AN- So this is pretty much a little trial run. It's my first Fringe fanfiction, so we'll have to see how it goes. Depending on the response to all this, really, we'll see if I get into this. Anyways, happy reading!

Chapter One

Misguided Intentions

Her heart leapt suddenly, an uncontrollable feeling taking over her. While her pulse pounded in her ears, Etta sat up in bed trying to swallow her heavy breaths.

"No," she whispered to the dark. "No more."

She fell back in bed, both exhausted and relieved. The idea of sleep sounded so nice and innocent in theory, even tempting to the deprived mind. And yet, each time she chanced it - let her eyes slide closed - nothing seemed to go right. It had been weeks since she'd had a proper night's sleep, and when she did manage to catch a couple hours, they were filled with nightmares and panic attacks. It was almost as if her body wasn't going to let her get some peace of mind.

And that, in itself, was exactly the problem.

But as her mind pulsed with these thoughts, her body responded with a growl. Clasping her stomach she sighed - she had forgotten to eat dinner that night. Having now given up entirely on getting any sleep at all Etta slid from her bed and headed towards the kitchen.

Her apartment was rather quaint, only one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen and living room adjoined at the front. She didn't need the extra space, seeing how she barely spent much time there anyways, so it was perfect in her eyes. In the fridge she kept rarely anything more than a couple beers and some miscellaneous fruits and vegetables, and occasionally, like today, a jug of milk.

"Cereal it is," she muttered to herself, grabbing the jug before rummaging through the kitchen for a bowl, a spoon, and the cereal box. She barely glanced at the label - most likely something with 'bran' and 'wheats' in the title - before dumping almost half the contents into her bowl. After drowning it in milk, she made her way to the couch where her laptop awaited her on the coffee table.

Taking a few bites, she opened the laptop to reveal a government login, the words "Department of Defense" heading the page. With barely a glance at the keyboard, she typed in her password and continued on to a search bar.

The clock clicked on from one to two, then two to three, as Etta pounded away on her keyboard, trying different combinations of the words "flesh, Kruger, Montana, and homicides" over and over.

"Local man found dead near trails," she read off the screen. "Witnesses say they saw the man's flesh disappear before their very eyes." She'd thought that maybe saying it aloud would have made it easier to understand, but instead it just served to make her apartment feel smaller than it already was.

However, just as she'd opened a new article, this one entitled "Dr. J. Kruger, Known Experimentalist", her comm began vibrating next to her.

"Bishop," she said as she answered.

"Agent Bishop?" asked the man on the other line. "We need you at the office. We've got a live one."

"I'm on my way."

It wasn't more than fifteen minutes - she purposely bought the closest apartment to the Bureau possible - before she was entering through the doors to Fringe Division.

"Bishop. Good, you're here," said a low voice from behind her.

She turned and smiled at Colonel Broyles, her boss of now approaching three and a half years. His face had aged well, she'd always thought, still having gentle eyes but a hard exterior. Although he liked to act tough and formal most of the time, Etta would always know him as her Uncle Phil.

"Never late," she quipped back, falling into step with him as he marched down the hallway passed her.

The main entrance to the Fringe Division was kind of a wonder, especially disorienting the first few times she'd visited as a child. The walls were a grey steel colour and housed about fourteen different hallways. Each lead to a different sector within the Division: Biology Laboratory, Weapons Investigations, Abductions and Terrorist Threats, and more. However, as Etta had expected, she and Broyles made their way to the very last hallway, its plaque reading "Suspect and Criminal Interrogations".

"I assume you've updated yourself on the case," Broyles said as they reached a door at the end of the hallway.

"Yeah, on the way here."

"Perfect." He opened the door and led her into a dark cement room, where there were only two things: a door and a large rectangular window. "I'm afraid this isn't going to be an easy one, Bishop."

Etta took a few steps towards the window and peered into the room where a man sat in front of a metal table. He had scraggly hair, as if he hadn't bathed in over a month and the grease was holding onto his roots like its life depended on it. It seemed like he might have been living on the streets for a while too, as he had an impressive beard of red hair and his clothes had definitely seen better days.

"Has he said anything yet?" She asked, looking back at Broyles.

"Nothing yet," he answered, staring straight ahead. "I was hoping you might be able to help us with that, though."

"How's that?" She asked with furrowed brows, not sure what he was getting at.

"Well, we believe it's possible that the man in there knows you."

"What? I've never met him before in my life." She looked back at the man who was now tearing apart a paper cup, and shook her head. "How could he possibly know me?"

At this point Broyles lost his typical composure and looked down at her with worry sketched into his brow, concern evident on his face.

"He asked for you," he said bluntly. "He asked for Henrietta Dunham Bishop."

"How's this possible?" Etta demanded, chewing through her thumb nail. "Is he like, some kind of stalker or something?"

"I don't know, luv," her partner, Simon, said as he flipped through a file. "Perhaps you've just forgotten that you met him."

"No, that's not possible." I don't forget anything, she added to herself.

"Well I don't know what to tell you, dear, except that you're only wasting time pacing around like a lunatic."

"Well I'm sorry if I'm a little rattled," she spat, now pacing in front of Simon's desk, her thumb almost chewed through to the bone.

"Perhaps he just heard you're name on the news, or summat."

"He called me Henrietta Dunham Bishop," she said, stopping momentarily as she thought. "The only person whoever calls me that is my mother. My birth certificate and badge even read Henrietta Ella Bishop. No Dunham."

She scrunched up her eyebrows again as she tried to think around the problem.

"Why would he call me that?"

"I don't know, luv, I just don't know."

She paced back and forth for what seemed like hours as Simon clicked away at his computer, her mind spinning for answers.

"You know what sucks the most?" she asked rhetorically. "It's that Broyles brings me in here at three in the morning to tell me some psycho wants to talk to me, but guess what? I'm not even allowed to interview him yet! No instead, I have to wait until the bloody board approves me for investigation. What's the point of being an agent in this fucking Division if I can't really do anything?"

"Once you graduate from being a Junior Agent, it'll be fine, dear," Simon said, glancing up over his computer screen. "You just need to be patient."

"Screw being patient," she barked, glancing over at Broyles' office. She watched through his glass walls as he turned in his seat to go look in his filing cabinet, and as his back was to her, she made a swift exit from their Department and beelined it to the interrogations rooms, hearing Simon yelling something along the lines of "I don't think this is a good idea".

"Agent Crowley," she greeted the attendant who was watching over the suspect as she entered the interrogation room. "I'll take it from here."

"But Broyles said no one in there until-"

"Don't worry about it," she spoke with certainty. "It's already been cleared."

"Whatever you say," grumbled the agent, leaving Etta to herself in the windowed room.

Taking in a deep breath, Etta stared at the man behind the glass. Was it strange that she didn't even feel the slightest pang of familiarity? Her instincts were always her strongest asset, and yet here, when she most needed them, they told her nothing. Perhaps this man had simply heard her name somewhere, maybe overheard a conversation between her mother and a colleague or something. Or maybe he'd been someone from her childhood, the years before she could remember.

Whatever it was she was certain there was a logical explanation. Although Fringe Division was rarely awarded such a courtesy, she had to have hope.

Sucking in one last breath, steeling herself for the inevitable, she entered the room.

"Alright, Mr. No-Name," she announced as she walked in, nodding slightly at the bearded man. "Let's get right to it, hmm?"

The man simply stared at her, his black beady eyes revealing nothing. She was momentarily taken aback by his composure.

"Well, I'm here." She waved her hands around, presenting herself. "What is it then? How the hell do you know who I am?"

There was a pause as the man seemed to stare at her in wonder.

"You're Henrietta? Henrietta Dunham Bishop?" He asked eyes wide.

"Err, yes," she said, confused as to why he seemed so shocked. "But I'd prefer Agent Bishop."

"I'm sorry," he spoke, craning his head to the side. "For some reason I pictured you younger."

"Well unfortunately you're stuck with me." She pressed her hands to the table, staring him down. "Where did you hear that name? Dunham?"

"From a friend," he answered cryptically. "That is your name is it not?"

"No, in fact, it's not," she answered, her eyes furrowing to slits. "I go by Bishop, and only Bishop."

He nodded seemingly to himself, his hands shaking as his eyes flitted across the room. It was odd, the way he presented himself, scared yet confident. Generally, Etta thought herself a pretty good judge of character, which her father reminded her every day she got from him. But this man stumped her. The way he chewed at this nails made her think he was nervous, perhaps anxious. And yet the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, lead her to believe he wasn't nervous at all: this was precisely where he wanted to be.

"Now that we've heard so much about me, how about you, hmm?" She pulled out the chair across from him as she said this, raising an eyebrow in question. "What's your name?"

"That's not important," he answered immediately, his eyes shifting from side to side.

"Oh, but you see, that's where we disagree." She flashed a small grin, wondering if maybe it was a game, and all she needed to do was deal herself in. "I don't know who you are, where you came from, or how you even know who I am, so obviously, I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage here. And I'll let you in on a little secret: I don't like to lose."

"You're scared, aren't you?" Etta glared as the man seemed to regain some of his earlier confidence. "He said you might be."

"Who said I might be?"

The gears in her head began to churn, spinning off their programmed course to wrap around this strange man's story. What could he possibly want from her? Who was his friend? And why was all this happening? For the first time in a long time she had one resounding thought: her mother would know what to do.

"My friend."

"Yeah, I know." She cursed under her breath and sat back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. "So what, this friend of yours knows me?"

"He knows you very well, indeed." He seemed to deflate suddenly after that statement, his eyes flicking around the room again, not concentrating on one corner or another. She wanted to shake him, force him to tell her what the hell he meant. He wasn't giving her anything; all he had were more cryptic answers.

"So who is he then, hmm? Some pervy stalker or something?" She was frustrated now, leaning towards him, her face growing hot. "What does he want with me? Is this a threat or something? Some sick twisted joke?!"

With the last syllable she slammed a fist into the metal table, her anger bubbling over into rage. She couldn't contain herself, she just needed to know.

"You ask a lot of questions," he said, chewing on one of his nails, his eyes still flicking around in their sockets. "A lot of questions indeed."

"Of course I have questions!" she yelled. "But you haven't given me any damn answers! If you want to get out of here any time soo-"

"Agent Bishop!"

Etta flinched at the sound from behind her, having not even heard the door open during her rant. She turned slowly to the voice, gulping and knowing she wouldn't want to see what came next.

"My office, now," Olivia Dunham - her mother - demanded, standing in the doorway, hands on her hips.

"Yes ma'am," she muttered down to the floor, embarrassed how even at work her mother could make her look like an utter fool.

Olivia was holding the door open for her and she slipped out of the floor, flashing one last look back at the bearded man, who didn't seem at all phased by recent events and had returned to ripping apart his paper cup. She followed her mother down the hall, where she made a swift right towards the second entrance down the hall. Neither of them said a word as their heels clacked against the tiled flooring, looking like a prison guard escorting a criminal to the gas chamber. She gulped a few times, trying to push down the lump in her throat that threatened to announce her weakness to the world.

Finally, after catching a few curious glances from the other agents at their cubicles – Simon in particular who tried to mouth "what happened?" in her direction – they finally arrived at a door that read 'Special Agent Olivia Dunham'.

"After you," her mother said coldly, opening the door for her daughter.

"Thanks."

The inside of her mother's office never failed to amaze her. Whereas Colonel Broyles' office was organized to the very last paper clip, the only humanizing thing being a framed photo of his son, Olivia's was something of a shrine to the Bishop family. The walls were covered in framed photos of her parent's wedding and Christmas photo-shoots of all three of them, decked out in red and green sweaters. The best part was all the photos that weren't framed: a vast collection of photo booth tabs from before Etta was born, worn polaroids from the park at Harvard University, or quick snapshots that Agent Farnsworth had taken in the lab. There were even a few of Walter and Peter, both old and young. By far Etta's favourite part of the room was to the left of her mother's desk, however, where she kept her few drawings. Some were Etta's that she'd done as a little girl, typical house and stick figures, but the best was one Olivia had done.

It was a detailed sketch of Peter, her father, looking as if he was peering into your soul. It was Etta's favourite though, not because of the detail or its artistic value, but because of the story her mother always attached to it. "The power of love," her father would always say, smiling at his two favourite girls. Had her mother not drawn that photo after seeing Peter in her dreams, had not shown it to her grandfather, perhaps little Etta never would have come to be. Perhaps their life never would have been as it was.

"The power of love," she whispered to herself as she laid a hand on the sketch, sighing to herself.

"What were you thinking?" her mother barked, pulling her from her reverie.

"I was thinking that I needed answers," she responded, walking away from the wall to stand a few feet from her mother, prepared for the shouting match that was surely to come.

"And that's how you do it? By going behind Broyles' back?" Her mother huffed and went to sit behind her desk, shuffling a few papers around as she did. "If you'd just listen to me for once you wouldn't keep getting into these awful messes with the board-"

"I wouldn't be even on the board's radar if it wasn't for you!"

"Do not blame your situation on where you came from. That's no excuse."

"Really? Because I think it's a pretty God damn good one-"

"If your father could hear you speak to me like this-"

"Don't pull the Dad card every time you want to get out of a fight!" Etta yelled, her cheeks blushing in anger. "He'd be on my side anyways! He always is!"

"You need to learn to respect authority, Henrietta. You'll only dig yourself a bigger grave if you keep this type of behavior up!"

"Nothing even happened! I didn't even get anything from the guy," she retorted, her youth becoming shockingly evident in her voice.

"Well good, because anything you would have gotten would have been void anyways. You know that. You're a better agent than this."

Her mother's face softened a bit at these last words, perhaps having realized how harsh she might have sounded. She looked up at her daughter with sad eyes, trying to convey whatever maternal knowledge she thought she had.

"I know I may seem cruel sometimes, but I promise you, Henrietta, that I'm only looking out for you," she spoke softly. "I just want to know that you'll be okay."

"Yeah, well - again - look how well that turned out," she grumbled, crossing her arms and looking up at the ceiling. "I bet Broyles will be giving out awards by the end of the week."

"Can we please, just once, not bring that up-"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

There was a long silence between the two of them as they each thought of what to say next, what might not deteriorate the situation any further.

"I just…" Etta spoke, her voice a little shaken. "I just want to know what this guy wants with me, you know? Why he has an interest in me specifically."

"I know, Etta, so do I."

"Could you-" she cut herself off momentarily, trying to think of how to phrase this. "Do you think, maybe, you could just not tell Broyles about this?"

"I don't know, Etta, it's my job-"

"But mom, please," she said, desperate. "I know he needed to wait for whatever politics this bureau runs on, but I beg of you. Please don't let them come down on me again. I can't afford it."

"I know, Etta, I know."

She sighed into her hands, rubbing her eyelids with her palms.

"Okay, I won't tell him," she said, speaking through clasped hands. "But we'll talk more about this at home, okay?"

"Okay."

And with that, she exited the office, hopeful that maybe this time, her mother wouldn't come between her and the job.

"Hey, honey," her father said as he answered the door, kissing her once on the cheek. "You're early."

"Is that okay?" she asked, carrying in the plate of veggies she'd picked up from the store on her way here.

"Of course it is," he said sweetly, leading her into the kitchen. "I'm making your favorite: chicken pot pie."

"Dad," she laughed as she took a seat at the small wooden table across from the window. "That's not my favorite. That's yours."

"Oh, well, what a shame."

He grinned like a child as he flicked some water at her, causing them both to laugh out loud. He smiled once more at his daughter before continuing on to his dinner preparations, slicing carrots and potatoes on a wooden cutting board.

"How was the lab today?" she asked as she flipped through newspaper that was on the table, the headline reading 'Governor Donald Trump to Retire'.

"Good. Quiet, but good," he responded, popping a carrot into his mouth. "Astrid spent most of the day decoding those messages from the Experimentalists, so there wasn't much for me to do. I spent most of the day looking over some of Walter's files, seeing if anything connected."

"Yeah, you never know," she said, quoting something they tended to say a lot. In this business, you really never did know.

"How about you?" he asked, chipper. "Kick anyone's ass today?"

"I wish," she scoffed. "Got mine kicked more like it."

"By who? Not Simon, I assume? You could totally take that Aussie."

She laughed but shook her head.

"No, by mom," she said soberly.

"Ah, I see," was all he said, staring down at the cutting board. "And what were my ladies fighting about this time?

"Well," Etta drawled, biting at her thumb nail again. "I may have, sort of, broken protocol again," she said, but adding really quickly, "but for a really good reason, I swear."

"I don't doubt you had your reasons, Etta," he said, his voice falling into a paternal drawl. "But I do have a hard time understanding why you insist on pushing these buttons. Eventually it's going to come and bite you in the ass, you know."

"I know, I know," she repeated, dropping her chin into her hand. "I just hate in when Mom's right."

He laughed at this, looking up at her.

"Funny, I think you guys have that in common."

"Have what?" she asked, why creased eyebrows.

"Stubbornness."

Just as these words left his mouth, the front door opened with a creek, her mother's distinctive heels clacking against the linoleum in the entrance.

Peter laughed as he quickly wiped his hands on a towel, making his way to the door.

"We were just talking about you," he said, giving his wife a welcoming kiss as she removed her coat and blazer.

"Were you now." She smiled into the kiss and Etta's heart leapt at the sight. It was these precious moments, just watching the two of them, that she treasured most. "It wasn't another one of your stories was it? I told you, you might give her nightmares."

"Thankfully, no," Etta said, as the two of them joined her in the kitchen. "I don't think I could handle another detailed excerpt from Polivia: The Early Years."

"Polivia?" Her father laughed, returning to his station in the kitchen. "Where'd you come up with that?"

"Oh, I didn't," she said with a smirk. "It's what all the Juniors in the department call you guys. You're practically celebrities."

"Perfect, just what I need," Olivia said sarcastically, rolling her eyes and she uncorked a bottle of red wine. "Wine?" she asked the both of them.

"None for me," Peter said as he lifted his beer.

"Yeah, I'll have a glass," chirped Etta, getting up from her seat to grab some place mats for the table. "Mom? Can you grab the cutlery too?"

"Sure, dear," she responded as she handed her daughter her glass, filled half way with wine.

They continued on like this for another thirty minutes, chatting about the day as they set the table and prepared for dinner. The smells of the pot pies began to fill the air slowly as they progressed through their individual days, today's news, and their plans for the weekend.

"I just hope we don't get called in again this weekend," her mother complained, running a hand through her hair. "I've been waiting on a couple days off for ages now."

"I know what you mean," Etta agreed, nodding and taking a sip from her glass.

"Well I say," Peter said, "if Broyles does decide to cut the Bishops some slack this weekend, we go on a little outing."

"An outing?" Etta was a little unconvinced, knowing that typically whenever they tried to have anything resembling 'family time' it usually just ended with a shouting match between herself and her mother. "Where?"

"Well what about Reiden Lake? We haven't been there in forever," piped Olivia, settling down into a seat across from Etta.

"Perfect, Reiden Lake it is." Peter smiled, pulling the baked pot pies from the oven.

"I don't know…" muttered Etta, a little wary of the whole plan.

"It'll be great, trust me," her father promised, finally setting out the meal between his two girls. "It'll be just like old times."

Yeah, right, she thought to herself. Just like old times. Super.

"Now without further ado ma' ladies… Enjoy!"

With that decided, the Bishops spent the rest of the night pretty much at ease, Olivia and Etta's fight seeming to have been pushed aside for that one moment, that one evening of peace. But yet, at the back of her mind, Etta couldn't help but think back to the bearded man behind the glass, and all he had to say.

For some reason, she got the feeling that nothing was quite as it seemed.

Hope you enjoyed! Reviews make me happy :)