Written for trope_bingo 2013 Round Two: secret twin/doppelganger (wildcard square). Mentions of suicide and suicidal thoughts.
Thanks to Wendelah for first read!
S4, 4x20 variant, uses some dialogue from that episode. In "Worlds Apart," I really wanted to see alt-Nick meet our!Nick. It wasn't critical to the plot, and it could be argued that he was probably out of it for the duration thanks to the LSD. But that's what fic is for, right?
Nick was still woozy from the drugs, coming down off a (thankfully) easy high when the blonde Agent Dunham came back to the lab to talk to him. He'd already noticed differences between her and the redheaded Agent Dunham, the one from his own world—the blonde seemed more intense, somehow, more driven.
"We caught our Nick Lane, thanks to you," she told him. "But he's convinced that your world is trying to destroy ours. I'd like to..." Agent Dunham hesitated, the pause half full of premature apology. "If you agree, I'd like you to meet him. So he can see for himself that you're not an enemy."
Nick wet his dry lips with his tongue, a nervous habit. The lovely woman who'd assisted the doctor in hooking Nick up to all the gadgets—Astrid, that was her name—was there immediately with a plastic mug of ice water. "Sip slowly," she advised, flashing a smile both kind and sympathetic. Not the first time she'd seen bizarre human experiments in this lab, then, and helped with the aftermath. He nodded his thanks and did as she suggested, thinking over Agent Dunham's request. "Is he dangerous?" he finally asked, once his throat felt like it wouldn't squeak on the question.
Agent Dunham gazed at him steadily, not granting him the comfort of an easy lie. "I think he can be, yes. But he's being held in the Federal Building, he's being continually monitored, and I'll be with you the whole time." She hesitated again and added, "Your Agent Dunham too, as an official representative."
"So why do you need me, if," Nick started, but the answer was right there. On his own face, as it were. "Because seeing me might convince him."
"That's my hope." She sighed, leaning back against a lab table. "He's been...brainwashed, is probably the best way to think of it. A man named David Robert Jones built his own private cult full of people with dangerous abilities and convinced them that they were this world's only hope against the monsters on the other side. He taught them how to control their abilities and gave them something to fight for."
Nick was frowning, concentrating on her words. "You said you knew him before all that."
Agent Dunham nodded. "He seemed pleased to see me, if nothing else. Despite this," she said, wryly indicating her FBI badge. Before today, Nick hadn't seen one of those in over a decade. "But he didn't really believe me when I told him that our worlds are working together. We're running out of time to find Jones and—"
"I'll do it," Nick said, because really, what other option was there? If what these people believed was true, both universes were on the line. Part of him wanted to be, like Peter Bishop said, "the hero that saved two universes." If not that, at least he'd know that he'd tried to help.
The rest of him was just curious and well, no one could blame him for that either.
There was, mercifully, time to grab lunch on the way. Astrid had warned Nick that he'd probably have a serious case of the hungries as the drugs cleared his system. Nick greedily shoveled take-out Thai peanut noodles into his face in the back of the SUV, listening while (the blonde) Agent Dunham told him about her initial interrogation of the other Nick Lane and his insistence that the two universes were trying to destroy each other.
"Which we're not," (the redheaded) Agent Dunham assured him from the passenger seat, glancing over her shoulder. "Jones has been causing trouble for both sides. He figured out how to use the connection between certain alternates to create the earthquakes."
Nick swallowed his mouthful and took a gulp of soda to clear the peanut sauce off his teeth. "But...why?"
The two Dunhams exchanged brief glances. "We're...still working out his endgame," blonde Dunham said, in a way that screamed "evasion" to Nick. "But what's important now is that we convince our Nick Lane to help us find Jones before this goes on much longer."
At the Federal Building they gave him a short list of Things Not to Do: don't approach the prisoner, don't touch the prisoner, don't try to hand him anything.
"I'll be with you the whole time," redhead Dunham told him, just like her double, only she said it with a flash of a grin.
An armed soldier opened the door to the interrogation room. As Nick stepped inside, his mirror image looked up, saw him—
—and leapt to his feet, knocking over the chair and scrambling backward so fast that his back hit the far wall. He stared at Nick, eyes wide. Nick was staring right back.
It was like looking into a mirror, except for all the ways it wasn't. The other Nick Lane's hair was slightly longer, his clothing more casual. Most tellingly there was something overtly wary in his reactions, the way his eyes darted around to track everyone entering the room.
Nick swallowed hard and took a step forward. "Hi," he said, and then—because honesty always worked best with him—"I swear this is as bizarre for me as it is for you."
His doppelganger straightened up, looking past him. "This was your idea, wasn't it."
"Yes," the blonde Dunham said simply, moving into Nick's view to his right. "Jones didn't tell you everything. The natural link you have with this Nick Lane works both ways. That's how we found you."
The other Nick's eyes narrowed. "He doesn't have abilities," he started, and then gave Dunham a grim smile. It wasn't an expression Nick liked on his own face. "But you do. Clever, Olive. I don't know what this is supposed to prove, though."
Nick figured that was his cue. "Well for one thing, if our universes are at war, no one told me about it."
His double shifted to look at Nick, his gaze far too intense. "Doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't expect a civilian to be in the loop." His lip curled with disdain, his eyes raking over Nick's clothes.
Maybe Nick's sweater vest wasn't the height of fashion, but he'd had a meeting scheduled with a client today before all this happened, and his doppelganger's opinion of his clothing was the least of Nick's concerns. "So that makes it okay to cause earthquakes and kill everybody? Including those who have no idea what's going on?" It was hitting him, belatedly, what this man had done. What he'd used Nick to do. "We're people over there, just like here."
"I'm not a civilian, and I'd know we'd declared 'war'," redhead Dunham drawled, appearing on Nick's other side. "Fringe Division might be rinky-dink over here, but it's the largest operation under the DOD in our world. Which you would know if Jones had bothered to tell you anything about the world you're trying to murder."
The other Nick looked like he was about to say something, and then his lips pressed tightly together. Nick didn't like being ganged up on, either. He stepped forward again, spreading his hands to regain his double's attention. "Listen, I— I had no idea about any of this until this morning. I'm still trying to catch up on what's going on. But these two agents brought me over here, working together, because they said you were causing the earthquakes that affected both our worlds." He took a gulp of air and added, "And using me to do it."
"Collateral damage," other-Nick muttered, but for the first time he didn't sound so sure.
"An entire world's worth?" Nick moved to pull out the chair on his side of the small table and sit down. He was still kind of shaky from the drugs. "Seriously, I don't know what that guy Jones told you, but everyone I've met on both sides is just trying to keep everybody alive."
"'There is a war coming,'" the other Nick recited, and it sounded like a mantra. "'Not a war of hatred and anger—a battle for survival.'" He stared at Nick, sounding almost desperate. "Don't you see? It— it doesn't matter. Two universes can't exist in harmony. 'What was written will come to pass.'"
"Whoever wrote that needs a good hard slap." Nick heard both Agent Dunhams stifle a startled laugh at that. "From what they've said, your world is healing mine. Sounds like harmony to me."
Behind him the door opened, and there was a whispered urgent conversation between the agents and whoever'd come in. Nick kept his eyes on his doppelganger, still trying to forge a connection.
The door shut again and the blonde Agent Dunham stepped forward. "The quakes are about to start again. The timer's counting down. Nick, I know what we're saying is upsetting you, but consider for a moment that we're right. That means that in less than six hours, everything you know and everyone you may love will cease to exist. Right now, you're the only one that can stop that from happening."
"Cease to—" Nick started, shocked, but at the same time other-Nick's head snapped back as if burned. "Everyone I love?" His eyes found Nick's again, burning with intensity. "Do you have a sister?"
Nick frowned, trying to order his whirling thoughts. "Yeah." He didn't necessarily want to volunteer Kendra's information, but the look on the other man's face made him add, "She's married. Two kids. Still lives in Philly."
Nick had never seen another person's face simultaneously light up and crumple in on itself, like the other Nick was on the verge of tears. "Kendra's alive," he whispered, more to himself than to anyone in the room.
After a moment he started talking again, in a hushed voice. "When my family moved away from Jacksonville, I started having bad thoughts. And when I went to college, it got worse. I thought I was going crazy. And I had to make it stop. But even then, I was a coward. I was afraid that it would hurt. But I had heard that cutting your wrist was...kind of like drifting off to sleep. I had a sister, too. The night I was gonna do it, I had the knife in my hand, and my parents called. Kendra was dead. Slit her wrists in the tub. Jones told me I had become a reverse empath. That my emotions were contagious. That's what Walter Bishop and William Bell did to me."
He stopped to scrub a hand over his face. Nick was holding his breath and he thought the Dunhams were, too. "A couple years ago, Jones found me. He knew all the old words. He said the truce was broken, that the other side was coming over now, that he needed warriors. He taught me how to control my feelings so I wouldn't hurt any more people."
Nick listened, horrified, hearing the shame and guilt echoing in his own voice. This Nick Lane had been abused, he'd—he'd killed his sister through no fault of his own, he'd been betrayed and used and he was the victim here, God, Nick had never been so grateful for his own life. "You...you don't have to be a warrior. You don't have to do this. I don't want to die, I don't want Kendra and her husband and kids to die, and my friends, and—" he made himself take a breath. "Please, help them find Jones. Make this stop."
Other-Nick stared at him for what seemed like a long time. "I can't," he finally said, sounding broken. "I— Jones always came to me. He had me meet him in public places. Never the same place twice. If I got caught I was supposed to lie, lead you to an empty warehouse. There's nothing there. There's nothing I can do."
The Dunhams were conferring behind Nick's back but he kept his eyes on his double, somehow knowing there was more. When the other Nick spoke again, his voice was a raw wound, low and despairing. "He lied to me. And I didn't even question it. Do you know how that feels?"
...he did. It was nearly a tangible blanketing wave, despair turning the world gray and stealing all his air. But Nick had felt this before, he'd fought his own demons and triumphed over them years ago. He knew this kind of desolation intimately and familiarity gave him the tools to deny it: Nick let the surge of hopelessness pass over him, imagining it reflecting off the strength of the person he'd become.
"I'm pathetic," the other Nick was saying. "I should have just done it. I should have killed myself. I'm—"
"No, oh my God, no," Nick said, getting up and moving around the table, the hell with the rules. He hesitated, then put his hand on the other man's shoulder. "What happened to you was terrible. Jones helped you get control of your life, of course you believed him."
His double's arms came up to cover his head and he crumpled, sliding down the wall until he crouched there weeping like a lost child. Nick crouched down with him, wishing he knew what to say.
"Nick," a quiet voice said behind him. "Nick, we have to go."
He knew without turning around that it was the Dunham from his world. "Can't we—"
"I'm sorry." She came closer but didn't reach out to him, respecting his and the other Nick's space. "Without a way to find Jones, we don't have any choice but to close the Bridge. That should cut the link between Jones' people and their alternates on our side. The earthquakes will stop."
And stop the healing effect of the Bridge, she didn't need to say. Nick had been avidly following every news report as formerly toxic zones reopened. The vortex in the East River had been shrinking and Vegas was taking bets on a full closure date. The world was better, but by no means restored to what it had been.
But if the alternative was letting both worlds be destroyed, there wasn't any choice here at all. He gripped the other Nick's shoulder, trying to convey his sincerity. "This wasn't your fault," he said fiercely, and squeezed once before letting go.
Nick stood, turning to face the two Dunhams. He looked the blonde one in the eye. "You'll take care of him? Please?"
"I will," she said. It sounded like a vow. Nick believed her implicitly.
He was walking back over the threshold of the room when he heard other-Nick's voice again, subdued and defeated. "Hug Kendra for me."
"Extra-tight," Nick said, not turning around, and took another step toward a home he hoped would still be there.
NOTES
All ends as it did before, only Agent Tim doesn't get stabbed. Olivia helps Nick recover and finds the rest of the Cortexikids, which is the season 5 I really wanted. And with Jones and Bell gone they reopen the Bridge, and also alt-Linc didn't die. THE END.