REMAINDERED chap. 1
Disclaimer: I do not own nor am I affiliated with Fringe or any other work herein referenced. This story takes place shortly after episode 7 Season 4.
One of the prerequisites of a good con is the establishment of trust. Persuading your mark to disregard that tiny, nagging, interior voice telling them to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction while simultaneously relieving them of their life savings, their self-respect, and their pants is what distinguishes a master con artist from the legions of amateurs, the one percent from the ninety-nine.
Peter Bishop was a proud member of the one percent.
His latest mark, however, was proving to be more of a challenge than he'd anticipated. FBI Agent Timothy Joseph Rawlins had so far resisted all his attempts to be charming, offers of home-cooked dinners and nights on the town, content instead to stand at rigid attention just outside the front door, all senses on high alert for any sight, sound, or suggestion that he, Peter, was anything other than a good, obedient little prisoner.
And a prisoner he was, though he had to admit the cage was a gilded one. The house in which he was for all intents and purposes incarcerated was the same one he and his father, Walter, had inhabited for over two years, a rental secured for them by the FBI and Fringe Division. In this new world into which Peter found himself abruptly thrust, not unlike a huge middle finger mocking the whole universe—and wasn't that an apt metaphor, he thought—Walter owned the house, and had done so for some years. Not that Dr. Bishop himself cared about the place, living as a paranoid, obsessive-compulsive semi-recluse in the confines of his old lab at Harvard. Grieved and sickened as Peter might be that the man he considered his father was reduced to such a state, he couldn't allow himself to dwell on it, to become involved. It wasn't his Walter, after all. Not his Walter, not his Olivia, not his world. He had to believe that, or the fragile control he had on his emotions and sanity just might snap; he had to believe he'd somehow landed in the wrong timeline with the wrong people—unloved, unwanted, and forgotten, the ultimate victim of a vast cosmic joke.
Still, the house was warm, dry, and nominally his, and one of the more recent tenants had furnished it with a brand-new plasma TV and cable service. And it was infinitely better than a bare cell at Fringe headquarters, where he'd been reduced to pounding on the door if he so much as wanted to get a soda or use the toilet.
Once Peter had removed the dust covers from the furniture, cleaned the decaying remnants of the last tenant's last meal (spaghettini with white clam sauce and garlic bread) out of the kitchen sink, and made himself up a comfy bed on the pull-out sofa, he'd done a comprehensive sweep of the house for objets d'art both small enough to conceal in a pocket and valuable enough to fence. He'd come upon some surprising things during his search; things that, like himself, should not have been there. One was a toy airplane bought for him by his "mother" a few months after his arrival in this universe. If, as Walter had insisted, he'd drowned as a child in Reiden Lake, the plane should not have been purchased. It was possible, of course, that in this timeline the plane had belonged to his counterpart before his own untimely death, but Peter had noted a small scratch on the right wing, acquired when he'd tried to make the plane fly out a second floor window of their old house. He recalled the incident clearly, just as he remembered the visit to the toy shop and the aftermath of that day; therefore, in some inexplicable way, these things, which had not happened, had happened after all.
Peter had found other things too. He found himself secreting these items well out of sight of Agent Rawlins, hoarding them together for…well, he wasn't quite sure why, except that they were a sort of comfort, a tether to his old life, an affirmation that he could, and would, return. After dark, safe from the prying eyes of the agent, he'd take them out and look at them, turning them over and over, searching for some clue, some connection, hoping for an epiphany that thus far had failed to materialize.
Then, frustrated, he turned his attention to the more immediate problem of neutralizing Timmy Baby. It was becoming clear after almost a week of house arrest that Agent Tim was neither easily duped nor bribable; that left (a) injury, (b) distraction, or (c) homicide.
Option (c), of course, was out of the question. In his old life, Peter might have got away with murdering an FBI agent if he'd claimed self-defense, but there was no way this new hard-ass, untrusting Fringe team would tolerate such an action. ("You thought Tim was a shapeshifter? Up against the wall and spread 'em, kid…") Anyway, massive frustration aside, he didn't really dislike Timmy; he knew the man was only doing his job to the best of his myopic, unimaginative ability.
Distraction was a better idea. In the good old days before Orwellian levels of security cameras, GPS tracking, and smart phones, Peter had once cleared out an entire shopping mall in ten minutes flat with a fake bomb threat called in from a pay phone in that very mall. Before security had figured out what was going on, Peter, his then-partner in crime Nadine, and about twelve grand in small luxury items were in the next county, deep in negotiations with a trusted fence.
The problem was that any distraction big enough to drag Tim away from his post would also require him to drag Peter along with him, probably at gunpoint. No, it would have to be a combination of (a) and (b), a brief moment of inattention on Tim's part followed by swift and decisive action on his.
It would have to be brutal.
And that was where the core of Peter's plan started to break down. He wasn't sure how or when he'd developed a conscience, but somehow over the course of becoming Walter's caretaker and Olivia's partner, he'd learned to care for people other than himself, to take into consideration their thoughts and feelings as well as his own. And somewhat to his own annoyance, he found he didn't really want to hurt Timmy. The old Peter, the one of five years or a decade ago, wouldn't have hesitated at the thought of incurring collateral damage while on a job, and yet here he was, balking at maybe breaking a few ribs or the odd kneecap.
Most of his old associates would say he'd gone soft; he preferred to think he'd become more human. In any case, he knew he'd have to put his scruples aside and act fast. He'd only get one shot—a single failed attempt would send Tim into high alert, and instead of the relative not-quite-freedom of his old home Peter would go back again to solitary confinement at Fringe headquarters, handcuffs, and possibly (his imagination ran riot at this point) a diet of stale bread and water and "enhanced" interrogations involving whips, needles, and castor oil.
Maybe if Olivia was the one handling the whip…
He put that thought out of his mind fast. The last thing he needed was to start thinking of this iteration of Olivia as his partner and helpmeet, his lover, his (future) wife. That was one mistake he wouldn't be making again. She'd made it clear that he was alien to her; an interesting and occasionally useful anomaly, maybe some expendable muscle, nothing more. This lack of awareness on her part disturbed him not a little whenever he allowed himself to dwell on it; the old Olivia, the one he knew and loved, would have exhibited boundless curiosity at his sudden appearance. She wouldn't dismiss him with a few casual words and a glance; she'd investigate him thoroughly, never resting till she uncovered the truth about the stranger haunting her dreams and Walter's lab. Something was wrong, his hindbrain told him; something was rotten in the state of Massachusetts. Peter shoved the nagging inner voice resolutely away, willing it to silence. Soon, if all went according to plan, he could put this world, these cold strangers with familiar and beloved faces, behind him forever.
The toaster oven dinged, and Peter left off his depressing thoughts to smear a bagel with cream cheese and add a few slices of lox before biting into the whole with a sigh that was almost orgasmic. During their last shopping trip, Agent Tim had looked askance at this evidence of wanton extravagance in his prisoner. He'd also had several words to say about the purchase of a package of chicken thighs, half a pound of bacon, a bag of potatoes, and a small flask of Jack Daniels. Clearly, as far as he was concerned, Peter ought to be living on ramen noodles and Kraft mac 'n' cheese, and by God, liking it.
He'd gone so far as to actually try to remove the bacon from Peter's shopping cart before learning quite quickly that anyone who valued his own skin—even a trained Federal agent packing heat—didn't get between a Bishop and a good meal.
Peter grinned to himself at the memory. A victory was still a victory, however small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He finished off his bagel in two bites and glanced at the clock above the kitchen stove. Six AM. In exactly half an hour Tim's shift would end and he'd be replaced with Agent Suzanne Briscoe, a dour, hard-faced woman of fifty even more impervious than Tim to Peter's charms. Soon Peter's small window of opportunity would end and he'd have to wait another whole twenty-four hours to try again. He set down his coffee mug, tore himself away from contemplation of the blueprint of the Vacuum Machine he'd been studying, and padded silently into the front hall. Through the leaded glass surrounding the door he could clearly see the figure of Agent Tim—who, he observed, had for once abandoned his pose of self-important vigilance and was instead lounging against one of the support columns of the porch. His back was turned away from Peter, his attitude one of relaxed indifference, the bulk of his attention focused on the pages of a hentai manga which, Peter noted, he was reading from left to right.
This, at last, could be the chance Peter had been waiting for. The latch was raised, the opening of the door timed to coincide with a passing truck whose air brakes effectively masked any sound. Several pulse-pounding moments went by when it seemed as if Tim was about to sense his prisoner's approach and turn around, but no; the agent's eyes remained fixed on his book. Peter took an instant to compose himself; to steady his breathing, to ready himself physically and mentally for the act of rendering unconscious the man who recently—and in a context quite the opposite of a true emotional bond—had asked Peter to think of him as a friend.
Peter took a deep breath and slid a hand into his pocket, fingers curling around the makeshift weighted blackjack he had concealed there.
"Say hello to my little friend."