Title: Keep Me
Fandom: Fringe
Characters: Olivia Dunham, Liv Dunham, Henry Bishop
Spoilers/Warning: Character death.
Summary: Not your typical O² story. A slightly different ending to season 3.
Disclaimer: This is purely fictional. I own none of it.
[…]
A/N: This is, I suppose, old and a little senseless now after 2036. I actually started it quite a long time before that. I know Fringe has tied up its loose ends nicely but for me baby Henry was, is a big hole in the mish-mash of the plot. I believe if Peter came back, Henry should have, as well. But since that would have created quite a bit of dissonance in their plotline, I can understand why they did not go there. But the second, and the biggest hole that I feel exists is that Liv could forget Henry so easily. I don't care what anyone says, a mother's love for her child transcends any and everything, I cannot believe that even if timelines were rewritten a hundred times, she would ever be able to totally forget that she had this bitty little baby boy she gave birth to, held in her arms and loved with all her might. Look at Peter and Elizabeth in the amber!verse, and the example of a mother's love they showed with that. It makes my heart hurt that they didn't give Liv a chance, or occasion, to mourn how her son was erased from the timeline, especially since we know she can't have children. That was cruel, show, that was very cruel. Now I must end my rant so that you can proceed.
Also, there's this beautiful video on YouTube based on Linkin Park's song 'Leave Out All the Rest' which ties up very nicely with this. Props to the creator whose name I'm forgetting :/
[…]
Sometimes when he looks at her with his big green eyes all alit, and smiles, Olivia gets a rush of feelings that can hardly ever be explained. He looks a lot like his father; that nose, that stubborn little chin — but his eyes. He got his mother's eyes, along with that sprinkling of freckles on his nose and that unruly mop of red hair.
She loves him to pieces. It's his little hands and feet that run her world these days. He has the uncanny ability of being able to twist her around any of his adorably little fingers. The only sounds she yearns for are the pitter-patter of tiny feet, and the loud, shrill strings of coco-jumboish baby talk. To her ears every word sounds a bit like 'Mommy'.
Peter laughs at her adoration, Walter just joins in. Astrid tells them that they're going to spoil this baby rotten, and then goes right on to do some outrageous act of godmotherly love that renders her own statement void. This little boy runs their life, no doubt about that. And he knows it, too.
He laughs and she feels like Christmas has come early. He has only to point at something for her to get it for him. His crying is like a catastrophic event for her, she'd do anything to avert it.
She remembers when he cut his first tooth. She'd sit by him and watch him bite a little piece of bread again and again just to look at that tiny, single-toothed bite mark. She remembers all the landmarks in his little life. The day he first smiled, actually smiled at her, the day he laughed with her for the first time, the day he learned to roll over in his cot, the day he sat up by himself for the first time, the day he stood up and teetered like a little drunken man. The day he took his first unsteady step in that rolling, penguin-like gait, wobbled and plonked down on his little, diaper-clad ass and laughed.
Every day, every little thing is stored in her memory, as dear and precious as any memory could be, from the moment she held him for the first time till now. She has all the memories except for one. Probably the most important one. The memory of the day he was born.
That memory is not hers to have.
…
She remembers the day that he came to her for the first time. It was the day the very seams of the reality broke. It started out as every other day. The sun rose all bright and new, full of promise. The world woke up slowly. And then all hell broke loose.
Love, they say, is a powerful force. Her son is a testament to that fact.
It was love that had driven a man to desperation in the first place, causing him to break the universes.
It was love that caused another man to become death itself in his attempt to destroy one of these universes because he loved the other one too much. Love made him blind to the fact that he had only half the tools necessary to bring about what he had set out to do. He wanted to undo the unforgivable thing that Walter had done years ago – but he ended up doing it, only a hundred times worse.
And it was love that made a woman reach out and try to save a universe, a son, a universe for her son.
One woman amongst millions, billions of people. One woman brave enough to fight back, to resist. One woman selfish enough to take the action that was necessary. One woman who saved a world, a universe, a child. Who gave her life and seven billion more in order to save one, and seven billion others.
What you read in books or hear in stories or watch on a screen is not even close to the reality of what an apocalypse feels like, and what it's like to hold someone in your arms when they are dying.
Olivia held her while she died. The other her. Her alternate. The woman who somehow crossed over and handed her a tiny, red-clothed bundle even as blood soaked through her leather jacket from the bullet holes in her body, even as it filled her lungs and ran in a thin, stark line from the corner of her lip to her chin, even as she took her last breaths, said her last words.
"The Secretary," she told Olivia, stilling Olivia's hands with one of hers, as the blonde tried to frantically staunch the blood flowing so freely out of the wounds that her two hands would never have been able to cover anyway. "My universe was dying," she told Olivia. "It could not be saved. But this one could. The Secretary was mad with grief, he activated the machine but he didn't have the full DNA. The machine turned on him."
Right at that moment Olivia couldn't have cared less about the goddamn machine. Her tears fell on the hands that found the biggest wound she could in that hole-riddled body, and her tongue felt numb as she screamed for the paramedics, for a doctor, a divine intervention, anything.
"It's okay, you can let go" she told Olivia, taking Olivia's hand in her, the one that was plugging the wound in her heart, it's last frantic beats pumping blood out of her body. "I did what I had to, I saved a universe."
And she took Olivia's hand and placed it on the tiny, screaming bundle.
"His name is Henry. Take him, Olive. Take my son. His son. Raise him as your own. Will you do that? He may not know his mother but I'm leaving him in the hands of the best woman I know. And his father. Will you take him, will you do that Olivia Dunham? For me?"
And Olivia remembers the last kiss the redhead planted on her son's head. Bright crimson drops of blood glistened obscenely on the little head of burnished red hair, clashing horribly against it and Olivia pried the icy fingers of the dead woman off the tiny bundle to take him in her arms and warm drops of water rained down on ruddy little cheeks mingling with the little one's tears. The baby was crying, screaming as loudly as his lungs would allow. And Olivia realized he wasn't the only one crying, he wasn't the only one screaming. And Olivia realized that she was crying, screaming with him. And a little while later when Peter and then Astrid tried to take him away from her blood-soaked hands, she wouldn't let him go.
She remembers that. She remembers that perfectly, every second of that moment.
…
He's adorable and perfect. She may not have given birth to him but she is his mother in every other sense that counts.
In the end her alternate proved she was so much more. Stronger, harder, better. When she had taken that last leap. Saved a universe that wasn't her own and gave her son up to a woman who wasn't her. Because when Olivia thinks about it, she isn't sure if she could've done it — let her own universe be destroyed to save another one.
But then Henry looks at her with his big green eyes and smiles — and she knows in her heart that she would destroy — not one but many — universes without blinking an eye, without missing a beat if it meant that her son would be safe.
~fin~
A/N: I know, my heart hurts a little every time I think of this, too. So what do you guys think?