THE AFTERMATH
Twenty-one nights she dreams of him and then she doesn't anymore. All alone in non-existence, Peter Bishop finds himself entangled with reality. One-shot sequel to '21 Dreams'; follows 4x04. Reading it as a stand-alone might be confusing, but not impossible.
It's so dark here – this place he comes to every night.
The tulips glow, ethereal as ever. The moon illuminates what the tulips don't, a perfect circle. He thinks it might be his imagination but there may be stars, even.
And yet all of this can't provide the same luminescent glow she brings – no, brought – to this place, and he is left alone in the darkness, nursing a cold, dead heart that can't even be warmed by hope when she and his father deduce that he must be real.
No, he won't hope, not again. Not after twenty-one nights of pure bliss had been ripped away so cruelly. Not after the last time they'd tossed him a crumb and then stolen it all away. In the aftermath of it all, he is still crippled by grief and pain and so he won't hope again.
Not after she forgot their lifetime together.
Grief is a funny thing, and maybe he would laugh darkly at it; if he still had a laugh in him. He chooses, instead, to brood over it and silently catalogue the way he fights himself every single moment, the way his dead heart feels – like it's been stabbed, run over, lit on fire; all of it – and the way her life changes without him.
At first, he thinks he'll never see her again, not because she can't see him but because it is a fresh stab to his gut every time he is reminded of the fact that to her, he never was. But he develops a bad taste for masochism and suddenly she is air to him; she keeps him alive in this non-existence where life and death is relative.
Her life is cold; so cold. More than once she has brought up the hole in her and he feels like screaming, at the very top of his lungs for the whole world to hear, that his absence is the hole and why can't she see that?
But it's not her fault.
It's theirs.
September.
That's his name.
September is the reason why he is no more; why his father is worse than ever; why Olivia is hollow. And the first two he can forgive but it is entirely too much for him to see Olivia's dead eyes, not when he'd caused this whole mess to avoid that dead look in the first place.
September can see him; of course he can – they all can. But he remains unacknowledged and he knows it is damage control for what he already knows – that he isn't entirely gone; that traces remain.
Olivia has never forgotten anything – a random number plate; an order for McDonald's when she was nine; an entire list of strangers – and yet they have made her forget the one person in her life who matters the most.
A receipt number remains stuck in her head while Peter fades into mere traces.
He wants to hit someone.
It builds in him – this blind rage and grief and everything negative in man – when he can't even hit someone. Please, by all means, ignore the non-existent person who is in pain; more pain than this man with his rainbow tie and sloppy clothes might ever feel.
He tries to hit September and one of his other colleagues when they come out from an opera and he is pissed, positively pissed because not only is that the opera he planned to take Olivia to, but the Observers didn't even enjoy it.
Also, he can't hit them, apparently.
Non-existence sucks just as much as life did.
More, actually.
And then it happens.
He screams, a guttural, primal sound so horrible that maybe it is for the best that no one can hear it. He yells, uses expletives no human ear should be subjected to, curses these infuriating bald men until his mind goes blank.
And when, after all of this, his anger doesn't subside, he runs.
He runs and runs and suddenly he is no longer himself, but a form of energy born out of anger and hatred and grief and love and pain.
They say energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so he thinks, with smug satisfaction at the Observers' failure to defy the very laws of nature, that this must be him again, this shapeless form with no limbs.
He'll take it.
Eventually he drains himself and is denied even the basic, shapeless form. It takes so long – so very long – for him to retrace his steps and return to her, his life support, for all intents and purposes.
She settles in and he waits for her to close her eyes before molding himself around her, a shadow of a former life. He disposes of his old mantra and prays to every enlightened being there is for him and Olivia to be reunited; for two minutes, if that's all that they can spare – just two minutes for him to love her and be loved in return.
She doesn't dream that night.
When she has just half an hour of sleep left before her alarm rings, he gives up hope of her ever seeing him again and focuses, with all his might, to lightly brush his hands against her.
Over and over; his hand brushes through her, disappearing into her skin only to emerge again a nanosecond later, a phantom limb.
Desperation and frustration feel like one in that moment and even as his love for the sleeping woman attempts to eclipse these feelings, they grow stronger yet because his love is useless, not tangible anymore, and then love turns on him and unites with desperation and frustration and anger until suddenly, the world shudders and he has a form again.
He draws everything to him – a lonely, desperate energy mass – and he prays he'll make enough disturbance for her to wake up; to just wake up and see him.
And see him she does.
They're treating him like a Fringe event and while it's nice to actually be noticed, what he needs is not Astrid testing objects and Walter coming up with theories.
What he needs is for Olivia to sit down and close her eyes and remember – remember that she loves him, and she's done everything for him, and he would do everything for her in return, if she would only remember.
She finally retreats into the bathroom and though he hates himself for scaring her – because he knows she is scared, no matter what she might say – he locks them in together and wills her to remember; to please, please remember.
Eventually his grief and loneliness overpowers everything else and he leaves her with Astrid, and the promise of more company in the form of Walter.
He would never wish this loneliness on her.
A sudden onslaught of nostalgia and longing and the dreaded loneliness floods his very being as Olivia and Walter bond over floats and apparently, this works to his advantage.
But then Olivia pulls out her gun and pulls Walter out and a car comes skidding towards him and – no no no no no, not Olivia. Not again. Not if he's here.
He hasn't experimented on this form yet and this isn't how he envisioned it but it takes all of his concentration to will Olivia to move and brace for the hit meant for her.
It hurts.
It hurts like hell and he's smiling; a genuine, huge smile that won't be wiped off by a wince.
It hurts.
He feels.
They're in danger.
Olivia and Walter are in danger and all he knows is that he needs to help them.
If you want something bad enough, you'll get it.
He doesn't believe in this because no one has ever wanted as badly as he has for the past few months, but in that one moment he tops himself and wants, with a fervent intensity he never knew himself to be capable of, to keep his family safe.
And suddenly he's there, with Olivia and Walter and the angry kid.
But it's all wrong; they're scared of him – of Peter. It's all wrong because Olivia is backing away with Walter and that kid is trembling and suddenly, he realizes: they're fine. They're fine as long as he leaves them alone.
The kid screams and he lets them believe it drives him away, but Peter knows now that grief is the one thing that can destroy energy as he turns into nothing more but a phantom memory, guarding over his loved ones.
They want to destroy him.
Olivia and Walter want that kid, whatever his name is, to destroy him. He races to them, begs like he never has before for Olivia to hear him, to just see him; pleads Walter to remember, or change his mind.
He's never done it on purpose but now he draws on all of his emotions, all that seeing Olivia stirs up in him, and prays, for a split second, that it works.
And it does.
It works better than he could've imagined because for one second, just one second, he pushes through and makes Olivia see him. He thinks of the years they had together in the future and all that he felt, and he pushes through.
And in that one moment, he can see it in Olivia's eyes – somewhere, deep inside her, she remembers him.
She remembers him.
And that is enough to drive him over the edge, send him hurtling away and throw him back into existence.
Someone pulls him out of the freezing water and as his euphoria melts away, the acute sensation of being real again overwhelms him.
He remembers being rushed to the hospital and being made a spectacle of and sudden spurts of consciousness. He remembers contacting the Bureau and alarming some poor agent with his knowledge; enough to raise suspicion and get to Broyles.
Most of all, he remembers his mantra.
Olivia, Olivia, Olivia.
Almost a year ago, she revealed that he had been the only thing to keep her going while she was trapped; that she had seen him, in her subconscious, making her remember.
And today, as he stares out into the endless night which looks just that bit more vivid, he knows he can reciprocate because truly, she had been the one to push him into reality. He wonders how he'll propose, now, because romantic gestures between the two of them now include crossing universes, tearing holes into the very fabric of reality and bringing back one from non-existence.
But none of this prepares him for that one moment when she enters the room, her familiar scent in the air, her erratic breathing patterns a clear melody to his ears and her very being a charged presence.
"Olivia," He smiles, because she did it; she actually did it. "Thank God you're here."
And he means it, each and every single word, because he knows now that there has to be something else, something bigger than him and her and the Observers, because this is nothing short of a miracle; a miracle of her doing, admittedly, but still.
And then he stops believing and curses himself for being so naïve in the first place as her three words – not 'I love you', not 'I missed you', not even 'Oh God, Peter' – ring in his ears.
Who are you?
And there we have it, folks. I can't believe it took me this long but apparently doing 21 Dreams just really took everything out of me. But I made myself sit down and do it all in one sitting, even though my mind took forever to warm up. Still – I'm just glad this is going out before Fringe Friday, which, by the way… *squeal!*, is so close!
Look out for more Fringe from me in the coming days because that little Season-Two-And-Three marathon I did has left me with a million ideas and I've decided to do two one-shots and a little Halloween case.
Review? You know I love hearing from you guys, and it makes me all warm and fuzzy and cheers me up when I become sad inside because Olivia doesn't remember Peter. Pretty please?
I am sad inside.
SAD.
INSIDE.
E Salvatore,
October 2011.