Olivia Dunham has played many roles in Peter's life.
The annoying stranger who literally shackled his nomadic existence and dragged him reluctantly into a job he wasn't interested in and forced him into confronting a past he had long repressed.
The slave driving and at times infuriating colleague who had no qualms about showing up in the middle of the night at his hotel room if he let his phone off the hook to indulge in that human necessity known as rest.
The most impressive drinking buddy any man with an appreciation for whiskey could ask for.
A woman who seemed to have an uncanny ability to see him for more than what he was, who always seemed to expect more from him just with the way she looked at him, who, in what some may perceive as a serious error in judgment, seemed to place her trust in him.
She's been his partner and his friend, his confidante and his protector.
She was the love of his life, the mother of his child, his wife.
Layer after layer has cemented their relationship, deepened their connection and made it so much more than what any one label could wholly define.
Tonight he wishes he could peel back those layers a little, go back to whence they came from.
Back to a time when he didn't matter to her, when she didn't look at him with love in her eyes.
Or pain…
Back to when she would shake her head in mild reproach as a smile fought at the corner of her lips, when he launched on some witticism at a crime scene they were investigating which always reflected an undercurrent of how much he didn't want to be there.
That Peter Bishop may have never had a chance in hell with someone like her, but at least he could have been safe in the knowledge that he couldn't hurt her.
He could make her laugh, he could help her out… but he didn't have the ability to affect her.
Thank God for that, he thinks.
Because that Peter Bishop, the self-centered, rootless man who'd existed blissfully on the periphery of her consciousness had never been the one to let her down, to disappoint her.
It was the man he had become, the one who had so whole heartedly and joyfully embraced the mantle of family who had ended up being her persecutor instead.
He understood now why he had fought for so long against being tied down to people, putting down roots.
Because once you did that, and something comes along to untether you, to uproot you from the people you loved…it hurts like a bitch.
It turns you into somebody you can barely recognize when you looked in the mirror.
And he only sees it now. Sees the faded quality of his eyes, lacking that carefree twinkle that had graced them long ago, the gauntness of his face, the absence of a more prominent stubble.
The capriciousness that he once worn like a garb on his demeanor has slipped off, replaced by an acute gravitas, his broad shoulders that had once hoisted his daughter were now stooped by another invisible weight.
He doesn't see the man he once was, or even the man he came short of being.
He only sees the man who failed, in every which way a man could fail.
Everything in his life had always been about making the impossible possible. Hell, his very existence was an outlier. He was but an anomaly of flesh and blood who lived and breathed because twice in an interval of twenty six years, two people who had loved him very much had refused to let him go.
And yet after everything, after the scale and context of the things they'd dealt with in the past, all his experience at making sense of crazy and unprecedented situations amounted to nothing when confronted with the most grave crisis of his life.
And the price of his failure was in the brokenness of her being, the fractures in that beautiful family he had made with her.
She hadn't asked for much, just for him to be there and he hadn't even done that.
Every story needed a hero and a fallible protagonist. And he was the epitome of a fallible protagonist, just as much she was the embodiment of a true hero.
She had given him everything, a sense of purpose, a sense of home, of family.
She had given him the most precious little girl in the entire world…
Above all, she had given him her heart, completely.
And he couldn't hold onto a single one of those things.
She had held onto him through everything, through differing sets of memories to no memories of him.
Where he had seen only his weaknesses, she had seen his strengths and made them her own.
Even her idea of him was much stronger than who he was really.
Maybe it would have been better for everybody if he had simply stayed a figment of her imagination instead of morphing into an actual human being.
Because he hates this Peter Bishop. Hates him even more than that smart talking, resourceful and unscrupulous son of a bitch he used to be. He fucking hates him for being weak, for spiraling down a path of despair when he should have held her hand and walked with her.
It doesn't matter that for a few years he had something so beautiful and perfect and real, that if he closes his eyes, he can literally taste it.
The warmth of sunshine, the smell of grass, a dandelion in the breeze…
Because he had wrecked it with his own two hands. Watched it slowly crumble, not caring as his own misery numbed him to everything around him.
For years he had resented his father's tendency to develop tunnel-vision in moments of duress, to become consumed with the problem and never see the world that was crashing and burning outside of that.
And yet when the situation presented itself, he had done nothing differently. Had become obsessed with searching for his missing child and failed to see that she was hurting as much as him, perhaps more.
Sometimes in life, the only choices we have left are bad ones…
He had made a choice, chosen the slim chance of finding their daughter over going with her.
He left her alone…
Of all the years of riding shotgun with her, of watching out for her in corners of abandoned buildings, of chasing down suspects with her.
Even when she was more than capable of handling those situations by herself.
The one time she actually needed him; he had stood back and let her walk into danger without even a moment's hesitation.
He doesn't want to be that man….her goddamn husband, who had made that decision. He wants to be that stranger who had anxiously urged her to call for backup, who had ignored her advice to stay in the car and run after her after all of two days of knowing her.
Because that stranger may not have cared as much about her as he does, didn't love her the way he did with every fiber of his being, but at least he could never break her heart.
Tonight, he wants to go back to where they began, to assume different roles.
He'll be her partner again, like always. He'll be the man whom she could trust, if she'll deign to do that again, to have her back, who could make her maybe smile in the direst of situations.
If he could learn how to do that again, maybe someday he could be her everything else again too.
