Disclaimer: I claim no ownership or rights to the characters from Fox's Fringe contained in this story. I only borrow for fun and hope the networks/creators have better things to do that read fanfiction.
A/N: Huge thanks, as always, to super-beta Chichuri. This little fic is set after "Road Not Taken" with call-backs to "Bad Dreams." Enjoy and let me know how I did!
Bump in the Road
Tossing the last of the omnipresent manila folders in the mountainous stack at the corner of the desk, Olivia leaned back in her chair and sighed. The last case report was finished. She'd recorded every insane detail, every wacko theory that turned out to be true, with all her 't's crossed and her 'i's dotted. It was tedious busy work that she'd put off for a long time, but it was a good excuse to keep her close to the office that day. And away from the lab.
She'd kept her distance for a reason. Walter. She'd reduced the good doctor to tears, and part of her hated herself for it. There was more to tell, she just had to find the key to unlocking his scarred memory. Olivia knew she and Walter weren't done yet, but it was like a double edged knife that promised to cut one or the other of them should they venture onto its blade.
Her thoughts dwelled on their conversation – or lack thereof – until the continuous memory loop spurred her to seek restitution. Perhaps an apology could open the lines of communication. A more surreptitious route rather than full-on assault would gain more ground with Walter.
While Olivia replayed her last conversation with the elder Bishop, the SUV seemed to drive itself to the Harvard lab. So much guilt wrapped around frustration and fear had marred his aging features that night in the pastry shop. He'd wanted to give her the answers she sought, that much was obvious. But even as the tears streaked down the old man's face and his strangled protestations tugged at her heart, Olivia had felt like Walter knew more than he was letting on. He was still hiding something.
She'd been careful to choose the right moment to press him – when Peter was nowhere to be found. Peter was tolerant of most of Olivia's shenanigans, even helped plan a few of them with her, but lately he had been unusually protective of Walter. Where Peter used to badger Walter until he was nearly frantic, he was now careful to tiptoe around the holes in his father's memory. He'd devise ingenious ways to trigger a necessary memory: buying kid's cereal that Walter might remember, rephrasing questions in ways that would circumvent Walter's mental blocks, even taking his father back to their old house to jog the old memory synapses. Never bulldozing through walls that Walter wasn't ready to breech, and never treating him like a suspect in interrogation.
As she entered the Kresge Building, Olivia reminded herself that that was exactly how she'd treated Walter in the pastry shop, assaulting him with accusations and photographs like a suspected perpetrator. She was angry, world-weary and tired of having every answer bring more questions, especially where her own past had been concerned. In the past week she'd seen a woman setting a man alight from across the room, the charred remains of a woman not so different from herself, had déjà vu flashes into a "reality" that terrified her. She'd needed answers. And to do that, she'd needed to take off the kid-gloves that night with Walter.
She could tell the old scientist had a soft spot for her. And that might be endearing, had he not been one of the two helping to conduct scientific experiments on her when she was three. Dosing her with God-knows-what. Opening her young mind to a terrifying world with freakish abilities, all in the name of "doing what was best". It was too much for her to comprehend and all the more frightening because, like Walter, she couldn't remember either.
The halls were darkened and shrouded in shadow as Olivia neared the lab doors. She checked her watch, idly thinking that while Walter remaining to tinker in the lab until all hours was a given, Astrid or Peter might not still be hanging around.
The lab was eerily quiet. Perhaps Peter had already taken his father back to the hotel.
"Walter?" Getting no answer, Olivia moved further into the work area. At first, the only sounds were the whirring of machinery and Gene chewing her cud in her stall. All the lights were dimmed or shut off for the evening.
About to give up and leave, Olivia heard the faint sound of voices coming from the back of the lab. As she moved through the various metal monstrosities cluttering the room, she saw the flicker of a TV screen in a far corner, behind the critter cages.
Walter was seated in a chair opposite a television watching grainy images flicker on the screen. Voices muttered in the background of the movie, spouting various scientific terms and theories that Olivia couldn't make sense of. The scene changed, and she watched with widened eyes as the camera panned in on a small girl, huddled in a corner. The room around her was charred black with ash and soot, and Olivia had to swallow the emotions that roiled up in her throat. The similarities were too obvious.
Susan Pratt's charred bathroom.
Spellbound, Olivia found herself moving quietly into Walter's macabre movie theater. One of the voices from the video, the one with a raspy authoritative tone, was talking about how the child had exceeded the expectations of her abilities, and that the "accident" was unfortunate. Something about a lab assistant being missing.
Then a voice Olivia recognized. Rigidly, as though someone had poured frozen water down her spine, she halted just shy of Walter's chair. Her eyes flicked downward to the man seated in the old chair before her, the man whose voice she'd just heard speaking soothingly in the video to the child he called "Olive."
Her chest seized painfully. The girl in the video, that nickname... "Walter…what the hell?"
Walter snapped around in his chair, looking up into the utterly confused and aghast face of Agent Dunham.
"Olivia? Oh my goodness, I didn't hear you…come in." Before she could get to the TV, Walter jammed the power button on the remote, erasing the scene of his younger self creeping into the charred corner to comfort the traumatized child.
He shifted his weight uncomfortably, keeping his eyes on the innocuous remote in his hands. Perhaps she wasn't really there. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, she'd disappear from the lab, so that when he looked up, Agent Dunham's intrusion would have been nothing but a figment of his admittedly unstable imagination.
No such luck. "What was that, Walter?" she asked in a low tone.
Looking back at the TV, Walter shrugged, "Oh this? Nothing. Nothing at all. Just going through some of my old files, odds and ends." He ejected the cassette tape and tried to smile reassuringly at her. "Found some old videos of experiments from my earlier lab days. I was endeavoring to find a particular file on the use of rabbit hormones in enhancing human sex drive…" he looked back at Olivia, saw that she wasn't buying the stall-job, "…but to no avail, I'm afraid."
She stalked toward him. "Walter, that tape in your hands. I saw part of it. I heard your voice."
Walter froze. Swallowed thickly. She was looking at him with those tortured eyes, same as the pastry shop attack. "And Bellie's…" he whispered meekly.
"You were working with William Bell in that video?"
Walter tried to distract his mind from the suffocating guilt that racked his being every time Olivia did this to him. Tried to focus on something safe, like the interesting way her eyes changed color with her moods, darkening to a deeper sage green. They always seemed to darken when she was angry or threatened… or voraciously determined. Perhaps there was some genetic coding to eye color and varying moods, or perhaps it was merely his own perception.
She was very close to him, head tilted slightly to the side – studying him. Reading his every reaction. "What were you and Bell doing in that video, Walter?"
He was pinned by her gaze. So many questions, and God knows she deserved the answers. "I don't…remember, really."
"That's a lie." The dark, almost guttural accusation made him wince.
Oh, how he wanted to tell her. Wanted to make everything better for her. After he'd first found the video, he finally understood the unusual need to help her, to give her the answers she sought and to make sure she stayed safe. Realized he'd felt that same fatherly protectiveness for her since she was three years old, huddled in a corner after a horrifying mistake. He felt his throat tightening again, emotions strangling his voice as they had in the pastry shop.
"Olivia…please." He was begging her to understand that he was trying to look after her again. As he always had.
Walter jumped when Olivia's hand reached out and snatched his arm by the cuff. "That was me, Walter. Me in that video. Three years old huddled in that corner and I don't remember a goddamn thing." Her voice never rose above the low, dangerous octave – her eyes boring holes into his. "I heard you – saw you there with me, Walter. And I know there's more to this than what you're saying."
Walter could feel the tears welling up again, and he damned himself for being such an addled old fool.
"Now tell me what the fuck you and Bell did to me?" Olivia's voice broke that time, raw hurt ringing through the dangerous timbre, and Walter nearly broke down because of it.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't tell you because I don't know…not everything." Too much to remember, too many holes, too much need. Seeing her posture wilt before him in frustration, Walter snapped.
"I tell you I don't know!" He flung himself away from her, and started pacing. "I just found this cassette a few days ago. Most of it's damaged beyond repair, save for a few random pieces of film. I can't piece it all together…I can't," his voice cracked and he pushed his fist into his temple in frustration, "I can't put all the pieces together."
Olivia watched him with a pained expression that only upset him more.
"We thought we were preparing you, don't you see, Olivia? Preparing you for what was coming! We thought the benefits would out-weigh the consequences. We didn't know–"
Olivia broke into his train of thought, "Consequences? Is that what you call what happened to Nick Lane, Susan Pratt, Nancy Lewis… to me? What happened in that room, Walter," she motioned to the video, "collateral damage?"
Suddenly Olivia's face melded with that of little Olive in his mind, and Walter had to restrain himself from reaching out to her again. At this stage, she might just shoot him. "There was no way were could predict how the recruit's abilities would manifest once they were activated."
"You… tortured… us, didn't you?" She was horrified now. "You and Bell played God and never cared what might happen to the kids you were using as guinea pigs."
"That's not true, Olivia. I cared. I wanted Bellie to scale back his Cortexiphan trials until we had more data…especially after…" Walter paused and looked down at the video in his hands. The film confirmed what he suspected about Olivia's involvement, but the scenes of devastation around her, the inference of a terrible accident, seeing his younger self comfort the frightened child, drove the spike of guilt further into his chest. And he still couldn't make the memories any clearer.
"After what? What happened to me in that scene?"
Walter closed his eyes. "I don't remember. I'm so very sorry, Olive."
Olive. She nearly choked on the recollection of Nick calling her that up on the roof that day. On the familiarity of Nick's face, the links between the information he was giving her and her own suspicions. The blocks of information, the fragments of memories started tumbling over themselves into place even more when she looked through Susan Pratt's house, finding a near carbon copy of her's and Nick's lifestyles. They were all connected.
But she needed to know more.
She stood back and surveyed the damage that was Walter Bishop. The old man was nearly in tears again, shaking and clutching that damned video cassette like a security blanket. He paced back and forth, muttering incoherently while she stood back and watched. She had come to the lab with the intention of apologizing to Walter, and now she was torn between hugging him and beating him to within an inch of his life.
Fucking God complexes and scientists too smart for their own good.
"Should've kept them together more. He would have been able to help keep her stable…" Walter muttered under his breath.
Olivia assumed he meant Nick. She let herself wander back to the rooftop in her mind, to Nick seemingly relieved that Olive had heard his cry for help and come running. She must have been his grounding rod during the trials. Perhaps that was why the mantle of "protector" fell so easily on her shoulders; she'd been doing it since she was a child. Walter's gibberish filtered to the background.
The world around her faded like a smudged painting as she allowed the doors to her memories creak open. Olivia found herself standing in a lab, not unlike Harvard's. Everything was distorted – entirely too huge, as though she'd shrunk and was looking up at enormous doors, tables and scary machinery.
She's three years old and on the floor before her is a box. Its smoldering remains is a mish-mash of melted wiring and the stink of burned filaments.
Olivia feels like she flunked a major exam and is about to be in big trouble. Nervous knots wind around her stomach, and her hands ball into shaking fists at her side. Someone enters the room, and she startles at the sound of his voice.
"S'okay, 'Livia. My dad won't mind fixing it." A young boy, no more than a year older, appears by her side. He's just about her height, with chubby cheeks, a mop of brown hair and vivid blue-green eyes.
He bestows a lopsided grin on her, and reaches out. His hand slides down her arm to her hand, which immediately relaxes and grasps his. He gives her hand a gentle squeeze, broadening his smile as if to tell her that all was well in the world. And in that moment, he's right. The knots ease in her belly and Olivia finds herself releasing a breath she didn't realize she was holding. All the tension within her body abates, and her mind stops its incessant racing.
The sound of a door opening jolted Olivia from her memory. Wiping a hand across her forehead, she looked over at Walter, who was still pacing around in circles. He paused at the sound of the newcomer and eyed Olivia, before looking away in guilt.
"Walter? Hey, Walter, you in here?"
They both waited silently for Peter to find them. He rounded the corner and stopped, rocking back on his heels as surprise and then suspicion flitted across his features. He eyed both of them for a moment.
"Oookay. What's with the pow-wow in the dark?" He cocked a brow toward Olivia.
She cleared her throat. "Nothing. Just… taking a little stroll down memory lane." That hadn't come out like she wanted, and the mere mention of trying unclog more memories from Walter had Peter's jaw working. He wasn't happy.
"What, one interrogation wasn't enough?" It wasn't quite a growl, but the heat underlining the words was unmistakable. But she'd been knocked off balance by the video and was still simmering with residual anger at Walter to be bothered by Peter's new-found familial concern.
Peter moved to Walter, who cradled the video to his chest. When he touched his shoulder, Walter looked up. "Oh…Peter. I didn't know you were here." Walter gave Olivia a shaky smile, and tried to compose himself. "Olivia and I were just talking about the …uh…"
"Cortexiphan trials." She finished. No sense in sparing Peter the details. He'd shut them down before when they skirted the issue.
She watched comprehension wash over the younger Bishop's face, and worry tightened the lines around his eyes. "I thought he told you he doesn't remember anything else about that."
Squaring her shoulders, Olivia leveled a stare at Peter. "He does. Trust me on that, Peter. He does."
Walter seemed to fold in on himself a little more, and Peter placed a calming hand on his shoulder. He studied Olivia for a moment, concern digging the furrow between his brows even deeper. "Look, I think you both should give this a rest for a while. It's been a really long couple of days."
Olivia's hands balled into fists. He was doing it again. Every time they suggested the truth that his father experimented on her as a child, Peter became agitated, clearly freaked out, and blew the whistle to send her and Walter to their separate corners. She understood his need to protect his father from the guilt or from being overloaded with demands that taxed his fragile memory. But there was something in the way Peter looked at Olivia when these Cortexiphan conversations arose. His eyes would swing from Walter to catch hers for a millisecond, then looked down and away. His throat bobbed with an unspoken emotion when he finally brought his gaze back to her.
Fear on her behalf. Peter wasn't just trying to protect Walter, Olivia realized with dawning clarity, he was trying to spare her as well.
Peter reached out and placed a hand on Walter's shoulder, causing his father to jolt suddenly from where ever his mind had been. "Go straight out to the station wagon and wait for me there. No detours."
The old man looked anxiously between the two of them, and then seemed to relax a little. He nodded and shuffled out of the lab, still clutching the video and muttering something about stabilizers always coming in twos and the "buddy system".
"C'mon, 'Livia," Peter murmured, entering Olivia's space. "Go home. Get some sleep. Nothing more you can do today."
"I need to see that video, Peter."
He sighed, but there was steel in his voice. "Later. We'll tackle that monster another day. Walter needs a rest, and so do you."
Olivia huffed a small, incredulous laugh and shook her head. He was handling her. Normally, she'd let him do it, but answers were close to her now and she didn't want to be told to leave it alone like a kid being told to leave the cookies until after dinner.
Just then, Peter tilted his head to catch her eye. His features still held concern, but his eyes were pleading with her to do as he said. For her own good. He reached out and touched her arm. Olivia felt a chill course through her as his hand slid down her arm to grasp her hand. A feeling of ease erased the chill and flowed through her, causing her muscles to relax and her mind to slow the never-ending search for the puzzle pieces that would fit into place, giving her the answers she sought. She even let out a shaky breath as she searched Peter's face.
The same blue-green eyes, only a shade or two more jaded by life and a hint of a lopsided grin pulling at his mouth. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
And she knew.
END
A bit of angst and supposition for you guys. Like it? Hate it? Let me know and REVIEW!