Five People Who Saw Olivia Hold Peter's Heart (and One Who Didn't)
When Detective Olivia Dunham follows Peter Bishop out of the room, leaving Walter Bishop behind, clutching his chest, she doesn't say anything.
They make it all the way to the car before a single word is spoken.
"He's your father, isn't he?" He looks at her, startled. She looks back, arms folded. "I didn't become a detective just because I look good in a fedora."
"Could have fooled me." He smirks, eyes brushing over her body. But this is not her first day, and she recognizes a dodge when she sees one.
He can tell she's not going to drop it. "Look, Olivia, just…let it go."
She does. Their drive to her office is silent, but she helps him put his glass heart back in his chest and he could swear it skips a beat when she touches it.
(She feels it to, but what he doesn't know is that hers skips a beat at the exact same time.)
Esther begins to silently divide Olivia's life by life-altering events. She does the same with her own life—there is a Before Olivia and an After Olivia. For Detective Dunham, there is an After Ella and a Before John and an After John and a Before Peter and an After Peter.
The After Peter period starts the night Olivia walks into the office, and tells Esther that this is Peter Bishop and could she please set up the bed in the spare room because Peter needs a place to stay.
Esther complies, because, though she is still angry with Olivia, she really does love her job, and Peter looks a little like a lost puppy in need of a home.
She smiles when she hears jazz coming from the main room of the office, because she knows Olivia hates jazz and anything to upset her boss is fine with her at the moment. But the explosion she is waiting for never comes.
She listens hard, but all she can hear are the soft strains of Clifford Brown floating out of the speakers.
She nudges open the door connecting the two rooms, and peeks out.
She sees her boss, fedora and coat abandoned on a chair, dancing slowly with Peter Bishop, whose coat also lies forgotten. As they swing together slowly, Esther retreats into the spare room.
Soft laughter accompanies the end of the song, and she hears Peter say, "I think you dance almost as well as you fight."
Esther closes the door. This moment feels private, filled with too many feelings she can't decipher.
She starts calling the time span after that night After Peter.
(The dancing leads to a whole different kind of dancing later, and the spare room of her office remains unused.)
Ella Dunham was never someone who was good at sharing.
With the death of her mother, she had gone to live with her aunt, Olivia. She believed Olivia was the strongest woman in the entire world, and she kept the world safe for Ella to live in.
When Esther comes into Aunt Liv's apartment, eyes watering, Ella knows something is wrong. Esther grabs some of Ella's clothes, and some snacks, and hustles Ella out to the car.
They arrive at the hospital in record time, and Esther finds out Olivia's room number. When they get there, Ella sees her aunt hooked up to bags filled with clear fluid, her entire right arm bandaged, and she wants to cry.
But she reminds herself that she is a big girl now and big girls don't cry.
She's through the doorway and at the bedside when she realizes there's another person in the room.
He's slumped over the bed, sitting in the chair, and he looks like he's about to fall over. There's a black eye blooming on his face, and he's holding Aunt Olivia's hand.
"Ella, right?" he says roughly, noticing her presence. She nods mutely, still transfixed by her aunt's still body.
"She's gonna be okay," he says. "She's tough."
"Mom always said that it was too dangerous, being a detective." Once the words fly out of Ella's mouth, she can't stop them. "She said Aunt Liv would get herself hurt."
"Your aunt is going to be fine. The bullet hit her arm, and they had to get it out. She was in pain, so they gave her some medication." He swallows and his grip on Olivia's hand tightens. "The guy…he was aiming for me."
Ella doesn't say anything.
"I don't know what I would do if something worse had happened," he whispers.
Together they sit on either side of her bed, and hold her hands.
Ella wakes up in the middle of the night, and hears Peter singing softly to her aunt.
She smiles, recognizing the lyrics from the song Aunt Olivia likes to sing around the house when no one is around. "For once in my life…" His voice is deep and sad.
Ella falls back into sleep, a sad smile still on her face.
When she wakes up the next morning, her aunt is awake, and Peter is gazing at her with a look that is a third relief, a third admiration, and a third something that Ella doesn't recognize. She feels a tug on her heart, but it is quickly drowned out by her aunt's happiness as she beckons Ella up on to the bed with her, and Peter winks at her.
She thinks it might not be so bad sharing Aunt Olivia with him.
(Olivia hears Peter singing in her dreams, and the pain recedes a little more. She holds on to his hand tightly, and it helps bring her back.)
Lieutenant Broyles is a man of simple tastes. He enjoys piano, his kids, and making Detective Dunham's life a little bit more difficult.
"What do you think you're doing?" he demands, greeted with the sight of Olivia bending over a body. "This is a crime scene—police only."
"Ah, yes—that is true," says a man, sidling up behind Olivia, who is, for the most part, ignoring Broyles. "Except we were the ones who found the body."
"Bishop," said Broyles, inclining his head towards the other man, who he had become used to seeing whenever Dunham was involved in a case.
"Lieutenant." The man salutes sarcastically. "At ease."
Olivia smiles behind her hand.
The smile quickly drops when she inspects the body further. Broyles notices her change in demeanor the same moment Peter does, and the two men move closer to the body to see what she found.
Running around the place the heart should be are a few wires, but the heart is missing. The small metal doors that would have hidden it from the world are wrenched open.
"His name is Charlie Francis. No one knows where he came from." Broyles lists off what he knows. "He's been here six months."
Olivia and Peter exchange a look, and his hand instinctively goes to his chest.
Olivia is off the ground and next to Peter in a flash. "You don't think…" She trails off.
"Don't you?" He raises an eyebrow.
She doesn't answer.
"I'm going to go back to the office, see if I can figure out who Charlie talked to." Peter regards Olivia carefully.
"Be careful," she tells him.
Her eyes follow him as he weaves his way out through the crime scene.
Broyles whistles. "So," he says, "it's really true. The great Olivia Dunham really has found someone to put up with her shit."
She doesn't say anything, but to him, that's answer enough.
(She gets back to the office and together they figure out how to break the heart in half, so that he has a back-up. Just in case.)
Nina Sharp never liked Peter Bishop. She liked Olivia Dunham even less. And the two of them together—that was just a recipe for disaster.
So, needless to say, Nina is not pleased when the two sweep into her office, unannounced and unescorted.
"Olivia," she says coolly. "Peter. How's your heart?"
"How's your hand?" His reply is equally cold.
"Before we get down to it, Miss Sharp," Olivia folds her hands, resting them on her lap. "I want you to know that there is a letter in the possession of my assistant, to be released in case of my disappearance."
"I thought we might be past that," says Nina, sighing.
"You nailed me into a coffin and threw me in the ocean. I don't think we'll ever be past this." Olivia smiles wolfishly, bright red lipstick contrasting with her pale skin.
"What do you need, detective?" asked Nina.
"Charlie Francis." Olivia places a file on the desk. "He one of yours?"
"Not that I know of." Nina doesn't touch the file. "Why don't you tell me why you're really here?"
"We heard Walter Bishop got a new heart," Peter says.
"Oh, yes." Nina smiles sharply. "Designed by William Bell himself."
"That's odd, see, because last time I heard, he was missing." Olivia glares at the redhead.
"Please, Olivia, we both know better than to play that game." Nina smirks. "Regardless, the heart didn't take. He's been in and out of Massive Dynamic's hospital for weeks, but he doesn't have much longer."
She doesn't miss the way Peter grimaces, or that Olivia moves to hold his hand underneath the table. "If that is all…?"
"Not even close." Olivia stands and stalks out of the room, in a swirl of black coat, Peter following behind her as Nina watches.
(That night, he holds on to her the entire night, as if by holding on to her he can somehow cheat death.)
Walter watches in surprise as a reluctant Peter follows Olivia into his hospital room. "We figured out how to split the heart," Olivia says proudly.
He watches, open-mouthed, as Olivia pulls half a heart out of the box, and gives it to him. His hand shakes as he takes it from her.
"Olivia convinced me that it was important to spread happiness, because she saw goodness in you before," Peter says gruffly.
He smiles, and wheels over to his record player, putting on some Coltrane. "As I remember, this was your favorite."
Peter smiles a small smile, and offers a hand to Olivia. She takes it, and he pulls her close to him and they start to dance. Walter smiles, feeling the pain in his chest recede at the sight, as he slowly falls asleep in his chair.
("It was his time," they say, at his funeral. "He brought happiness to the world, and he finished his mission." They don't mention that he died smiling, his blood pumped full of drugs as he hummed along to Coltrane, and no one notices the two figures standing a little ways away, watching.)