This was my first long fic. It just kept growing! Post-Concentrate and Ask Again fic written before 6B. I want to give a huge thanks and shout out to Ambre (handle: Elialys) for encouraging me to keep writing and publish my stories here. Go check out her fics, they are amazing!
How Peter Can Fix This Mess
Something was wrong.
This, he could tell. He may not be able to tell one Olivia from another, but he sure as hell could tell when something was bothering her. He'd had that ability pretty much from day one. Even on the phone, he could tell - her voice was slightly higher pitched, her words came out faster, her sentences ran together. In person, it was like reading a book - she pursed her lips, creased her forehead, gripped the steering wheel a bit too tightly. The signs were extremely subtle - in one so serious, how do you tell the difference between intensity and distress, deep thought and deep pain? But he always could. Which made his earlier lack of insight even more egregious… but he put that thought out of his head. There was plenty of time to continue beating himself up over his idiocy later. For now, he had to figure out how to get Olivia alone and then how to get her to open up about what was wrong.
The opportunity presented itself later that day. He'd gone to pick up coffee (black-one-sugar, black-one-sugar) and when he returned, she was in her office pouring over paperwork, back hunched, lips pursed, forehead creased. He took a deep breath to steel himself before slipping into his most winning smile and entering the office. "You know, I tried to get Walter to set up an IV drip of this stuff for you, but until then you'll have to settle for the old fashioned way."
Her eyes flicked up to his for a brief second. "Thanks." Not good. He sat down across from her, sipping his coffee while she pretended he wasn't there. He counted down from five in his head and sure enough, when he reached "one" she put down the file she was studying - a bit too forcefully - and with a sigh of exasperation looked up at him. "What is it, Peter."
After taking one last sip from his coffee, he leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk, looking at her intently. "I was just wondering if you're going to tell me what's bothering you, or if I'm going to have to sit here pestering you all afternoon."
"Nothing, nothing's bothering me. I'm fine. Just tired." She gave her "I'm faking it" smile - tight lipped, forced, doesn't reach her eyes - and turned her attention back to the files, shuffling them nervously.
Peter sighed, rubbing his temples for a second before looking back at her. "Olivia, come on. I know my perceptive abilities have been sorely lacking of late, but I've spent almost three years honing the art of 'How to Tell When Olivia Dunham is Upset'. So, I'll ask again: are you going to talk to me, or am I going to have to sit here all day?"
"Peter… please. Don't." Her facade cracked, proving his intuition right.
His knowing smirk was replaced with a look of concern. "Hey, it's ok. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can't keep it bottled in like this, it'll eat you up. Please, just tell me what's wrong … or at least tell Astrid, or somebody…"
She bit her lip and looked pained. Looking everywhere but at him, she said, "I just … I … I can't do this anymore. This … whatever this is, between us. I tried, and I thought I could, but I can't. So please, can we just put this behind us and move on?"
He blinked, concern turning to confusion, a sense of unreality settling in his stomach. "But … I thought … we were doing ok. I mean, it's not perfect, but we're working on it, right? What … what happened? What did I do?"
"You didn't do anything. It's not like that. It's just … you don't need to keep trying to make me feel better. You can move on, ok? I'll be fine. It's ok, really." The pained smile again.
"Wait, what? 'Move on'? Olivia, I don't want to 'move on'. I mean, if you're telling me I'll never have a shot then ok, I'll do my best to pick myself up again, but I don't think that's what this is about." He leaned forward, trying to catch her eye. "What IS this about?"
She stood up abruptly, turning her back to him and running her fingers through her hair. Uh oh. That was level 10 on the "Olivia is really upset" scale. She turned back around and brought her hands up to her mouth, fingers steepled together. She had the look of a trapped animal. "When I dropped Simon off… I tried to talk to him about that girl at the coffee shop. Tried to convince him he should talk to her. He said I couldn't understand, that I didn't know how hard it was to see in peoples minds like he can. That no one is supposed to have that kind of knowledge. And to prove the point, he … he told me that you still … have feelings … for her."
Shit. He leaned back in the chair, rubbed at his face with his hands. Shit shit shit. The world seemed to tilt sideways, spinning on the wrong axis, knocked off kilter by the fear and guilt swelling up inside him. This can't be happening.
"Peter it's alright. It's ok. I understand. You can stop trying now. Stop trying to make it work when it can't. Stop pursuing me out of guilt. I don't need your pity, Peter. Just let it go."
She turned to leave the room, and something snapped inside of him. No. He was not going to let this happen again. He was not going to let her walk away from him again. Not this time.
"No." He stood up and grabbed her arm as she tried to walk past him out the door. As he turned her around he saw the tears trying to escape the corners of her eyes, her lips pursed so tightly they were turning white. "Olivia, listen to me. Whatever you think you know, whatever you think he heard, you're wrong." She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. "Just let me say my piece, ok? Then if you still want to write me off then so be it. But I deserve the chance to tell my side, ok?" She nodded and he let go of her arm. She backed away a step, hugging herself, looking so damn vulnerable. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She wasn't supposed to look so broken. He took a deep breath and just let the words come out.
"Look, I'm not going to lie to you. And I'd be lying if I said my feelings about her weren't … confusing. I have eight weeks of memories that I don't know what to do with. Moments of happiness that I can't quantify. It all feels like a dream, and I'll admit part of me misses it. Misses being happily ignorant, because reality is so god damned painful. But these feelings, these emotions I'm trying to work through, they aren't for her. Not really. I don't even know her. The feelings I have are for a version of her pretending to be you … a version that doesn't exist. The woman I spent eight weeks with … it's not just that she wasn't you. It's that she's not even real. She was playing a part, acting a role. But even knowing that intellectually, those feelings, those happy memories, they don't just go away because I don't want them any more. And I don't - I wish I could get rid of them but I can't. And it doesn't mean I like her more, and it doesn't mean I want to be with her, and it absolutely doesn't mean I don't want to be with you." He took another deep breath and tried to catch her gaze, which had been aimed at their feet. "And if you think about it, I bet you know exactly what that's like."
She looked up, startled, eyebrows shooting up. "Wh-what?"
"When you thought John was a traitor. When you thought he'd betrayed you and his country and that your whole relationship with him was a lie. Even after all that, I'd bet you still had feelings for him. And it didn't mean you'd take him back if he suddenly came back to life, and it didn't mean you were any less furious or hurt or all the million other emotions I know you had, because I have them too. But as much as you hated what he did to you, you couldn't forget that - ignorant and foolish as it looked to be - you were happy, and you did love him. Right?" She nodded again, eyes wide. "And while you ended up learning the truth and getting some closure out of that whole shitty scenario, I never can. Because we already know the truth. And the truth is she lied to me and used me and used my feelings for you to manipulate me, ruining both our lives in the process, and I will never, ever forgive her for that. Do you hear me? Never."
Her face softened, just the slightest bit, and he felt a surge of energy and determination. He was going to fix this, dammit, if it took everything he had. "One more thing, and then I'm finished, and you can tell me to go to hell." He closed his eyes and took a moment to organize his thoughts. Don't fuck this up, Bishop. This is your last shot. "I don't want, I will never want, a happier version of you, Olivia. I want you to be happy. I don't want to change you and I don't want to fix you - I don't have to. You already have it. I see it every time you're with Ella, and I use to see it pretty often when you were with me. And I don't care if I have to move heaven and earth for a single smile, because that smile from you means more than a thousand from her."
Home stretch, Bishop. This is it.
"And I wouldn't trade your intensity with her free spirit for anything, because I know that the intensity, the dedication that you bring to your job, to your life, to protecting people and trying to make the world a better place, you would bring that into a relationship as well. And you would fight for it, for us, just as vehemently as you do for everything important to you. And it's that passion that drew me to you, that intrigued me and attracted me from day one, the passion and determination that is uniquely you, Olivia. You think you're broken, that you're less than whole and somehow lesser than you would have been without the trials. You're wrong. You're so wrong. You are ten times the woman she is and stronger and more selfless than anyone I have ever met. That's the woman I want to be with. That's the woman I've been in love with for the better part of two years. And that's the woman I'm standing in front of now, begging, please … please believe me. Please give us a chance."
Her hands were covering her mouth now, and a few tears had escaped to roll slowly down her cheeks. She took a trembling breath, and gave him a shaky smile. "Okay … okay." And with those two words the distance that had been between them for so long finally shattered. He pulled her into his arms and they held each other as tight as they could stand, neither wanting to loosen their hold in case the other might slip away. Her tears flowed freely now, and to be perfectly honest, so did his. After a while she pulled back and looked up at him with that look, the one that pierced directly into his heart, the one she had given him when she'd come to take him back from a far off place - a mixture of pleading and pain, hesitation and determination, a quiet strength and deep love. He cupped her face with his hand, and with his own shaky smile said, "It's always been you, Olivia. Always." And this time, he kissed her.