iii.
Peter draws in a breath and starts to cough on musty air and dust. "Where are we?" he chokes out through the spasms, peering into the grey-black space surrounding them.
Olivia drops his arm. Over the sound of his heartbeat, still pounding wildly in his ears, Peter hears rustling, then a click, and the beam of her flashlight once again plays about the room. The stage. The seats. Scaffolding and plastic sheeting. And overhead, the notable absence of the glass dome.
"We're home," she says. "Come on."
-x-
They follow the aisle by the light of Olivia's flashlight and cross the lobby by the dim orange glow of streetlights filtering in through windows and polyethylene. When they reach the glass doors of the main entrance, Olivia stops and holds up a hand.
"You two wait here," she says before she pushes the door open, walks out onto the sidewalk, and vanishes down the street.
She crosses in front of them a few minutes later heading the opposite direction, and again twice more. Peter holds the door open for her when she finally gives up on her search.
"No one watching the back door?" he asks once she's back inside.
She shrugs. "Apparently not." She sounds surprised, but not entirely displeased. "I could call for pickup," she says, "but I think we're better off waiting till morning."
Peter's not going to argue the point. He's not in any particular hurry for her to make that call. He's glad to know she's not either.
-x-
They pass what's left of the night in the lobby; no one sleeps, but no one talks much, either. Peter sits on the grand staircase and taps a quiet rhythm on step and stair rail until the orange light fades with the breaking of day.
It doesn't quite keep the sound of his own thoughts at bay.
When he finally follows Olivia out of the theater's door and into the pale morning sun, the first thing he sees is a plane droning across the sky, the long cloud-like plume stretching out behind it tinted pink with the dawn. He wonders what ever became of that old toy plane from over there — over here — that he'd inadvertently brought home with him. His father had pulled it out of Peter's hands, and Peter had never laid eyes on it again.
He'd never cared enough to ask before.
They stand on the sidewalk, watching the early-morning traffic flow by in fits and starts; Olivia turns her head back and forth and lets out a hmm that Peter's got no idea how to interpret.
Walter turns around, looking back at the theater. He tugs restlessly at the cuff of one sleeve, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Olivia —"
"It's okay, Walter. It's going to be fine."
Peter glances up at the sky once more. The plane's flown on and disappeared, but the trail lingers on.
-x-
They grab a cab to the nearest station and hop a train from New York up to Boston. Nobody asks for a Show Me, and no one looks at Peter like he's breaking some kind of metaphysical taboo. Walter garners more than his fair share of second glances, muttering to himself and stopping to stare here and there along the way, but none of them are the looks Peter's used to seeing directed at his father. Admiration. Fear. Awe.
On the train, Peter snags a window seat without asking, and Olivia sits down next to him, trapping him between her and the rest of the world. That's probably highly symbolic, but he'd rather not think about that yet. He turns away, resting his cheek on his balled-up fist and staring out the window as the train pulls out.
He watches the city slide by, T-squared streets and soot-stained buildings stretching back and far away, until his fatigued body and mind lose the battle with the rhythm of the rails and he falls asleep.
-x-
When he wakes, the densely-packed big city blocks have given way to the trees and lawns and sailboat-dotted bays of what he assumes is Connecticut, even over here. The seat next to him is vacant now; Olivia's moved across the aisle and settled in beside Walter. Walter, for his part, is sitting very, very still, except for his hands. His hands are twisting back and forth, folding and unfolding a shiny tin-foil gum wrapper over and over and over again.
It's a detail that's oddly comforting, the sort of nervous habit Secretary Bishop would never have allowed himself to share.
Olivia's speaking softly, her hand resting on Walter's arm, and somehow Peter's sure they're talking about him. About what happens to him now.
What happens to him now probably involves a fair number of locks and misplaced keys. Peter was kidding himself to ever think otherwise. He wonders why, exactly, he made all of the choices he did, when at so many points he could have called it all off and avoided being stranded on the wrong side of a big honking quantum divide. Again.
If there's a God somewhere in the multiverse, Peter's pretty sure he's laughing right about now.
"But Olivia," Walter says, his voice climbing from the murmurs of a moment before, "You can't just let them —"
"Walter." Olivia's voice cuts over his sharply. "Not here. When we get back …" Her voice drops again and whatever else she says vanishes into the thunk-thunk-thunk of the train running on the track below.
Walter crushes the gum wrapper in his hand. Olivia sighs and sits back in her seat. She closes her eyes for a long moment, then turns to glance at Peter. She freezes when she sees him awake, her brows furrowing. Then her expression clears and she gives him a small, apologetic smile.
Good or bad, somehow Peter's life always comes back to her.
-x-
Peter hasn't seen Harvard in years; his memories are faded and jagged around the edges. Walking down the streets of Cambridge and through the greens squares and red brick buildings of the campus should be like a history book coming to life, but it turns out it's more surreal than that.
A history book wouldn't capture the rush and push of the wind as it blows leaves and litter here and there and tugs at the edges of fliers taped to light poles. Opening its covers wouldn't release the aroma of coffee and croissants drifting from the bakery at the corner or the city-sewer stench lingering near the storm drains. The pictures on the pages wouldn't be so unashamedly decorated with bright young people going about their lives without any idea of the darkness and danger that lurk only a quantum heartbeat away.
Harvard, Cambridge, all of Boston, perfectly preserved and undisturbed by the phantoms of Peter's past — that's hard to take in. But when he descends the stairs to the basement of the Kresge building and stands in the doorway of the lab that to Peter symbolizes his father's past life, whole and unchanged, Peter can almost hear the click as everything slides back into place.
He's still stuck in place listening to the echoes of a sound that never happened when Olivia pushes past him through the door. Her mouth opens on what Peter assumes is an explanation, but it's too late. She's already seen him.
Elizabeth. His mother.
For several long seconds, she stares right at Peter, and Peter stares right back. Her brow furrows, and she draws in a breath as if to speak before she turns away from him to face Olivia instead.
"I was so worried," Elizabeth says, putting her hand on Olivia's cheek. "What happened?"
Olivia purses her lips and gives a tiny shrug. "Let's just say that talent I've always had for stirring up trouble seems to be just as strong no matter what reality I'm in." Her words and her tone couldn't be any clearer if she'd held up a sign that said let's not go here yet, but her hand reaches up to clasp and squeeze Elizabeth's reassuringly. "But we're back in one piece."
"With an extra to spare, it seems," Elizabeth says softly.
Olivia nods. "My fault this time."
"I see."
In the hallway behind Peter, Walter hums a tune that seems familiar but that Peter can't quite catch. Walter's feet tap and shuffle a bit to the beat as he paces closer, coming to stand almost at Peter's back as the tune draws to an end.
"She missed you."
Peter's honestly not sure which of the women Walter means.
Walter nudges Peter's shoulder, but Peter can't seem to force himself to cross the threshold into this strange hybrid of past and future. After another nudge or two, Walter grunts, turns himself sideways, and slides by Peter and into the lab. He walks across the room and immediately starts to fiddle with one piece of equipment after another.
Elizabeth's eyes follow him as he goes. "He called," she tells Olivia, "about half an hour ago. He sounded a little tense." She squeezes Olivia's arm, then she straightens her shoulders and walks to Walter's side.
Olivia closes her eyes and breathes out long and slow before she rejoins Peter at the door. "I have to …" She plucks her phone from her pocket and holds it in front of her. "My boss isn't going to be particularly happy that I brought you back with us."
"Yeah." Peter nods and finally steps all the way into the room. "Didn't figure anyone much would be."
-x-
She's on the phone for a long time. At first, she paces back and forth along the far wall of the lab, well out of Peter's earshot; eventually, she enters the private office and pulls the door shut behind her.
When Peter looks away, he finds Elizabeth staring at the closed door. Walter, though, is staring right at Peter, a Petri dish clasped tight in his frozen hand. Peter meets Walter's gaze, one eyebrow raised in challenge, and Walter's eyes fall. The Petri dish drops to the counter with a clatter, and Walter starts to mutter under his breath at a rapid-fire pace. Elizabeth turns back to him and lays a hand on his arm. Her eyes flick to Peter before settling again on Walter, and she nods, her hand squeezing gently.
These people are nothing like the ones that have lived in Peter's memory all these years — the memories of a scared eight-year-old boy. He's not sure who these people are at all.
-x-
Olivia's phone has vanished again when she leaves the office, shoved back into her pocket with Peter's fate no doubt decided, at least for the short term. She crosses the room to stand still and quiet at Peter's side as he continues to consider the puzzle of the two people on the other side of the lab.
"She left him," he says at last. "On the other side. Said he didn't …." Peter shakes his head. He's not sure if he's talking to fill the emptiness or to answer the question he's sure her silence is asking. Maybe it doesn't matter. "Said he didn't need us anymore."
"They're not what you think," Olivia says in oblique reply.
They're not, if for no other reason than this man is nothing like Peter's real father. "Right now I don't think much of anything."
"That's fair," she says. "I don't know what you thought of them back then. After you went home." She turns to face him, and the look she fixes on him is so much like all those years ago that he can almost feel the room shrinking, contracting around them. "Peter, my mother died. And all I had left …."
She trails off, tipping her head and pursing her lips as though she's searching for the right words, but her shoulders tighten and her hands clasp into fists at her sides. "I don't know what would have happened to me without them," she continues at last. "They didn't have to take me in. They could have hated me for taking you away, for taking you home. But they didn't."
Peter takes a step back, away from the tension in her body and the fierceness in her eye. He doesn't know what he'd expected had happened to Olivia, but it wasn't this. It wasn't even more loss, wasn't taking his place with his family as some kind of surrogate. He has to remind himself that they'd never been his family, and that no Olivia he'd ever met would be anybody's stand-in.
Across the lab, Walter bends down to the counter, holding a new Petri dish in one hand and a swab in the other. He's speaking to Elizabeth as he draws the tip of the swab across the bottom of the dish, his body relaxed and his demeanor calm, as though the interlude of moments before had never happened. Elizabeth leans in and kisses the top of his head, and he glances up and smiles at her, childlike. She pats his shoulder and settles onto a stool nearby. When she looks up at Peter and Olivia, it's Olivia her attention settles on, Olivia who makes her brow crease and the fingers of one hand worry at the other.
Watching them now, it's like Olivia's shown him another universe all over again.
"My boss is sending in a team," Olivia says, and Peter nods.
Elizabeth shifts on the stool, running a hand through her hair.
"What happened to him?" Peter asks.
Olivia sighs. "He did that to himself."
"On purpose?" Olivia nods, and Peter decides to forgo the obvious question of how. Instead, he dives straight for the one that's probably impossible to answer. "Why?"
Olivia smiles, a halfhearted, lopsided expression that doesn't quite touch the sadness in her eyes. "Because he wanted to be a better man," she says after a few breaths of silence pass.
"Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy." Peter's words tumble out without thought, a lesson learned by rote, but Olivia's head swivels back to face him and she stares wide-eyed, like she's seen a ghost. "What?" he asks, curious.
"She taught me that," Olivia says, nodding her head at Peter's not-really mother.
Maybe it's not so impossible to answer after all.
Footsteps sound in the hallway behind them, faint at first but growing louder, echoing off the hard surface of walls and floor. Dread gathers in Peter's belly, tries to claw its way up and out, but he shoves it back down his throat. Straightening his shoulders, he turns to face the open door.
"It's going to be all right, Peter," Olivia says, standing still and silent at his side.
Peter doesn't answer. He offers no protest as he's escorted up the stairs and out of the building, one unidentified and somber-suited agent on either side.
Before he climbs into the back of the black Suburban — trouble here as much as there — he meets Olivia's eyes. She gives him one small, slow nod, then steps back and away.
The door swings shut with a thud.
