The Inductive Experiment
At two in the morning, Olivia woke to Walter dropping the toilet seat like a cannonball, followed by the Niagara-sounding flush in the wet wall. Ordinarily, she would have turned over and gone back to sleep, but since the Fringe events had gotten bad, Walter's bathroom runs had hauled her out of nightmares, each worse than the last, and she found it a relief to be awake.
It'd taken her a few days to realize the nightmares weren't really about what they were about. It wasn't literally Peter in the office building that rattled her, but it was the same feeling she'd had years ago, when John Scott was turning see-through and she'd gone across the world to find someone who could save him and it had all come too late.
For months after John's death, she'd dreamed of having been five hours faster: faster to get Peter Bishop on a plane to the States, faster to get Walter Bishop out of St. Clair's, fast enough to keep John's lungs from turning to gravy. But that panic over John Scott had never really been about John Scott, just as, now, Olivia knew her dread wasn't really about Peter, nor the people who'd died, nor the holes in the world. It was that she was supposed to have been able to stop it.
Everything about her life had been set in place to lead her toward being able save those people, or to save Peter from failing to save those people. The Cortexiphan; the light box; the tests; the multiple interventions by mad geniuses; and still, she hadn't been ready or able to do what was needed.
Would she be able to, in the future? Or, ever? In light of the sudden escalation in Fringe activity, a critical turning point could be only a day ahead of her, but she felt far removed from the heroine in Walter's stolen prophetic images. Suddenly she felt intensely guilty for being at home, in bed, trying to sleep.
She looked to Peter, who was asleep beside her, his face a foot from hers, and the thought crossed her mind that she could wake him up and expect him to offer some comfort (because, ordinarily, that's what sharing a bed with someone would allow). But wouldn't that be just another amelioration, another sleeping pill, when she should be wide awake and working?
She got up.
In the kitchen, she made toast and burned it, just to have something to chew while she walked in circles.
After a few laps of the living room, she stopped. Her eyes settled on the television. It occurred to her that a television was not unlike a box of lights, and that, if she wanted to work as hard as she could, there were types of work she could be pursuing harder than she was.
Peter didn't mean to creep up on her. Soft feet, he supposed, and the fact that Olivia was staring holes through the television (never mind that there was nothing on but static) got him down the stairs and to the back of the couch without drawing her attention.
"Non est somnus pro defesso."
"Ooh!" Olivia said, jumping at the sound of his voice. "You scared the hell out of me."
"If only it had always been so easy to get you to admit that."
"Peter," she sighed, refusing to lift her eyes from the television as she felt his hands compress the couch cushions behind her shoulders. He leaned over her, waiting.
"I missed my 4:30 wake up kick," he said.
"I don't do that."
"Yeah, you do."
She blinked. "Is it 4:30 already?"
"Sure is." He glanced at the television, still playing nothing but static. "TV's on," he noted.
"I'm aware."
"For any reason in particular?"
"Yes," she said, as if that would explain anything. She twisted back to look up at him. "Peter, I want to go to the lab."
"Now? Why, what happened? Something wrong?"
"Kind of."
"You're staring at a blank television at five in the morning; I'm guessing 'kind of' might not cover it." He ambled around the couch and took up a seat. "What's going on?"
"This isn't working," she said. She caught the sting in Peter's face, but also the steadying of his expression as he waited for clarification. "What I mean is that I came here to do something and I haven't done it. And now these terrible things are happening and I don't have the answers I was supposed to find. I was supposed to prevent these things. I should've been able to stop them."
"Olivia-"
"And I've been telling myself, this whole time, that I was doing everything I could. But I wasn't," she said. "So. That thing you asked me to keep in the back of my mind. That thing I said I'd try." She paused. "I'm ready to try it now."
Peter didn't say anything for a minute. He looked between her and the television, and then he understood. "Yeah?"
"I want to go to the lab."
At 5:46am, Peter set two gas station coffees down next to Walter's rotary evaporator and pulled two chairs together in a corner of the lab.
"Okay," he said, taking the chair that Olivia didn't and scuffing it close, "despite anything I may have said before in the interests of making you receptive to this idea...keep your expectations comfortably low."
"Cold feet?" she smirked.
"Definitely not," he said, edging forward until his knees were almost grazing hers. "I'm just saying, I haven't exactly had the chance to practice."
Olivia sat perfectly still and ramrod straight at the edge of her seat. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."
She shut her eyes and waited.
If she'd expected Peter's presence to be efficient or in any way precise, she'd overestimated his capabilities. Where his mind made contact with hers, he was a blunt instrument, pushing and tugging like Mike Mulligan and his damned steam shovel. There was no good descriptor for the loss of balance, but the physical jolt was like hitting her funny bone with a screwdriver. The sensation of nakedness went far enough under her skin that it made her crawl up onto the chair to get away.
Peter opened his eyes to see her half-kneeling on the seat. "You okay?" he asked, waiting for her to tell him he wasn't getting a second chance - that she'd tried it and once was enough, thanks.
"You'd better have a steep learning curve," she said, instead.
"It's just me and vos Savant in the MENSA fight club," he promised.
Olivia smiled, just a little bit. "Again," she ordered, as her fingers went white around the wooden arms.
