I think I just understand transactional needs. Each party has something the other party wants.
He had said that to Olivia once, the other Olivia that is… he has to remind himself.
All his life he had known that statement to be true. Nobody did anything in the world without an expectation of reciprocity, of gaining something back. He certainly hadn't.
Unconditional love was a myth he didn't put much stock in. Not with anyone, not even with Olivia… because he knew there was always something that could and had come between them.
No, Peter didn't believe in unconditional love.
Until he knew his daughter that is.
The moment he had known of her existence, he had loved her. Before she was an actual person, before anything… fiercely, unequivocally and completely, he had loved her.
And when he knew her, when he first took her into his arms and saw her for who she was, absolutely perfect and his baby…in that order, he had only loved her more.
She had been a tiny little thing, her length almost entirely measurable by his single arm, and as she wriggled agitatedly in his arms, three minutes old and already impatient to get on with the rest of her life, he found himself awestruck by this perfect human being he had had a hand in creating, felt every pore of his being swell with an overwhelming emotion that couldn't be described as simply love.
It was stronger than anything he had ever experienced, a forceful almost ferocious instinct to protect her at all costs from everything and everyone.
He doesn't know if what he had felt for his daughter was unique in any way. Didn't know if all fathers felt that kind of blinding affection for their children.
He didn't know many fathers, he still doesn't. The one he knows best had broken universes for a child that wasn't even his...had risked the fate of two worlds for a mere facsimile of the son he lost.
So Peter didn't think it strange to feel that way he felt for his child, and if other parents weren't so completely in love with their children, then too bad for them…
They were really missing out, he couldn't help think.
Before Olivia, there was no room for a child in his life. He hadn't once considered the idea even when they'd been together, concepts such as family and parenthood falling way outside the scope of their surreal existence.
He could never have seen himself as a father.
But when Olivia had told him that day at the hospital that he was about to be one, he could never see himself again as anything but a father.
He had never really comprehended what that feeling was capable of doing to him, how it would make him strive every second to ensure his daughter's happiness above anything else, how the need to keep her from harm's way would become an obsession with him.
And how the loss of her would break him twice, make him inconsolable; devastate him with a pain which had no parallel.
He had no idea until today that the love for his daughter which had once made his heart burst with happiness was also capable of turning him into a cold and vengeful monster.
To know Etta was to love her, a Bishop family maxim, Walter had said jokingly several years ago.
At one time, Peter had known everything there was to know about her. Had memorized effortlessly every shade of blue her almond shaped eyes would acquire depending on the day, the sunlight and her moods, the exact softness of her blonde hair, the changing sizes of her little hands and legs as they grew over time, her growth recorded diligently by him on a giraffe height scale he had affixed to the kitchen wall, the particular sound of her laughter as it resounded all through the house all day.
In another life, he had known his daughter inside out, known that she liked her carrots mashed but not her peas. That she would eat toast but only with apricot jam and lots of butter. That she loved M&Ms almost as much as her mother, yellow ones included. She would eat apples, but wouldn't drink apple juice. That her favorite color was white and that her favorite book was the Burlap Bear. That she loved it when he played the piano for her and liked it less when he tried to sing for her. She liked Olivia to read to her in funny voices, and for him to tell her stories of all the places he had been to. Loved being hoisted onto his shoulders and taken around.
She loved playing in the water, loved it when they took her to the pool in the summers and loved running across the sprinklers.
She hated baths…
He didn't know anything about the young woman who found him so many years later. Doesn't know what she's done all these years in his absence, how she's grown up. He never took the time to get to know her, confident in the knowledge that there would be a chance for that later.
How wrong he had been about everything…
There was a time when he would be the one to soothe her every malady. The one who had held her comfortingly through every vaccination she's ever been given, as she buried her face in his chest, looking away from the sharp needle, but not crying or causing a fuss.
He remembers every bout of illness he had nursed her through, curled up in his arms in pajamas, where she liked it best, wrapped in her favorite blankie, the one that Astrid had made for her, as he rubbed soothing circles on her back through her coughing fits, applied cold compresses for her fevers, and tried to coax her to eat with bribes of mac and cheese and hide medicines in apple sauce, that he would make for her with Walter's special blueberry pancakes.
He remembers the time, she had gotten a bad nose bleed, and how he had become almost hysterical with worry, pulling out one Kleenex after the other, as he tried to stem the flow of blood, trying hard not to panic, to dwell on the ominous nature of such a happening, of the sinister memories it brought with it. His daughter's fate wouldn't be like his or Olivia's, he had promised himself. She wouldn't be made a sacrificial lamb to serve some bigger purpose, wouldn't be taken collateral for the greater good like his son.
He remembers every scrapped knee, scab and scratch that he had bandaged and kissed to make better as she bravely fought tears at the sting of antiseptic that he would dab gently on her wounds, cleaning away the faintest traces of her blood… because even with all the violence he had been party to, the sight of her blood, even the slightest bit of it, made him anxious and nauseated.
Today he lets her bleed to her death as the light in her eyes fades away, a coldness setting into them, a shade of blue he has never seen before.
Today he holds her lifeless form in his arms and weeps, grasping at her still warm body, and desperately trying to will it back to life, trying to find the strength to get her out of there.
Today he watches her body be blown up into smithereens from afar, doing nothing to stop it, thinking oddly in that moment of the countless Fringe crime scenes with scattered and bloody and mangled human remains that he had always been so disgusted by.
He forces himself to watch, immobile, powerless to look away, reminding himself again and again that this was the fate he had forsaken his daughter to.
That this was how much of a failure he was as a father.
He stares into the mirror; his shirt stripped, trying to look for that gaping hole in his chest where his heart had once been. It wasn't a visible puncture, like the bloody one in Etta's chest he had so futilely tried to fix, but it was there and it was rapidly swallowing up every good feeling inside him like a vortex
He resists the violent urge to gouge his eyes out, knowing he'll never be able to see his reflection again without seeing her eyes. He does not want to see traces of her anywhere in him. Does not want to be reminded of the fact that he had passed on much more than his cursed blood to her, wants to purge all of him that had made half of her.
He is disgusted with himself, by what he has let happen. She had died in vain, in the foolish belief that somehow his life was more important than hers.
He would laugh if he could, because he can't think of anyone less worthy of such a sacrifice.
He almost hates her, for forcing him to leave her side when he would have gladly stayed and let himself be obliterated into nothingness. There was nothing left for him in this world anyway. The only reason he had even left was because he knew Olivia wouldn't go without him and he really doesn't want to be responsible for another death.
He hates his father a little too, for not trying to do something, anything to bring her back, for accepting her demise as a finality after all those times he had defied death, treated it as trivial and relative.
And more than anything he hates Olivia. Hates her for having done this to him, for everything that had happened to him because of her.
He hates her for coming into his life that day, all those years ago in Baghdad for letting him believe he was a better man than he really was, for having the audacity and dismal judgment to fall in love with him, allowing him to think he was actually capable of loving her back without hurting her, for refusing to let him go even after the universe had so clearly understood his potential for destruction and eliminated him for the non-necessity that he was.
He hates Olivia for have wanted to seek happiness with him, for wanting a family with him, for entrusting him with the responsibility of fatherhood and giving him their daughter, when she who knew him better than anybody should have recognized the truth about him.
That he was simply incapable and unworthy of holding onto anything so good and pure.
She had a pathological need to see the best in everybody and he had let himself be pulled into her grand delusion, refusing to confront the inevitable truth, that in the end he would always fail, always let down anybody foolish enough to place their trust in him.
Suddenly he finds himself wishing John Scott had never died so that Olivia could have found her happily ever after with him, or maybe Lucas or Lincoln or really any other man on this godforsaken earth who wasn't him, someone who probably would have kept her happy like he had never been able to.
He wishes that he had left Boston like he'd threatened to the first time in her office, when instead of ignoring his instincts to leave, he had stayed.
He wishes he had never tried to kiss her that night at Massive Dynamic after Jacksonville, that she hadn't tried to follow him to the other side and ask him to come back for her.
He wishes for many things, for a different turn of events, a chain reaction that would stop this day from happening.
Because if Etta had been anybody else's but his, had been spared the fate of his paternity she would have lived… he's certain of it.
His daughter had deserved a better father than him. His wife had deserved a better husband than him.
His family had deserved much better than him…
That there was only one thing he had ever been good at and that was running.
Tonight after years of never knowing it, the urge to run is stronger than ever.
This fight has stopped being his fight since the moment Etta took her last breath. He could care less if someone were to set this entire world ablaze right now.
He'd probably be the one handing that someone a match and then he'd watch everything burn down without the slightest bit of remorse.
He would end his life if only he could convince himself that he'll stay dead this time. That the woman who loved him for reasons he couldn't fathom would allow him to leave this miserable world without a fight.
But he has to leave, he thinks. He'll go anywhere but stay here, where his child's life had been extinguished in front of his eyes. His mind is already steps ahead of him, channeling the old Peter Bishop who always had ten different exit strategies planned out for any situation, each idea seemingly implausible than the one before it, each one infinitely better than the alternative of having to face what had happened.
He could use Walter's device and cross over, he thinks. Go back to where he had come from, before fate turned him into a changeling, a place holder for a son his mother had lost, a second best replacement for the man Olivia had loved and lost.
He didn't belong in this world. The signs were always in front of him and he had never bothered to see. Even being expunged from an entire timeline had not made him realize that truth.
No one will die for him again.
No more will the blood of his loved ones be spilt on his account.
But there will be blood. Rivulets of red that he will shed with pleasure when he finds that man, if one could even deign to call him human who had put a bullet in his little girl's chest and then left her to die.
He will kill every last one of them, as many as he can lay his hands on, as many as it takes for the pain to stop.
He will avenge her death at any cost, even if the price is his humanity, his soul.
It was shattered and no good to him anyway.
And when he has done that, when he has had his revenge, he will leave.
He hopes Olivia will understand when he does, will not stop him, will not try to weaken his resolve.
She doesn't need him. She never really did. Like everything else, it was a mirage that they had deceived themselves into thinking was true.
He still needs her though, but he's willing to do without as punishment even if it kills him inside till his dying day. A feeble atonement for his sins, for his hubris in thinking he was worthy of a second chance with his family.
This was what his fate had always been.
He'll run and never look back.