NIGHT AND DAY
She is standing in front of the door to Dr Bishop's Harvard lab, trying hard to ignore the trepidation she feels at having to be back here, after all that has happened. She frowns when she realizes she is fidgeting with the button of her jacket. Two students walk by and she absently looks up, catching them sizing her up. When their eyes reach hers, she raises an eyebrow and grins cockily at them, making them turn red. Confidence moderately restored, she pushes into the lab.
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
Ella Fitzgerald is singing from one of the offices to the side, and Gene is contentedly nosing the hay in her room. She can smell bacon cooking from the back, and so quietly makes her way there. Walter is telling somebody the tricks to making banana bread just the way they do in the shops. When he hears her footsteps, the old man turns.
"Olivia-" but he stops abruptly, and his welcoming smile quickly changes into a furious snarl. "You!" then he is flying at her with a spatula.
"Dr Bishop!" Liv yells, jumping back and tripping over a stack of books on the floor. "Hey, stop!"
"Walter!" faster than he'd ever moved in his life, Agent Lee wraps his arms around Walter's middle, barely holding him back from beating Olivia with his wooden spoon. How is he going to report this to Agent Broyles? "Dr Bishop, why- What is going on?"
Astrid walks in to Walter screaming incomprehensible abuse to an Olivia that is on all fours on the floor with books scattered all around her. Agent Lee, his glasses askew on his face, is doing all he can to stop the mad scientist from attacking her.
"Walter! What's going on?" she echoes Lincoln. "I'm sure Olivia didn't mean to trip on your books, I'll clean it all up. Now stop it!"
"It's not Olivia! She's not Olivia!" Walter screams, gesturing at the woman who has managed to finally stand. "What have you done to our Olivia this time?"
The blonde woman rubs her butt, smooths down her hair, and adjusts her jacket before replying. She flicks a glance at Astrid, but maintains her attention at Walter. "She was attacked last night. Here. Your side. Then somehow she crossed over to my- She's currently in hospital over there, receiving the best care our side has to offer. I'm here to find out who attacked her, and why."
"Olivia was attacked?" Agent Lee lets Walter go. "Who-"
"It was that man's shapeshifters!" Walter cries, as Astrid takes the spatula from him. "She never came last night. Agent Tim and I waited and waited. You! You left her there, alone, where he can get to her quicker!"
"Lincoln is with her," Liv says shortly, mouth twitching and annoyance briefly flashing across her eyes. "And my mother."
"But is she okay? What happened? Was she badly hurt?" Astrid puts herself between Liv and Walter. "Can she be transferred back here?"
"It's probably best if she just stays there until she recovers. It shouldn't take too long," Liv can feel herself starting to calm down. She'd forgotten how this side's Astrid had that effect on the people around her. She smiles at the woman appreciatively.
Walter, still muttering about shapeshifters and Mata Haris, walks around the counter and turns the makeshift stove off.
"Was it shapeshifters that attacked her?" Agent Lee asks, wiping his glasses with a blue handkerchief from his pocket. Without his glasses, and his suit, he could be her Lincoln. "What purpose could they have from taking her out?"
"Well, she's Olivia," Astrid shrugs. And even Liv can see how that pretty much covers it.
"She'd been hit in the head," Liv gestures to her own head, remembering all the blood. She tries to contain a shiver of revulsion. Not pleasant to see yourself all bloody and barely hanging on to life. "She'd also been shot. Left shoulder," to Walter, she continues, hoping he'd answer. "How did she manage to cross over?"
"Are you spying for him again?"
Astrid sighs exasperatedly, "Walter, enough. Please?"
"You and Olivia are more than two different sides of the same coin. I theorize that because of that and her latent abilities-"
"Abilities?" Agent Lee frowns in puzzlement. "What abilities?"
"Oh, didn't you know?" Liv smirks. "You work with a bona fide superhero. I'm sure there'll be comic books about her one day."
Walter ignores them both and continues, "-at the moment of greatest danger, she simply... moved down that line that connects her essence with yours, and was there, where you were."
"Huh," Liv nods, only vaguely understanding. Then turning more serious, unbuttons her jacket. "And contrary to your belief, Dr Bishop, that tech you recovered from a shapeshifter doesn't belong specifically to us, at least not from any of the usual recognizable sources. There is somewhat of a similarity in its design to the Machine, and Col. Broyles has assigned some of our science and tech personnel to work quietly on it."
"And you trust those people?" Agent Lee looks at her guardedly.
"We've got to trust someone, sometime," Liv shrugs, remembering her conversation with the other Olivia about it. "If they prove to be untrustworthy..."
"I'm going to call Agent Broyles," Astrid walks away.
"Hurry and do that, dear," Walter calls after her. "Then let's have breakfast."
Liv isn't sure if she's invited to the meal, but Walter, still glaring somewhat, points her to a small stack of plates and beakers with Gene's milk.
Under A Blanket Of Blue
Someone's drawing circles on the back of her hand. It's sending tiny tingles up her otherwise numb arm. She realizes she has been trying to turn her hand to catch the fingers for some time now, but her hand isn't paying her any attention.
Olivia frowns, "Peter?"
"Lincoln," he says softly. "But if you keep calling me Peter, I just might consider changing my name, though Peter Lee doesn't nearly have the same awesome ring to it as Lincoln Lee."
Olivia smiles. Of course. Lincoln. She turns her head and opens her eyes slowly. He's sitting at her bedside, looking pale and tired. His hair looks to be spiky more from having run his hand through it in frustration rather than product. She wonders at that. "What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you to wake up," he promptly replies.
"Oh," she licks her lips in confusion. "But why- Why aren't you in bed?"
A strangled splutter comes from the corner of the room behind Lincoln. Olivia shifts to get a better look as Lincoln slowly shakes his head. She winces at the dull throb of pain from her left shoulder, but freezes as the other man in the room walks over to her bed. "Charlie."
"Hello," this Charlie has a scar down his left cheek. His grin is more irreverent, but the teasing glint in his eyes is the same. "Am I interrupting something?"
Lincoln snaps something at him, but suddenly, the memory of the attack is streaming into Olivia's consciousness. She gulps for air as it all happens again, the chase and the fight, the gun coming down to smash into her head. She twists her hand from Lincoln's and reaches for her head. Something is wrapped around it. Panicking, she clumsily tries to rip the bandages off. Her left shoulder burns, and that arm is worse than the other.
Charlie calls out something to someone outside the room, while Lincoln grabs her hand and mutters soothing words that are, for the moment, unfathomable to her. The shapeshifter in her memory aims her own gun at her. Off to the side of the dark courtyard, the bald man in grey watches. "Help. Help me!"
Then everything goes fuzzy. A monitor above her head echoes the rapid beating of her heart. A nurse peers down at her, a syringe in his hand. She's in hospital. In the other universe. A new kind of terror turns her cold as she recollects her previous abduction, and of the people in white injecting different kinds of torture into her blood stream. She fights anew, and Lincoln barely avoids a fist.
Security runs into the room to help contain her, closely followed by a woman with three cups of tea.
"What's happening? What's wrong?" Marilyn Dunham's anxious voice cuts through the alarms, the brisk medical discussion between the nurses and doctor over her, and Lincoln pleading for her to settle down.
Olivia looks at the end of her bed, eyes wild, gasping for breath. There, the woman stands - fading blonde hair, blue eyes full of concern. "Mom?"