so spoilers for 3.01-3.08, even though it hasn't aired yet.
rated T.
The winter is cold, bitter frost biting at everything, devouring the beautiful grass and permeating the soil on the ground. There is snow on the cliff where Peter stands, out past his beach house in Maine, up a winding road and path. He stands atop the Cliffside and stares over the vast ocean, wishing himself to take off and into flight, soaring over the ocean. He feels small next to it, he feels insignificant. And for now, he'll enjoy being obsolete, he'll enjoy being small.
But it'll only last for a moment.
There is a seeping heat filling his chest cavity. It's the heat and steady ooze of blood, pouring out of his heart in a sluggish fashion, filling the airtight spaces between his lungs and ribs like water fills a bucket. He's never been shot before, but he imagines this is what it feels like, this consuming pain that just feels like searing white heat. Then the sluggish moments between consciousness and dreams, where everything is toasty warm and soothing and there is nothing left. But Peter's past those moments, past the spaces between the wick and flame, thrown between the earth and the sun, lost in the blazing heat one moment and freezing cold the next. And so it'll consume him for now.
He used to think being left at the airport, standing in the terminal window staring out at a plane as it leaves carrying the love of your life as she leaves the worst thing he could possibly feel. But he was wrong. This feeling, this seeping feeling of hurt was much worse. With an airplane he figures, he could travel those miles between them and find her. But not with Olivia. Never with Olivia. Because the difference, he knows, is that he could go to both ends of the earth and never find her. Because she wasn't there, she was somewhere else and there was no way for him to ever get to her. And he wasn't there for his true Olivia.
At least he was there for her, for Bolivia. He was there for her when she was confused, sad and lonely. He could help her, help her go home, go away, get away from him and the destruction she left. She was like a hurricane, leaving devastation in her wake. He was the biggest piece of damage she left, completely and solidly broken, though he'd never let anyone see it. He was too prideful he loved himself too much. He'd never let anyone see him face the wind like this and cry. He let Bolivia lead him on, change him and make him love the wrong Olivia. But he could help her.
There was no one to help Olivia. She had no one. Lost and confused as someone else, she had no one to turn to. She had to figure it out on her own, because she was alone. And that solely kills him slowly, knowing that he made a promise, a silent and unspoken promise to never hurt her again. He didn't want to see her eyes near tears again. But he broke that promise, and that in itself, should be enough. It was enough to lead him here, feeling small against the vast ocean waves and bitter air.
Of course he didn't come alone. She came with him. He hadn't told her yet, not everything. But he planned too. He had too. He wasn't sure why he wants to do this just yet, but it feels right. This feels right, the cliff and snow and ocean. This vast space feels right. She feels right. Olivia Dunham from here, not there. She followed him here wordlessly, as if she knew he was about to say something. So he stands out in the icy wind and waits, waits for words that will never come to him, because there are no words, regardless of what universe, that can convey what he wants. He can't even place a single word on it himself.
He wants redemption. He wants forgiveness. He wants a bullet through the heart and a stab through the back. He wants an electric jolt to the brain and a soft gentle touch of hands to the face. He wants tears. He wants fears. He wants happiness and ease and joy and simplicity. But there is nothing for him. Not even the numbing will suffice his voids inside him, he isn't even worthy of that. He wants to be something, something more than a liar, a cynic, a villain, a fool and a man. He wants something more.
The sea air fills his lungs and he wants to be the rocks in the shores tides, endearing thousands of years of punishingly gentle waves with angry white tips and freezing cold froths. He wants to be with something so much larger and more beautiful than him and for him to be the seas pawn to use, to be nothing more than a pillar that stands for punishment of the grace and beauty of waves. Olivia is his ocean. And for her he'll endure almost anything, because she is grace and beauty, anger and rage and yet perfect and precise, an image of everything he should never have and leave the world without.
It's a soft walk to return, the snow leaving crunching steps underneath his boots as he walks back, head held high. He winds his way from atop the cliff to become parallel with the sea and its curls of waves. The sea grasses in the sand lives no longer from the frost and he steps over it, compelled not to step on it for now. He slides the back door open and finds the house warm, not the way he left it.
She's not awake, but he can tell she was at some point. She's curled up on the couch, not the place he left her, and curled tightly. He drapes a blanket over her soundly sleeping form and looks away. He curses to himself for looking away from her. She herself has done nothing wrong. It was her, the other her. He moves onto the kitchen where a pot of coffee and a mug sit, just the way he likes it. He drinks it down in a single gulp and then sheds his frozen outfit, stripping himself down and changing into sweats and a white shirt before settling into the kitchen.
He feels it then, her presence behind him. He feels her eyes and then the draining cold, swirling out any heat between them. She's vacuumed away his feelings in her presence and he's solely responsible. He turns to face her and she knows why she's here, why he's asked her to come here. It was not case related. It was not for work. He was there to tell her how he felt, which in her mind, was not the same as she did, when in truth, it was so much more.
"You should sit down," he manages to say in surprising himself. She does so without a questioning glance. She has nothing to say to him.
He must be a masochist he figures because he likes to look at her and feel this hurt. He likes to stare at her face and in her eyes and feel this all consuming pain, searing in heat and bone freezing cold. It's comfort. But at the same time, it's pain. So he'll bask in the pain he enjoys, like sun warming his skin, because it's all he'll want to know, it's all he'll ever know.
"We should talk," he says, and she blinks, her eyes unmoving, sharp and precise. He stares over her shoulder because that feeling is more pain than comfort yet he drags his eyes back to meet hers and drowns in them. She waits patiently, just watching, itching to hear exactly what he has to say.
"There's something we should talk about," he starts, unable to bring himself past those words, "And it's going to be hard to say."
She waits, silent but sure, a steady beating on his shores.
"I-" he starts, but stops. "When you were over there, I- I didn't know it wasn't you."
"I know," she says.
"And I should have," he spilled on, "I should have known but didn't. I couldn't tell. The excuse I used was that I was so happy I was finally with you, that I finally was able to hold you and touch you and-"
"You slept with her," she says and he watches her eyes flood over. She isn't crying but her emotions in her green eyes are flooding over and into the white, filling them.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation, "Because it felt right. She felt right. The whole thing, it all felt like you. But here you are now, and there's so much more I want to say, and so much more I want to explain to you, but I can't because I don't know how. I don't know what to say."
He stops to stare at her and she has something to say. The words are there in her eyes so he pauses he waits to hear her.
"I want to say it's not your fault," she begins, "And that the blame shouldn't weigh so heavy on you. But how can I say that? How can I believe that it wasn't partially you to blame? You're smart Peter, you are and you should have known, somehow-"
"But I did know!" he blurts, only to watch her eyes go wide. He double takes in horror and pushes his hands through his hair, "I knew something was wrong, Olivia, but I couldn't place my finger on it. And I told her, I told her the night she seduced me and I slept with her," he says rushed, hearing how awful he sounds when he says so, "And I told her she was completely different but I made up lies, excuses and reasons, anything to tell me that it wasn't true, that I wasn't falling out of love with you!"
And she gives him that look, a mixture between startled and scared, the same look she gave him when he told her that he cares, or the same looks when he told her he'll be there. It was a look between comfort and uncertainty, a wide-eyed stare and glassy eyes. She doesn't say anything but he sees her mind working at a thousand seconds in a single second. She looks down at her lap and then up to him, her eyes unreadable and he braces himself for the angry wave that will smash against him, the rock.
"I didn't know who I was," she begins, "For three months I didn't know me. I knew her. So when I saw you, I was terrified. For all I had known you had left with her, who was me and I was her. I knew we were together because you kissed me, you brushed my hair away and you told me in gentle tones that everything was backwards and wrong. And I didn't know you. I didn't believe you. And I don't know what I'm supposed to say now, because I didn't know you then. But I know you now. I know you-"
She stops and looks away, fingers folded in her lap. She collects her words and stares back at him. "Your father," she starts softly, slowly, "Is a dangerous man. He has nothing to lose. He wants everything and nothing all at the same time. He's…." she stalls, looking for the words, but he sees them in her eyes. She's frightened and that frightens him. It frightens him because he can be related to this man. "He was going to kill me," she says in one breath, "He was going to cut open my head and remove my brain. He was going to dissect me-" she stops and chokes and he looks away and stares out the window, jaw clenched and hands balled, white knuckles barred and looking about to burst from their skin.
"Stop Liv," he said, fists curled angrily, "Please stop."
"No Peter," she says, standing for the first time. She wobbles and he almost reaches for her to help her stand, but holds back. She's been unstable since she's returned, face marked over with lines that trace under her eyes and on her forehead. He knows what the lines are for, but he didn't and doesn't want to believe it. And even if they've been washed away many weeks ago he can see them traced in his mind, traced on her face now.
"And the worst part was that I was me and you never came again, that I didn't see your face again because I was back. That's all that held me together, you. You were never there again."
Her eyes are boring into the side of his face, staring. Intent. Her pressure gaze is like the pounding of the waves, hitting the rocks of the cliff, jagged and raw. He feels it on his jaw and is compelled to turn and face her wrath, to feel and see her beauty in all its raw anger. And he does so, and he feels himself bleed, he feels the blood pooling in between flesh and bone, oozing. He makes sure not to look away because even though it breaks him, it heals her. And that's what he wants right now.
"I'd like to forgive you," she says, "But I don't know what I'm forgiving you for. I'd like to apologize, but I don't know what to apologize for. So to be honest, I don't know where I stand right now. And that means I'm not sure where you're standing either."
She says nothing more as she stands, her eyes travel from his face to the window behind him and she watches drifting patterns of snow tracing the outer bushes and hitting the ground. She feels herself shiver from watching the cold. Part of her wants to feel him wrap his arms around her, for him to be her sun and heat and warm her thoroughly, but she knows it won't happen. At least not today or tomorrow. Or this week. Or next week. He was like the sun in the middle of winter, there rarely but wholly. She knows he won't heat her up until he stops hating himself. But she doesn't know when that would ever be.
He looks at her and feels himself drowning. Her tide is coming in, drawn out by the dark sky and moon, where small beacons of light dance above them, watching. In the night her high tide comes up and swallows him nearly completely. But he'll take this drowning. He watches her as her eyes glaze over, her mind made up. And he'll take her decision. He won't say sorry because his pride won't allow him too. He can't swallow his pride, either. So he'll let her leave, because she'd do the same. In fact she did. But the difference between the two of them is simple.
She had enough strength to come back.
He doesn't have the ability to do that. It has always been his weakness. But there was much to be said about this to him, because he doesn't allow himself to be put in this position. He avoids forks in the roads, or spaces for U-turns or anything of the like. But he'll gladly stand here for her. He'll gladly watch her walk away because it meant at one time she was his. Twisted, weird and strange, that was what he felt about himself standing here but it worked. He steps closer to her and stares her down, looking into her eyes as if he could change her mind with a single glance, because he was so unwilling to change himself. She was the ocean after all, she moves in and then out. He was the cliff, never moving.
He gives her the lightest, sweet, most heartbreakingly beautiful kiss she'd ever received. It is the bullet he was looking for, the knife in his back that he asked for. It is perfectly precise, a pain that was soft and beautiful and so right for him. Her lips are the poison he wants and the remedy he seeks and she kissed him back, if only for the moment. It lasts, maybe a mere second, but it'll be forever for him. He won't forget the feeling. It's the feeling of death and life all wrapped into one. She was death and life for him, the winter and the summer.
And she gets her coat and keys, hobbles out into the snow, shoulders hunched and bracing against the bitter wind and her head held high, proud. She won't let him see. She'll never let him know. Her face was wet with tears that stung. But she climbed into the SUV, the one they took together and starts it, driving away without a second glance. Silently she knows he'll be okay, he'll find his own way home. And she knows that home is not with her anymore, and she's already off to think of throwing everything away. They weren't built to last anyway.
She comes and goes in waves. To him she's the ocean. Watching her drive away was her retreating into her own beauty. The sun was on the horizon for them, and low tide was in. He'll wait until midnight to feel her swallow him whole again because he is the cliff. She moves but he won't budge. And that's how he ends up here alone. In the silent beach house in the bitter cold, Peter is alone with the lingering smell of a broken relationship that he doesn't want to fix, that they don't want to fix. After all, the best love stories always end in tragedy.
And he realizes, for them, there would be an exception.
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