A/N: I'm sorry for being slow with getting this chapter up, there has been a lot going on for me lately and there are no signs of it slowing down for the time being. But thank you for being patient and for all of the nice reviews. I really do appreciate all of them. Also, I already had most of this chapter wrote up, but then I decided to go a different way with it and I ended up rewriting it. There were many ways this chapter could have gone, but I think that I finally settled on the right one.

Chapter 10: The Missing Pages

"The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul." Gilbert Highet

Olivia stood there at the door, pistol drawn and trained on William Bell's forehead and had no intentions of moving from her spot on the floor. Her gaze was bearing down on the man, just daring him to move to give her a reason to pull the trigger. She wouldn't hesitate to shoot him, not this time, not after what he had done and what he was fully capable of doing once again if he wanted. She felt her heart thumping away in her chest from the adrenaline that was coursing through her veins, but she didn't dare give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was nervous at the mere sight of him, furious even, at the thought of being his pawn again. Somehow she had managed to stand there as if she were a statue, despite the internal conflict that was raging on the inside of her, begging her to pull the trigger so she could end all of this now. She couldn't do it, it wasn't right, but she wanted him to believe that she would if he so much as flinched.

"Come now, Olivia. Don't you think that we can talk all of this over?" he asked with his hands raised in the air to show her that he had nothing on him that would harm her or anyone else in the lab. "I know what's going on with Peter, and with you, and I know just the thing to cure it. But if you shoot me, you will never know the answer and he will be lost to you." The word 'cure' had immediately caught her attention, but she didn't dare move or take her eyes off of him. What if all of this was a trick? Should she risk it and take a glance at Walter as if he could pass her some kind of silent message on what she should do here? His emotions were always easy for her to read, all it would take is a second… no, she couldn't do that; she wouldn't allow herself to, so instead she deflected the question with one of her own.

"What did you do to the security guards that were outside of this door?" she asked ignoring what he had said, not wanting to let him get inside of her head so easily, she couldn't trust anything that he said or anything that he did, so why would she trust him about this supposed cure of his?

William took as deep of a breath as he could manage under the circumstances and let out another sigh. The older man was looking his age and the air about him suggested that he was growing older and more and more fatigued by the situation. "Relax, they're only sleeping…" he muttered, starting to sound even more wearier by the second. "They should be waking up very soon and by that time, they will send in a report to the Fringe Division, that they saw William Bell going inside of this room and then I am not so sure that they would allow me anywhere near you to help you after that. I can almost hear the sound of their boots on the ground to come and take me away already."

"O-Olivia, listen to Belly… it's his soul magnets that are inside of you that's causing all of this." Walter cut in, almost meekly, in fear of what might transpire in the lab. It was an infinitely delicate situation no doubt, but she wanted to do what needed to be done. She dared for a moment to take a glance at Walter, who seemed to be distracted by something that was off to the side and was looking in another direction that her eyes couldn't help but follow and she immediately saw what he was looking at. Olivia slowly lowered her gun, seeing her four year old watching the scene unfold in front of her from the door of Walter's office. "She was supposed to be sleeping…" he wrung his hands together as he nervously looked back at Olivia who had turned white upon realizing what she almost did in front of her daughter. "But she just doesn't seem to want too…"

"Is that your granddaughter, Walter? She looks just like you, Olivia. The resemblance is uncanny." William Bell smiled, thankful for the momentary distraction.

"You better stay away from her." Olivia demanded as she swiftly brought her weapon back up and trained her weapon on the elder man once again.

"Or you'll do what?" he asked. "Put the weapon away, Olivia, so I can help you."

"How do I know that I can trust you?"

"You can't. But I'm the only you can trust, because I am the only one who knows how my soul magnets inside of you work. I'm the one who invented them after all."

Hesitantly, Olivia lowered her weapon and slipped her gun back into its holster but didn't fasten it in, just in case she needed it at a moments notice to protect her daughter from who she had grown to see as a monster. "Fine. What do you need me to do?"

"First I'll need a blood sample."

Astrid walked back to her car after making the final arrangements for her father's funeral, feeling a weight tugging at her shoulders that caused her to slump forward as she checked her phone for any messages that she might have missed while she was inside. The Fringe Division had given her some time off, they practically all but forced her to, to allow her some time recover from everything and so she could get back onto her feet again, although she didn't really intend on taking any time off at all, but she also didn't expect to hear anything from them either. Work is good for the soul; she could almost hear Walter gently whispering the phrase in her ear that she had heard him say so many times before as if it were being carried to her ears by the gentle breeze that was drifting through the area. She wanted to be back in the lab, in his gentle embrace that made her feel like she was at home, like she was both safe and needed somewhere, it kept her distracted from everything else that was going on around them.

Scrolling through some of the spam messages that she received, she noticed a text from Peter, asking her if she would come to pick him up miles from where she was standing and without hesitation she sent a text back to him to tell him that she would be right there to pick him up before hopping into her car with dozens of questions popping up in her head about why he had asked her to come and get him and not Olivia.

Upon arrival, Astrid pulled over next to the sidewalk and began looking around for Peter, but he was nowhere to be found. Odd, she thought as she glanced around the area trying to find the brunette walking around among the other people who were all going about their daily business and pulled her cellphone out again only to find yet another message from Peter, telling her to 'take a seat'. Astrid furrowed her brow as she read over the strange message again and again. Why would he tell her to take a seat? What seat? Wasn't he supposed to be the one who was waiting on her? Shaking her head, her eyes caught sight of the only seat in the area, a bench, and she wandered over to it and immediately noticed a rock on top of a stack of yellowing pages that looked as though they could have been torn out of an old journal. Curiosity got the best of her as she drew nearer to the bench, eager to see what he had left for her to find and why. Reaching out, Astrid took the rock in hand and sat it to the side and picked the pages up and quickly began to scan over them, a look of horror spreading across her face upon realizing what she was holding.

Astrid pulled her cellphone out once again and quickly found Olivia's number and waited for her to pick up on the other end.

"Olivia, you won't believe what I just found."

"What?!" she asked, her voice sounded irritated, but Astrid knew not to take it personally.

"It's pages from the diary, I think that Peter left them here for me to find… but the handwriting on these pages looks different from the others. It was most likely written by someone else."

"What do they say?" Olivia's tone had changed almost immediately on the other side, as if she were hanging off of her every word.

"It seems that Lydia and Robert's relationship was a little more intimate… Lydia was pregnant and wanted to tell the doctors at the asylum so she could have an abortion and that's why Robert was angry with her. He claimed that she was going to kill their child and that Lydia was the crazy one because she didn't care about what he wanted. This must be why the pages were torn out. She wanted Robert to be taken away so she could have what she wanted."

"And Peter?"

"I never saw him, he just sent me a text message to come and pick him up, but he wasn't here when I got here."

"Where are you? I'm coming. I need to find him."

"So Walter, now that we're alone again." William said as he peered through the lens of a microscope. Olivia had decided to take Etta to a babysitter and had arranged for a couple of guards to watch over the babysitter's home until she returned without their knowledge of setting all of it up, before heading off to inspect the area that Peter had last been in for any clues as to where he might have been. "This isn't the only journal that we need to talk about."

"What?" Another journal? Surely he couldn't have meant the notebook that he had hidden beneath a tile in his room. He knew that he shouldn't have left it there after he had the dream about it the other night because he knew that he would eventually fall to temptation and look at it again. But that very same temptation was the very thing that had prompted him to keep it there to begin with.

"You have one; or rather you had one that you kept all of your secrets in too." William mused as he adjusted the scope to get a better look at the microscopic magnets underneath the scope. "I couldn't help but take a peek at it once before, while you were out of your office. Surely, you must have gotten curious about some of your old ideas after our last meeting. All of what I did, it was your idea and you must have some clarity about what I said to you by now."

"They were just ideas, Belly. And ideas don't matter unless you find a way to implement them. I never acted on them. That was you."

"No, but you could have if you truly wanted to, and you did, that is why you asked me to cut out the three pieces of your brain." William looked away from the microscope to look at his old friend. "You were always afraid of taking chances Walter, just as you were afraid of your full potential."

"As I told you before, William. Somethings are not ours to mess with and I know that now. I should have listened to Carla when she told me that many years ago. But the lengths that I was willing to go through because of grief frightened me. I had to do something to stop myself."

"Why should we want to hinder our true nature? Our full potential? If there truly is a creator in heaven as you suggest, and he designed us after his own image, does that not make us gods in our own right? Shouldn't He want His creations to excel and fulfill their own destiny? What we were made for? To become like Him? Most of us don't have that kind of ambition-"

Walter shook his head and backed away from him, not wanting to hear any more of what he had to say. William was trying to justify what he had done, just as he had before, but this time he didn't seem as delusional to him as he had once before. The three pieces of his brain that had been cut out was now fully intact and what William was saying was resonating with him and it was becoming harder and harder for him to deny it the longer that he listened to him. Did William somehow know? Was that why he was pushing him to listen to this rubbish now? He felt himself starting to give way to the pressure and felt himself starting to shake as his fear got the better of him.

"You know that I'm right Walter, no matter how many times you try to deny it. But it is one of the many reasons that you agreed to work with me on the Cortexiphan trials. It gave these children all of the abilities that we have denied ourselves of for so long, gifts that were endowed upon us."

"You didn't come down here to help us, did you?" Walter asked, although it was more of a statement than a question. "There's always an ulterior motive with you, isn't there? What did you come here for?"

"I asked you about the journal earlier. You know where it is, don't you?" he smiled and Walter backed away a little further, there was something about his smile that reminded him of something sinister and frightening. Or was it what he was saying that bothered him the most? The truth. Something that he had tried to block out and run away from for so long, but he was starting to realize that no matter where he went or what he did, that part of him would always find a way to follow him. "You don't need the journal anymore, do you Walter? I can see the look in your eye; you're a different man than what you were back there on that boat."

"I'm not helping you with your next plot to destroy the world, Belly. You can leave me out of it." Walter said in a stubborn tone, even angry with him now. "I used to admire your ambitions, but now I can see that nothing can save you from who you truly are. You spent most of your time finding a way to further your name… do you have any idea how much you have hurt Nina? How much you will hurt her? Or do you even care anymore?"

"There's the Walter that I knew."

"You could be there with her right now, spending your last moments with her, but instead you choose to let her suffer because you would choose power over love." His mind was flashing back to William's vault from their time in the future, and the picture of Nina that he had found in there as he spoke. He remembered how hurt Nina was when he told her that William didn't care about her when he now knew that that wasn't so and yet he felt the intense desire to keep pressing that nail down even further, to make it dig deeper, he wanted to see if William actually did care or if he was too far gone to save.

"Walter, what goes on between her and I is none of your business. You best hold your tongue. Why does any of this matter to you?"

"I have found that love is the most powerful force there is out there, William. I suggest you embrace it before it's too late for you. If it's not already."

"Walter…" Astrid gasped as she came through the lab door. "What is William Bell doing here?"

"Don't worry. He was just leaving…" Walter said, continuing to glare at the older man as Astrid came to Walter's side and took him by the arm as William got up to leave.

"I don't doubt that you can figure this out on your own. Now that you're whole again." He smiled and looked at Astrid who only returned the look with a glare. "Goodbye, Walter. I hope our next meeting won't take as long."

"Not in your wildest dreams, Belly." Walter said and Astrid tugged at his arm. The two were silent as they watched him walk through the doors and Walter pulled his arm free from Astrid's grasp and then strode across his lab to his office to retrieve his own journal that was tucked away from view underneath the tile and emerged shortly after.

"Walter, what are you doing?"

"Something I should have done a long time ago, Astrid." He replied as he pulled some lighter fluid off of the shelf. "No one needs to see what's in this journal. Its secrets have to die with me."

"Walter… calm down and think about what you're doing."

"I have, Astrid. This needs to be done."

"Is that why William Bell was here? He wanted your journal?"

"No… He wanted to know if I was the man that I used to be… the one who wrote everything down in there."

"Are you?"

"I don't know anymore." He said as he threw the book into a glass container, the same one that he had once before, and drizzled the lighter fluid on its surface. "Astrid, a match, if you will."

She quickly fished a box of matches out of one of the drawers and handed it to him and he wasted no time lighting it up and dropping it down in the bowl and setting the journal on fire.

"Walter… are you going to be alright… look at me." She said as she grabbed his arm and tried to spin him around, forcing him to. There were tears streaming down his cheek and the sight of him crying tugged at her heart. "As I told you before, Walter, I am not going to let that happen to you again. You don't have to carry this alone anymore. I'm here for you. I'm always here for you… Okay?"

He nodded and she immediately wrapped her arms around him as he continued to let his tears flow down his cheeks, even harder now that he felt comfortable enough to not hold back. Her gentle embrace was all that he ever needed to feel safe, like everything was right where it should. "I love you." He said as he placed an arm around her middle and pulled her a little closer. He wanted to be sure that she knew exactly how he felt about her, especially after his meeting with William Bell, wondering if his old friend had ever told Nina how he felt about her. Did she know? Or had William continued to lead her around after all of these years.

"I love you too, Walter."