Leap of Faith

No in FRiNGEment intended.

Note: filler for Ability. I wanted to go back to the "light scene" and have my take on that one. As Olivia said: "I didn't do it"…

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I have faith in you.

How could he? She was a fraud. She should have known that Jones was not the type to be cheated upon. It was not a world of make believe either, not when so many lives were at stake. But why? Olivia was a cop. She wanted to know the whens, the whys, and she knew in her guts that Jones was not a terrorist.

And now she was going to die a painful death to prove his point, suffocate in this empty building, facing the Boston skyline. She'll hear the blast when the windows blow but she won't hear much more after that. The toxin works fast. Her ears will be shut long before she stops yelling.

It was a good day to die, except that she always thought that she'd go with a bullet, or defusing a bomb of a very different kind, or in a car accident, like John did.

She never thought she'd die alone. It's a rare thing in the life of a FBI agent when you're actually on your own, there's always your partner, or a squad of agents following tracks. The dying alone part, that was the worse case scenario.

She was ready though. There was nothing she could do, in spite of all the promises made by all the maniacs of this earth, in spite of her determination to fight evil. She was not one of the warriors of their new army. She had no special value. She was an expendable asset.

How did they put it already? Recruit? She was only hoping that Peter would find a way to stop this insanity before it's too late.

Peter…

I'm not doing this with you, Olivia.

And he was right. He was better off. In the aftermath, a lot would need to be done. And he could continue to decipher the riddle that was his father and probably much more. With two geniuses up its sleeve, the Fringe Division should be able to face the future and Peter was the only one who can "speak" Walter and deflect his quirks with a smile.

Her face twitched. I'll miss him. That was stupid. She won't miss a thing. She'll be dead.

She took a deep breath and focused on the lights. But she could not focus, not on the lights, not on anything. Her thoughts were all over the place, her mind –regardless of the urgency, racing to reasonable solutions even when she knew that logic was not the answer, that logic simply didn't apply.

She would have liked to have Charlie by her side.

There was no way that Charlie could succeed either in his impossible task of deporting so many people on such short notice. As much as she would have wanted to, this was not a science fiction show; there would be no commercial break, no teleporting device, no containment field, and no space ship sponsoring the program that could ultimately save them all.

She was going to die alone with hundreds by her side. She'll be the first to go, the first of a very different army. An army of people with no face, reaped away from their lives in a matter of minutes. They won't even see it coming --in every way. She felt no guilt though. Jones had planned this from the very beginning. There was no way out. She was only a pawn and he's been playing her ever since he escaped from prison. And probably way before.

She frowned and tried to get her attention back to the lights, but all she could see was the blue digits and the decreasing numbers on the timer. She swayed slightly, moving her weight from one foot to the other, attempting to find an inner balance, barely able to breathe. Her reflection in the window blurred and she felt dizzy, on the verge of losing consciousness. Fighting away the vagal episode, she kept staring at the board.

00:00:37

From the corner of her eye, she spotted Peter. Why on hell would he come back? She fought the urge to run to him and to wait for their deaths in his arms. He was walking slowly back to her, and the lights flickered. Was it only in her mind? The timer stopped and she experienced a tingly feeling in her neck, in her back, in her hands. The sounds were muffled and Peter was totally still, stopped in motion, one foot up in midair.

She heard a bell and children's laughs. Simon said… She blinked when a blue light brought her back to reality and to the bomb, and to the ticking timer.

00:00:23

All of a sudden, Peter started to walk again, and the digits started to change again, and the numbers to decrease again but with it, the lights were clicking off, and too bad if it was too late Mr Jones because she was doing it, and it was working, and…

00:00:02

The timer halted and there was a humming sound when the bomb was deactivated. Her lungs were hurting. Panting, she started to breathe again. She put her hands to her face. She could not find in her the liberating tears that would fight her lingering panic.

"You did it. What was that? How did you do that?"

She had her back on Peter, but she could hear his trouble echoing hers.

"I don't know…" she said, turning around, "I don't know."

He made a step forward and she folded her arms on her chest. He stopped. His hand that was reaching out to her fell limply to his side and he frowned.

"You okay? You're shaking."

She smiled when she heard the familiar question.

"Yes, I'm pretty shaken, I guess. Remind me to keep an open mind next time," she quipped.

"Next time? Are you kidding?"

"There will be a next time Peter, we both know it."

"Will do," he replied softly.

"I have to call Charlie."

She turned her back to him again. She could not face Peter. She needed to be alone, to mull over what had just happened. But Peter was in shock and didn't try to speak or do anything. She gave a quick glance in his direction. He had not moved away from the window, his eyes locked on the light board a deep crease in the middle of his forehead.

She called Broyles, she called Charlie. And only then, she sat down in the dim light of the 47th floor, and waited for the FBI to flood back into the room and take care of the deadly device with Peter by her side.

I wouldn't have died alone.

She shrugged away her fears and the thousand burning questions she had to ask Jones. She would not have died alone. She took a gulp of water and stared at Peter, seated by her side. He came back.

-o-

Apart from the obvious heavy corny subtext, what do you think?

If you wonder, I do think that she didn't stop the lights alone ;)