Every time he closes his eyes, he sees his dead, the specters that live behind his eyelids, that walk his dreams. Olivia, his wife, with a bullet hole in her forehead, unseeing eyes staring up at the sky above Central Park. Olivia, the love of his life, again with an identical bullet hole, crumpled on the floor of William Bell's boat. His mother, dead from a broken heart. Peter from this side, wasted away from the disease. Peter from the other side, drowned and frozen under the ice of Reiden Lake. Henry, whom he unknowingly wiped from existence. And now Etta, with a bloody hole in her chest, slumped against the warehouse wall.
They take their turns speaking to him. Sometimes, it is the Olivias, reminding him of the times he has failed her, of the times he left her alone, of the times he was too slow or too weak to save her. Sometimes, it is his mother, telling him again to be a better man than his father, to take care of the people he cares about. Sometimes, it is the Peters, making sure that he does not forget that he lives for all three of them, that his life has to mean something, because he has the chances they never got.
But tonight, as he paces in the hallway... tonight it is his children who call out to him.
"Daddy? He shot me... it hurts... where did you go, Daddy? I needed you..."
"Dad? Do you know me? I'm your son... you killed me..."
"Why didn't you find me? I was so scared, and you weren't there..."
"What kind of a father destroys his own son? Now I am no one... I never was..."
"The dandelions were all gone... the scary men came... Daddy?"
"There is no one to mourn me. You took care of that..."
"Where were you when I needed you most?"
"How could you do this to me?"
"I was alone..."
"I never had a chance to live..."
"We needed our father..."
"...why didn't you save us?"
He sinks down against the wall, unable to remain standing under the onslaught of their accusations, silently screams back at them.
"I never asked for this! Do you think I wanted to be a father, after what Walter did to me? But when I found out, found out that I had a son, had you, Henry, and had lost you without ever knowing, I would have done anything to go back and save you. I love you so much, even though I never knew you, but I couldn't save you! Don't you understand? I couldn't save you, no matter how much I wanted to... And then, when you came along, Etta, I thought I'd been given a second chance."
Scrubbing his hands through his hair, he thinks that the universe has a particularly cruel sense of humor when it comes to Peter Bishop's life. He had been so excited to be a father in this timeline, to get to hold his child, to shower her with love, give her anything she wanted, to take this second chance and make the most of it. And it had been beautiful, right up until the point where she needed to be saved and he couldn't even find her.
"You were gone in an instant. I looked for you so hard, never gave up, but it wasn't enough. It's never enough. But I never stopped loving you. And then you found me."
It shouldn't have worked out that way though. He was supposed to save her, to find her, not the other way around, so even when he was reunited with his daughter, that nagging thought at the back of his mind wouldn't let him alone. He was still not the father he should be. But maybe this time he could be. Maybe a third chance would be enough. It was something to strive for, at least.
Until today.
Until the moment when he held her in his arms and watched her slipping away, bleeding out because once again he wasn't there to save her.
The universe rarely gives second chances, much less third, and so tonight, he knows that this is his final failure as a father. There will be no more opportunities to maybe get it right this time around, only memories of what was, and thoughts of what could have been.
He tucks a curl behind her ear and kisses her forehead, murmurs to her the same thing he does every night - "G'nite kiddo. I love you always."
She blinks sleepily up at him, clearly fighting sleep, as she asks, "Daddy? How long is always?"
Smiling to himself (because how do you explain the concept of infinity to a three-year-old?), he sticks with a simple answer that he hopes will suffice for tonight. "Always means for as long as you can possibly imagine."
"So always is as long as forever?"
He nods, amused by her insistence to understand this concept, although not surprised (she is a Bishop, after all).
With her big eyes firmly fixed on his face, she makes this pronouncement - "Then I love you too, Daddy. Always and forever."
And his heart melts, as he wonders yet again how he wound up being a part of something this wonderful, and he can't help kissing that perfect little face one more time before he shuts off the light and moves toward the doorway, still marveling that he (Peter Bishop, con man extraordinaire, nomad, and all-around massive pain in the ass) could have this much perfection in his life. She is the one thing he's really done right in this whole world, and when she looks at him with adoration in her eyes, he can't help believing that maybe he can be what she sees, the daddy who can do no wrong, who fights off the monsters under the bed, and who is worthy of the delight that is evident in her squeals of happiness every time he walks in the front door.
Tilting his head back against the wall, he presses his eyes tightly shut in a futile effort to stem the tears that run down his cheeks at the memory. She was so perfect, so precious to him, and he lost her. He failed her. And now memories are the only pieces of her he has left.
He has no memories of his son.
No one does.
That is the price he pays for having Olivia with him - not that no one remembers him, because he is alright with that so long as Olivia knows him, but that there is no one in the world to remember his son.
He wonders if Henry had his mother's eyes, if he was cared for and loved before the universe was rewritten without him in it. Would he have grown up to be like the other Olivia, fiercely stubborn and devoted to a cause? He knows these are questions that will never be answered, might-have-beens that never will be, because before he ever failed his daughter twice, he destroyed his son.
You can't really be a worse father than that.
And as his dead children continue to stare into his soul, exposing his worst failures, the things that haunt him most, he only has one last plea.
"Forgive me... I should have saved you."
He has nothing else left to give them.
But maybe that is enough.
And for once, his specters look at him with understanding instead of condemnation, fading slowly as they also cry out a last request.
"Remember us..."
And he whispers brokenly to the ghosts that will forever haunt him, to the son he never knew and the daughter he had for a few short precious years, "I will... I love you so much... always and forever."
Author's Note: I've never done this before - this is the first piece of fanfiction I've actually been able to finish, so hopefully it's not too terrible. After I got over the shock from watching 5x04, this came to me and I felt like I couldn't not write it.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the universe they live in.