Ruby Slippers

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Fringe, just the thoughts in my head.

Rating: T (violence and mildly suggestive situations)

Summary: There's no place like home – a journey both within and without as Peter and Olivia find their way back to each other.

Spoilers: Post-ep to Over There 1 & 2

Author's Notes: Sorry for the repost. Not sure if it was a problem with my browser, but I couldn't seem to fix a glitch in the chapter any other way. I didn't know ff was going to treat it like a new chapter. Okay, you know how I said that chapter 7 would be the end? Well, apparently my muse had other ideas. I was banging my head against a wall, trying to wrap everything up in 8-12 pages and just couldn't do it. Then my beta and sbz both said "why end it there?" So, armed with a renewed sense of plot, I ploughed ahead. Now, it looks like there will be 10 chapters in total. Thank you to both of them for freeing me up from my writer's block. By the way, don't let this one's subtitle fool you.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with this and especially those who've taken the time to share your impressions with me. It means a lot to know you're enjoying the ride. I'm certainly enjoying writing it. I hope you are willing to hang on a little longer.

Thanks, as always, to Joy (molamola), my beta extraordinaire! Thank you for 'playing through the pain' to get this done. You are truly remarkable.


Chapter 7

"Ding, dong, the witch is dead."

The slow, steady beep of the cardiac monitor offered an almost soothing counterpoint to the erratic rhythm of his own heart. They'd been here before. The sense of déjà vu was so pervasive that Peter found himself biting down on the inside of his cheek, hard, at intervals nearly as regular as her breathing just to remind himself that he wasn't dreaming.

Olivia was home. She was safe and he was never letting her out of his sight again.

Getting from the lab to the hospital had happened without him really registering the transition. Peter didn't know how long he had stayed on the floor, huddled at Gene's feet cradling Olivia, before the sharp sound of hurried heels against linoleum had echoed through the musty stillness. Astrid had appeared beside them then, phone already pressed to her ear, calling for an ambulance.

He had no idea what had prompted her to return to the lab so late at night, but he was grateful for the young agent's quiet competence then because he'd been only this side of functional since Olivia had simply appeared in Gene's stall like a gift under a Christmas tree. It was as though his mind was stuck, caught in some endless feedback loop, circling incessantly around what had been unimaginable less than six hours earlier.

Olivia had found her way back to them.

The paramedics had to practically pry them apart. Even once he'd relinquished his hold, Peter had refused to go very far, remembering with painful clarity how things had played out the last time he'd let Olivia disappear through hospital doors. So he'd held firm, his dark scowl quickly cowing any attempt to send him away. The ER staff had finally relented, stuffing him into a cramped corner, wedged between a crash cart and a narcotics cabinet, standing helpless as they barked questions at him for which he had no answers. Each new question had only fed the ice solidifying in his veins as his ever-active mind conjured up scenario after scenario that could account for her lacerated feet, scorched fingertips and severe dehydration.

His newly-returned nightmares would have fodder for years.

When he'd first dragged her out of the hay and into his arms, Peter had assumed that Olivia's injuries weren't too serious; he'd assumed wrong. Although it thrummed steadily now, Peter would never forget the terrifyingly rapid heartbeat that had cut through the din of the treatment room as the hospital staff raced to stabilize her. All he could do was watch, useless, as her neurons seemed to fire at random, each twitch of her body a sharp stab to his own heart.

He should've figured it out sooner.

And have done what, exactly? Unlike the woman in front of him, he couldn't just walk between worlds like passing through a curtain. Even once he'd discovered the truth, he'd been unable to help her, impotent, standing on the wrong side of the looking glass while the woman he loved fought her way home on her own. Some knight in shining armour he was.

Guilt hung heavy like an albatross around his shoulders, dragging him down into the pit of self-loathing he was so handily creating for himself. He systematically catalogued the visible signs of her trauma, wishing for the umpteenth time that he could've been there for her, that he might have shielded her from some of the blows. The hint of a grim smile tugged at his lips. Even in self-flagellation, Peter was being realistic. No matter how much he wanted to protect her, Olivia would always throw herself into the fray, and if he was being truly honest with himself, Peter would admit that it was one of the many things he loved about her.

A tiny whimper escaped her lips, drawing his focus back outward. The peace of a restful sleep was gone, her brow furrowed as she fought, yet again, with all that sought to destroy her. However, this time things were different. This time, he wasn't useless.

'Peter, help her ... help her calm down.'

This time, he knew how to help. Mindful of her injuries, Peter edged closer, carefully slipping his hand between her bandaged fingers, offering the only anchor he knew. All he could do now was wait.


She was hurtled back into consciousness by her head slamming into an unyielding steel floor. Blinking back the bright stars of agony exploding behind her eyes, Olivia grappled with her spinning mind and tried to take stock of her surroundings.

She was still alive; she hadn't been expecting that. Her shoulders ached from her arms being stretched behind her, wrists burning from the constant friction from what she was certain was a pair of handcuffs. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the stark interior of a utility van came into focus, the rhythmic thrum of road noise now noticeable through the static in her ears. They must truly plan to send her back to the other side and she wasn't sure if she shouldn't consider that a fate worse than death.

A week ago, she never could've imagined the life she'd been thrown into. A week ago, she was doing her job, trading affectionate barbs with Charlie and Lincoln and coming home to a man who loved her, confident in her place in the world. A week ago, she would never have thought that she would be risking it all to stop a war she hadn't even known existed. She could've never imagined that she'd make the choice to leave everyone she cared for behind, and pin her hopes at stopping some potential apocalypse on this dark, haunted version of herself and the motley crew of law enforcement and lunatics who loved her enough to have her back.

She was going to miss having that kind of back-up. The enormity of her decision was only now setting in, pressing steadily against her chest, threatening to crush her completely. She was well and truly alone … and if she didn't do something soon, she was going to die alone.

Carefully, she edged her gaze towards the driver's seat, releasing a tiny breath of relief when it became clear that her captor hadn't noticed her change in status. The hum of the road beneath her roared louder for a moment and she slid a few inches along the floor as the vehicle banked into a turn.

Time was running out.

Desperately, she cast her eyes around the stark interior of the van, searching for something, anything, she could work with. Despair and resignation twined around her throat, choking off what was left of her hope when she spotted them: three drywall brads bouncing around in the gutters of the floor panel.

Sending up a tiny prayer of thanks to the contractor who'd owned this van at some point, Olivia gingerly rolled herself over, mindful of the rear-view mirror, until her back was to her prize. Easing her aching body slowly, she shuffled soundlessly backwards, tracing every inch of the dirty panels with her hands.

Suddenly a sharp pinprick to her palm drew a hint of a smile across her face as she closed her fingers around the thin strip of metal.

Things were looking up.


The darkness was filled with screams, each pain-filled cry slicing through her consciousness like a hot razor. As each ragged wail trailed off into the abyss, another would pick up the note, one building upon the other until the cacophony became unbearable. Blindly, she pushed her way through the thick, oppressive heat. The heavy air reeked of charred flesh and weighed on her limbs as she fought to escape the chaos.

The noise coalesced into words like 'monster', 'murderer' and 'freak', slamming against her brittle body like linebackers. Gasping, she pressed onwards, like she always had, beating back the darkness and demons that dogged her heels, threatening to drag her down into the vortex.

"'Livia?"

A tiny shaft of cool, blue light lit on her cheek. Desperate for relief, she turned towards the source, tipping her head back, revelling in the blinding intensity contained within a pinprick.

"Peter?"

She knew it was a lost cause the moment his name slipped from her parched lips.

'Peter's gone,' the voices taunted. 'He left you behind. No one is going to help you.'

The light, however, didn't dim and she held fast.

"Olivia?"

The beam grew, the light encompassing more and more of the spectrum, slicing though the murky haze, enveloping her body in its soothing glow.

The voices were wrong. They had to be.

"'Livia, it's okay. I'm here; you're going to be fine." His words, an echo of what seemed like another life, drew her up, leaving her weightless. Eyes slipping closed, she leaned into his touch as phantom fingers ghosted along her jawline, smoothed the furrows in her brow.

"Peter." Her voice broke as cool, cleansing tears streamed down her cheeks, washing away the sweat and grime, washing away the darkness, sending it swirling in oily eddies back into the abyss.

"I'm here, Olivia. C'mon back, Sweetheart."

His voice was upon her now, his gentle breath whispered across her parched skin. If she could only just reach out...

Dragging her eyes open, she did just that, clawing her way out into the light.


"Hey."

The rasp of his voice was like sandpaper dragging across the open wound of her throbbing head, but it was still the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard. Olivia couldn't help the smile that spread across her face as the world slowly came into focus and Peter materialized before her. He answered her smile with a relieved grin that rivalled the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows.

That sweltering day in Bagdad when she'd met his cocky smile with an arched eyebrow and a desperate bluff, Olivia never would've imagined that Peter Bishop would go from being a means to an end to the centre of her world.

"Hey," she echoed, her voice deeper than usual, tired and careworn.

Despite the heady cocktail of relief and anticipation coursing through her system, she found it hard to keep her eyes open. Exhaustion tugged stubbornly at her senses, and for the first time in years Olivia just didn't feel like keeping up the fight. Peter's hand had migrated into her hair and the rhythmic sweep of his fingers through the strands was the final pull she needed to slip back into the nebulous haze of comfort his nearness brought.

'Are you sure this is real?' The insidious voice from the darkest corners of her mind just refused to be silenced.

The sudden thought sent a paralyzing chill down her spine, tripping up the beep of her heart monitor to an alarming rate as her eyes snapped open. Frantically, she cast her gaze around the room looking for something, anything, to assure herself that she was truly home.

"Hey, Liv, shhh," Peter soothed, running a careful hand over her flushed forehead before framing her face in his fingers.

"You're safe, 'Livia. You're home; I've got you. It's okay."

As the terror faded from her mind, the adrenaline flowing through her veins dissipated and Olivia collapsed back into the pillows. She couldn't help the groan that escaped her lips as her head made contact with the lumpy cushion. Everything hurt, tiny sparks of pain lit from the tips of her toes to the edges of her eyelashes. Peter watched, eyes brimming with sympathy and no small amount of uncertainty as she shifted carefully on the bed, trying to find a position that was the lesser of a whole host of evils. She felt like she'd been hit by the proverbial bus. Apparently crossing universes and creating human fireballs took a lot out of a girl. A crushing wave of nausea and guilt crested over her senses as she reminded herself what it had taken for her to get to this point.

"What's wrong?"

Panicked eyes darted up to meet Peter's concerned gaze before she managed to school her features into something resembling the mask she wore every day. She really wished that Peter was not so adept at reading her. She couldn't talk to him about this, she couldn't.

What would she say?

'Hey, Peter, your father's turned me into a walking blow torch?'

She just couldn't see that going over well, so instead she replied her standard, "Nothing, I'm fine."

It was clear, however, that Peter wasn't buying it for a second, but he didn't push. Instead, he seemed to be bogged down in his own issues.

"God, Liv, I can't even imagine what you've been through. If I had realized that it wasn't you sooner, I-"

Olivia froze.

'Peter will know.'

The assertion that had pulled her through the endless hours of pain, torment and darkness crumbled at her feet as those few words dropped carelessly from his lips. He hadn't known she was gone. Her nightmare had been realized. She'd been replaced and no one had noticed. Fear curled sickeningly in her belly, a vicious feedback loop of questions and speculation. How long has she even been captive? Olivia had lost track of days in that hell-hole. Had her life been completely infiltrated? Had they even been looking for her?

Peter looked about as lost as she felt, scrambling for purchase as the road they'd been walking together all these years was suddenly tilted on its axis, leaving them with no idea where to go from there. Peter's mouth worked silently and she could see the rationalizations and reasonable explanations building behind his eyes.

Suddenly, she didn't want to hear it, didn't want to hear how her doppelganger had managed to slip beneath the radar of those who should have known her best. She wasn't feeling reasonable or rational right now. She was beaten and fragile, her chest so full of emotion that she feared that she might shattered from the pressure.

So, she did the only thing she knew how to do to survive; she yanked back on the reins of everything building inside of her, wielding her icy control like a weapon. She shut down whatever words were about to spill from his lips with the pointed glare of Agent Dunham, settling behind the mask she'd grown so comfortable in.

She should've known that Peter wasn't going to back down that easily. Olivia couldn't quite manage to hide the flinch as his fingers circled hers and he recoiled as though he'd been burned. With the way her life had been going these last few days, maybe he had been. However, he wasn't about to give up.

"'Livia, we need to talk about this."

Olivia fixed him with a look that clearly replied, 'No, we don't,' before slipping fully back into the only role in which she felt truly comfortable.

"Where is she now?" Her tone brooked no argument. The shield was firmly in place. Peter sighed heavily, finally conceding.

"Broyles has her in a safe house in Ashmont, over on Fuller." His fingers tentatively grazed hers and she stiffened, shaking with the effort to keep everything in check.

The shrill ring of Peter's cell ended their standoff, drawing him back in the molded plastic chair as he brought the phone to his ear. His eyes, however, never left her, and Olivia arched an eyebrow at his blatant disregard for hospital policy.

"Bishop."

A soft shuffling drew her gaze over to the door where Walter was easing himself quietly into the room. She couldn't help but return the smile the older man sent her way when he noticed that she was awake. However, Peter's tone quickly recaptured her attention. His face had darkened, setting Olivia's senses on alert.

"How? When?"

She strained her ears, managing only to make out Broyles' voice, but no words. Walter shifted restlessly behind his son, his body strung tight as he braced himself for whatever blow they were about to receive.

"Alright, I'm on my way."

She was already eyeing her IV, trying to discern the least painful way to remove it, when he ended the call, shoulders slumping under the weight of his now-visible exhaustion.

"What is it?" she asked, straightening in her bed, biting down hard against the wave of pain that rippled through her extremities.

"There's been an incident at the safe house; looks like a shapeshifter. Olivia ... the other Olivia's gone."

The blood in her veins ran cold at his words, but Olivia wasn't sure if it was the mention of shapeshifters or the woman who shared her face that was bothering her. Either way, they needed to get moving before the trail went cold. Carefully suppressing a wince, she eased her legs over the side of the bed.

"I'm coming with you."

Peter stared back incredulously as he placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You're kidding, right?"

The look she gave him could've peeled the paint off the walls, but he met her glower for glower.

"You can be as mad at me as you want, Olivia. You can forget that I came back to this world for you and that I would've never left you over there if I'd had a chance. At the moment, I don't care. All I care about right now is that you can barely sit up straight, you have second degree burns on your hands, your feet look like you've walked on broken glass and you just crossed the barrier between universes. You're not going anywhere until the doctors say you can."

Olivia crossed her arms defiantly, but made no move to follow as Peter turned and stormed out of the room, stopping only to fix his father with a pointed look.

"Don't let her out of your sight."


The lock gave way beneath her fingers with a satisfying 'click', freeing her left hand just as she released the breath that she had been holding for what felt like forever. Carefully, so as not to alert her captor, Olivia tilted her head, trying to get a line of sight through the passenger side window. There wasn't much to see, just the tops of utility poles disappearing and reappearing at regular intervals, the monotony broken now and then by the flash of green treetops. The rate at which they moved past the window suggested they were on a highway. The road noise had evened out beneath her a while ago. Traffic must be light.

She needed to move; they could be reaching their destination at any moment. Painfully slow, Olivia drew her legs into her body and shifted until she was seated in the shadows behind the driver seat. Bracing herself against the steady rocking of the van, she came up into a crouch, poised and ready. She'd been trained for this moment, but it didn't make the reality of what she was about to do any easier.

'Survival of the fittest,' she reminded herself before lunging forward from the darkness like a cobra, thrusting her arms up and out before dragging the handcuffs back viciously across his neck. She felt the trachea crumple almost immediately as her captor flailed in his seat, trying to mount a coordinated effort to knock her loose. His right fist managed to connect with her jaw, but she only pulled back harder even as stars exploded behind her vision.

There was only one way out of this.

The van careened out of control, weaving back and forth into the oncoming lane. Now that she could see out the windshield, Olivia breathed a small sigh of relief to discover that the road they were travelling was empty. The swaying inside of the vehicle intensified, threatening to throw her off her feet. Determinedly, she hung on, trying to ignore the sickening gurgle of her captor's last breaths in her ear as she waited for his struggling to subside.

Finally, her strength was the only thing holding him up. Releasing her death grip, Olivia noticed the strange, greyish hue of the chain-shaped ligature marks. However, she didn't have time to consider subtleties for long. The van lurched suddenly as it ricocheted off a guard rail running along the right side of the bridge they were apparently now crossing. The impact changed the vector of the vehicle dramatically, sending it hurtling for the other side of the span. Frantically, Olivia lunged for the steering wheel to correct their course, but it was too little too late.

With a sickening crunch, the van collided with the opposite railing, the force of the impact buckling the metal before it pulled loose from its supports, leaving the vehicle dangling precariously over the water rushing several feet below.

Olivia sucked in air greedily, trying to feed her racing heart as she willed the adrenaline surge to subside enough to think clearly. A loud groan as the van nosed downward towards the river snapped her back into sharp focus. Turning away from her handiwork, she carefully edged her way to the back door. It was time to go.