Bridge Variations: Apocrypha

Fandom: Fringe Characters: Peter Bishop Rating: PG-13 Wordcount: ~260 Spoilers: Post-s3 finale.
Summary: Events unfold without him. As the title suggests, this might not be a true telling.
Notes: "Bridge Variations" fic, spinning off from "Worlds Collide" in the Quantum Entanglements series.

From a space unanchored in time, Peter watches the bridge.

(He is not in any place that can be named.)

This was necessary, he understands. If he was there, the arguments between his two...fathers...might never have stopped, and their combined genius is the only thing that might save their two universes.

(And all the others attached to them, Peter understands now, the infinite variations connected by one critical moment in time, when Walter Bishop shattered the barrier and all potential became actual.)

If he was there, Olivia would never forgive her counterpart and it's their pooled talents that this world-merge requires, intuition and fearlessness and psychic power and unswerving aim alike. The weapon and the hand that wields it.

(From this remote perspective-detached even from himself-he finally understands that he loves them both, because of and despite all their similarities and differences, and can forgive himself for it.)

He watches, fascinated, as the two Astrids work together, completely simpatico despite their so-different modes. Two halves of a whole, emotion and logic, empathy and cold analysis.

(Even in nonexistence he hopes she knows how much he came to care for her, the steady rock upholding all their insane exploits, no less family than Walter and Olivia.)

And it's with an ache in his heart that he sees Olivia talking with the other world's Lincoln, watches her respond to him, witnesses the attraction between them bloom. In all worlds, Lincoln Lee loves Olivia Dunham. She has no reason not to love him, in this variation.

(He hopes there will still be room for him if he finds his way home.)