Watching Marionette tonight killed me! Another brilliant episode and it got me thinking. We saw Olivia's pain and POV but not Peter's. I do think he deserves to be heard. What little he said in the episode wasn't enough (brilliant, but not nearly enough). So I decided to write this one shot to vent my demons that were plaguing my brain.
Per usual, I do not own Fringe, it is the brilliant mastermind of J.J. Abrams & Co.
I may be using some dialogue (may not be verbatim, but close) from tonight's episode.
A/N: Italics are thoughts or inner monologues
POPOPOPOPO
It had been two weeks since they closed the Barrett case and to say tensions between Olivia and Peter were thick was putting it mildly. The tension was so bad that even a chainsaw at full speed couldn't break through it. Olivia had been back at work and it was hard-hard for her to work with Peter, hard for her to look at him without seeing her double. She wanted to just forget, to build up that wall she had neglected for so long and never break it down again.
Things in the lab were a little different, too. Every time Olivia looked at Astrid all she could hear echoing in her mind was what Astrid had said to her that day at the FBI office.
"He thought she was you…whatever feelings Peter had, they were about you and they were real…they still are."
No matter how many times Olivia tried to think of something else, tried to block any and all thoughts of Peter out of her head that kept blaring, louder and louder on a constant loop. It got so bad that she just would come to the lab and shut herself in her office and not see or talk to anyone all day long. Olivia knew Astrid meant well, she was always the voice of sanity and reason, but she just couldn't look at Astrid, her eyes replayed her thoughts in stereo.
Peter entered the lab as he had the last two weeks a broken man, more so than he was when he first found out about the switch. Olivia's words to him that night in Barrett's garden I don't want to be with you-she's taken everything cut him deeper than a serrated knife dipped in lemon juice and salt. He hadn't been sleeping well and every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Olivia's face and the tears he caused. The tears he never wanted to see cross that gorgeous face of hers. He was hurting, too, deeper than he could ever even fathom.
"Peter, so glad you are here, come and help me with this experiment," Walter chimed to his son giddy with newness.
"Walter, as you can see, my hands are full and besides, I don't want to know what new and gross concoction you are mixing to try out on some poor unsuspecting person or thing," Peter retorted gesturing to the two coffee cups in his hands.
"Well, all right, son, but if you smell something foul…" Walter informed.
"Okay, that's all the information I need to know. Astrid have you seen Olivia? I brought her some coffee?" Peter asked looking around the lab.
"She's where she has been the last two weeks, Peter, in her office. She hasn't come out all day," Astrid said to him with sadness in her eyes.
Peter read Astrid's mood and knew. Knew she was worried for her friend, worried that Olivia would close herself off so much from those that cared about her that they feared they may lose her…for good this time.
Peter gave Astrid a reassuring smile, he knew what she was worried about and he mirrored it, too. He lost Olivia once and he'd be damned if he lost her again. It tore him up to know he was deceived. To know that the woman he shared his thoughts with, the woman he cooked breakfast for, the woman he made passionate love to wasn't the woman he loved. She wasn't even close.
Heading towards the tightly closed door of Olivia's office Peter took a deep breath and composed himself quickly before he entered not even knocking. Her head was down; she didn't even bother to look up at him as he entered. She was looking over some case files, shuffling papers and tapping her pen on the desk, doing anything to not look at Peter.
He hadn't moved, he stood by the door as if the weight of his legs became a metric ton. He just stood and watched her, watched her breathe, watched her hands as they shuffled papers on her desk. God she was beautiful and she hated him, that much he knew and it killed him.
"I brought you some coffee," Peter said, as he moved closer to her desk cautiously.
Olivia said nothing, just continued her work.
"It's from that coffee place you like, the one on Boylston," Peter added hoping to get some reaction out of her.
Nothing, again. Silence more deafening than the sonic boom.
Talk to me Livia, please talk to me! His thoughts screamed in his head.
He could feel her rage, her sorrow, her wounded heart. He ached all over, ached for what he lost, for what they lost. It broke him in two to know that she was acting this way. That she hadn't once asked him about his feelings, about how HE was coping with what happened.
Waiting by her desk for an answer or for anything, Peter finally turned towards the door and said to her "I'll leave you alone" in a defeated tone, the tears he had been keeping at bay threatened to surface.
As he shuffled his feet towards the door slowly, he hoped that she might snap out of her hateful trance and say something to him before he left her office. Slow motion, everything he did was in slow motion as he reached for the door knob, his emotions hit him, like a freight train.
"No, dammit, I am not going to leave you alone," he raged as he turned and headed back towards Olivia's desk.
"You are going to listen to what I have to say. I sat and listened to you in Barrett's garden now it is your turn," he commanded of her as she finally looked up at him in shock.
"I know that what I said to you about what happened between me and her fundamentally changed the way you feel about me and I get it, I do, but you have to give me a chance here, too. Yes, I saw changes, small changes, the intensity that you normally have, that is uniquely Dunham, was less intense and frankly, I liked it, it made me happy to know that you were embracing your softer side, the side I always knew you had, but rarely showed to anyone. When you came to the other side and got me and you said that I belonged with you I did and I do, I came back for you, for us." Peter raged at her with such a mix of emotions he couldn't see straight.
Pacing the floor he continued, his blood coursing through his veins at record speeds. "When I got that phone call from that woman informing me that the woman I love is still trapped on the other side, I broke. Broke into a million pieces that still haven't been put back together. I was angry at her, for deceiving me, for making me fall deeper in love with you than I already was. I was angry at her for making me think that all this love I was feeling, all this happiness that my heart had never experienced before wasn't for the real woman I wanted it for. I had so much rage, so much sorrow, and so much fear that I couldn't even face myself. Yes, she took everything from you, but she also took from me, too. She took my deep love that I have for you and she used it. She manipulated it, mutilated it and tore tiny pieces from it and devoured it. Don't think that you are the only one that was tortured" Peter confessed.
"You are not the only one hurting, sweetheart, I am too. You couldn't hate me more than hate myself. I hate myself for being selfish, for thinking that I was the one that made you change, I was the one that brought out the light in your eyes." He croaked, tears almost surfacing.
"I am in pain, Olivia, more pain than I ever wish to inflict on my worst enemy. I know that you hate me right now and that you don't want to be with me, but I am not going anywhere. I'm not going to run away and be a coward. I am going to stay and fight for you, fight for us because we belong together, it was written baby, and there is no denying that. I love you, more than anything in any universe. So you can sulk and cry and carry on and be a bitch, but just know that no matter what you do, no matter how much you hate me, rage at me, curse at me, hit or punch me, I am staying forever so you'd better get used to it sweetheart," Peter finally spit out all in one ragged breath.
Peter then turned around, and exited her office with a slam of her door making it reverberate on its hinges. Grabbing his jacket he quickly left the lab, hearing Walter's voice fade out as he asked his son where he was going.
Peter walked. He walked, not knowing where he was going, but needing to get the feeling out of his body, the feeling of pain. He needed to purge it and he did. He knew that he probably made her even angrier, but he didn't care right now. All he cared about was the fact that she now knew how he felt. How his heart was filled with so much bile that pumping it out would have killed him. His heart was trying to clear all the deception that other woman inflicted in him, the other woman stole from him. He kept walking until his legs burned, until his lungs stated constricting from the air pumping through them faster and faster. He kept walking until he hit it, his emotional wall.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, Peter let out the most guttural cry any human has ever purged from their body. Finally letting the tears that had been teetering on his lashes flow, Peter collapsed. His body convulsed and writhed as he let the hateful demons that had manifested themselves in his heart scream and tear their way out. He was shaking and crying, cleansing his soul of that other woman. Burning the images of the other her out of his head and out of his heart. He wanted a clean slate, wanted to make sure that when HIS Olivia finally came back to him, finally came to her sense, finally forgave him that he can start a new and never have his heart tarnished again.
POPOPOPOPOP
I hope you like it! Please read and review and maybe Fringe will come back before January 21 (sigh, I still can't believe a whole month!). Also, I will be updating my other story All's Fair…this weekend, so prepare for some Peter smut. Thanks as always for the reviews they are always appreciated.
