So this is it! I finally finished the story! Woohoo! I'm posting the last 3 chapters in one go. I hope it was worth the wait because I have another story already started and this demanded to be finished before posting the next one. I'm sure you guys and gals (are there any guys on here?) like it when stories have endings, right? :P This might get kind of angsty, cuz i just love putting characters in danger and yanking them out at the last second...

As always, we scribes love feedback, good and bad, they're like crack only without the side effects!

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Part 7

The zip ties were immediately snipped off Olivia's wrists and a blue NYPD jacket appeared a minute later. Olivia slipped it on relishing the warmth. It was three sizes too big for her and smelled a bit like cigarettes, but she didn't care. Broyles led her to the side, out of ear shot of everyone and they sat on a bench together.

"Are you okay?" he asked her sincerely.

She nodded, rubbing her wrists. She was pretty damn sure she wasn't okay, but she wasn't about to admit that right now. "Yeah."

Broyles wasn't convinced she was telling the whole truth, but they didn't have the luxury of time. He had a million other things he needed to deal with, like what exactly was he going to tell the media and if there was going to be retaliation from the other side. Dr. Bishop had eventually detailed the large-scale effects of the blight around Boston, but that only left him with ninety-nine hundred other questions that needed answers.

"Olivia, what happened here tonight?"

"Honestly? I don't know." She motioned upwards, "This statue... is from the other side. I saw it there earlier." She wasn't going to tell Broyles how unsure she was of what side she currently inhabited. How would she know? Could they all be actors playing parts only to capture her again? How could a whole statue, a whole island, have been exchanged? It was an impossible feat, wasn't it? It was one thing to send over a car or a building... The energy it would have taken, the effects of it all on this side and theirs... It was enough to leave her brain a little cracked, fried and scrambled. And a mental crack-up at this point in time was not advisable.

Broyles let a particularly loud helicopter fly over them before answering. "That's what I was afraid of."

"What?" she snapped around to look at him.

"The moment I saw it, I was afraid this statue was from the other side. Dr. Bishop came back two days ago. Alone. He told me as much as he could. He also said that as they opened the doorway to come back through, Peter pushed you away at the last second. Now why would he do something like that?"

So that's what had happened. She swept her hands over her weirdly colored bangs, already hating them because they were always getting in the way. Her alter-self must have tried to take her place after the confusion outside the opera house. Peter must have somehow known. And why did it not feel like two days had passed?

"That wasn't me. There are versions of us on the other side-"

"Dr. Bishop informed me of that, too."

"I met my version. I had to assume her identity in order to warn Peter. Something happened outside the opera house, I... I was knocked unconscious. When I woke up, I was being held prisoner. She must have tried to come back with them and infiltrate our side. And Peter must have realized it. Sir, what happened here?"

"Witnesses saw a bright flash of light, boats tossed around, power outages here and in the city. Not to mention the bronze-colored elephant in the room. Do you know what kind of a story I'm going to have to tell the papers? Because I don't." He sighed loudly.

She couldn't help but laugh at him, a short, hard laugh. "You're worried about what you're going to tell the newspapers? What you should be worried about is if an alternate Walter Bishop, an evil, semi-sane Water Bishop, whose son was kidnapped twenty-five years ago, is running around loose!" She shook her head at him again and stood up. What in blazes were they doing sitting on a bench chatting as if the fucking Statue of Liberty hadn't just been plucked from an alternate universe by unknown forces!

"Walternate—the other Walter Bishop- was the one holding me captive. He may be on this side, right now. Peter may be here, too. We need to turn this place upside down." She turned on her heels and began walking towards the building.

"Hold on a second, Dunham!" Broyles shouted after her, easily catching up. "You're saying an alternate version of Walter Bishop may be here?" That's exactly what I don't need right now, he remarked to himself. This whole situation couldn't get much worse...

"Yes! You need to alert everyone here. Put out their descriptions, we need to do a systematic sweep of this building and the surrounding area."

"Agent Dunham... Olivia, nobody's getting off this island without me knowing it. And there's enough manpower here to fight an army. You are in no condition to be conducting a search after what you've been through. The FBI, NYPD and every other government agency available is sweeping this island-"

"With all due respect, sir, do any of them really know what they're dealing with? Because I do," she said stubbornly.

"You have no weapon and you are too close. And I'm officially ordering you to stand down!"

"And I'm officially declining to follow your orders," they were almost standing toe-to-toe when an FBI agent chose that inopportune moment to interrupt their little chat.

"Sir! I think you need to see something!"

"What is it?" both Broyles and Olivia turned together and shouted at the agent, startling him.

To his credit, he didn't flinch. "We've found something you should take a look at."

...X...

Olivia's apprehension was building as she walked through the dark corridors again, following Agent Harrison's lead back into the building she had only tried to escape minutes or hours earlier. On the way down into the depths of the old military building, Broyles radioed a description of Peter and Walter. If found, they were instructed to take them quietly into custody and notify him immediately.

They came upon a guard posted outside a room who nodded at Harrison. Harrison led them inside.

"What we've found here is beyond anything I've ever seen," he spoke gravely as he took his flashlight out and swept it around the room.

They took in all the details they could see with the meager light. Olivia noticed a framed drawing on the wall that matched the one the Observer left for her, but it appeared much older. She studied it for a moment, a sense of dread in her stomach. The light swept around and finally rested on the frighteningly large machine from the drawing. It was as huge and evil looking as Olivia thought it would be in real life. That sense of dread settled hard in the pit of her stomach.

"Can I see the flashlight?" She took the light and edged toward the machine, trying to see any other details. She was looking for something but she would only know what it was if, and when, she found it. She looked at Broyles. "This is the machine. This is what we crossed over to warn Peter about."

Broyles didn't look happy. Things had gone from bad to worse. "Do not touch this device," he commanded Harrison. "Do not power it on. Do not let anybody else into this room. I want as many agents as you can spare down here with weapons to guard it until we can get this place secure."

"Yes sir. I have a few agents on their way already."

"Good. When is the power going to get turned back on?" Broyles demanded.

"Uh, we're not sure, yet. The layout of the building is very different than the specs the city had on file. Con-Ed is sending over some technicians and equipment as we speak. It's going to take some time."

"Great," Broyles muttered. "Time is what we don't have."

"Do you mind telling me what you think is going on here, sir? I mean, this is more than a little unusual. And what are we going to tell the media, they're going to have a field day."

"That's for me to worry about right now. Your job is to keep this room secure. All of our lives potentially depend on it."

Olivia had been listening to their conversation with one ear as she continued to scan the room. There was a bank of consoles with schematics on them. The drawings matched the device she had seen in Peter's apartment. Three iterations of "wave syncs". She remembered what Peter told her, that it was a power supply given to him to 'take a look at' by his father. His newly found son only a few days home and he's ready to hook him up to some doomsday device. She wished on her mother's grave and Peter's grave that they would find Walternate because she was personally going to interrogate him and it wouldn't be pretty.

He would see the real Agent Olivia Dunham, not the cowering, pleading, frightened girl she had appeared to him in that cell.

Broyles' radio beeped.

"Broyles."

"We have one of your unsubs in custody: male, approximately six foot, dark hair, late 20's/early 30s."

Olivia looked at Broyles, whose features were unreadable in the dim lights. But he was looking at her. She hurried over as he responded.

"What's the subject's location?" Broyles said into the radio.

"Electrical room. Second sub-basement. Con-Edison's in there now starting repairs. Subject is secured, paramedics have been called."

"Paramedics?" Olivia was now very concerned.

Broyles waved his hand to shut her up and spoke into the radio. "You boys didn't do anything to one of my agents, did you?"

"No sir, he was in pretty bad shape when we showed up."

"You need to take me there," she said urgently, her gaze swinging between Broyles and Harrison. She tried to disguise her fear and her need to see with her own eyes that Peter was okay behind an air of professional detachment. She was good at that. Had lots of practice over the years, but after the events of the last few days, she felt it starting to crack. "I need to speak to him. He's probably the only one who knows what happened here."

Yeah, Olivia, that's the only reason...

Harrison stared back at her, waiting for Agent Broyles to weigh in on the matter. He really had no idea who this woman was, only that Broyles had allowed her to tag along after exchanging some heated words with her. But she walked and talked like a senior FBI agent and bossed around a big-wig like Broyles, so he could only speculate what the whole story was. And she looked like she'd been through the wringer and spit out the other side, maybe a little on the edge. Broyles was fighting with what he really wanted to say.

"Agent Harrison, please escort Agent Dunham wherever she needs to go. I'll coordinate things here."

"Thank you, sir," Olivia told him and immediately left the room.

Broyles leaned in close to Harrison and pulled on his arm, "And no matter what happens, don't let her out of your sight."

...X...

After finding out how to get to the building's electrical room, they descended the stairs again and emerged into a hallway. Portable lights had been set up farther down and a slew of official-looking, uniformed people were entering and exiting. With her goal in sight, she sped up, but Harrison grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

"Hey, hold up. An NYPD jacket will only get you so far. Let me do the talking before they throw you to the floor and haul you away."

She was at his mercy and she hated to admit it. It seemed as though she was always at somebody's mercy lately, her control slipping away ever so slightly each time. She gathered the fractured pieces of her FBI facade and nodded to him. She had no ID, no gun, nothing to say she should be allowed to poke around this crime scene other than Broyles' word and now this agent's. She didn't need to be locked up for the third time today and so she let him lead the way.

Harrison walked up, showed his badge, spoke in low tones to the officer guarding the door, looked Olivia's way a couple of times, and finally they were allowed in. She saw the technicians, heard them arguing with each other about melted wires and blown transformers, tools banging noisily, instruments squawking and beeping.

And then she saw him- sitting upright on a stretcher, a paramedic trying to take his blood pressure- and it all faded away.

He looked horrible. His skin was pale in the harsh spot lights, but his cheeks were scarlet red. One wrist was handcuffed to the stretcher, but it was probably just for show. He didn't look like he was going anywhere. In a few strides, she was at his side, everything else forgotten for the moment.

"Peter?" It was almost a whisper. His eyes were closed and she had no idea if he could hear her and he made no movement.

"He's been out of it since I got here," the medic at his side told her.

She placed her hand on top of his handcuffed one and it radiated heat like a fire.

He heard the voice, it didn't blend in with the other voices and sounds he'd been trying to tune out for the last few minutes without any luck. And somebody was tugging on his arm, but he didn't really have the energy to see who it was. But that voice... only Olivia could say his name like that. Only she could contract his name down to one syllable. One syllable that told him he'd better open his eyes, better look at her, better listen to what she was saying or she might put a bullet in his brain solely on the basis that she felt like it. And the 'other one' never spoke his name like that, she was all sneers and teeth and perkiness. But he had to check, so he willed himself to open his eyes. His mind was sharp, but his body was dull and lifeless. So when his eyes finally complied with the orders sent from his brain, he saw her there looking worried and bedraggled.

The person before him had brown hair with bangs and he panicked slightly.

"'Livia?" Maybe it was the other one, trying to gain his trust again...

"Yeah. It's me."

He needed a little more proof. And when he was able to get it out, his voice sounded thin to his own ears. "First time we met... where'd we meet?"

Of course he was suspicious, she thought. Who knew what kinds of lies he'd been told so far by people that looked like those he trusted.

"Iraq. Baghdad, Iraq."

He struggled to keep his eyes open, but this was enough to allay his fears. The other Olivia couldn't have known that. The other Olivia, had she been up and about, probably would have just punched him by now anyways. Especially after what he did to her. He felt slightly sick thinking about it. It hadn't been Olivia, but in his mind's eye, it was and he still couldn't get it out. Not even 10,000 volts could erase the sound of her skull cracking against the tile.

Olivia was looking into his eyes and then scanning him up and down. After what he'd been through, he thought maybe he might look a little charred. Crispy. Deep fried. Because that's kind of what he felt like. A deep-fried State Fair twinkie, crispy on the outside and hot molten goo on the inside.

"'Livia," he sounded relieved and gave her a tired smile.

She touched the side of his face, it too was red hot and he leaned into it for a second, closing his eyes.

"What happened?" she asked, afraid to know...

Her hand on his cheek felt so good, so cool and comforting and he wanted to fall asleep against it. But then she pulled it away a little too quickly.

"About to ask you the same thing..." He looked back at her.

She was trying to hide it, but she looked worried, stressed, panicky, even. And Olivia Dunham almost never looked this panicky as long as he'd known her. He wondered what she had been through since he saw her last outside the opera house. He wanted to know.

"Was trying to bust us out of here." A wave of nausea hit him but he swallowed a couple of times and it went away. His arms burned, his face burned, his whole body felt like it was burning up. "Guess it worked."

"Well whatever you did, it worked. We're back on our side."

He opened his eyes again and perked up.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. What did you do?" She almost didn't want to know...

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure now."

"Hooked that thing up-" he tried to give a small nod in the direction of the techs who were busy scratching their heads around the main transformer. "-made a wish, did the hokey pokey... Don't really remember..." his voice was getting fainter the more he talked and he barely opened his eyes. Olivia looked over in that direction and spied the black box on the floor. The one he had shown her in his apartment. Damn him!

"Is that the device Walternate gave you?" She grit her teeth and didn't want to be mad, but she was. "Why would you risk yourself like that, Peter?"

"Modified it," he pleaded with his voice for her not to be mad. "Had to get you out. Had to get us both out of here. What else was I s'posed to do?" It took a lot out of him to get all that out. He didn't realize how exhausting talking could be.

She looked away from him. How could she be mad at him, he had moved a small island across universes for her! But she WAS mad, because he could have died. Still could die from the looks of him. She would gladly have stayed on the other side with him if THAT was going to be the outcome of all this. Tears started pooling in her eyes, turning him into a dark blurry shape. She was scared for him and for herself and for whatever was going to happen next because she had no control over anything any more. In the span of a few short weeks and hours and minutes, her world had gone to hell just as Peter's world had gone to hell. And if he didn't make it... She couldn't even fathom it. They were in this together, fate had brought them together for whatever business it needed them for and he couldn't leave her alone now. He couldn't!

"'Liv..." he pleaded as the tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. This public display of emotion was so unlike her. She didn't realize how much he wanted to reach out to her right then, but he just didn't have it in him. And seeing her like this and knowing he was responsible for it all in so many ways, made her sadness even more crushing. Made everything that had happened so crushing. He had caused so much heartache for everyone around him and he just wanted to make it right. And to not be able to let the one person he cared for in all the universe- both universes!- know how much he was sorry for it all... He just needed to touch her, hold her hand, stroke her cheek and everything would be okay. He was sure of it. But he had no strength to even move a finger.

In Olivia's muddled state, she didn't realize the EMT was speaking to her.

"-got to get him to a hospital. He's running a high temp. He's fairly stable so we should go now," he said.

Olivia nodded her head, blinked away her emotions as much as she could. Even though Peter's eyes were barely open, she could see they never moved from hers.

"Are you riding along? We're taking him to University Hospital," the paramedic said to her. He had been a mute witness to the whole scene and he didn't need to ask if they knew each other.

"Yes," Olivia responded automatically, tucking her hair behind her ears. Broyles had things under control and he had basically told her to get out. And somebody really needed to ride along and make sure Peter was okay. Maybe she would listen to her boss for a change...

But would the doctors know how to help Peter? Sure, they knew what to do, they were trained professionals, but they wouldn't know the whole story: that he had 'hopped universes' and used a strange type of technology that might be killing him. She couldn't exactly tell them all that, they might admit HER for observation. And not knowing all the facts, could she trust them to make an accurate diagnosis? When she thought about it, there was only one place to go. And only one person who would know what to do. Her heart was telling her it was the right thing, if her brain was telling her not so much.

"Wait..." she touched the EMT's arm as she followed him out. "We have to take him to Boston."

"Boston?" He looked at her like she'd grown a third head.

"Yes, Boston."

"This ain't a taxi service, lady. We'll take him to University hospital, get him looked at, and you can arrange it all from there."