Hello readers! Before you jump into this, thought I'd speak a few words on this story's behalf. I absolutely LOVE this show. It's my first attempt at Fringe fanfiction and a little rocky, I think, but as Walter is a kinda hard character I figured it turned out pretty well.
If any of you have read my Twilight story Miriam Grey, then you may recognize the girl in this story. If not, it'll be your first encounter with her, so sit back and enjoy! (Although I recommend reading the before-mentioned story, as that was the first time playing with the character and it's a little better represented there.) On the other hand, if you HAVE read Miriam Grey, note the similarities between several instances in the story (some things I did not plan, most I did). Have fun spotting them. Some are positively EERIE if I may say so myself... lol.
This story is AU, set in Spring in the Fringe division of the FBI. It's centered around Walter Bishop, slight Peter/Olivia shipping mentioned (but only in Walter's observations). It's a one-shot (at only 5,000 or so words) so enjoy!
Signed, with an excitedly awesome stamp, sonorahugagi
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN the magnificence that is Fringe or anything within this work that is associated with it. However I do own Sarah Strider and Ester Grey, so no touchy! (However if J.J. Abrams wants to contact me... *wink wink nudge nudge*)
Ester Grey
Doctor Walter Bishop saw odd things in his line of work everyday. Well... depending on what perspective you took on the world the strange creatures he saw could be considered normal... but that was a psychological debate he'd had with himself one too many times. At least twice a day or so. It irritated Peter sometimes, but the boy really didn't use his intellect to full capacity, if he were to stop and consider life through the view of say, a caterpillar, then... but no. Caterpillars would never let you get in their heads anyway.
The recent events apart from his job were puzzling to the extreme. Walter had to figure this out on his own, not only because Peter didn't believe him... well, yeah, that was the only reason. He could talk to Olivia about it, of course, or that nice girl from the FBI that helped him out (what was her name? Apple...?) or even Agent Broyles, if he got desperate. But the opinion he wanted the most was from Peter, and if Peter didn't believe him, then well... there was really nothing he could do about it than ponder it on his own terms.
It started with a death, of course. But not before the unfortunate girl arrived at his doorstep.
It was perhaps 3:36 in the early morning on Wednesday. Walter remembered distinctly because he'd been listing all the pies he could think of and had finally remember the elusive 'boysenberry pie' when he was at the end and had to start all over, something Peter was certainly not very happy about. Then there were a series of frantic, light knocks that screwed him up again and he just gave it up. Peter had jerked up off the couch and rushed to the door, probably because he guessed it must have been Olivia because only Olivia came knocking at odd hours. But after a few moments, when Peter did not greet Olivia in that warm manner or invite her in as Walter had observed Peter save for only her, he got up and trailed into the foyer to peek.
The woman in the doorway was young, no more than 20 at the most. She was wearing brown slacks and a long brown winter coat native to Boston -- only it was late spring and she looked like she'd been caught up in a light rainstorm, even though it hadn't rained that day. Water dripped from curly brown locks and into hazel eyes, though the woman made no move to brush the water away. She only stood there silently and shivered her face pale and drawn, staring at Peter. Well, staring at him until Walter coughed lightly. The woman jerked and her eyes shot to Walter. It was easy to tell she was nervous, skittish, whatever you preferred to call it... just from the dilation of her eyes you could tell, not to mention little signs she probably wasn't aware she was giving off.
"Are you Walter Bishop?" The girl said timidly, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Yes, I am." He replied automatically, giving the girl a small smile. She seemed out of her wits, she did. Walter fiddled with the ties of his bathrobe while she opened and shut her mouth twice, seeming to prepare to start a sentence but not. It was a classic case... if he remembered correctly, Peter's second babysitter was a lot like this girl. He'd liked her, she was always too shy to ask for extra money when he got home 3 hours late because he'd been wrapped up in an experiment... though his wife hadn't kept her very long. He couldn't remember why...
"Do you realize what time it is?" Peter said, dragging Walter from his memories. "Who are you?"
"S-Sarah. Sarah Strider." She broke her gaze from Walter just long enough to glance with a scared look at Peter before locking back on him. "I have a message. For Walter."
"A message? How exciting." Walter rubbed his hands together.
Peter didn't seem as happy as he did about the mysterious message and Sarah Strider. "Couldn't you have just called? Or come at a more reasonable time?"
She shook her head, and at this glanced down the hallway as if she were expecting someone. Though it was more fearful than that... and he couldn't tell if this was her or if she were actually frightened of something. "I only just got here, and I don't have much time. I have a message for Walter." She repeated, the mixture of fright and nervousness written all over her face now. Her eyes locked on his. "Ester Grey is coming. There's a piece of the Pattern you still need to consider."
There had been a brief moment of silence while Walter and no doubt Peter digested this. Ester Grey... that name wasn't familiar. He'd have to look through his old files, maybe it was a codename for something. Pretty name, though. Ester Grey... he'd always wanted to name a daughter Ester. Wait... no, it was Edith. Or was it Evelyn? One of those names was a relative of his...
"How do you know about the Pattern?" Peter demanded, glowering at Sarah. Peter was not in a good mood at all tonight... Walter tried to give him a disapproving look but his son never took his eyes from the brunette. She was almost shrinking from his gaze, shaking her head left to right only minutely. Her eyes darted down the hallway again, only this time she must have seen something; her already pale face had gone completely sheet-white. Walter shifted just slightly to peer down the hallway in that direction to see what it was -- and there was nothing.
"Are you all right?" He said with a tiny frown. She was showing signs of a nervous breakdown.
"I-I'm sorry. I have to go." She backed out of the doorway and against the hallway wall, beginning to shake. Her eyes locked on Walter one last time. It left an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach; like when he was sentenced to stay in Saint Claire's. "Please, please, just remember the message. She's coming."
And Sarah fled.
Peter was on the phone not three seconds after slamming the door, complaining to Olivia and then to Agent Broyles of a Sarah Strider coming in the middle of the night raving about an Ester Grey and the Pattern... which was a little unfair, seeing as Sarah Strider had not been raving, merely passing on a message. A quick search brought up that Sarah was from Washington state, and had just disappeared from her home 2 days ago in her car with the clear intentions of getting across the Atlantic as fast as possible, with no money for a plane ticket. It would have meant two days of almost non-stop driving at break-neck speeds across the country, an amazing feat considering she hadn't been pulled over or crashed once. Friends were a bit worried, as Sarah had begun exhibiting strange behavior a week before she left.
Searches on an Ester Grey involving the Pattern brought up nothing.
With lack of any mysterious happenings that day, the Fringe division began trying to investigate Sarah Strider and how she knew about the Pattern. They found nothing but a good report card, safe driver, no signs of mental or physical illness of any kind in her family, enrolled at WSU with a major in psychology; the woman was as ordinary as half of America. Agent Broyles wanted to toss the case. Then an old couple reported a car crash in a forest outside Boston. The license plate proved it belonged to Sarah.
"I don't understand." Walter complained noisily, ambling over to where the ambulance men had managed to pull the mangled body from the wreckage. The car had relatively flattened itself against an old oak. He rubbed the back of his hands across his eyes; it had just started raining lightly, just enough so it could be considered a mist and get in your eyes. "Sarah wasn't the type of girl to just lose her head behind the wheel."
Peter glanced at Olivia briefly before looking back to him. "Walter, you knew the girl for all of 3 minutes; you don't know anything about her."
"Not true; I read the report papers. And you can discern a good deal of things if you pay attention." Walter nodded firmly to try to convey his point, but all he got was an eye roll. He tried to pretend he didn't see it and bent down to lift the tarp covering her body. "Besides, I must have known her somehow... after all, she knew my name and had a message for me."
"Anyone could have found the name and address." Peter cut in. Walter gave him a look and let the tarp settle back to the body.
"Walter, for all we know the message could have been nonsense." Olivia spoke softly, though she could never hide the hard-edged curiosity in her voice. He always heard it. "You said yourself she looked on a verge of a breakdown."
"Yes!" He said sharply and jumped to his feet, waving one finger around in the air. Olivia and Peter jumped at the sudden outburst. Walter lowered his tone. "Yes, but there must have been an outside cause of it, rather than it being caused by some sort of... mental anomaly, and trust me I know." He chuckled to himself before plowing on. "Possibly a drug, alcohol, any number of things could have given the girl paranoia, and possibly someone was after her..."
Peter's brows were furrowed – a good sign. "Like an Ester Grey."
"Yes, exactly. We must get the body back to the lab immediately for testing; it could be quite possible that a drug came into play here. While we're at it, that nice Agent... eh..."
"Astrid." Olivia said.
"... Adonis, can help me check through my old files for that name... Ester Grey..." Walter's voice faded off while he stared, lost, in the distance. Olivia, the bright girl, immediately noticed and turned towards him. She nudged Peter and he turned to look at him.
"Walter?"
"Funny..." He murmured softly. "Ester... doesn't seem like the kind of person to purposely try to kill someone..." He didn't notice their confused stares. "Yes!" He said loudly, suddenly, clapping his hands together and rubbing the rain off his face again. "Let's start rolling! And if we could," He sent a not-so-sly glance Peter's way. "possibly stop off for ice cream on the way to the lab?"
Peter exchanged another look with Olivia, though it was more amusement than exasperation this time. Walter could read Peter like a book... most of the time. "There aren't any on the way there, Walter."
Walter huffed and got into the passenger side of the car, leaning out the window. "Oh, all right, but you mind giving me my lemon drops?"
Peter checked his pockets when he sat down behind the wheel. A frown followed. Oh no. "You have them, I gave them to you this morning."
"No you didn't."
Peter's annoyed face again; he could feel the explanation for his mix-up coming on, in a tense patient voice. "Walter, you were trying to walk out of the room still in your pajamas and I made you change out of them. I found them in your pocket and I handed them to you."
"Son, I think I'd distinctly remember..." Walter started back defensively, but then it dawned on him what he'd been meddling with just before arriving at the accident scene. "Oh... I left them by Sarah's car." Peter sighed heavily and he quickly plowed on. "I'll just grab them, it won't be a minute..."
"Walter, wait–"
He jumped out of the car and slammed the door before Peter could finish his sentence. Now, all he had to do was retrace his steps, which could prove to be troublesome at times unless he used a mnemonic device (which he didn't in this case), but since the car had not been towed away from the forest it shouldn't be too difficult. Scanning the ground Walter tried to keep his thoughts focused on only his lemon drops (admittedly hard to do at the current moment in time) but it paid off – there they were, sitting placidly in a puddle of reddish-brown mud next to the car. He bent down to pick them up, using the hem of his shirt to wipe off the sticky substance, and turned halfway to Peter's car waving them in the air.
"I found–!"
Just out of the corner of his eye, Walter saw a brief glimpse of gray, and the suddenness of it made him turn his head slightly to get a full view.
That was when he saw her.
It wasn't for more than a few seconds and it wasn't more than a glimpse, but it shocked him into silence, the sentence dying on his lips.
At first, when his eyes first landed on her, he could have sworn that she was nothing but a garden statue, life-like and unanimated. But she couldn't have been, she was standing right next to Sarah's car and she hadn't been there before, Walter was absolutely sure of that. The second thing he managed to discern was her strange presence among all the rushing agents, police, and firefighters at the scene, like a girl out of time. She couldn't have been more than 18, a year or two younger than Sarah Strider. A blue and white checkered blouse was half-buttoned with a thin white t-shirt underneath. Jean-cutoffs and worn white sneakers, no socks even in this light rain, were the only other clothing on her body. Her skin was a light cream, almost pale, a lot like some of the inmates at Saint Claire's who hadn't been outside in years. All this he took in in a second. It was her eyes, her hair that grabbed him... the same exact color of gray. It was as if someone had taken the purest gray color in the world, mixed it with all the other grays that existed, and painted it on her in smooth, even strokes. Just like a human statue. Only she wasn't; a moment after he saw her those eerie gray eyes moved and met his. Her lips pulled back into a smile.
"Walter? Are you coming?" Peter's voice wrenched him from his stare and made him jerk, breaking his gaze away for no more than a second to glance his way before looking back. And she was gone.
Walter had returned to the car, popped a lemon drop into his mouth, and was already launched onto the subject of what killed Sarah Strider when the thought struck him that the girl standing there had not been normal in the slightest. The FBI almost never let civilians onto scenes of accidents, let alone that close to the wreckage, and the fact that she was there and gone in only a few seconds was strange, strange indeed. There had seemed nothing terribly unusual about her except those eyes, those strange haunting eyes... but she must have been there for a reason or Peter would have noticed her and said something. Something in him whole-heartedly agreed with that. He didn't bother to ask anyone about it, however. They'd just think he was making it up.
He tried focusing on poor Sarah Strider and her message all that day, he really did, but every time he bent down to work the mysterious girl kept popping up into his head. Tried to help Apple look through the files in his office for any mention of Ester Grey, up came the mystery girl. Tried to run some tests on Sarah's blood, up came the mystery girl to ruin his samples. Of all that, he once looked over to Gene the cow and saw the girl standing there. Leaning against the cow herself, arms crossed and one foot crossed over the other, staring other everything with that disturbing statue-like appearance. He ended up dropping the tray in his hands and had to fumble to catch it, only to look up and see she was gone.
What was going on? Rarely since he'd gotten out of Saint Claire's had something bugged him so strongly that he couldn't get it out of his head, no matter what he did. Try as he might, he couldn't make connections come together and explain themselves. Peter had actually asked him once if he were all right, as he'd been distracted all day and was mumbling to himself. This girl... thinking over everything he had noticed, Walter realized he'd never seen anything like her, really. Not in any of his experiences that he could remember from years ago to now.
"Walter... Walter?" Adonis's voice made him jerk the scalpel back from Sarah's corpse, staring at the FBI agent. She blinked at his expression but didn't bring it up, thank goodness. "Peter and Olivia left on another case a few minutes ago and I was going out to get some coffee. Looks like we'll be pulling an all-nighter. You want anything?"
He glanced out the window for a moment, seeing a sliver of the full moon come out from behind some trees, before her words sunk in and he turned back. "Oh, no, no thank you... I think coffee would be a little much right now." He chuckled a little to himself and dropped the scalpel on the counter. "However," he crept closer to speak low. "If you could get some of those strawberry-filled doughnuts..."
"I got it, strawberry doughnuts." She nodded her head and made her way out the door. Such a nice girl, Astrid. She really was. Adina poked her head back through the door after a moment, however. "You promise to be good and not get into trouble while I'm gone?"
Walter held up his pinky finger with a small grin. "Pinky swear."
She nodded her head and was gone again.
Walter stood, alone, in his lab for a moment, suddenly wary of the silence. They almost never left him alone here, and for good reason sometimes... sometimes the silence frightened him. A sudden strange feeling washed over him and he turned, slowly, to look behind him.
She was there, leaning against the examination table Sarah Strider was laying on, as life-like as the statue... the garden statue. A small shudder worked its way down his spine and the girl looked straight at him, those eyes, a smile curling her lips back from her teeth.
"Finally! I thought they'd never leave." The voice wasn't what he was expecting. It was soft, yet light and whimsical. It gave off the impression of an old woman mimicking perfectly the voice of a young girl. Strange combination... Walter stumbled back a step as in one fluid movement she pushed off the table and moved towards him, extending a hand. "It's nice to finally meet you, Dr. Bishop."
"W-Walter... p-please, call me Walter." Struggling to find his voice again, he battled with the decision to shake her hand. Fear of what it would feel like won out and he didn't take it. She frowned briefly before dropping her hand. "And who are you?"
"Ester Grey."
Any words of surprise died on his lips as their eyes connected for the second time. It struck him how ordinary she could have been, one of those faces in the crowd, if not for the gray hair and eyes. For a flashing moment, he could see both ancient knowledge and young innocence in those eerie gray eyes. Extraordinary. Subtle signals of extraordinary and the ordinary look of a teenager... the idea fascinated him.
Some reaction in his face must have been amusing, because the smile broadened to a grin on her face and she looked away, out the window. There was silence except his own breathing for a moment. Walter frowned slightly and listened. He couldn't hear any breath coming from the girl at all. She didn't even have the rise-and-fall motion in her chest!
"You're a funny man, Walter." She spoke, startling him from his intent gaze at her chest, trying to catch movement. Her tone held laughter.
"Oh, no, I assure you I wasn't just staring at your breasts to –" He said quickly, hoping to repair the situation, but Ester shook her head. Wisps of gray hair fell over her shoulders.
"It's all right, I wasn't referring to that. I was only thinking out loud." Her smile disappeared as she glanced out the window again. There was the garden statue look, making him shudder again before she shook her head and motioned out the door. "Do you mind too terribly if we go outside? I know it's raining a little..."
"No, no, of course not, not at all." He hesitated, reaching for his coat and draping it over an arm, unable to take his eyes off the girl. "Sarah Strider said something about the Pattern..."
Those eerie gray eyes locked onto his again, and the sentence hung unfinished. Mirth danced across her face. "Outside, Walter." She turned away and motioned to him with a finger. He followed quietly behind, closing the door behind him. Oh, was Adonis going to be mad he broke his promise...
"I know you have a lot of questions..." Ester Grey spoke for the first time in almost 10 minutes (he counted), staring up at the sky. Walter's breath blew tiny plumes of smoke while hers (if she even took in air) had none. It wasn't cold outside, really, but the light misting rain made everything chilly... unusual for spring. Very unusual. Together they had wandered off the Harvard campus into a well-forested park nearby, the girl seemingly following the path light of the moon through the leaves. If anything, she was watching the moon for some reason.
"Yes, a lot of questions." She murmured to herself again. She stopped walking.
Walter was fiddling with the lemon drops packet in his pocket, not really wanting one but needing something to mess with in his hands, and almost ran into her. He stumbled back a few steps and stood still, watching her face turn up to the sky. The shiver worked his way down his spine. Unanimated, life-like... the garden statue. And the funny thing was, the closer he tried to peer at her details, the more it seemed like the lines holding her form were melding and running together so everything was blurry. It was almost as if... the rain was making the paint on the garden statue run off into a pool of gray at her feet. Only there was no pool, she wasn't painted, and the illusion was lost when she turned to face him, her expression serious.
As if given the cue to begin speaking, Walter opened his mouth and blurted out a question before he could stop himself. "What happened to Sarah?"
A spark of understanding in those gray eyes, and a slow smile. "You really liked her, Walter? I can see why... Sarah was a nice girl. It was a car crash, though, nothing more to it."
He shook his head. "I don't think that's the only thing, Ester."
The sound of her name must have been amusing, because she giggled to herself and said Ester... twice. "No, it's not, really. Sarah Strider had developed a few psychic abilities in life, could feel feelings through people's old clothes, see, and when I tried to give her a message of mine she wouldn't listen. Grabbed this old guy's cane to try to fend me off for some reason, and the feeling terrified her. She thought I was with the Pattern, don't ask me how she knew because it's not my story to tell... raced off to find you, the feeling overwhelmed her while she was driving and she crashed."
Several questions popped into his head as she spoke. Nothing she said made much sense. "I don't understand. So... there's nothing else to the Pattern then?"
"Not anything you haven't already thought of, Walter." She giggled to herself. "Or what you'll remember later, I should say."
Aw... he'd been hoping for some sort of new revelation to help explain the things that were happening. Apparently, everything they needed was still locked in his head. Another thought struck him. "Why did you need to see me then?"
Ester Grey frowned. She opened and closed her mouth several times, the same thing Sarah did when she first tried to give Walter the message. The question seemed to have baffled her, which baffled him considerably. When he'd seen the ancient look in her eyes, the impression he'd received was that the girl seemed to know everything. But apparently not.
"Sometimes..." She glanced at the moon briefly while she struggled to speak. "Sometimes I like to give... messages to people. Random little things most of the time, I don't know where they come from... but sometimes they're more than that." Ester turned her gaze to the ground for the first time, wisps of gray hair falling over her shoulder. "Sometimes I have to give them to people... and sometimes they have to act on them. And sometimes they need encouragement to act on them. Like Sarah's... Sarah's was 'Don't touch the weapon that tempts you'. Get it? The cane?" She sighed, though Walter heard no noise except what she made herself. "So when way leads onto way, I usually don't question where things lead. Sarah Strider led me to you... but I don't know why." One shoulder lifted in a slender shrug and she stared back up at the sky, eyeing the moon.
Walter frowned, not noticing he'd stopped fiddling with the lemon drops. "Do you think...?"
"The Pattern? No. The Pattern is entirely under the human category. The messages are not. The messages are beyond the human intellect for the most part, which is why I can't force anyone to completely follow up on the message I give them."
Her wording confused him. In fact, the sudden overload of facts, connections being made, made the world spin with new ideas. He had to steady himself against one of the trees – an old oak.
"I think I'm confusing you, aren't I?" Walter looked up from the ground to see her staring at him with the disturbing statue look again, making him shudder.
"No, you're not... well, not to say you aren't, but..." He fumbled for a lemon drop in his pocket and popped one into his mouth. "But some of the things you said provide for, infinite possibilities, if nothing else!" He laughed shakily and stopped leaning against the tree, a little nervous that she was still staring disturbingly. He began to pace. "Consider the possibility of strange happenings not related to the Pattern, of non-human entities such as yourself –"
"Who says I'm not human?" She said sharply, making him stop and turn to look at her.
"But you aren't, are you?"
Ester Grey only smiled.
"Hmm... that changes some things... but not many, I assure you." Walter turned away and began pacing again. "That means that not everything is localized just to the Pattern! Not everything created has to be taken in and interpreted badly because it's related to the Pattern... take miracles! Miracles don't have to be considered Pattern-related! And those strange messages you receive... well I honestly don't know what to make of them."
"Working of fate, maybe," She offered, but a sudden small change in her voice made him stop and look hard at her again. Their eyes met, and he realized she was only letting him go on to humor him. She already had the answers to everything... except why her messages led her to him. That blew out some of his steam a little, and he bit down on the lemon drop with a crunch.
She had turned her gaze towards the sky again. The moon held her gaze longer than it had before; a brief frown crossed her features before Ester Grey looked at him with a half-smile. "I like you, Dr. Walter Bishop; I don't see the workings of the Pattern falling into any better hands."
The steam blew out even more and a sudden fearful sadness swept over him. He didn't want her to go. "You're leaving." He accused, pointing his finger at her. "You figured it out so you're leaving."
She shook her head, walking towards him. Again, he was struck by how her definition seemed to meld together so everything became blurry. "I haven't figured it out, but I think I at least partly understand. Besides, some really Pattern-related hugeness just occurred, and the people need you." She giggled a little and touched his face with the tips of her fingers. The feeling was so alien Walter jerked back and stumbled, rubbing his cheeks. It was a good thing he hadn't shaken her hand. "I suppose I have a message for you now... Remember, Doctor Walter Bishop. Remember and use them to fight back."
She turned away and walked back to her spot, waving a little. "That's my message for you. I gotta be off now; make it back to the lab safely, okay? Because I really like you, Dr. Bishop, and I don't want them to have to hunt you down. I'll see you around."
Before he'd gotten a complete hold on what she said, her eyes had locked onto his for a space of a second; she flashed a smile and her features once again blurred and smoothed together. And then Ester Grey was gone, and he was all alone in the park.
Walter stood in complete shock for a few minutes before turning and stumbling back towards the lab. He didn't have to make it all the way, however, because Olivia and Peter were just getting out of a van when they saw him.
"Walter!" Peter said loudly, rushing over to lend support. "Where the hell have you been? Astrid just called to say you disappeared!"
"Ester... Ester Grey..." He mumbled, that fearful sadness sweeping over him at the mention of her name.
Peter sighed angrily. "You really are crazy, you know that?"
Time moved on, as it always did.
But Walter constantly tried to remember, and he constantly kept on the lookout for an Ester Grey.
Because she said she'd see him again... and as the mysteries surrounding the Pattern grew stronger and worse with every turn, he clung desperately to the idea that not everything was controlled by it. Somewhere, life moved in mysterious ways within the eerie gray eyes of a garden statue.