Many thanks to my amazing beta and quantum entangled pal, OConnellAboo! She makes it all work!
He walked through the empty lab, running his hands over the tables covered by a thin coat of dust.
"So much has happened here," he remembered someone saying, many years ago. And so much HAD happened here...
He met a man he thought he knew, a man he'd run away from years ago, and found a father he'd never known.
He met a woman, a woman smart enough to con the con man, a woman that saw through his bullshit, a woman that made him want to stay when the man he used to be would've run.
He walked by the sensory deprivation tank. An image of a slender blonde woman, stripped to her black bra and bikini panties, popped into his mind. He couldn't say that was the first time he'd been attracted to her... hell, he'd been attracted to her from the moment she held out her hand in the sweltering hotel lobby in Baghdad. If he was honest... it wasn't even the first time he'd gotten hard looking at her (that was on the military plane coming back to Boston), but, if he was brutally honest with himself, it was the first time he realized just how screwed he was… when he pulled her out of the tank and wrapped his arms around her shivering body.
He patted the top of the rusted metal coffin as he passed. It might have been the instrument that sealed his fate as a reluctant member of her team, but it was also what brought her back to him. He shook his head ruefully as he walked deeper into the large, cluttered space. "Dumbest smart guy in the world," he thought.
A garland of faded paper flowers, the colors dimmed from layers of dust, adorned the "livestock" area of the lab. Remnants of the straw bedding were scattered around the edges of the stall, and a galvanized bucket sat next to an overturned milking stool. "Every child needs a pet," he hears her say, and chuckles to himself as he remembers that she was referring to his father, and not his daughter...
His daughter.
He closed his eyes, and he could see her in every corner of the lab.
Standing on a lab table, Walter's arm around her waist and hers around his shoulder, in front of a white board. He was teaching her to draw mathematical symbols – infinity, sine, cosine, square roots, infinite cardinality, summations, derivatives, deltas...
Daddy,Daddy, come look at set thewwy. Grandpa, it's FUN!
Perched on a stool next to Astrid, tiny fingers stretching to press the letters on the keyboard. A keyboard that had been reprogrammed for Greek. Two pairs of eyes sparkled, two heads bent together (one light and one dark), and two voices whispered conspiratorially….
Daddy, Aunt Astrid's teaching me a secret language. Do YOU know it, too?
By herself, in front of the aquarium, hands clasped tightly behind her back (Because we LOOK, but don't TOUCH, right, Daddy?), watching Walter's latest aquatic acquisitions swishing back and forth, tails slapping the sides of the glass.
Daddy, Daddy, it recognizes me! I think we should name it Dora…
Sitting on his workbench, holding a flashlight in one hand and a voltage sensor in the other, watching him work. Helping him work. Handing him tools she could barely pronounce… but she knew what to give him when he asked for it.
Daddy, am I your best helper?
Sitting across the desk from Olivia, a pair of her mother's old reading glasses sliding down her nose and a stack of case folders in front of her. Peter watched her watching Olivia, mimicking her every move – flipping pages, making notes, chewing on the end of her pen.
Daddy, when I grow up, I'm going to be just like Mama… and you.
He took a deep breath and brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. What was it that Walter told Olivia? "Pain is the proof that she was here."
The lab was full of ghosts, every inch of it, and he felt the presence of them all. He paused at the doorway, his hand on the light switch, and said his last goodbye, then turned out the lights and walked away from his past.