Broken
Written by: Addie Price
Summary: Olivia Dunham was broken.
Words: 448; one-shot
Note: This is only the second fan-fic I've ever written. As of right now, this stands alone as a one-shot but if I get enough inquiries for it, I am prepared to extend it into a multi-chaptered story. This is set after 3.02 "The Box."
Disclaimer: FRINGE is the property of FOX Broadcasting Company and its associates. I am in no way affiliated with FOX nor do I own any of the characters depicted in this story.
Olivia Dunham was broken.
Her mind had been ripped open, purged of memories that were replaced with the remnants of a life that was not her own. They were similar in certain aspects, but it wasn't the similarities that she had difficulty coping with. It was the overwhelming differences.
Her sister was dead. Her niece was dead. Her mother was still alive, but more broken and different than before. Her boyfriend was a man named Frank. Her partner was alive. She was still Olivia Dunham, but at the same time she was not.
Once the life of her alternate took hold in her mind, however, it would not be easily shaken. Certain cases would be like triggers to her, pulling old memories to the surface. But then more injections would come, forcing her old life into submission, to retreat into the bowels of her mind.
The case in Boston was supposed to be a simple one. It was an anomalous energy that had attracted the Fringe Division's attention, but they knew that the energy source would be there. Boston was a quarantine zone; the energy source was the reason why the amber had frozen half the city, why the rest had been evacuated. No, more than anything, the objective of Fringe Division was to make sure nothing else had appeared in the city, to ensure that it was still the ghost town that they had left it.
What they didn't know was that the entirety of Boston was a soft spot, a bridge into an alternate universe that threatened the existence of their own.
They had suspected that Boston's status as a soft spot had changed since its quarantine. It was the reason why the Secretary hadn't wanted to send Olivia there, for fear that her ability would be triggered and she would cross over, back to her home; that he would lose the one soldier he had who could safely bridge the gap between two realities.
He was right to be afraid.
Once Fringe Division arrived at Boston, more specifically Harvard, the anomalous energy settled itself into Agent Dunham's bones. It was the energy that ignited a fire that drove her ability to activation, ripping her from the reality that her memories were familiar to and shoving her into the world she was originally from but had no recollection of.
The moment the Cortexiphan flooded her mind it broke the trance she had been in. Her old memories came rushing back to her but mingled themselves with the life of an alternate, a life she had become accustomed to. Two entirely different lives fought for possession of one mind.
When they found her, Olivia Dunham was broken.