Days of September
by Palatyne
Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe. The original story and characters belong to J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Fox Network .
Summary: He decided to search the multitude of universes to understand the two people whose lives he had long observed – hoping to find an answer that will save their future.
Author's Note/Update: I apologize to those who placed this story on alert expecting more chapters, but due to problems meshing the other stories with this one, I decided to leave this as a one-shot. The chapters that were supposed to succeed this are still in the works and if they are to be published, they will be published as separate stories. I do apologize for this, and I thank you for your interest in this story.
He observed the woman sitting almost serenely on the park bench. Her golden hair was loose and wavy and trailing down her back, a few wisps whirling away in breeze.
She never seemed to lose her alertness, despite the utter serenity of the park and her own relaxed posture. He could see that her eyes remained sharp, brows slightly furrowed, her mind ready, and her feet ever so slightly braced.
The soldier.
But in this country there were no wars, at least none that involved troops and actual combat. She fought her own wars, battled with enemies of a less lofty kind.
Her days were spent amidst the bluish hue of computer screens, neck-deep in dusty records and yellowing documents. In more exciting days, she would be eye-to-eye with liars, traitors, maniacs and criminals of all kinds.
Yet at the moment she sat on the park bench just like any other person.
Her gaze faraway but not haunted.
She was waiting for him, that much he knew of her in this world.
In this world, it was her sister she tried to save. And the help he gave her consisted of nothing but a phone call to a perfectly sane, albeit distant father.
They had met in almost the same circumstances, his help sought to save someone she cared about.
Then eventually she started caring about him.
September saw him then, walking towards her bench, a smile already on his face. He walked with the same subtle, unconscious swagger, tempered by his carefree expression.
Unlike the other one he knew, the one he saved, this one fit perfectly in this world. He had the same extreme intellect, the same rebellious streak as they called it, but he channeled it all into an adventurous, risk-taking lifestyle – instead of a life of deception and crime.
"Sorry I'm late." He heard him say, before planting a kiss on her lips, his hands reaching up to slightly caress her cheek, before sitting next to her.
"It's okay." She replied, her eyes never leaving his face.
September lowered the device from his eyes, and let his thoughts wander into the possibilities now forming, and the many reasons why he was observing the man and the woman.
Like the others of his kind, he was becoming increasingly disturbed by the escalating manner with which recent events in the two universes were coalescing. The many threads of probabilities were now converging, weaving into the very pattern of destruction his kind had foreseen.
The longer he remained in close contact with humans, the more he understood the limitations of their perceptions – and not unexpectedly he had begun to think of his own vastly differing perceptions in the context of their own.
To see.
What he and his kind did may well be described as seeing but only because this was the human experience closest to it. In earlier times he had even taken to likening it the human experience of dreaming. He even once heard it likened to the visions humans experience in altered states of consciousness.
But these were all, to say the least, inaccurate.
For he and his kind could not only see, they could be – in those dreams, those visions of worlds.
Once, they alone possessed the ability to cross the nearly impenetrable but fragile walls of universes – to travel across them.
To observe, to watch, to learn, to witness, to understand.
Sometimes, to caution.
To warn.
In rare instances he and his kind presented themselves to humans, interacting with them directly, conversing with them.
Always, nearly always, it would be to warn them of the consequences of the choices they had made.
Once, he even engaged with a human directly to set right his own mistakes.
Too often, such warnings went unheeded. For he and his kind could only appeal to reason, yet all the humans he had ever directly encountered shared a fatal flaw.
Emotion.
September trained his eyes to park bench once more, and saw that the woman's face now relaxed, her brows no longer furrowed, her mouth curved into her trademark half-smirk smile.
Then the man reached a hand to her hair, tucking a stray wisp behind her ear. He shifts his head slightly, and she leans towards him as they discretely share a kiss.
September watched them and thought that no two people could be more different.
Yet he could understand why they were attracted to each other, despite their obvious differences. They complemented each other, and in essence they had the same fearlessness and ferocity to protect those they cared about.
Caring.
Emotion.
Even in the most rational and intelligent of them, this one flaw would overcome all else. In this regard, he and his kind were helpless.
Until August.
What August did was not wholly unforeseen, though it was markedly unexpected.
When it came to pass, he was shaken – perhaps more than the others. August had allowed himself to become attached to a subject – one who should have been abandoned long ago.
He broke the very sacred of their very few rules. He had intervened to create a change, tampered with the probabilities of the universe by creating one more.
A mistake that they would all eventually make, a mistake that they now cannot seem to avoid.
What happened to August echoed in all of them, making them all too aware of the irony of their existence.
That they should simply observe and not interfere was a rule irrevocable. They must never change anything.
Yet what they overlooked was how an existence such as theirs would not remain unchanged over the eons, across the universes.
August had changed.
He was changed.
For now the fate of two worlds hung in the balance – pushed to the precipice of obliteration by a single error.
In all the probabilities, the many worlds and many futures that sprang and stretched to infinity before flashing briefly into their semi-collective minds – this was the one future that disturbed them the most.
The storm of destruction.
He felt the weight of it, a strange sensation that he had never experienced before – too human to be his own.
Yet they all felt it as well.
Something must be done, warned July.
And so it must.
Yet before anything he must first learn, he must observe.
See.
As his thoughts raced and as the myriad threads of probabilities stretched across his mind, he stared at the man and the woman as they rose from the bench, as they walked away with hands entwined.
Perhaps he could finally see why they always find each other.
He sensed a movement behind him.
"You are still here?" asked July, walking away from the shade of a nearby tree.
"Yes."
"What have you learned?"
"In this world, they are different," He paused. "but, they are together."
"A predictable attraction, do you think?"
"Against such odds?"
"A coincidence."
"Perhaps."
"You must continue, then. Prove it wrong."
"As you say." He replied evenly, as they watched the man and the woman fade into the distance.