would spend more time with them, because he misses him and because he's worried for his mother.
She's sad all the time, her eyes always lost and in pain, and he tries so hard to make her feel better. She cries when she thinks he doesn't know. But he always knows and it makes his heart hurt and he's angry, so angry at Walter for going insane and abandoning them to this.
Na einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy
Be a better man than your father. Be a better man than your father. Be a better man than your father.
He thinks he could be when he looks at Olivia.
He's fascinated by her.
He likes her.
He loves her.
The girl in the red dress, Sydney is her name, she lives in the house across theirs in Cambridge, 2828 Greenstreet.
He exchanges a smile with her every morning on his paper route.
Olivia has the most beautiful smile, when she smiles that is. He loves making her smile.
He can't lose her. He loves Olivia.
He struggles to remember when exactly he realized that he loved her.
It isn't a dramatic television worthy epiphany. More of a gentle awareness, a recognition of a truth that has existed outside his knowledge all along.
The signs are always there and being who he is, for a long time he tries to run from them.
God knows he tries.
He doesn't like what she does to him. The strange effect she seems to have on him.
She's making him care… a little too much than what he was used to. And he doesn't like it one bit.
He pulls her out of the tank, shivering, wet and disoriented as she clings to him in relief, turns to him for comfort.
Him….
At first, he doesn't find it odd at all to be holding her and comforting her, reassuring her with his touch and his words. It feels like he is fulfilling a role he was always meant to play.
But after the events of the day have passed and he takes time to process everything that had happened, he realizes just how in over his head he was getting when it came to her. That he had willingly put his life at risk to go with her to that sting because he had been scared of what could have happened to her, because he couldn't bear to let her go alone on the strength of the words of a dead man who couldn't be trusted.
That he had cared….
This isn't him, he doesn't care, he certainly doesn't care enough to put his own life on the line for anything, let alone anyone.
Even if they happen to have the most mesmerizing green eyes.
Enough is enough he decides, he needs to get the hell out of here. He packs his bags, calls a taxi and makes it as far as the hotel reception, and all the while his father sleeps like a log.
But the thought of what tomorrow would bring, the look of disappointment her eyes will wear when she finds out… disappointment in him.
It makes him feel hollow inside to even consider it.
She should really have known better, he tells himself, trying not to let that bother him. He didn't ask for any of this, doesn't want to spend the rest of his life being Walter's baby sitter and he is far from suited for a long time career in law enforcement of any kind.
If her investigative skills are anything to go by, she surely won't be surprised that he took off on her, more likely has been expecting that from him all along.
The idea that he actually meant anything more to her than a convenient asset to manage Walter was laughable. Sure, they share a laugh every now and make a pretty good team when it came to investigations. But she can have that with anyone, he reasons as he feels his resolve weaken by the minute. There was nothing unique or special about him. In fact, the bureau was surely staffed with people way more skilled and trained for this job than he was.
And it's not like Olivia would miss him or anything…
Would she?
Fuck… he takes the elevator back up that night…. just like the three times after when he tries to leave.
Olivia… makes him want to be more than he is. Olivia makes him believe he is capable of anything. Olivia gives him purpose and gives him meaning.
He sees her father shoot her in the head. She falls to the ground dead.
He sees her burning funeral pyre float away into the vastness of the ocean.
He sees Walter trying desperately to coax a sign of life from her, as she lies unconscious on a gurney, brain-dead and lost to the world.
He stumbles his way back to the hospital that night, the abundance of alcohol unable to keep the dull ache throbbing inside him. In fact he feels remarkably sober, more than he'd like to feel in that instant.
He can certainly do without the feeling of being rammed into by a moving truck, which is how he feels when he sees her crash through the car and hit the ground like a lifeless rag doll.
He is completely lost, doesn't know where to go or what to do anymore. Without Olivia, there was nothing to keep him here anymore. The Fringe division was being shut down and his father has already begun a downwards spiral into his usual insanity. Everything that had come together to make his life somewhat meaningful in the past months was crumbling down.
And instead of feeling relieved, instead of embracing the freedom that would come from leaving this life behind, he only feels inexplicable sadness, like he was being uprooted.
He feels the same sorrow that he felt the night he learnt of his mother's death.
The sorrow of losing the only home he's ever known…
A distraught, scruffy faced nineteen year old in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt he hasn't changed from since the flight, still in shock, standing by his mother's grave, barely listening to the priest's words.
He's the only one at her funeral. He doesn't care enough to sign his father out from that asylum he's been condemned to. He doesn't deserve to be there. As far as he is concerned, Walter is the one who is responsible for her death.
He doesn't inform her friends, the few that he knows she had left. He doesn't want anybody there….to pity her, to speculate on her passing, to judge her for taking her own life.
He doesn't want anybody there to blame him for abandoning her…
It begins to rain and once the priest leaves after muttering half-hearted words of comfort to him, he kneels besides her freshly made grave, clenches at the wet earth and cries.
He stays for hours as the rain soaks him to the bone, crying in silence , angry at himself for not doing right by the only person who ever loved him selflessly and unconditionally despite his flaws, and angry at Walter for wrecking their family to shambles, for destroying her spirit and damaging her beyond repair.
His mother is dead, he realizes as the first hole opens into his chest, never to go away completely.
His mother is dead and he has no one left.
And now Olivia was leaving him too, he was all alone again.
Something inside him snaps as he struggles to say goodbye to Olivia that night, thinking to himself how the loss of her could affect him so much, when they had known each other for less than a year.
He's angry at her for making him care about her this way, in a way that makes it hard to breathe. A while ago he wasn't even sure he had a haert and now its beats painfully against his chest, reminding him that like everybody else on this planet, he is vulnerable.
Vulnerable to feeling grief, to loss, to pain.
Months later, he holds a gun to her face, delirious from a virus that has turned him into a monster, but can't push himself to pull that trigger.
He thinks later why he couldn't do it. Even incoherent and barely in control of his faculties, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He's glad.
For weeks after, he cringes every time he catches sight of the bruises on her pale neck from when he had tried to strangle her, hating himself so much for having done that to her. For having physically assaulted her. He is many things, but he's never ever laid a hand on a woman till that day in his life, and to think he had actually been violent with her of all people.
It makes him feel so small and ashamed of himself and he's barely able to meet her eye for the next few days, even as she keeps assuring him that she didn't hold it against him, that she understands he wasn't himself at the time.
She had taken an immeasurable risk for his sake. Yes, he knows there were other people in that building and he knows Olivia had cared about getting them all out.
But he also knows, and he has no way of explaining why he know this but he does, that her decision to come back was driven by a need to save him more than anything else.
And he's not sure how he feels about said decision. His life wasn't worth more than hers. Not by a long stretch.
She obviously cared about him and that is a problem because people who care about him end up getting hurt, always.
And he is more than capable of hurting her. It's who he is. It's what he does best.
He can feel her blond hair between his fingers, as he looks up at the ceiling, staring into space.
For the first time it's hard to do this. To take off in the middle of the night and leave her behind.
He feels something more for Tess than any woman who has ever walked into his life and into his bed.
He almost wants to ask her to go with her. But he knows he has nothing to offer her except the certainty of danger from Big Eddie and his men.
And he knows her. She won't go with him. She's not that different from him. They were both damaged souls. Seemingly happy go lucky on the outside but fragile on the inside.
He hopes for her sake, she didn't care all that much about him, because he doesn't want to hurt her any more than he already has.
He doesn't like to hurt people, but seems like it's all he does when he gets close to them.
He hurt his mother, he hurt Tess and he will hurt Olivia.
Olivia's scared of him tonight like she was that day they were quarantined. He can read her fear like he can read her thoughts.
She's scared of him, but more than that she's scared for him.
She doesn't understand his decision because she's not weak like him. She doesn't have weaknesses.
Olivia was always his greatest strength
Etta was his biggest weakness.
He loves her. He loves her. He is a good father to her…. he was… he was. Wasn't he?"
She looks just like her mother he thinks as he hugs her on the train, holding her as close as humanely possible. Her hair is blond like Olivia's but the texture is more like his. She's crying into his chest and he can feel her tremble violently in his embrace and for a moment her knees almost give way when she clutches at his shirt with both hands.
But he holds her tight, he keeps her steady.
He doesn't let her fall.
Etta falls asleep easiest when she's curled up against his chest. Like everything else about parenthood, he stumbles upon that a few days after they bring her home. Something about the sound of his heart beat that she finds soothing, or that's Olivia's explanation of it at least.
And so the thousand dollar crib he had picked out and assembled himself falls by the wayside as every night for the first two months she ends up sleeping between him and Olivia.
He loves it, loves being a father. More than he ever knew was possible. He loves the downy feeling of her whisper blond hair against his fingertips when he runs his hand through her head, the alabaster skin of her chubby cheeks that color up with a tinge of rose when she breaks out into a smile.
And there's nothing in the world he loves more than being the one who makes her smile.
He loves being needed like this, loves being the one who takes care of her.
Etta's always happy to be in the lab with him. She laughs at Gene and giggles when Walter makes the lights go on and off with his clapper switch. She watches Astrid work on her computer with a concentrated gaze and naps against his chest as he helps Walter.
"Are you sure it's safe for her to be in the lab so much?" Broyles asks him taking in the sight of him with Etta in a baby carrier strapped to his front as she follows his movements with her gaze curiously while he loads the mass spectrometer.
"Is anywhere safe?" He quips back without a moment's hesitation, offering Broyles an amused look, before shrugging.
"She's safe with me. She'll always be safe with me."
Etta is bleeding. He can't make it stop. Etta's dying and he can't do anything to save her. She doesn't breathe, she doesn't blink.
She dies and he can't save her.
He loves her. He reminds himself.
Love is not logical. Love is weakness. Love is pain. Love is capable of destroying you. Love destroys his mother, love makes his father go insane, love kills his daughter, love creates fear in Olivia's heart.
He loves her. It's why he does what he does...