He wakes up in the middle of nights in a cold sweat, body tense, shivering, calling out Walter's name.
She holds him then, head pulled against her chest, her embrace firm, unyielding as he shudders and struggles against her, desperation in every limb movement.
"I lost him… I lost him Liv… I let him go…" He repeats incoherently.
"Sshh…it's okay." She whispers. "It's okay…" She repeats till he stops fighting her hold and collapses in her embrace in defeat, her heart cringing as the tears begin to fall from his face.
He cries in silence against her like he does every time this has happened over the years, his mind and body caught in that strange place between sleep and wakefulness. He cries till slumber takes over and she continues to hold him in her arms, keeping a silent vigil all night.
He never remembers in the morning. Never appears to be curious why he wakes up, face buried into the nook of her neck, her t-shirt damp, as is the pillow between them, smelling of tears and salt. And if her kisses are more fierce than usual that day, her hugs tighter and longer, her eyes more watchful, concerned even…
He doesn't seem to notice.
"Why is daddy so sad all the time Momma?" Etta asks her in the middle of reading Burlap bear one night.
Walter is three months gone, and Peter is in so much pain at this point that it literally radiates off of him.
And it kills Olivia that she can't do anything about it.
"My father is missing. We have to find him." He says to Broyles, impressively calm, after the fifth time they've finished watching the tape addressed to him, an hour after Peter receives a white tulip drawn on a piece of paper and they come to the lab to find it empty and a half eaten red vine on the floor.
At first they work hard, they track leads, they theorize every day, they try to find clues in the tape that aren't there, a task force of fifty odd personnel to find one Walter Bishop, all of Massive Dynamic's resources committed to the cause.
Olivia goes along with it, too afraid to tell Peter something he already knows deep in his heart, too afraid to tell him about the feelings she has for fear he might lash out at her, on edge as he's been ever since he watched the tape.
She's too afraid of telling him that she knows whatever happened to Walter, happened for the right reasons.
He doesn't let her help him when hope begins to recede and everybody comes to the inevitable conclusion as her, stubbornly clinging to the belief that there was a way to bring him back. He won't hear of it, when she tries to point out to him that this was his choice, that he wasn't taken by force, that perhaps he's fine wherever he is.
"He misses grandpa." She says simply, summing up in three words, a truth far more complex and layered.
"I miss him too." Etta nods in agreement. "When is he coming back?"
Olivia tries to fake a reassuring smile but fails as she looks at her daughter's questioning eyes, perceptive beyond her young age. They'd lied to her about his disappearance, telling her that he had gone away for some time and that he would be back soon.
"I don't think he is baby." She admits then, shaking her head, feeling the truth sting at her heart like a painful knife.
After the eleventh time he doesn't come home from the lab, she calls Astrid to babysit and drives over to find him standing in front of the glass board, penning equations on wormholes and time travel.
She wraps her arms from behind him, resting her head against his chest and he stills.
"Please stop doing this to yourself." She pleads quietly. "I can't bear to watch you suffer like this."
He turns around and looks at her.
"I have to find a way Liv. If I can just find a way to…"
"To what?" She asks anxiously, taking in the obsessive streak in his eyes. "Travel to the future and bring him back?"
In any other relationship, the beginning of such a conversation would have been a red flag, a snarky voice in the back of her head says humorlessly.
"If I have to." He shrugs and Olivia feels her stomach bottom out with a crippling fear.
"You know you can't do that." Her voice wavers. "Peter… the consequences alone…"
"You're telling me to give up?"
"I am telling you to let it go. I am telling you, you can't do this." She whispers, her hand finding his cheek. "I know it's hard, but Walter wouldn't want you to do this."
"Except he would do it himself." He cuts her off. "He would do exactly this and probably more for me."
"Yes he would." She nods. "He's your father. There is nothing he wouldn't do for you."
"Then how can you ask me not to do this for him?" He asks. "How can I sit back and simply do nothing?"
"For the same reason your father would do anything for you. Because you have a responsibility towards your daughter." She reminds him. It's cruel, she knows, a play she had hoped not to have to resort to, but also the only one she knew would work.
"Are you willing to abandon her over this? To go off running into some unknown future to bring Walter back and leave her without her father?"
His face flinches like he's been slapped.
"Etta needs you more than Walter does." She presses on, knowing she had already won this. as she watches his expression change, the grim set of determination gradually being replaced with a sad acceptance.
"Your family needs you Peter." She says softly. "Please don't leave us alone in this."
I need you, goes without saying, she thinks, as he looks at her and nods, his face crumbling, as he collapses into her embrace, hot tears slip onto her skin.
"I really hate that selfish son of a bitch for doing this." He whispers in a strangled sob.
"I know." She laughs, through her tears. " I know."
An hour later they sit on the floor, leaning against the tank, her head resting on his shoulder, passing a bottle of whiskey between them.
"What are we going to do without him Liv?" He asks her, his eyes begging a silent question. He looks then like a lost little boy, orphaned by fate, confused by the world around him.
She squeezes his hand gently. She won't forsake him too, she wants to tell him.
"The best we can." She tells him instead.
It's maddening how humans persevere, how easily enough loss and sorrow and anguish get lost in the mundane tasks that command our attention, in the simple acts of being and doing.
Too soon, tragedy becomes eclipsed by banal concerns of car pools and grocery shopping and bank payments and hunting for kindergartens.
Too soon, everybody moves on.
Peter takes over from Walter at Fringe division.
"Those are some insanely large and ethically ambiguous shoes you're asking me to fill." He jokes half-heartedly when Broyles asks him. " Walter was a genius and then some."
"So are you." Broyles says. "Agent Dunham tells me that you have a recorded IQ of 190."
"His was 196." Peter chuckles sadly, as he meets Olivia's eye. "A six point difference he never let me forget. I don't even have an actual doctorate, or a college degree for that matter."
"You can do this." Olivia says, squeezing his hand, knowing his doubts have nothing to do with lack of credentials or a six point discrepancy in IQ.
"Daddy's going to teach me Chinese." Etta tells her excitedly, reaching into the fridge for a juice box.
She's eight and the traces of chestnut at the roots have almost seeped out of her hair, her hair blonder than it was two years ago.
"It's Cantonese and I can't teach you anything if you keep running away every five minutes in the middle of homework." Peter's complaining voice filters in from the living room. "You really need to focus better kiddo."
"I was thirsty daddy…." She says earnestly, skipping back into the living room. "I promise I'll be good now."
Olivia laughs and thinks she got lucky when Peter agreed to help with homework.
She then thanks whoever and whatever for Etta and all the little and big ways in which she helps Peter forget that Walter's been gone for five years today.
Déjà vu they call it…
Just my life, Olivia thinks.
It's extraordinary the things Peter and her have in common. Most couples like the same books or share the same taste in music. Between the two of them they have enough traumatic childhoods, dysfunctional parents and trust issues to keep any therapist on permanent retainer.
They are also both keepers of futures that never were.
He'd told her once of a life they'd shared, of a crumbling universe and another they destroyed unwittingly, the heavy price of war they all paid, of having to watch her funeral pyre float away into the vastness of the ocean.
"It's like fragments of a picture Liv, floating around in my consciousness somewhere. I can't remember everything, but pieces flash in my head and sometimes I remember what it felt like…losing you."
She sees flashes sometimes, sights, sounds, images, a feeling of having been somewhere, done something, experienced something that never happened.
Etta loves to play dress up almost as much as Ella did.
"Look mommy, I am you." She giggles in delight, as she totters towards her in a pair of rarely used black heels that were too big for her, in one of her white dress shirts that came below her knees, sleeves touching the floor.
Olivia sees a beautiful young woman, with soft blue eyes and a heart shaped face and fine blond hair and she feels a strange sadness overwhelm her for a second.
"You are?" She laughs as Etta twirls around for her, before scooping her up into her arms.
"I am beautiful like you." Etta grins, as Olivia grabs a tissue from the nightstand and gently dabs away the makeup that she has slathered on her face without any sense of proportion.
"Yes you are. You're so beautiful." She nods, kissing her forehead, as the urge to hold her close to her and feel her steady heartbeat literally burns her up from the inside in that instant.
"Who'd have thought huh?" Peter says, a twinge of irony in his voice, as he sits next to Olivia and they watch Etta deliver her valedictory address from the podium. "My kid makes Valedictorian. There's a cosmic joke in there somewhere."
"Yeah who'd have thought?" Olivia nods, not missing the massive amount of pride writ all over his face even as he tries to make light of it, probably mirroring her own, though she was trying hard keep it in and not be that obnoxious mom with an over achieving kid who got into all the Ivy Leagues. "It's almost like she actually came from a family of smart people instead of dumb geniuses."
He smirks and gives her an amused look, a dangerous smile playing over his lips before it softens and breaks into a smile of pure happiness.
Over Olivia's shoulder, Astrid sniffs suspiciously, dabbing at her face with a tissue.
"She turned out beautiful." He squeezes the hand he's holding, his attention back to Etta on the stage. "We did alright, Liv." He shrugs.
Olivia rests her head against his shoulder, holding onto his hand tight, like it's the only thing keeping her from floating away into space.
"We did wonderful." She whispers.
She tells her stories of Walter at nighttime, it's the least she can do, hold onto him, to the time they had together.
She owes him everything in a way. The love of her life, her family, her second chance.
She has to keep him alive in their hearts, hold onto memories. So she tells Etta tales of the fabulous Bishop boys and their shenanigans and how they drove her mad with their bickering and their arguing, about their weird synchrony when they worked together in the lab.
"Seriously, what did you see in him again?" Etta asks in disbelief when she tells her the story of how they met, about the time Peter tried to con Persian businessmen in Iraq and was on run from the mob and she had blackmailed him into helping her.
She's fourteen and has a sarcastic streak that puts her father's to shame. "Seriously mom, it's not too late to do better. You're still a very attractive woman and I am old enough to not be emotionally scarred for life if you guys split up." She says solemnly, looking at her mother with a mock concerned expression.
Peter smirks. "I agree with you. In fact, I told your mom before you were born that she didn't have to be with me just for your sake."
"And you didn't listen to him?" Etta says wryly, looking at her mother's amused expression.
"No, she smacked me over the head and told me if I tried to leave her, she would hunt me down and kill me with her bare hands." Peter chuckles as Olivia glares at him.
"Well it's your fault for trying to have that conversation with me when I was in labor." Olivia points out, a hint of a smile playing on her lips.
"Exactly when else could I have had the conversation with you? We were working cases every day, almost till the moment your water broke."
"Yeah but you don't just say that to the woman who's about to push your child out of her body, Peter." Olivia shakes her head.
"Yeah because it's so much better when you're telling her that in a crime scene full of field agents and dead bodies."
"That's exaggerating…"
"Is it really? Have you forgotten…"
"It's official…" Etta sighs, looking at them banter, as she gets up from the table, rolling her eyes. "You guys are the weirdest couple in the world."
"Try two worlds." Peter calls after her, as Etta leaves the kitchen muttering to herself about "parents…"
"Do you think we should tell her you crossed universes for me?" He asks laughing, as he presses a kiss to her forehead, putting his arms around Olivia.
"And lose the little respect she has left for me?" She chuckles. "Think I'll pass."
"Isn't it great we made full disclosure a family rule?" He smirks at her before pulling her lips into a kiss.
Olivia hums against his lips and thinks how silly she was for thinking once upon a time that she was destined for another fate.
She has no doubts. This was where she belonged.
"You know dad, I am really hoping the reason you're holding onto this is not because this is going to be my first car someday." Etta says, as she holds the flashlight for him over the station wagon's engine.
Peter looks up and smiles at her. "You don't have to worry about that. I am not letting you anywhere behind the wheel of this death trap. Your mother would discharge her weapon on me if I tried." He chuckles. "Pass me the wrench kiddo."
"Why do you keep it then?" Etta asks curiously, as she hands him the wrench. "You're working every second weekend to fix it and it's not like it's a vintage model or anything. It's a lot of trouble if you ask me."
"Well you're a lot of trouble if you ask me and I still keep you around don't I?" Peter says playfully as he tries to nudge her nose. She cleverly ducks from his grease covered fingers and then grins cheekily.
"Yeah you do, but that's because the law requires you to." She retorts. "And also mom loves me more than she loves you."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." He chuckles, wiping his hands on a rag, as he blows on the spark plug, before fitting it back in. "I could tell you things about how much she loves me that would blow your mind, except its classified."
"Did anyone ever tell you, you guys use that word too much?" Etta says with a sigh. "Most kids get boring family stories of some drunken uncle. I get classified."
"Yeah, count your blessings your parents don't have boring drunken uncles." Peter says with a laugh. "I could tell you about the times when Walter dropped acid, but I think you'd find that more scary than interesting." He stops laughing after a second or two, as if reminded of something before he swallows, turning his attention back to the engine.
"You still didn't answer my question?" Etta says, noticing the shift in his mood.
"Hmm?"
"Why you keep the station wagon?"
He shrugs, not looking up from the hood. "Lot of fond memories I guess. I took Olivia on our first date in this car. When we were dating, we used to make out in here all the time." He grins.
"Dad…" Etta whines, looking at him with a sickened expression.
"Hey you asked me." He puts his hands up in defense.
" Doesn't mean you volunteer that information." She scowls. "You know I take it back. I'd rather have classified than listen to details of your sordid love life."
"Fine by me." He chuckles, handing her the wrench. "Now hold this and make yourself useful and I'll teach you how to fix a radiator. If you're done being a smart ass, you might actually learn something yet."
"That's real rich coming from you dad." She says without missing a beat.
"It's because it was Grandpa's isn't it?" She asks abruptly after they've worked on the car for half an hour, their conversation having moved onto the chances of the Celtics in the coming season, and her AP German class.
Peter looks at her in surprise and she simply gives him a smile, an understanding in her eyes that goes beyond her years.
"Yeah…" He admits. "It's one of the few things I have of him. He'd locked it away in storage for years. I literally brought it back from the dead… twice…. and the miracle was that it still runs." He gives her a smile then. "Guess it must seem pretty stupid huh, holding onto a clunker. Go ahead and state your witty one liner, inherited from yours truly. I can see it dancing on the tip of your tongue."
She laughs and nods, and then simply launches herself into his arms.
"I know you miss him dad." She says quietly, holding him tightly.
Peter puts his arms around her, surprised when she doesn't let go after a couple of seconds like she usually did nowadays, reticent as she has been about physical affection from her parents since adolescence had kicked in.
"I am okay sweetheart." He tells her. "It's fine, really."
She nods, but still doesn't pull away, her hand tugging at the neck of his vest like she would when she was a little girl. "It's okay if you want to tell me about it when you sometimes get sad about him. I can listen and stuff…"
"Really, you'd listen and stuff?" He says dryly, trying not to let on how touched he was by her gesture.
"Yeah… coz I get it you know." She shrugs nonchalantly, before she hugs him even tighter."I don't know what I would do without you dad." She says then, her voice stripped of all its earlier sarcasm, honest, slightly scared.
Peter nods, kissing her forehead, smiling and thinking to himself for some odd reason about Walter and if he was out in the future somewhere, riding a hover board… he always did want to invent one since the time they saw Back to the Future.
"Right back at you kiddo." He whispers, ruffling her hair. He hears Walter's voice in his head, words said to him in a conversation they never had.
" You're my favorite thing you know." He tells her. "My very favorite thing."