A/N: Speculation, turmoil, and excitement. That's what inspired this story.
She takes the note and creases the paper once, twice, three times then slicks the corners into perfect crisp edges instead of tearing it to shreds.
I'll be back later, says the note in Peter's messy scrawl that she knows instantly: with some letters capitalized while others aren't, the ink bleeding black, melting letters when he's too hurried to lift his left hand from smearing. She imagines his black-stained palm where ink fills in the little crevices of his hand, reflecting the patterns of unhappiness that are etched into his skin.
Peter hasn't slept since the day Etta died. Not that Olivia's noticed anyway. And during first few devastating days neither did she, not without the images of her dying daughter's face to shock her back into stark consciousness when she drifted off. She knows Peter has the luxury of dreaming, and she'd be irrationally jealous if only it slowed him down enough to actually let him sleep, but it doesn't.
Instead, he spends his time pacing: long manic strides across the floor from one wall to the other like a caged tiger, fingers rubbing absentmindedly over his palms like he's trying to grind bone together. He makes his own clean line in the dirt tacked to the linoleum on the floor, sweeping his feet soundlessly over and over and over again. Olivia watches him from the crumpled corner of the bed, unsure on how to reach out to him, letting him try to work through whatever he's going through in the way he needs. She sat silently the first few days and watched him until morning poured through the window slats and she'd fallen asleep with her head strained against the wall.
He reminds her of Walter's bad days when he was first released from St. Claire's, and when one straight line on the floor became two she finally breaks.
"Is this how you're going to save the world?" Olivia erupts like a volcano. "Pacing like Walter until someone hauls you off to the mental ward too?" She says it with venom but regret follows quickly. He stops on a dime, staring blankly through bleary eyes and she opens her mouth to apologize out of reflex, but nothing she wants to say comes out. She decides she doesn't regret it. They stare at one another, neither one speaking, and Olivia breaks just a little because what she really wants to say is she's still here, and she still needs him but she won't dare. His eyes are so sharp they could cut and she swallows instead of talks. The moment passes and he leaves her in silence to continue his pacing in the living room instead.
He disappears for the first time that night.
Then next night.
Peter's manic behavior is a sobering déjà vu when they first lost Etta as a child. Her disappearance had broken them: shattered their marriage, their trust in each other and the faith in the world they were trying to protect. It broke her too, though she never said it aloud; too busy being hell-bent on saving the world and when Peter couldn't keep up, she left him behind to deal with his own grief alone. She couldn't bridge the gap because secretly she felt like he'd disappeared long before and it was almost as painful losing her husband as it was her child. She understands now it was her grief; can tell the difference because it's a whole new sting this time around. This time he really is leaving her behind and she doesn't know how to put them back together.
He slips out into the night but he's always back before daybreak. She sleeps alone, his side of the bed painfully cold when she reaches for him after each nightmare. It's Etta keeps that her company as she sleeps, sometimes warm memories of her beautiful three year-old toddler with curly pigtails she couldn't to sit still long enough to tie, and sometimes it's the sharp-cheeked woman with her mouth and Peter's eyes that glisten when she dies. Olivia wakes up sputtering regardless of which iteration meets her: they both hurt the same.
"Can we talk?" she finally cuts one morning, voice rough with sleep as he crawls through the ductwork into the lab. There's a flash of secrecy in his eyes that she recognizes and the fury flashes white-hot for a moment before it passes enough for her to get the words out.
If this was a different time and they were a different couple she'd suspect that he was having an affair. But they're not that couple and this is Peter and those aren't the problems they have to worry about. Their worries aren't normal.
His face softens as he waits for her to continue.
"Where do you go at night?" she asks lightly, trying not to startle, tracing the skin of his face to look for clues, for anything out of the ordinary. She knows he's too good to leave evidence.
His voice is flat, his smile fake.
"Out with Anil," he answers in a straightforward way that's anything but. "Nothing to worry about. Just some surveillance. Normal spy stuff." He's already turning away and she clenches both fists and his back stiffens as soon as she does like he sees it himself.
"You're lying," she says in one hot breath. She can't see his face, but knows he's probably fighting between what she wants to hear and what he really wants to say.
"If it were just surveillance, you'd bring me too." Because we're supposed to be partners is what she doesn't get out.
"We need to talk about this," she continues in a softer tone, hands already uncurled. "Please. Talk to me Peter."
She counts the seconds as they stretch, the ticking of the clock that takes them further apart, stretching the rubber band tighter than she can handle.
"What's there left to talk about?" Peter finally says over his shoulder, not even bothering facing her. His voice is different. Cold, even. It chills her because she knows that cadence. She needs to touch him, to grind her fingers into his skin to keep him from slipping away.
"You're disappearing," she says, taking the feather-soft strides to bridge the gap and touch his back, his shoulders; the fine wisps of curling hair at the nape of his neck. "I need you. We're supposed to save the world. "
For a fleeting moment she feels his resignation, leaning into her touch. But it's gone too fast and he's already feet away from her.
"I trust you can understand that this isn't about you and me anymore. It's about making her death mean something." He says it evenly until the end when his voice cracks and he pauses like he can't continue. In another blink he's gone and whatever fragile thread that held them together breaks.
Peter tracks Windmark for weeks in Etta's abandoned apartment; he's methodical in his calculations, foreseeing every gap, every variable in the solution. His board's splattered with colors of interchanging threads of Windmark's life that he can use to expose him, to smoke him out and reclaim the final shreds of his life. He wants to feel Windmark's head between his fingers and crush his skull to dust. The apartment is the only place he can work; free of distraction and close to his daughter.
He sees everything differently now, not the linear time and space he used to be confined to, but everything: time fluid as a waterfall, up and down, in and out, all at once and it's like taking Walter's LSD sugar cubes, constantly on the verge of overstimulation.
It's been nine days, seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds since he last slept. Food tastes like ash in his mouth so he forgoes the inconvenience of eating. He understands that Olivia's worried about him, but his singular wellbeing is inconsequential to the larger plan. She'd understand if she saw the whole picture like he does, and not just pieces like he used to. She'll understand when he has results. Then he'd put together how to save them. He weaves the marker over the board, feeling the distant electric buzz at the back of his teeth that might have once been excitement when all the different threads lead to the same inevitable conclusion: today he'll have revenge. He takes his coat with him when he leaves Etta's apartment behind.
Blood fills Peter's mouth when he's thrown to the concrete ground of the warehouse he'd followed Windmark to. It's under construction and Windmark's come alone. The building smells decrepit; industrial and half-completed. There's a vague inkling that the blood should taste different, more pronounced as Peter spits it through his teeth, but there's no time to dwell on the trivial when he twists out of the impending crash of knuckles that crush the concrete where his head used to be. Peter feels like he's fighting in a strobe light, the feeling of pressure behind his belly button flaring each time he flickers in and out of existence, moving faster than the human eye can perceive. He tastes the anger, the growing excitement that Windmark's here, that he's found him and he gets his chance to reclaim his life. He sees the subtle pulse inside Windmark's neck as his carotid artery pumps valuable blood to his brain. He wants to stab his hand in there and pull out the veins.
Windmark's strong through, understands the mechanics of the technology that Peter's only grappling with, and Peter sees that three minutes, fifty-eight seconds into the fight he's going to lose. A fist appears and everything goes red before it goes dark.
"Tell me something," Windmark drawls, his voice lacking inflection when Peter comes around. He pushes Peter to his knees with strong hands, Peter's face bloodied by the wound in his forehead, eyes blown black and it reminds Windmark of some kind of caged animal. "This thing you experience, this feeble need for revenge." He says conversationally as he draws the gun from his inside breast pocket he'd hidden away during the fight, hoping to see the fear betraying the blackness in the man's face, and presses it to Peter's forehead. The gun's old fashioned and something Peter's never seen before. It's well cared for, smelling like grease and oil, the barrel hot against his skin.
"Is it better now that you've become one of us? Does it taste the same as you remembered?" Peter's face doesn't change, doesn't flicker an ounce in the fear he must be feeling in his defeat. Windmark's disappointed, but interested nonetheless.
Peter doesn't answer, doesn't budge.
"Doesn't matter. Everything's inconsequential. Everyone's disposable. Even you."
The click of the hammer pulling back echoes like thunder in Peter's eardrums. There's nothing left. Peter closes his eyes and Windmark finally reads him, wants to revel in defeating the poster boy of the resistance, can't wait to examine his brain.
He sees the young woman's face looking down at her father, first removed from the amber he must have been trapped in, a trinket dangling from her throat. Yes, amber. That makes sense. They hadn't bothered to check the amber. There's another flash and it's a slightly older woman, the other blonde one, watching through the fog of Peter's mind in a park where she's watching the girl play with dandelions. He feels the attachment Peter has for the woman and the girl, the strong pull of affection that is foreign to Windmark. He dives deeper and the same woman's face is flushed, holding the crying newborn and murmuring words that Windmark can't discern, blurred by the cotton candy of Peter's memory. Even further back and he's greeted with the blonde woman's sweat-slicked face, her pale bare shoulders glowing under the soft light of the interior of the car, the spread of Peter's fingers digging into her hips. Windmark understands when he opens his eyes.
"Say hello to your yellow-haired daughter." Windmark says and Peter finally takes a breath. "Her mother will join her soon enough." Peter opens his eyes andlooks down the barrel of the gun, his face murderous and Windmark almost startles. It's gone in a flash and Peter smiles. Smiles like there's some joke Windmark's missed. Windmark tilts his head, finds this response puzzling. The gunshot echoes through the cracked concrete of the walls, fast and hard and Peter jumps.
Windmark looks to his chest, tilts his head as he presses two fingers delicately against the red that's spilling freely from the hole there, feels each pump of blood spurting through veins down the wool of his coat. Peter's face is splattered in it, eye's wide over his dark smirk. Windmark turns and there stands the blonde woman from Peter's mind: hair billowing in the soundless wind that Windmark no longer feels, the gun in her hand smoking. He sees the ghost of the woman he killed over her shoulder and it's the last thought before his life ends.
"Peter, can you hear me?" It's Olivia's voice, but when he opens his eyes it's Etta's face that greets him, her features blurred around the edges.
"Kiddo?"
"Peter, wake up." The voice is indisputably Olivia. Her features are more defined as his pupils dilate under the light.
"He's dead?" his voice is unbelieving, twisting his head to see Windmark's crumpled body two feet from where he's laying, but Peter feels oddly...unfulfilled. There's a vague pulse of something in his chest, a rhythmic thud-thud-thud of rippling beneath the skin.
"Peter, god…" Olivia's voice is strained, her vocal chords tight from restriction. Peter clasps her hand as she presses it against his chest, finds it covered in blood. He feels the pang of pressure, lifts his bloodied hand to touch Olivia's face, leaving bloody snowflakes smudges on her wet cheeks.
"You're alright?" he asks, his voice isn't able to convey his worry like he wants. Olivia nods quickly before leaning more pressure onto his chest, and all the elements reach the conclusion on his outcome. The smell of Windmark's discharged gun lays nearby, and Peter finally detects the shell that's ground into the muscle of his chest. He has roughly thirteen minutes before he bleeds out, seventeen if Olivia continues to apply pressure.
"I thought it would feel differently," he says as Olivia's face furrows in angry concentration. He'll last longer than seventeen minutes. He tries to smile.
"Oh yeah? What about this isn't living up to your expectations?" Olivia's quipped reply is angry, her voice tense and her heart rate elevated.
"I thought I would feel differently…him being dead. I thought this would put me back together." Peter says through wet coughs, his chest heaving under Olivia's hand. He's not able to finish the sentiment, blood thick in his throat. Olivia digs her comm out of her jacket one handed, barking orders into it and letting it clatter to the ground when she's finished. She's worried. Probably calling for backup that's too far way.
"I bought you this jacket," Peter muses, the hazy memory of him buying it from a little shop on Fifth Street for their first wedding anniversary. "I haggled with the guy for a week." His blood is splotched on the leather so he drops his hand to press it over the one she's grinding to the bone.
"You still spent too much on it," Olivia gripes.
He wants to slip to that memory, to watch it play again when she opened the box with no wrapping. But it's already fuzzy, receding into the background and he's back in the present. There are so many memories he wishes he could relive. All the good ones involve Olivia.
"I can't win," he struggles when he tries to breathe through the wetness in his throat. Olivia doesn't speak anymore, her eyes flickering from his face to the hole in his chest.
"I made a choice once. I blinked myself out of existence to save your life." He bleeds into the future that never happened, to Olivia's lifeless body with the hole that was rimmed red from the bullet that blew her brains out.
"Stop it." Olivia orders and he's back again.
"I was happy with my choice. I was ready to be okay with blinking myself out of being…and you found me. You found me and I didn't even exist." He touches Olivia's hand again, trying to loosen her hold on him. He's okay; doesn't even hurt anymore.
"And then you gave me Etta," he says, and Olivia's face crumbles like a burning building, her grip on his shoulder slipping. He has twelve minutes left. It's enough time.
"And she was beautiful…just like her mother, Olivia. But I lost her. Just like I lost you." Peter hears commotion in the distance, wants to slip away again to see Olivia's face when she first told him in the doctor's office, the fear and the apprehension and the love that was nearly so suffocating that he can barely register it now. He's relived it thousands of times already.
"Peter," Olivia says, teeth bared like she's ready to fight again. She doesn't understand. But Peter does. He wants her to know.
"How do I choose this time?" he asks. "I lose you or I lose her." The voices close in, the shadowed figures of people pouring in around them. He hears Anil's voice in the background. Olivia says something over her shoulder, shouting directions that Peter doesn't hear. She puts both hands on either side of his cheeks and he feels her touch as his beacon. She leans down beside his ear and her voice tickles.
"You don't have to choose. I'll find you again." And she presses her lips to his mouth.
Strangely, he believes her. He slips into the darkness with the taste of Olivia's lips on his.