The light at Massive Dynamic was bright and intrusive; pouring through every physical space with its overbearing presence. It felt like he was the ant under a very malicious kid's magnifying glass. The light was a nuance, but not enough of one for him to stay away.
The chair Peter was sitting in was cold and uncomfortable. He shifted his hips again in a failed hope that he would be able to find a more comfortable position. He couldn't, so he gave up and settled into a resentful pose and watched his father.
"How are you feeling today, Olivia?" Walter Bishop asked apprehensively as he flashed a light into the pupils of Olivia's eyes, gauging the response with a mixture between anxiety and excitement. He was perched on a little piece of Olivia's hospital bed next to a set of beeping monitors and a steel table full of metal instruments and syringes that Walter had selected for his "testing."
Olivia's face was carved in stone, her eyes lifting upward at Walter and squinting in disgust from under her copper tresses. Her lips moved from their hard line into a forced lopsided grin.
"Why don't you remove these restraints and I'll show you," she said, her voice unmistakably too pleasant and dripping with vile. Peter shifted forward in his chair, resting his arms on his knees.
"Walter-" Peter said warningly as Walter mistook Olivia's sarcasm as he made a move toward the restraints that bound her wrists to the bed. Walter looked over his shoulder to Peter, who shook his head at Walter's unasked question. It was Olivia who responded for him.
"Peter is afraid that if you released me, I might do something unbecoming." She said, the pretense of her former niceties over. She shifted her icy gaze over to Peter, who felt unnerved by her unfamiliar and undisguised loathing. Refusing to shift his gaze away first, he glared back at her- purposely invading her space as she was trying to invade his.
"Not at all, I just know you better than you think I do." He retorted, smirking at the snarl that crossed her lips. He knew she was constantly vying to get out of this room, to get back somehow to the universe that wasn't truly hers. Back to the place that she was brainwashed into believing she belonged.
Engaged by the events unfolding in front of him, Walter stared back and forth between Peter and Olivia, transfixed by the exchange; his head whipping between the two with the animation and excitement as watching a tennis match on TV. Peter would have laughed out loud if this were any other situation. Walter was still sitting on a little piece of Olivia's hospital bed, his mind wandering. After a few tense moments, Olivia shifted her gaze away from Peter and back to Walter.
"When am I getting out of here?" She demanded; all pretenses over. Her question pulled Walter from whatever line of thought he was meandering down and he shifted back over to look at her. She looked drawn and hallowed; her skin pale and bleached out from the unforgiving light. Back on the right mode of thought, Walter reached over and picked up the file that sat on the end of Olivia's bed. Flicking it open and perusing through the contents.
"Well that depends, Agent Dunham, entirely on when you are better." Walter responded with an uncomfortable smile, shifting through the papers as if the key to the mystery was hidden within them.
Peter eased back into the chair, running his hand over the roughness of his chin. He had been stationary at the hospital ever since Olivia's return a five days ago, eating, sleeping and sitting in the same God damned chair and watching over Olivia with such ferocity that Walter worried that she may disappear again if he left her side. He watched Olivia sink her head back on the pillow, defeated.
"You know they'll come looking for me." She snarled, eyes flickering between the two Bishops. Peter could tell she was bluffing; she could never pull an adequate poker face with her. Peter stood, his knees cracking in protest and padded over to the side of her bed, hands crammed in his pockets.
"If they do come," Peter allowed, taking his hands out and leaning over her bed frame, "they'll come looking for her. Not you." He caught her gaze and held it, willing her to recognize him and to snap out of it.
"They'll come looking for you, too." She whispered in a breath so low Peter wasn't sure if Walter could hear it. Peter smirked, never losing her eyes and tilting his head at her, her face mere inches from his. Peter heard the bedsprings squeak and he knew that Walter had exited the little place on the bed that he was sitting, but he didn't bother to look where he went.
"'Livia…" he started, hoping for some twinge of recognition. Her eyes crinkled for just the briefest of moments, as she heard him say her name, but she recovered quickly.
"I am Agent Dunham to you, and I am part of the Department of Defense branch called 'Fringe', investigating- "she started. Peter cut her off, hearing this same line everyday for the past five days.
"—weird and unexplainable events—yeah, I've got it." Peter back away from her bed and stretched his back, turning away from her.
"And I report to the Secretary—your father, Dr. Walter Bishop, and I was sent here to retrieve you—"
She turned to shoot a filthy look at Walter, who was cowarding in the nearby corner, making adjustments to the machinery that she was hooked up to. If he was overhearing their conversation, he wasn't letting it on.
Walter had been working furiously over the last few days, trying to figure out how the other Walter Bishop had brainwashed her, for this was much more than a simple case of Stockholm syndrome. Olivia had very specific details of the other Olivia Dunham's life that Walter couldn't place how they were implanted. Even an infinite amount of technology and resources available to him through Massive Dynamic couldn't assist him in bringing back their Agent Dunham and thus ease the horrible guilt her absences brought.
Walter stole a glance over to Peter's back as he stared out the window, the muscles in his back hard and rigid. Walter's heart broke a little, seeing Peter's frustration and his own guilt in not noticing the infiltration earlier. No one noticed that Olivia had been trapped and replaced for months and no one knew. The pain of realizing his oversight brought Walter to a near full-blown meltdown when Peter stumbled into their little house; Olivia badly injured and half-dead in his arms from the transfer made Walter feel less like a scientist and more like a bereaved father. Seeing Olivia's vacant eyes reminded him so much of Peter's death…
"Walter-"Peter's voice interrupted his haunted reverie. Walter looked up from the wires he held absent-mindedly in his hands. The wires were shaking. He released them like they were electrified.
"What's that, Peter?" Walter asked, focusing back to the present time- Peter was facing him now, hands crammed back into his pockets.
"I'm going to get something to eat. You want anything?"
"Redvines," came Walter's instant reply, the memory temporarily forgotten,
"and a blue Slurpee." He added. Peter studied his face for a second and dipped his head and turned to the door. In fact Peter wasn't hungry, he hadn't been since Olivia came crashing back into this existence and he knew he'd been had. The truth is he wanted to get the hell out of the room that was a constant reminder of how much of a failure he was. He was almost to the door when Walter soft voice floated over his shoulder.
"We'll bring her back, son." Walter's voice almost sounded like little plea. Peter's eyes closed, willing himself to believe his father's words that they could save her.
"She's never coming back, Peter." Came Olivia's heckling; a sing-song voice that wrenched a knife in his gut whenever she used it. Without looking back into the room, he crossed the threshold out of the hospital room, wondering if he'll ever see his Olivia again.
