I've been a Fringe fan for ages, and I've been meaning to write something for it for a very long time. Because my heart broke so much watching pretty much the whole of season 3, I decided to write this. I'm not entirely sure where it came from, but I hope you'll read and review this story anyway. I am planning some chapters for my other stories, but you'll have to wait at least three weeks before anything is even considered.
He still has feelings for her.
He still has feelings for her.
He still has feelings for her.
He still has feelings...
The words reverberate inside her head, like a drumbeat that does not go away, like a heartbeat that does not stop pounded along in her bloodstream with every beat. The words are tattooed to the inside of her mind like they tattooed the back of her neck.
Only she knows which one hurt less.
(It isn't her neck.)
Simon says that Peter has feelings for the other Olivia, that he still thinks about her. She knows that he does. He gets this look on his face, and she can't read him like she used to (or maybe she just doesn't want to). There is this look in his eyes that makes her want to curl up in a ball and cry, like she did against the washing machine, her fingers clutching at his t-shirt, and wait for it to all go away.
Feelings, she thinks. Sometimes she pretends that these feelings are ones of hatred, or disdain, of betrayal. Even of abandonment (she knows that abandonment means that he misses her, but she knows to be abandoned is to never forgive).
She pretends that Peter is fine, because the real Olivia is back, and that's all he ever wanted, not the fake copy with dyed hair and a mother and a smile.
She pretends that it never happened, that she came back with them, like they thought, like she was supposed to. She pretends that after her confession (you belong with me) she takes two steps back, because retreating is what she does, and (like always) he follows her. She pretends that the first time they lie in her bed she does not smile, but she looks him in the eyes and knows that she doesn't need to for him to know how happy she is.
But she knows that none of this is true, that Peter's feelings are of a different kind, from a different place in his heart. She knows Peter.
She knows that Peter had fallen for her double, the one with the smile and milk in her coffee. These feelings are of abandonment, but the betrayal of being left behind, alone in this world while his real father and his Olivia are in another.
Peter has fallen in love with her double, the double that is better than her, that is happier than her – that makes Peter happier than she does.
And she hates him for it, hates that he has replaced her with a better model, whilst she was locked away in the dark, whilst she was strapped to a table with a needle in her veins, whilst she was lying in bed with another man waiting for him to rescue her.
Peter is what has kept her sane, the thought that she would not be kept in the dark forever, that Peter will take her out into the light.
(He is the light.)
But he does not come. He stays in her world, with the Olivia from this world, and he is happy.
(They are literally from the same world; shouldn't that have been her first clue?)
She is alone in the dark.
And whenever she closes her eyes she is back there again, waiting on a table for them to cut her open, laid bare. Only it is not Brandon holding the blade, it is Peter, his eyes full of love, but he does not look at her, only at the red-headed woman at his side. He brushes her fringe out of her eyes with his free hand. The other Olivia takes his hand, holding the knife together, and they do not even look at her as they drive it into her skin, tearing through her exposed flesh as they have torn through her heart.
She wakes up screaming.
(Sometimes she wishes that she wouldn't wake up.)
Simon says he has feelings for her.
Simon doesn't say what those feelings are.
But she already knows that answer.
(Her heart aches with it.)