Part 7: Solace
Peter's lungs are shredding in his chest. He can barely breathe. It feels like his heart is pumping acid through his veins. But he keeps running anyway, ignoring the calls of disgruntled nurses telling him it isn't safe to run in a hospital. He doesn't care. Nothing about this day is right or real or sane. All he can do is keep running, keep moving, keep breathing, as he tries to make sense of the chaos.
Finally making it to the right floor, he sees her. In the waiting room. Sitting, staring at her hands.
"Astrid!" he calls to her.
At first, it is as if she didn't hear him. He slows to a jog, approaching the chair she is sitting in.
"Astrid?" His voice is softer now, breathless - his heart thundering as he takes panicked heaps of air inside his chest. "Astrid?" he pants again, touching her this time.
She draws away at the touch. Then she looks up at him. Her eyes are big and wet, shimmering under the garish fluoro lights.
She opens her mouth. But no words come.
He falls to his knees. Takes her hands in his, like a parent does for a child. "Jesus, Astrid," he breathes. "You're shaking."
"I don't know how…" She trails off for a moment, swallowing. "She was just there. She just stepped out of the tank, like she'd been hiding there this whole time."
"Astrid…"
"She just fell. I couldn't wake her up. I tried so hard, Peter. I couldn't wake her up."
"Astrid, it's OK."
"I didn't know what to do," she cries, tears hanging in her eyes, but not falling. "The medics said it was some kind of seizure, but nobody will tell me anything now."
It strikes him then that he's never seen Astrid cry before. No matter what the crisis, she has always shown true FBI agent determination, keeping her head up and asking "What can I do to help?" But not today. The sight of her missing friend crossing over and collapsing into a seizure in front of her, unable to be revived, had honestly scared her.
Astrid doesn't fall to pieces like he expects her to. It's like she's frozen, the tears building up inside her without her letting them fall. She's just numb, in total shock at what had happened. Her hands are still shaking.
He sits in the chair beside her and takes her in his arms. Cradles her like a little sister. With the familial care she's shown him and Walter every day over the past few years, that's practically what she is to him anyway. "It's OK, Astrid," he whispers into her hair. "You did everything right. It's a good thing you were in the lab when she came back. Nobody would have been able to call an ambulance for her otherwise. You were there. You did the right thing. It's OK."
She curls into him. Her fingernails scratch lightly at his shirt. He tells himself he's holding her to comfort her. He is. But he's also doing it because, despite how much he wants to believe he's handling this, he needs someone to hold, something to ground him, just as badly as she does.
Of course, he has questions for her, about Olivia. But he isn't ready to ask them, or hear the answers, and Astrid isn't ready to be pestered with things she doesn't know anything about. Not yet.
Peter gives Astrid a tissue to wipe her face and sighs. It's going to be a long night.
They say there are moments in life, where a tragedy shakes you to the core, when you look around you and see that everything you thought you knew was nothing but a hologram.
They also say that there are days, when you wake up in the morning, in the home you have always known, and you don't recognise anything. Not anything at all.
When those moments come, they don't come in a whirlwind of rage and chaos.
They come in the quiet. In the stillness.
It's late now, and a starless, black night has swallowed Boston whole. Olivia is still being looked over by the doctors. They won't let anyone see her until they find out exactly what was done to her on the other side. It's clear from the drugs in her body that they'd done something to her, that she was nothing more than a prisoner of war to them, and that Peter's father was responsible.
The thought makes him sick to his stomach. Since going with him to the other side, Peter has had a kind of quiet curiosity towards his true father, bordering on admiration. The power he has, his posture, the impeccable tidiness of his clothing, his relentless vision and the cold rigidness of his demeanour makes it seem impossible that he and the Walter that raised Peter are anything alike. Meeting him had made Peter wonder how different his life would have turned out if his real father had raised him, imagining how much more stable his childhood would have been. Two months ago, Peter was ready to re-establish himself in his true home, with his true father, even help him build that machine. The only things that stopped him were Olivia's plea, and a kiss.
Now, he looks back on that time and feels a deep and resounding shame. He had wanted to help his father then, to recover lost ground with him. Now, he wants to open up his veins and drain any trace of that man from his blood.
Because a true father and a decent human being would not torture anyone, let alone someone so important to his own son.
They are still waiting for details from the doctors on exactly what happened to Olivia. But Peter's sure that no matter how bad her torture was, it can't be worse than the things he's imagining in his head.
Or can it?
Knowing Walternate, Peter decides that despite the boundless cruelty of his imagination, reality will always outdo it. That's just the way these things go.
He wants to scream. Scream through clenched teeth until his lungs give out, fight with balled fists until he breaks bones. But there is no voice anymore. No way to move. Just stillness. And quiet.
Yes - he wants to scream. He would if he could. But you have to be able to breathe to scream.
There's a fine line between hell and here.
The air in the waiting room is viscous with the smell of sweat and ammonia. His hands are clammy. Through the night, the doctors have barely given them updates. People yelled at broken vending machines. Loved ones cried and whispered anxiously, waiting for news on other patients. Nurses chatted in hushed tones. Phones rang. Clocks ticked. Hours passed.
Peter has sleepwalked through it all.
He feels himself sink into his chair. He wants so badly to sleep, to drift off, to let go. Maybe if he did, he'd wake at home in his bed and discover that this whole thing has been just a dream.
But it's not a dream. He knows that.
When Broyles first told him about Olivia being back, the first thing he felt was joyous relief. It was like he was thrown up in the air, inertia keeping him suspended in the shock of it. But now he's hit the next part. The freefall.
What goes up must come down.
He feels like a man sliding down the sheer surface of a cliff, snatching and clutching at rocks and tangles of vines, and coming up empty-handed.
He wishes he'd hit rock bottom. Just to be relieved from the fall. But he knows after the mistake he's made, he doesn't deserve such mercy. This mistake - this foolish belief that she really was his Olivia, the fact that he'd invited her into his life, his arms, his bed – was something unfixable and unforgivable. With every kiss, every night out, every secret he told her, he had damned himself. He wasn't even sure if he wanted Olivia to forgive him.
Whether or not she does eventually forgive him, he'll never forgive himself. The greatest sin of a conman is to be conned. And now he'll never be able to look at himself the same way again. That much he knows was true.
"This is a nightmare," he mutters under his breath. "It has to be. I want to wake up."
He thinks he's saying these things to himself, until Astrid nods beside him and shifts a little closer, taking his hand delicately in her own, as words once again come up short.
He bows his head. Squeezes tight.
He's jolted awake when Astrid sits by him again. "Hey," he mumbles, wiping his eyes. "Have the doctors…"
"No. Not yet."
"Oh."
She runs a hand through her hair and sighs, handing him some food. "I picked this up from the cafeteria. You should eat."
Accepting the food, he gingerly tries to smile. "Sorry."
"For what?"
"You're always taking care of us Bishop boys. I should be getting you food."
"Don't worry about it," she says, starting to eat her own food.
He looks down at his meal and finds that he isn't hungry. But he's grateful for Astrid's consideration, so he forces himself to eat in calculated, deliberate bites. He tastes nothing.
"I just got off the phone with Walter," she says.
Oh. Walter. Peter had completely forgotten to check up on him. After the other Olivia escaped, the old man had become determined to keep working on the case, trying to figure out how they did it. This was the reason that Walter gave for not coming with him to meet Astrid at the hospital. But Peter knows that the real reason is that he hates hospitals, is utterly terrified of them, and that seeing Olivia in such a fragile state would surely break his heart. So Walter would wait until she was a little better to see her. Peter accepted this. Walter had come to care deeply for Olivia these past few years.
"How is he?" he asks.
"Pretty out of it. Mixed himself a nice cocktail of drugs I don't want to know about. I've got an agent looking after him."
"Thank you," he tells her sincerely. But then he sighs. "That's just how he copes, I guess."
"I wouldn't mind doing something similar," she admits sardonically. The dark tone is so unlike her. "I could probably use a drink."
"I didn't think you drank."
"I don't really. Only when the occasion calls for it."
He nods in understanding.
"You want to leave for a bit?" she asks him. "Get some air?"
This time he shakes his head. "I'm not leaving."
She shifts a little to face him. Her face is etched with concern for him, looking him over almost like a mother would. "Not even for half an hour? Just to get out, clear your head?"
"I'm staying," he insists quietly. He looks away. "I owe her that."
"Peter," she sighs. "It wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it?" he scoffs. "I got close to her. I noticed the differences. But I couldn't tell it wasn't her."
"None of us could."
"But I should have known. I spent every day with her, I went out with her, I shared secrets with her, I…" He stops himself before he goes further. Rubbing his eyes, he tells himself to keep breathing despite the weight on his chest. In. Out. In. Out again. "It should have been me," he murmurs then, barely above a whisper. "If anyone was going to tell it wasn't her, it should have been me."
"Peter…" Astrid says. But her voice trails off, and she leaves it there. There's nothing that can be said.
They sit in silence for a moment, but it feels like a day. At the same time, it feels like a second. The torturous act of waiting messes with your head that way.
"You know what's really ridiculous?" he scoffs, his head still in his hands. His eyes try to focus on the patterns of tiles on the floor, but his vision comes up blurry. "I thought I was actually getting it right for once. I honestly thought that I had her now, and that I was treating her right and everything was good. How much of a total fucking idiot does that make me?"
She doesn't answer.
He remembers a feeling he hasn't felt in so long. Not since his teenage years. That sensation of being destined for failure – the knowledge that he'd never do a good thing, that he'd never have a good thing, without royally fucking it up. He remembers girls like Nadya and Tessa, and how he'd come to them with the best of intentions but left their lives with a trail of destruction in his wake. With Olivia, it's been no different. The best intention, the harshest failure. That feeling is so clear to him again, here, now – that feeling that launches caterwauls at him from the inside that scream "I ruin everything I touch".
There isn't a woman in his life he hasn't done something to destroy in some way. Not even his mother.
He really isn't good for a damn thing. Olivia had helped him gain some focus, some purpose, some reason to turn his life around – but he was an idiot for thinking he wasn't just the same old asshole under all of that. That much is clear.
But Astrid doesn't blame him. She doesn't hurl abuse or lecture him on how he should have done better. Instead she just sighs, as if unsure what to do about any of this. It's strange. Astrid always has a next step, another plan. To see her rudderless and adrift is unsettling.
"Should we call her sister?" she asks him after a while.
"No. She wouldn't want that."
"How do you know?"
"We were on a case once and she told me so - the one where we were quarantined in the building with the virus. I told her that she should call Rachael to explain what was happening and she said no, she didn't want to worry her sister."
Astrid tries to smile. "Yep. That's Olivia," she says. "But shouldn't we call anyway? Rachael's her only real family, she needs to be here."
"Olivia can decide for herself when she wakes up."
If she wakes up, his brain scornfully reminds him.
Astrid fidgets with restless hands, looking around the sad state of the almost empty waiting room. Pretty much everyone else is working frantically on the case. It was depressing to think that Olivia had gone through hell for them, and they were the only two who could manage to show up for her. It seemed like a betrayal of the harshest kind.
But Peter would not betray her any more. He would stay in that damn waiting room every minute until she woke up. Because he owed her that. For God's sake, at the very least, he owed her that.
Astrid sighs. "If I were in hospital like this, I'd want all my people here." She said it as if she was talking to herself, wistfully, her tone bittersweet.
"You have a big family?"
He could have sworn he saw her smile, if only briefly. "Massive. Three brothers. Four sisters. A huge clan of cousins."
"Wow," he chuckles. "You the oldest?"
"The oldest girl. I've got an older brother though. Why?"
"You just seem like the type to be looking after everyone."
"Yeah, that was pretty much me. My parents must have been insane, having so many kids. The house was crazy, all of us running around. But it was good, I guess. We were all really close."
Peter smiles, just a little. It's nice, hearing her talk about her family. There had been times when she mentioned a brother or sister, or told a story of something funny her parents did, but apart from those occasional snippets he'd never really heard much about her family life – but conversations over bodies in the lab weren't exactly an ideal time to start cracking open old albums. He'd figured she was a home-grown girl, with all her care and patience with him and Walter. He can imagine her as a teenager, running the house while her parents worked, chasing after squealing tiny humans trying to order them into submission.
"I always wished I had siblings growing up," he confesses. "I only ever had my mom. Well, the woman I thought was my mom…"
Astrid shakes her head at him. "That woman raised you – alone, without Walter. She might not have been your mother, but she'll always be your mom."
He wants to smile. Astrid always had precise insight like that. She always knows exactly what to say.
"I didn't exactly make it an easy job for her," he admits sadly. "I've got a lot of regrets in my life, but the way I always caused trouble as a teenager ranks towards the top. Broke that woman's heart, I swear. She always tried so hard but I was just too angry at the world to care about being good for her, I guess. Maybe if I tried a little harder at school, helped out around the house and didn't get into so much trouble, she'd still be here."
"Peter, you can't think that way."
"Why? It's fucking true. Just like it's true that I should have done more for Olivia."
"Peter," she sighs, laying a hand on his shoulder and leaning into his line of vision. "You didn't know."
"Exactly."
He clenches his teeth, trying to decide whether to cry or beat the living shit out of something.
"I'm damned both ways," he mutters. "I can use the 'I didn't know' excuse as a reason for sleeping with her, but that excuse in itself damns me. If I was really her friend, if she was more than that to me, if I really gave a shit about her, then I would have noticed she was different in a heartbeat."
"Did you notice anything different about her?"
He swallows. Runs a hand over his face. "Of course I did," he says. "Our relationship wasn't what I expected. That much was obvious. But, I don't know… I guess I thought that might not be such a bad thing. She seemed so happy. I though us being together was making her that way. So I didn't say anything. I brushed away my concerns. Because it was so incredible to see Olivia happy, Astrid. It was something beautiful. And now…"
"Now…?"
"Now I know that the whole thing was a lie, that I let myself be fooled so easily, that I betrayed my Olivia." He stops, rubbing his bleary eyes with the heels of his palms. Tries to swallow. Looks up to Astrid, his eyes hopeless, their blue shades lost to grey. "I'd never known a pain like this," he tells her. "Have you ever felt like you could burn the world down?"
She swallows back tears herself, but keeps her head up the whole time. "Yeah. I have." Astrid takes his hand then. This time, it is his that are shaking. "One day, Peter, she will forgive you. She will. And after that day, you can start again."
He scoffs. "Do you really think that's possible?"
"Yeah. I do."
"How can you be so sure?"
He feels her squeeze his hand with a subtle pressure, faint enough to soothe the ache inside him. "Because even after everything you've gone through as friends, you two care too much about each other to simply let go without a fight. In every case we've ever worked, you've put yourselves on the line to protect each other. I know how long you've cared about her, Peter. Olivia has always cared about you, too. She'd do anything for you. She'd follow you into hell."
Her last statement is a punch in the gut. He feels himself start to salivate, and bile claws up the back of his throat.
"I know that, Astrid," he mutters, self-loathing icing his every word. "I've led her there."
The sun is just beginning to light the sky when a doctor finally comes to brief them. By this point, Broyles has managed to get here. The doctor explains that Olivia was given a lot of drugs, seemingly for the purposes of being experimented on. He reached this conclusion because the drugs they found in her system were unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Knowing these substances are either Cortexiphan or new concoctions from the other side, the agents bite their tongues.
The doctor says there's no significant damage to her organs. She just needs to rest up. Sleep it all off. They'll monitor her for a couple of days to make sure the drugs don't do anything harmful to her body. The news is a welcome relief.
Broyles has gone to brief the department about Olivia's condition, leaving Peter and Astrid in the hallway, lost for words. The doctor says she's still asleep, but they can start visiting her. One in the room at a time.
"You go," Astrid says.
Peter forces his fatigued brain to think about it. His overwhelming sense is that he doesn't want to. The guilt sags in his belly, cementing his feet to where he stands. He can't possibly go in there.
But at the same time, that's all he wants. To go in there and hold her and tell her he messed up, but it's OK now, because she's safe, and he'll do better this time, he swears. He'll never hurt her again. Not ever. And they'll be happy.
God, he wishes it were that simple.
"You should go," Astrid repeats.
"Don't you want to see her first?" he asks. Say yes, he prays.
"I can wait." She lays a gentle hand on his arm. "It'll be OK, Peter. She's home and she's safe. We just have to be grateful for that today. Tomorrow we can worry about the rest."
He shakes his head, staring at the floor. "What do I say?" he asks. "If she wakes up, what do I say? You've got to tell me what to do Astrid."
"I can't," she tells him apologetically. "Just…let her rest for now. The explanations will come, but not today. Alright?"
"Alright," he replies.
The early morning light stings his eyes. He realises than that Astrid, like a true friend, has sat with him in that waiting room for half a day, making him eat, pestering doctors about Olivia's condition, calling to check up on Walter, listening to his guilty rants. She's the best listener he knows. Every day she does so much to help him and his father, never taking credit for any of it. And now she's making yet another sacrifice, giving up the chance to see her sick friend because she knows he needs to see her more.
If he ever had a godsend in his life, Astrid was it.
They exchange no words as he steps towards her, thanking her with a warm, brotherly hug. She accepts him tenderly, like she wishes she could take his pain away. She doesn't let go until he's ready. When he does pull away, she reassures him with a tight smile. A you're gonna be fine smile.
There's nothing more to say now. He turns, dragging his heavy feet across linoleum floors until they carry him to Olivia's room, where he watches her sleep as the sun rises, rehearsing every word he'll say when she wakes. He goes through a hundred different speeches in his head, but they all seem contrived.
He doesn't know what will happen next. As he takes her in - her hair still red and bruises tainting her pale skin - he realises there's nothing he can do now but wait for her to wake up, hoping desperately in vain that his sins will not catch up to them.
Please review! Coming up next…Olivia
