Peter finds that he can't not touch her; she's wrapped helically around the axis of his brain and coded deeply into his DNA. The vibrant pull of her through his veins borders on violent, and the acute certainty of how much he pulls at her too is exhilarating, even if she doesn't like to admit it like he does. That fact doesn't entirely bother him though, he's so completely unguarded about his feelings (without saying them outright, because Christ, he's not suicidal) and they need each other to survive. If there's one thing that Peter knows, it's a sure thing when he sees it. And he's damn sure she'll be the one who's going to live. She'll make it to Massive Dynamic at whatever the cost to save the world, and he's banking on that. He knows that she needs him to trigger her abilities, and he needs her to tie him to whatever's left of this godforsaken planet. If she doesn't make it, well, he hasn't even come up with an alternative. It simply isn't an option.
He thinks back to Iraq, the exact moment that she came into his life and spiraled him onto a path he'd never intended to take. At the beginning of the apocalypse, after the first shapeshifter appeared, when things were at their worst and people were dying and changing at exponential rates, he thought back to his life before Olivia and wondered if things wouldn't have been better if he'd ignored her pleas and stayed in Iraq.
He can't imagine why his life's path would be filled with such pain and misery if there wasn't something to show for it. And he's pretty sure the end of the path always led to Olivia.
That's why this was going to work. He'd see to it or die trying. His mother always told him he was irrationally stubborn; myopic to the point of carelessness. He imagines she'd probably say the same about Olivia.
"What'cha scavenging for?" her voice startles him, his back aching as he stuffs the contents of her things back into the pouch he was supposed to be watching. Olivia stands over his crouched form, hands on the swell of her cocked hip, eyebrow quirked as he shovels her things back together.
"Jesus Christ almighty, could you try to not give me a heart attack this close to Massive Dynamic?" Peter sputters, lifting up on worn knees to hand back the bag she abandoned when she disappeared into the distance after a full day and a half of the slow trek through Connecticut, finally stopping them to hobble off to find an acceptable place to pee. "Thought you had the aspirin." Her amused face stutters into concern, lifting a hand to his forehead that he instantly swipes away.
"Fever?" she asks, sidestepping the bag completely to lay her hand on his face. He stands still enough to let her, rolling his eyes but evening it out by flashing an impatient smile.
"I've got a headache," he says as he holds her bag out for her to take. "Just a headache. No fever, no chills. One hundred percent recovering thanks to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." She gives him a skeptical look, taking the bag and knowing he's not being completely honest but she knows well enough to let it go so they don't linger.
Her face catches in the light and he notices the gaunt slices of her features; the way her face is paler than usual. His eyes trickle lower and his heart sinks.
"Another nosebleed?" his question is more of a statement, reaching out to trace the remnants of blood stained under her nose. It's her turn to wave away his concern. The subject of the nose bleeds have been a strictly taboo discussion since they started back on their pilgrimage. Not that he gave much of a damn about confrontation. She shoulders away from him to grab her bag.
"Such a baby," he catches her mutter just loud enough for him to hear. He watches the swing of the braid hanging down her back, matching his memory of the pebbles hidden beneath her naked skin and the image of the last time he tasted her floods his extremities and he's distracted again.
"Your hair's so long," he comments as a gesture of peace, resisting the urge to touch his fingers to the strands. He shoulders his own pack instead and makes his way after her, kicking some crumbling asphalt out of his way.
"Speak for yourself, hippie." She tosses back. His snort isn't manly as he tries unsuccessfully to mash his hair back down to his scalp. They've restocked their bags with rations and water, found a pretty beat up Sig and a box of .38 bullets for it before they abandoned the shelter of the Resister building, but they didn't come across a razor or scissors to do anything about the state of their hair. A haircut isn't really topping the list of needs at the present moment.
They were shocked at the smoldering rubble that waited for them as they ventured into Yonkers. It looked like the military had dropped an atomic bomb and swallowed everything into eternal darkness. Neither one of them said anything out loud, but Peter has the suspicion it's exactly what happened. It should have soothed Peter more than it put him on edge, if there's nothing left, then there's no shapeshifters. And they haven't been met with any. No Resisters, no people, no trees. No signs of civilization. Nothing but crumbling buildings and empty, blackened streets. There's a haunting stretch of worry to how far the destruction touches that he can't worry about. They just need to get to Massive Dynamic. They need to keep walking.
There was danger hiding in every darkened shadow; behind every destroyed building when they first arrived. It made Olivia's intestines twist in her stomach, her hands never losing the tremor that she had to conceal from Peter's watchful eye. But with nowhere to pinpoint her focus, or her fear, she feels like she's trying to keep herself from exploding as they walk. The overwhelming sense of rising dread is palpable.
"That's the first thing I'm gonna do when we get to Massive Dynamic," Peter says conversationally, distracting Olivia from curling and uncurling her fingers into her palm. They quickly cross the devastation across George Washington Bridge. "Shave my whole goddamned head." He ruffles his shaggy hair to illustrate.
"Oh, I bet you have a funny shaped head," Olivia says, trying to quickly put distance between them and the sinking hole, trying not to take it as a failure, that the demolished city is an indication of what they'll find at Massive Dynamic. She hopes the distance will shake off the encompassing black cloud that's threatening to scramble out of every available pore. She's given herself a nauseating headache trying to keep herself together. "Like an egg." She manages, and Peter shoots her a nasty glare, reaching out to pull playfully on her braid, because he's feeling particularly brave.
It startles her enough to give him a particularly stony look of disapproval, her pulse quickening and her hands shaking so much she stuffs them in her pockets.
"You shouldn't sneak up on me like that." She warns.
"Or what?" Peter says mockingly, "You'll shoot me? I'm the one with the gun for once." He's juvenile and obnoxious and he knows it. "Best you can do is try to take another swing when I'm not expecting it if it makes you feel better."
"That's if you're lucky." She pulls her hair away from his clingy fingers. She feels exposed out here in the open, mixed between feeling relieved that they haven't been met with any dangers to put her powers to the test, and the haunted feeling that it would be so much easier if they saw anything other than destruction. His touch is too soothing, and out of the confines of a refuge, it feels like a weakness. She's worried if she lets her guard down she'll detonate.
She feels like cracked concrete, ready to break at any moment. The headaches are worse the further they travel, a migraine erupting when they first reached the border to New York. Yonkers was physically painful; the invisible danger everywhere and with it a surge of protectiveness so powerful she had to stumble away to put distance between her and Peter to keep herself from retching in front of him, sputtering something about needing a place to pee before doubling over behind the protection of an old hot dog stand, finding coils of blood among the food rations she threw up and a bloody nose that she quickly wiped away.
She doesn't dare share it with Peter; his concern over her would be detrimental to their mission, and they can't afford to lose any more time. Peter's back isn't healing as quickly as she would like, and the longer they go the better chance he has for the infection to get worse. She knows it's dangerous to keep things from him at this point, but the way he looks at her now, the tenderness of his voice…deception is better than distraction because time isn't a luxury they have to waste.
"Wait," he says, grabbing her forearm to halt her when he realized she'd stopped paying attention. She freezes instantly, trying to focus her gaze to their surroundings but the migraine keeps her from being able to feel anything but Peter's razor sharp focus. Peter grabs the loaded Sig out of his bag with his free hand, the other clamping on Olivia's arm. She hones in on the hard fingers of Peter's hand, the warmth spreading over the skin even through the layers of clothing.
"I don't hear anything." She says after a long period of silence. There's absolutely no noise around them. No birds, no movement. Nothing. Peter isn't convinced so she stays alert, letting him wander in front of them a few feet ahead and pretending not to mourn the loss of his touch. There's a snap in the distance.
His reaction is immediate; spinning around with the gun raised and ready. He finally makes out the figure in the distance, belonging to the remains of a small shapeshifter clamoring toward them. It's a few hundred feet back, a ghost of a boy who's more ash than skin, pieces flecking off as it moves at a snail's pace. It's jaw hangs open and he can just almost make out the grey ash it breathes out.
Peter hesitates.
Olivia doesn't.
Peter had startled her; she'd sensed the danger behind them, but the gun in Peter's hand turned in her direction too quickly and the pull in her chest flickered before she could stop it, the migraine splitting her head open as it bloomed, the charge becoming painful as it zipped up her bones to electrocute her. She can't feel her legs, the blackness forcing her to her knees, the nausea overwhelming but she can't even turn her head as the pain crests.
"Olivia!" Peter shouts, and she feels his hands on her, the sickening feeling that her brain is hemorrhaging through her nose again like a faucet, coughing through the stickiness that's trapped in her throat that she can't quite get out and she chokes on the blood as she tries to breathe.
The spinning subsides as everything fades back into focus. She first feels Peter's hands on her face, then in her mouth as his fingers scoop out the blood and vomit caught there and she quickly gags before she's able to breathe again. She blinks through the tears stinging her eyes until she can make out Peter's face from behind the veil of clouds distorting her vision, and she suddenly wishes she couldn't see him at all.
His face is frozen rigid in disbelief and shock, his eyes wild as he turns her face to the side to help open her airway. She tastes blood, smells it and she tries to spit what's left in her mouth to the blackened earth he's directing her to. Breathing burns, scorching her throat and expanding painfully in her lungs as she pulls in the stale taste of the air that surrounds them.
"Can you swallow?" he asks her, and she wants to hear his snarky joke or the rough guffaw of his laugh, but it doesn't come, instead he waits for the nod of her head before he lifts the canteen to her mouth so she can drink. She swishes the tasteless water in her mouth, spitting out the lingering acidic flavor before she can take a pull to soothe her aching throat.
Being able to breathe evenly calms her nerves a bit, reaching out to grab for Peter to support her to rise to her knees. She hears a hiss as she tightens her hold on the hand smoothing her face and she's surprised and horrified by what she sees.
"Peter, my god." she says, her voice hoarse. The pads of his hand are laced by a sliver of red skin stretched tight across his palm, like he grabbed onto a live wire and couldn't let go.
Peter ignores her reaction, pulling his hand away and forces her to drink more from the canteen.
"Can you breathe?" he asks and she catches the raised intensity of his pain through the murky waters of her head caving in, and she can't make out the shock of whatever happened. She sticks a palm to his chest to push him far enough away to let her sit up and scrabble to her feet to look at their surroundings.
"Your hand," she says, but on closer inspection finds his hands suffering identical burns: two angry scars that puff away from the skin; his left hand worse than the right, matching the same red blotch that's almost a fine sheen in places and covered in blood.
"It's your blood," he says as she traces his hands with her blurry eyes until the bloody nose that's still openly flowing seeps into her mouth. She's forced to release his hands to reach up to wipe her nose on her sleeve. Peter snaps to grab her wrist, painfully spiking in the hazy field of her periphery and she knows he didn't mean to do it on purpose.
"Let me get the first-aid kit," he says, reaching for her pack that's laying haphazardly in the debris. "Between my back and your nose, we don't need any more unwanted attention." He tries to keep his voice light, not letting the rising heat in his hands overwhelm him into panic. He finds a clean wad of gauze and gingerly wipes the blood away from Olivia's face and mouth. She sits and stays still enough to let him clean her up. She takes the opportunity to look around.
She sees him grind down hard on his jaw, and looks past his shoulder when he turns to tuck away the disgusting gauze to find another wad. Where she assumed the shapeshifter was before is now a bag of burning bones, the grey smoke raising up from it yards away. Had he tried to put out the fire with his hands? How'd he get back so quickly? Was she out longer than she thought?
"What did I do?" she asks, because there's no other explanation. Peter looks pained, his face pale as he attempts to hide whatever it is she's done. He helps pull her up, supporting her on his unscathed wrists until she's standing.
"It wasn't your fault." He says with an edge that tells her that it absolutely was her fault.
"I crossed the streams, didn't I?" Even as she says it, she knows it's what happened. The last thing she remembers was the barrel of the gun pointed in her direction even though she knew, knows, that Peter'd never in a million years pull it on her. She felt the bitter pull of the shock but doesn't remember with any amount of certainty what followed.
Until she sees the gun glinting against the street and everything becomes painfully clear.
"Don't even worry about it," Peter cuts in when she sees the gun. "Takes the edge off my back, so maybe I should be thanking you." He shuffles her away from the place where the melted weapon lies against a nest of fluttering newspapers, the corners long since burnt so that she can't make out the headlines. Her hands shake.
"I wasn't thinking," he grins, but it's too tight for his face. "I shouldn't have pulled a gun in the direction of the person who can start fires with her mind." There's panic behind his eyes and he knows it. He tries to push away the image of her washed-out face, her eyes flashing black as soon as he pulled the gun, felt the charge of her reaction pinpointed square on the gun before it turned white-hot in his hands, sticking to the skin and the horrible burning that followed before he was able to toss it aside. She'd scared him in that instant, the look on her face not her, and he was truly frightened for his life.
It does little to make her feel better.
Her vision's blurry at the thought that she did this to him; her head a pounding drum steady on her skull. He's careful to not use his burnt hands as he steadies her on her feet.
"Peter," she argues, her hands wrapping around the frame of his wrist. His bored face would almost be convincing if she couldn't sense the white heat of lingering pain flushing against her like a second skin. Her head feels so heavy. "There's more you want to say."
"Why didn't you say anything?" he blurts, all the words blending together in his haste. Olivia focuses, her mouth opening to say something in retort, but it doesn't get past her teeth.
"About what?" she says innocently.
His calculated face crushes her. His cautious fingers pull the strands of hair matted to her face and the spiraling defeat washes over her and she knows it's bad. He sees something in her face that startles him and he backtracks, eyes glued to the burns on his hands.
"This is such bullshit." his voice is angry, swooshing the air from her lungs and her head cracks in pain. "You knew, and you didn't tell me. After everything, Olivia. You're still lying to me."
His outburst catches her off guard. She steps back from him, feeling her own anger reverberate against his own. She has to stifle it down so she doesn't let it overwhelm her. His anger is hot on her skin.
"I'm fine—" she starts, but stops dead at his murderous glare. She backtracks, retreating into her own anger and gives up trying to mislead him. "What's the point of scaring you? We are going to make it. This is just a setback, just a…" her rambling is cut short.
Peter's miles away, listing the possibilities, calculating everything he's witnessed and trying to formulate the variables into something that isn't fucking terrible.
"This is bad, isn't it?" she says for him.
Peter hesitates, looking at the ways her eyes flicker black; the red spots in the whites where she must have burst capillaries. He feels so stupid.
"I don't know," he says, but the way his eyes crinkle sadly at the corners turns her stomach. "I don't know." He repeats louder, with more angry conviction. He pulls away from her, his back spasming from the exertion of his brewing tantrum.
"This isn't fair," he nearly shouts as he paces, Olivia left helpless to watch. "This isn't fucking fair."
She tries to quiet him, but she makes it only two steps before she stumbles, lightheaded and overexerted. He's back beside her to snag her elbow to steady her, but that makes it worse.
"This was supposed to work," he mutters, pulling her tight and trying to avoid eye contact. He can't.
"This was supposed to be how we made it. How we could save Walter, how we could save everyone and I didn't even think about the consequences." He's back to shouting.
"Keep your voice down," Olivia warns, but her voice cracks at the end and that only furthers Peter's tirade.
"Or what? Someone in this ground-zero of a fucking town will hear me?" He's mad sounding, the guilt and anger bursting through his chest.
"It's just a nose-bleed," she steadies, trying to reach out for his flying limbs. This must have been how she looked to him when she had her own mini-meltdown. His ache is more terrifying than she remembers her own, watching him bang around in his fury over her.
"It's not." His voice goes grave, lower and baritone and goose bumps spread across her arms. "I don't know what this is, but I know it's worse than what you're actually telling me. Don't even tell me it's not." He spits out and Olivia eats her retort, stewing in fuming anger.
"I feel…different," she finally says. Peter stops then, taking unsteady steps in her direction. "I'm worried that I'm losing control of it. It's everywhere. Everywhere's dangerous. I can't shake it."
Peter can't touch her, his hand rising as if to reach out to her, but he stops, and lets it drop between them. She feels his whirlwind of emotions: the fear, the pain, the horror. He looks at her differently, she sees herself reflected in his eyes like she's something dangerous, and it's a worse hurt than if he'd kicked her in the chest.
"I'm the trigger," he mumbles, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. "I can activate you." It's lacking the excitement from earlier; it's sad. Remorseful. It's pity.
Yeah, she wants to say but doesn't bother. She waits for him with a burning migraine and a pathetic need for his unwavering optimism to make her feel less broken. His hesitation is a sledge hammer.
"But I don't know how to turn you off." He finally says, the wind carrying his voice away.
"Hey, mister!" A voice calls, startling them both. Peter spins, stepping in between the meek sounding shout and Olivia, shouldering her out of the way when he hears her sudden intake of breath. A knobby-kneed teenage boy stands a few yards away, too thin and too terrified-looking to be a Resister. His shotgun is trained on them without knowledge or the foresight not to shake and Peter digs his hand into Olivia's arms to keep her stationary. The kid's hunched over, his bronze hair matted in thick clumps above his ears, his hands snaking out of clothing too big for his meager frame. The air cracks around them with electricity.
Peter wants to laugh at the injustice of it all.
"Hand over your bags," the kid says with a fizzled authority that's shaky and uncontrolled. Peter feels the heat radiating off of Olivia, twists to find her eyes clamped shut, her face flushing red and he feels time slip away as the sweat beads on her forehead. He grabs her shoulders and pushes.
Maybe her last outburst drained her enough to keep from exploding again. He's not sure what will happen to her if she has another outburst, but an aneurysm seems just as likely as spontaneous combustion at this point. He tries to cover her completely with his presence and away from the danger behind them.
"Get out of here," he shouts at the spindly teenager, sparing an outstretched hand to keep him from coming any closer. The angry snarl of Peter's voice makes the kid step back, and Peter keeps thinking keep going! Keep going! But determination sets in and the kid raises the gun up further and takes another step in their direction.
"Just give me the bags!" he shouts back, and Olivia grinds her fingers into Peter's skin, nails stamping as she doubles over. "They're right behind me, mister, and you don't want me to blow your leg off so the zombies can get you." Peter hopes it's a lie.
"You don't know what you're doing, and get that fucking gun out of my face!" Peter yells as he pushes Olivia back further, trying to put distance between them, seeing the way her body's shaking trying to stifle her response and praying that the kid has the good sense to run. Her face is bone white and he tries another tactic. "Take them! Take the bags and get out of here!"
"Olivia, don't," he murmurs into her ear, cheek pressed against her heated skin. Her eyes open, completed eclipsed by the black, more capillaries bursting and spreading across the slivers of white that are left.
"Don't," he orders, his voice unable to squash the panic rising there. The kid's screaming at them in the background, and Peter's terrified that Olivia will burst out of her skin with the exertion of trying to contain herself. "It's just me, it's just me." He wraps both his arms around her, crushing her to his chest, trying to murmur soothingly into her hair.
"Peter," her voice is different, not her own and he knows he's losing her. "Run."
She's a spinning tornado, feeling the heat build and quicken around her chest, and she's unable to cling to anything coherent. She digs into Peter's skin despite her warning, breathing in his scent, remembering the long gone smell of peaches on his mouth but the pressure is so much, so hot and it's burning her from the inside out. She feels her eyes bleed, the pain unbelievable.
She catches Peter's soft murmuring on her neck, but he's miles away, the fear undiluted and raging under her skin. The boy's voice is sinister, his presence dangerous despite his round baby face and dirty legs. He's probably a few years older than Ella, and the thought of her niece's perfect little face and button nose that matches her sister's furthers the consuming fire, ravaged by anguish. She's being torn apart; she opens her eyes to find Peter's face through the haze of the building pressure as he's shouting at the child and pleading for her to listen to him and it's too much. She loses control.
The blackness is an overwhelming sensation of discharging heat and squeals that sound just like Ella's. She clings to Peter with every thread of strength she has left and keeps trying to tell herself to keep him safe, and like that, Pandora's Box opens, and she lets herself fall into the blackness, letting it drain her until there's nothing left, her last coherent thoughts are of peaches and Ella's soft giggling in the distance.
