The whole lab was filled with dust and black smoke. There were things everywhere. Boxes that had been placed in the shelves and on top of the tables were now spread all over the floor, along with almost every surgical instrument, microscope and computer they had. Small pieces of debris floated down from the ceiling. The windows were blown out and the entire floor was covered with shattered glass and pieces of metal. She was on the ground. She had obviously fallen, been forced off her feet by the shock wave caused by the explosion.
Astrid slowly opened her eyes and slowly sat up on her knees. She was on the floor, right beside the counter she had taken cover behind. The lights in the ceiling flickered. She blinked and rubbed her eyes a few times to clear them from the dust that covered her entire body, as well as the whole lab. When she looked down at herself, there was no red blood pool on the floor around her and there were no bones sticking out of her arms or legs. She had a few bleeding cuts that would probably require stitches, but that was it. She was okay. She was alive. An explosion had gone off just in a few meters away and she had survived. But then she remembered that she was not the only one that had been in the room.
After a few tries she managed to stand up on her feet. Instantly she was hit with a wave of dizziness that made her grab the burnt counter. The room was spinning in front of her. She could hear the pulsation of her own blood as it pumped against her ear drums. It was almost a buzzing sound, like a small bee that was somehow caught in her ear. There was a lot of damage, but it was not as bad as she had thought. Of course, there had been an explosion, but it could have been much worse. The amount of chemicals that Walter had in the lab would probably be enough to blow half the building up. Luckily, she had placed all of them in special containers and stashed them in the back in case some tests would ever go wrong. But there was no time to think about what could have gone wrong.
Then something caught her eye. Peter was on the ground over by the entrance door. She made her way over to him as quickly she could with all the broken things on the floor. He was covered in dust just like everything else. There was blood coming from a deep gash on his forehead, right under his hairline. But he was breathing. It was light and shallow, but his ribcage was definitely moving. He was alive.
"Peter?" She said, her voice raspy as she tried to wake him up. But there was no movement, no reaction. Fortunately her phone was still working as she called for an ambulance. "This is agent Astrid Farnsworth with the FBI. I need an ambulance at the Harvard University immediately."
"We're sending people to your location as we speak." The man who answered the phone told her. "Can you tell us what happened?"
"There was an explosion. I think it was a bomb but I'm not sure I-" She said quickly.
"How many people are injured? Was there anyone else in the room with you?" He asked.
"It's just me and two other agents." She told him as she looked down at Peter who was still unconscious. The man said something else but Astrid was not listening anymore, at least not at what he was saying. She had heard something else. She had heard Walter's voice from the back of the lab.
Astrid quickly removed a piece of her sleeve and placed it on the bleeding cut on Peter's head. She made sure that he was still breathing before she stood up and as quickly as she could, she made her way towards the noise. The closer she got, the clearer she could hear it. The sound was coming from the small office in the back and it was definitely Walter. It almost sounded like he was crying.
"Walter?" She said loudly as she approached the door. There was a large beam outside the door that made it impossible to open the door.
"Astro?" He said and he almost sounded surprised or maybe confused. "Is that you?"
"Yes Walter it's me." She said with a slight cough. The smoke had subsided but there was still quite a lot in the air. "Are you okay?"
"I heard the explosion and then the door wouldn't open and I couldn't hear you anymore." He told her. "Peter! Where is Peter?"
"He's alive Walter." She reassured him immediately. "But he's unconscious. The ambulance should be here any minute and we're gonna get you out."
"How bad is it?" Walter asked through the door.
"Do you mean the lab or Peter?" She asked him slowly as she leaned against the door. She knew that she needed to get back to Peter in case he got worse, but she also knew that she could not leave Walter scared and alone trapped behind a door.
"Both." He said quietly.
"It will need some renovating." Astrid said softly as she closed her eyes. "But it'll be as good as new and so will Peter."
After a few more minutes of waiting, the ambulance and four field doctors had finally arrived. There were a few police men there with them since the FBI had most likely not heard anything about the explosion yet. After two of the EMTs had carried Peter out on a gurney and left for the hospital, one of the other had almost forced her to come with him out to the ambulance to get checked out. He had noticed the cuts on her forearms from the shattered glass on the floor. She had barely noticed them. They did not hurt, which was probably from the adrenaline running through her blood stream. Still, she let him clean the cuts from dust and glass pieces. They were not deep, which meant they had not required any stitches, so one of the field doctors had just placed a small bandage over her wrist before she went back inside to find Walter again.
The large beam that was blocking the door had just been removed as Astrid came inside, and since Walter was unharmed physically there was not really anything else for them to do than follow the ambulance to the hospital to be with Peter. By the time they drove off towards Boston General, the lab was filled with crime scene investigators that were collecting what evidence they could find in the debris. There was a lot of it. Astrid just hoped that they would be able to find out who did this.
"Are we at the hospital soon?" Walter asked for the hundredth time in ten minutes. Any other time Astrid would have thought it was amusing, but right now, it was anything but that. Walter was beside himself with worry. They had no idea how Peter was or if he was badly injured or not.
"In a few minutes Walter." She answered calmly as she focused on the road.
"What happened to us? How bad was he? Was he bleeding? Did you check his pupils?" He said quickly, clearly in a shock from what was happening.
"Walter calm down." Astrid told him slowly, trying to make him calm down. "I don't know what happened, but Peter was hurt pretty bad Walter. I'm sorry."
"Where is agent Dunham?" Walter asked when he had calmed down slightly. "Does she know what happened to Peter?"
"No, I haven't called her yet." Astrid answered slowly as she parked the car outside the ER at Boston General where the ambulance had brought Peter.
"Hey Lincoln, did you get the statements from the young couple who found the body?" Olivia asked as she walked up to Lincoln who was talking to another agent at the scene.
They were still in the park where the body had been found a couple of hours earlier. After Peter and Walter had gone back to the lab at Harvard, she and Lincoln had stayed at the scene to finish their work. They had to stay and talk to the witnesses, help process the scene and a lot of other things that was not that funny. Olivia loved her job more than anything. She could not imagine doing anything else. Being an agent was what she had always wanted, ever since she had been a kid. She wanted to protect people from the bad things in the world, just like she had protected Rachel from their stepfather.
But of course there were things that she did not enjoy about her work. The amount of paperwork that came with every case was not her favorite thing to do. Sometimes she enjoyed it and sometimes she hated it. But it had to be done, fun or not. And since she did not really have anything else to do in the evening, she spent her time at her kitchen table, going through the case files of her recent cases.
"Yeah but they didn't have anything." Lincoln said as he looked at her. "All they could tell me was that they saw someone move away from the body, but that's it. How about you, did you get find anything?"
"No, there is nothing here or in the woods." Olivia told him.
"You think Peter saw that man?" He asked as he glanced at the trees where they had found Peter a few hours ago.
"I don't know what he saw or didn't, but yeah, I think he did." Olivia answered slowly. "It wouldn't be the first time the Observer made an appearance during one of our cases."
"What do you mean?" Lincoln asked curiously as he turned his gaze back to her.
"About two years ago we had this case where the Observer was somehow involved." Olivia explained as she thought back. "He crashed into our car and then when Peter and I went after him he had this…weird pulse pistol or something that he shot Peter with up on the roof."
"Do you have any idea who or what they are?" Lincoln asked with a frown.
"No." She said simply. It was the truth, they did not have any idea what the men in the suits did or who they were. They had a few theories of course, but none of them were probably right. Before she could say something else, her phone started vibrating in her pocket.
"Dunham." She answered firmly.
"Olivia, it's me." The voice that she recognized as Astrid's came through the phone.
"Hey I was just gonna head over to the lab, are you still there?" Olivia asked.
"Olivia there was an explosion in the lab." Astrid told her slowly. "Peter's in the hospital."
"What?" She asked, not sure that she heard her right. "What do you mean there was an explosion? How?"
"I don't know how, it happened so fast." Astrid explained. "We're at Boston General. You need to come down here."
"I'm on my way." Olivia said as she hung up the phone and quickly made her way towards her car.
Lincoln was right behind her. He was talking, but she could not hear any of what he was saying. Her head was blocking everything out. All she could hear was her own thoughts. And at the moment, they were not good thoughts. There had been an explosion in their lab and Peter was hurt.
"Olivia!" The sound of Lincoln's loud voice and the firm grip from his hand on her arm made her stop. "What happened at the lab?"
"Look I can't-I don't…" She tried to say, but the words were stuck in her throat. "I need to get to Boston General."
"Give me your car keys and we'll go." He told her as he held out his hand and looked at her. Olivia reluctantly handed him the small key ring and watched him open the door for her. With a shaky breath, she got in the passenger seat of her car and closed the door behind her.
Lincoln quickly made his way around the car to the driver seat. He was not entirely sure what had happened in the lab, but it was obviously pretty bad. Olivia had said something about an explosion when she was on the phone with whoever it was. He had seen the look on her face as she listened to what the person told her. The flash of fear and worry in her eyes along with the fact that they were going to the hospital told him that someone on the team was hurt, someone she cared deeply for, which was either Peter, Walter or Astrid.
The first time he had met Olivia and her team, he had not liked them at all since their case involved his partner and they would not tell him everything. He had been furious when Olivia said she could not discuss the case with him. Now he understood why though. The things he had seen and experienced the following weeks after he had decided to join their Division were unbelievable. Human hybrids with translucent skin, highly intelligent serial killers that stole happy memories from regular people and a scientist that could make dead bird fly was not something he had ever imagined working with, but he liked it. He liked it because it was not ordinary, it was not boring. There was always something interesting when it involved them.
From what he had noticed, Olivia was not the kind of woman who got close to people or as Peter had told him when they went out for drinks one night; she always kept people at arm's length to avoid getting hurt.
"So how long have you worked for the FBI?" Peter asked as he sat down at the bar next to Lincoln. They had decided to go out for a few drinks after work since Lincoln recently started working with them.
"About five years now." Lincoln answered as he looked around the small bar. "How about you?"
"Well, I'm just a civilian consultant so I don't really work for them." Peter explained as he took a drink from his beer. "Although they actually pay me for it."
"Yeah, Olivia told me about that." Lincoln said as he grabbed his beer.
"Really?" Peter said with a small grin. "Did she tell you that she practically threatened me to come back here with her?"
"Come back here?" Lincoln said with raised eye brows.
"Yeah, when she first found me, I was in Baghdad trying to run a scam on these two Iranian businessmen." Peter explained as he took a sip of his beer.
"I didn't pick you as the scamming type." Lincoln told him.
"That's what made me so good at it." He said with a smirk. "Anyway, it was all supposed to be temporary. She told me I just had to babysit Walter while he was working on a case for the FBI and then I could leave and go back to my own life."
"I guess it didn't really turn out that way?" Lincoln said, more as a statement than a question.
"No, not really." Peter answered. "But I'm not complaining. It's a great job."
"Yeah, it's definitely different than most." Lincoln said with a nod. "Does it ever get to you? I mean everything that you know and can't tell anyone about."
"Sometimes, not as much as before though." He said with a shrug. "The first cases were pretty tough, but you'll get used to it."
"Well, I hope so." Lincoln said simply. "Alt-universes, shape shifters…Olivia said that eventually, all of this is going to seem run of the mill. Which, frankly, I'm having a hard time believing. It's insane how none of this seems to bother her."
"Yeah, that sounds like her." Peter said slowly as he took a swig of his beer. "You know… she's tough, incredibly stubborn, doesn't let anyone tell her what to do."
"I've noticed." Lincoln said with a nod. "She seems very…driven."
"Oh she is, she definitely is." Peter agreed. "Sometimes maybe even too much, which is one of the reasons why I am still working for the FBI. I actually tried to leave a few weeks after our first case…Walter was driving me insane and I didn't really want to stay in Boston at the time."
"And why didn't you?" Lincoln asked, slightly curious about what happened during the early years in Fringe Division, but also about who the people in it really were. "Let me guess, Olivia forced you to stay?"
"No, not really." He answered with a grin. "Olivia sees the best in people, even when they don't see it themselves…and that's sort of why I stayed. She made me realize that I could actually do something good for the first time in…well, a very long time. And of course, there were things going on that I couldn't even begin to explain, so I decided to stay."
"Ever regret that decision?" Lincoln asked.
"No." Peter answered simply.
"Okay." Lincoln said with a small nod. "So what's the best case you've had so far?"
"Best case?" Peter said as he tried to think back to the cases they had worked over the past three years. There were many cases, but only a few that had been particularly interesting. "Probably when we stopped a black hole from swallowing half of Brooklyn last year."
"Seriously?" Lincoln asked as he looked at him with raised eyebrows. "There was a black hole in Brooklyn? How could I have missed that?"
"Because things that involve Fringe Division never really make the news." Peter told him. "At least not what actually happened. If the reporters do make it to our crime scenes, the FBI makes up some lame story to prevent people from knowing what's really happening."
"Makes sense." Lincoln said as he took a sip of his beer. "I used to believe just a few months ago that, uh, I understood the world we lived in. I mean, there were basic truths that I thought were…well…true. But now…"
"You think you're gonna be able to handle this?" Peter asked with a small grin, but his voice was serious.
"Investigating strange and unexplainable crimes in different universes with you guys?" Lincoln said with a smirk. "I think I'll manage."
"Well then." Peter said as he raised his bottle. "Welcome to the team."
Due to the heavy traffic this time of day in Boston, the relatively short drive to the hospital felt like hours. Even with the sirens on, it was hard to get through. Olivia had not said a single word wince they left the park, she just stared out the window. Lincoln kept quiet, giving her the space and time she needed to herself. He could tell that she was more than worried due to the way her breathing shifted from shallow shaky breaths to slightly deeper ones.
Olivia was out of the car before it had fully come to a stop outside the emergency room. She instantly spotted Astrid's dark blue car parked a few parking spaces away from where they were. Apparently she had driven her own car to the hospital which meant at least Astrid was okay. She knew that she should have been more than relieved, but Peter was somewhere in that hospital and she had no idea how badly hurt he was. She did not even now if he was alive anymore.
The emergency room was filled with doctors dressed in their white coats, nurses in their light blue scrubs, just like the ones you saw on television. Almost all the beds were occupied by patients, young and somewhat older, some more injured than others. The sound level inside was loud, patients and their family members were crying, machines were beeping, doctors and nurses were running from patient to patient. It was exactly as she remembered it. After all, she had been a patient here a few times during her life, the last time only a couple of months earlier. The memories were hazy, kind of indistinct, almost like an old dream. Though in her case, more like an old nightmare.
"Olivia." Lincoln's voice said from behind her.
"I-I'm sorry." She said quickly. "I don't know where they are, Astrid didn't say."
"It's this way." He said as he started walking down one of the corridors. Olivia followed him, a questioning frown on her face. "I asked one of the nurses."
The hallway was much quieter than the crowded ER. It was similar to where her room had been the last time when she had been admitted, but it was not the same corridor. The pattern on the floor was different; it was a darker shade of beige than the one in her room, which was something she remembered because she had spent a lot of time just staring at the floor that day. The paintings on the wall were different as well. These ones were of the ocean.
"Excuse me." Someone said from behind them as they walked through the doors leading to another section of the hospital. "This area is for staff and immediate family only."
"We're looking for the federal agents that were brought in about half an hour ago." Lincoln said as he showed the nurse his badge.
"Olivia, Lincoln!" Astrid called out as she walked up to them. "They're with me."
"How's Peter?" Olivia asked as soon as she got closer.
"He's with the doctors now." Astrid told her calmly. "They did an MRI, and they said that he has a concussion."
"Oh my god." Olivia said, barely over a whisper.
"His vitals are stable, but they haven't been able to wake him up." Astrid explained.
"What happened?" Olivia asked as she looked at her desperately, needing to know how this could have happened.
"I don't know what happened." Astrid said as she shook her head. "I was in the back with Walter, then when I came out to Peter he just yelled at me to get down on the ground, and I did. I have no idea what caused the explosion."
"Okay…okay." Olivia said as she ran her hand through her hair and breathed. "Where's Walter? Is he alright?"
"He's with Peter." Astrid answered with a reassuring nod. "He's a bit shaken up, but he's fine."
Two very long hours later, Olivia sat in a small, comfortable armchair with her head in her hands. She was desperately trying to focus on her own breathing, instead of the steady beeping coming from the heart monitor attached to Peter's unconscious form in the bed in front of her. He was dressed in a pale blue hospital gown, just like every other patient in the building as well as the scrubs that the nurses wore. According to the doctors he was doing well, considering the circumstances of what happened to him. The concussion was pretty bad, but there were no indication that anything else was wrong with him, besides all the small cuts and the dark bruises that covered the left side of his face.
Astrid had taken Walter to the cafeteria downstairs to get him something to eat, and frankly, because he needed to calm down a bit and leave Peter's side for a moment. He had been sitting in the chair that she was currently in since the doctors had moved Peter from the emergency room to the hospital room he was in at the moment. Walter had been beside himself with worry, he had checked both Peter's vitals and his pupils almost every fifth minute for any signs that he was getting worse. The fact that he had not woken up yet, even made Olivia more worried than necessary. She knew that if someone had a concussion, they should try and stay awake, not sleep. But the doctors had assured her that he was fine and that he would probably wake up within a few hours. All she had to do was wait.
With a deep breath, she stood up and slowly made her way over to his bed. She carefully sat down on the bed next to his sleeping form and looked at him. The slight swelling and the dark bruises on his face made her eyes water, but she quickly blinked the tears away, not wanting to break down. No matter how bad she felt, she could not let herself fall apart. He was alive and he was going to be fine.
Olivia slowly placed her hand on his right cheek and traced her hand up the side of his face before she gently ran her small hand through his brown curls, careful not to put pressure on the wound on his forehead.
"You're gonna be okay Peter." She whispered as she held his hand in hers and looked down at him. "You just have to wake up."
Outside the room, Astrid stood next and watched the scene in front of her. She watched as Olivia gently stroked his face and held his hand in hers. Astrid knew that Olivia still loved him more than anything, and that he still loved her as well, but they were both to stubborn, and of course, still too damaged from their past experiences to admit the truth. Their feelings were still there, everyone except themselves could see that.
"How's he doing?" Lincoln said as he walked up next to her and looked in through the glass window from the hallway.
"They said that he's gonna be fine." Astrid said as she glanced at him before she turned her gaze back to the room.
"They seem pretty close." Lincoln said cautiously.
"Yeah…they are. Or well, they used to be." Astrid told him slowly. "Up to a few months ago, they were a couple."
"But something happened, something no one should have to go through as a couple, and they couldn't really get back on track after that." Astrid continued slowly. "At least not then…but they will, eventually."
love will come through it's just waiting for you...
AN: like it or hate it? let me know :)
btw; thank you for all the reviews to the last chapter!
