"Make it stop."
Her voice broke with the force of that need.
The need to awake on a glorious Sunday morning, to relish the warmth radiating off his body next to hers, to not see his shape refracted and oscillating before her eyes even while he slept. The need to banish the awkward feeling she got speaking to him while her vision failed to focus. It made her dizzy trying to banish it from her awareness, even more if she tried to focus past it.
Walter seemed to have completely missed her arrival. Absorbed in the cattle-pen, he was massaging something that must have been dime store hair gel into the crest of Gene's hide. A cow in a covert Harvard laboratory. Now a cow with a spinal-mohawk in a covert Harvard laboratory. The absurdity of it all ebbed slightly at that violent darkness she had lodged in the pit of her stomach. The one she swallowed the moment she opened Peter's door.
Gene turned to blast a welcoming "moo" in her direction when she walked toward them. Walter immediately began to give an inane justification for his bovine beautician skills. Something about touch and affection and the production of beneficial enzymes in the milk. The federal agent portion of her brain wondered if he had been violating the rules on unpasteurized milk production, the rest momentarily wondered how spiking cow hair was considered a sign of affection.
He didn't stop. He wasn't going to stop until he had finished his diatribe. His keepers not present and left to his own devices. "...which led to the ability to harvest the same strong fibers of a spider's web in the milk of a mammal. But of course it was only successful in a goat. No spider's milk for Gene." He patted the haunch of the colossal animal with emphasis. Olivia could only stare. He in return let his joyous expression slip under the weight of his recollection. In one of his moments of clarity she could see him recognize her distress and its cause.
Their shared secret.
"Walter." Her voice was soft but it echoed against the vast metallic surfaces surrounding her. "You have to shut it off." Tears began to pool and she could feel the cancerous emptiness rise within her, bringing with it a restriction in her lungs.
"Make it stop," she begs and punctuates it with a stunted sob. "I can't."
Can't what?
Bring herself to accept what Peter is. Leave those consequences unacknowledged. Stop from feeling like he would disappear at any moment in a flurry of barking dogs and geological tremors. Continue to work with the person who had become like a partner unless he was out of her sight. Bring the man she now realized she came to care for above all others into her life—into her embrace.
She couldn't because Olivia was afraid.
"Please, Walter. Siphon my blood, develop an antidote, create some drug to counteract the Cortexiphan. I don't care what it will take. Just do it."
He looked shocked at the request. It was unfathomable to think of reversing their only compass in navigating the impending doom he had wrought.
She wasn't above describing in deliberate detail how taking his son into her bed elicited such a sharp vertigo that she felt violently ill until she could reach for the light switch. That just being with him in the daylight was enough to strain her eyes and turn her stomach.
"I can't," she repeated. Her arms were shaking from the effort of clinching her fists into pale balls of compressed knots. "Do it or I will tell him myself."
Walter's chin sagged to his chest. He was a dear old man despite the insanity and the harm inflicted by his hand. He didn't deserve the full force of a ruthless and hardened Agent Dunham. He knew she wasn't lying.
"The likelihood of replicating your current state if needed in the future would be highly suspect. That is if I were to produce such a concoction." You won't be able to save people, she heard in the middle space.
Kidnapping, quantum mechanical coercion, experimental drugs, gunshot wounds, comas, the loss of friends, the loss of lovers. People be damned. She had plenty of goodwill capital to play.
Olive did not want to be afraid any longer.
Olivia wanted to be in love.
"We'll face that problem when it happens. Right now all I want you to do is to focus on this," She gritted her teeth and stepped forward grasping his upper arms. Walter didn't react, he was still transfixed with his view of the muck stall floor. "Can you do that for me, Walter?" Her grip lightened and she quickly stepped back, embarrassed by the out burst.
"I will do it. It may take time and I will likely have to procure several items necessary for the task—"
"Fine, fine. Let Astrid help you with that but do not tell her a thing about why. Do you hear me, Walter?" He still wasn't meeting her eyes. "Walter!"
He looked up with a piteous gaze. Whether it was for a father who lost a son or for the girl who became a woman with an unwanted burden did not matter. "Yes, Agent Dunham, I will make it stop."
Gene rustled, realizing she was not the center of attention and let out a loud bray when the lab door opened.
"Walter? 'Livia?," Peter asked filling the room with the honeyed sound of his voice as he drawled her name. "Astrid said you two were in here."
Walter quickly stepped out of the pen while Olivia furiously rubbed at her face to mask the drying tears. She could hear Walter start babbling distantly and she silently thanked his insight to give her a moment to collect herself. Leaning over to brace herself against the hulking beast in front of her she swallowed her panic down into that gaping maw.
Peter soon appeared at the entrance to the stall, with a warm smile. He reached to place a hand on the small of her back. "Christ! What is that stench? Why exactly did the cow get a spa treatment, Walter?!" He was right. The pungent artificial fragrance of the gel and the completely natural musk of cow and cow byproduct was an olfactory assault.
Still leaning against Gene she gave a small chuckle, "Yeah, Walter seems to have out did himself this time." She sniffled a bit. "It's really irritating my eyes." She hoped that the implication of allergies and chemical sensitivity was enough to account for her disheveled state.
T-minus 3, 2, 1, she counted.
She let him usher her away from Gene and took in his shimmering visage.
A dizziness shook through her core for a moment and then she was Olivia again.
Olive had to suffer her terror in silence.