Author's Note: I am proud to announce that this is the longest chapter (mostly because I couldn't find a good place to split it up). So for the last real chapter (oh no!) you get a nice long one. Only the epilogue after this, folks!
Disclaimer: I bowled a 152 today, but sadly I did not win Fringe.


Chapter Nine

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,
wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams
no mortal ever dared to dream before.
--Edgar Allan Poe

In the morning, after a good night's sleep and a third dose of antibiotics, Olivia's temperature is only 99.8 degrees and she triumphantly tells Peter she can go to work. So the three of them, including a refreshed-looking and fully-recovered Sian, trek on down to the federal building. Sian is absolutely fascinated by everything and everyone, even Broyles, who stops by to check on Olivia. She's still pale enough to look sick, so they have no trouble convincing him that the woman needed the time off. Sian has even more fun describing the woman from her dreams to a facial reconstruction expert, who faxes it over to Charlie.

"Now what?" asks Sian, almost giddy from the fun of it all.

"Now, we wait," says Olivia. Sian's face falls, and Peter smiles.

"What would you like to do?"

Her face brightens again. "I bet you $50 that I can kick your butt in bowling."

"Do you even have $50?"

She looks smug. "I won't need it."

"You're on."

Olivia stays to get some work done, after promising to keep it light and stay no later than two. Peter and Sian swing by the lab to pick up Walter and Astrid, who are game to go.

"I haven't bowled in seventeen years," Walter says gleefully.

They hang out at the bowling alley and eat terrible food and have a grand old time bowling. Sian somehow bowls a 225, a 208, and a 210, collecting $50 each from him and Astrid, having beat them by at least 50 all three games. Walter outbowls them all.

"I'm on the bowling team at school," Sian finally admits when pressed. "It's kind of nice. They'll actually talk to me when I bowl well."

"You are a cheater," Peter declares.

Sian giggles. "Am not. You're the one who overestimated your skill at bowling."

"Cheeky," he says, and buys them all ice creams to celebrate.

Olivia is asleep on the couch when they get back around four and they tiptoe around the lab to avoid waking her. Sian graciously allows Peter to play with her DS while she learns how to brush and milk the cow from his father, and they occasionally break out into quiet giggles. Astrid is out getting pizza for dinner when Olivia's cell phone rings, and they're all on instant alert when she wakes and answers it.

"Thanks, Charlie," Olivia finally says, hanging up and smiling. "They got her. Well done, Sian."

Olivia cooks for all of them at her house that night to say thanks, and early the next morning, Peter accompanies her to interrogate Dr. Melanie Harding.

"Given the events of the past few days, I assume you know why you're here," Olivia begins, her voice cool, collected, and in charge.

"Dear little Seirian Williams. How is she? I hope she survived my little…interference measure."

"That's none of your business," says Peter, glaring at her. "What did you do to her?"

Olivia tenses beside him and he worries he's taken it too far already, but the woman merely looks self-satisfied. "She's a special girl, you know. I looked through the CAT scans and MRIs of thousands of people before I found her. And I was so glad I waited."

"Waited for what? What do you need her for?" Olivia probes.

"Oh, come now. I'm sure you've figured it out from your tests."

"You altered her hippocampus," Peter says.

The doctor laughs. "I hardly even had to. Just put in the chip and upped her serotonin production and off she went."

"Was it just her?" Olivia asks. "Was she the only one you altered?"

"I've never seen anyone else like her, though not for lack of trying. But I do know she can't share dreams with just anyone, only people who have particularly vivid dreams."

"But why do this to her? She told us herself she can't control it, that she only saw little things until just recently. What's the point?" Peter demands. Why make a poor little girl dream the future?

The doctor leans forward, her eyes glittering with manic obsession. "She's only beginning to develop her full potential. Once she dreams with a person, she can always dream with that person. Eventually, she'll be able to choose, and then…then she'll be unstoppable. Imagine what she could do."

Peter is horrified, but Olivia manages to keep focused. "Do you know how we found you?" she asks calmly. "Seirian…how did you put it? Dreamed with you." Dr. Harding pales. "Oh, so it's all right when she dreams with other people, but not with you?"

"That's…that's not possible." There is actual fear in the doctor's eyes.

"What, is she developing to her full potential too quickly?" Olivia keeps asking the questions. "Now that she's dreamed with you, she can do it again, that's right, isn't it? Anywhere you go, anything you do, she'll be able to find you."

"I'm not—she's not—"

Olivia slams her hand down on the table. "How do we get that chip out of her?"

"I—I don't—you don't understand. The chip is just to monitor and to make little adjustments, but it shouldn't be happening this fast. Her brain is doing that on its own." The doctor's eyes are terrified. "I can't stop it. It's not in my control!"

Peter stands. He can't help himself. "You mean to tell me you put something in that girl's brain without even knowing what was going to happen?" he says angrily, looming over the doctor.

"It was an experiment! Sometimes they get out of control—"

"It was an experiment on a little girl!" he yells slamming his mug of coffee on the table so hard it shatters.

"I'll tell you where my lab is, where the monitoring equipment is," the doctor sobs. "It won't stop her from dreaming like that, nothing can, but no one will be able to use the chip. No one."

"You swear?" Olivia demands.

"I swear it. I swear!" the woman cries, then babbles out the address and how to get in. Peter nearly storms out in disgust, but thinks of a better way to deal with his anger and gets in her face.

"Now you'll never know when she could be dreaming with you," he says, his voice low and menacing. "Your nights are no longer your own."

The woman sobs him out the door.

He sits outside on a bench for a good long while, trying to calm himself down. By the time Olivia finishes with the doctor and comes to find him, he's all but succeeded.

"Hey," she says softly. He glances at her and notices she only has on a blazer.

"You just don't want to get better, do you?" he asks, keeping his tone light and joking as he pulls off his jacket and wraps it around her shoulders.

"Good thing I have you to look after me," she teases, and they sit for awhile in companionable silence. "You gonna be okay?"

"Me? Yeah, sure." He grimaces. "Sian won't be."

"She won't," Olivia agrees quietly, and he's glad for the lack of platitudes. "Can your father do anything?"

The news is grim when they consult him later—it's about management, not a cure. Sian takes it better than Peter does, and hugs him tightly.

"You tried," she whispers into his hear. "I know you tried."

"Take one of these every night at bedtime," Walter instructs, handing the girl a bottle of pills. "They will decrease your serotonin levels enough that you'll dream like a normal person. I will send you new pills whenever you require."

"Thanks, Walter," she says, hugging him, too, then pulls back to look at all of them. "I'm going to keep dreaming…with people…unless I take these pills, won't I?"

"I'm afraid so," Walter answers, looking as disappointed as Peter feels.

"But the dreaming, it…it can help you, can't it?" Sian asks, turning to Olivia. "It could help you with your work, with all the weird stuff?"

"Sian, I don't—"

"I'm not going to dream every night," Sian interrupts firmly. "But some nights, I will, and if you give me a way, I'll contact you."

"Sian, you don't have to. I won't want you to think you have to."

"I want to," Sian tells Olivia, absolutely adamant in the way only a teenager can be. "I'm the only one who can do it and you need all the help you can get. I can do it. Just…not all the time."

Peter wants to protest, but he can tell by the stubborn set to her jaw that Sian's not going to back down. He uses a different tactic. "You know, Olivia, if she's aiding in our investigations, she's technically in the employ of the federal government. Shouldn't she get some sort of compensation?"

"And if she's going to dream, she'll need to be somewhere quiet and comfortable," Olivia muses. "Not in that little house."

"And a phone, she needs a good phone. Maybe one that does text messages if she can't reach you by calling," Astrid adds.

"What are you talking about?" asks Walter.

Sian is close to tears. "Really?"

"I'll see what I can do," Olivia says with a warm smile.

When they finally return Sian to her parents, it's with the news that they'll be moving to a much larger house, compliments of the government and that they'll be getting a stipend for their daughter's help no matter how much or how little she dreams. Everyone is in tears and Sian is smiling widely and hugging everyone in sight.

"She'll be okay. We didn't stop it, but somehow, she'll still be okay," Olivia says, amazed.

"She'll be more than okay. They'll have money, and a better place to live, and she'll be able to control when she dreams…until she can control who she dreams with, I guess," Peter says, smiling as Sian shows the boys their brand new DSs and they shriek with joy. They girls and her older brother get iPods and they're equally as thrilled, though not quite as loud. Sian runs back to Olivia and Peter and hugs both of them tightly, whispering tearful thanks in their ears before rejoining her family.

Peter offers his arm to Olivia. "Let's go home."

Olivia smiles and slips her arm into his. She sleeps the whole flight home, head resting on his shoulder. He smiles at her and knows that even though they couldn't stop Sian's dreams, they somehow managed to do good anyway.

Yay for answers! And sciencey-wiency. And also, I doubt the government can do that sort of thing, but...they have lots of funding, right? They got a cow and everything...