This is still on Peter during Entrada. I'm working on the promissed Marionette chapter, but this one just had to be written before I went further on.
Review, please?
She sleeps peacefully.
Around him everything is a quiet rustle - her gentle breathing, the whirring of the hospital machines, the muffled footsteps of people coming and going on the corridors outside her room. The quiet is only broken by the disembodied voice from the hospital's loudspeakers; and by the din in his head.
He replays everything, every scene of those last eight weeks that he shared with her. He lists and catalogues every small difference he's noticed. Every new detail that resurfaces is a renewed torture, a fresh cut, another ounce of lead weighing him down.
He watches Olivia's face. He watches every little feature on her face, trying to find something, something that would allow him to tell them apart.
But there is nothing. He is sure that there is nothing. Nothing physical, at least, that would allow telling them apart.
He sighs. He doesn't know what to do, how to go on from what's happened. How should he be around her now? Should he just go on as if he hadn't been in a relationship with…
Shit.
What should he call her?
Her.
She.
Temptress? Or Mata Hari, like Walter had dubbed her? He can't help a derisive snort at the thought.
Or should he just give her some sort of a moniker, something like Walternate?
Maybe Alt-Livia?
Alt-Livia.
He breathes in slowly and raggedly.
He feels tears burning his eyes. He would have to bury it all and pretend it didn't happen, because, really, truthfully, it had all been a fantasy, a lie.
Reality is there, before him, unconscious on that bed.
He wonders if Olivia knows. If she's any idea of what's happened.
If she knows, she'll have no qualms about throwing everything in his face, he is sure. The moment she wakes up, he will know whether she's already been disappointed in him or if he'll have to announce his betrayal.
He can't decide which prospect is worst.
She stirs in her sleep, but only slightly. He is amazed by how peaceful she looks. If she wasn't sleeping, he would even risk saying she looked content.
He will tell her the moment she wakes up. He will tell her everything. Try to explain. To make her see. She'll have to see. She'll have to understand. Everyone was fooled. They belong together. Her words, not his.
Fuck.
She stirs and she is awake and he dreads what'll come next.
And then she smiles and is so clearly happy to see him, that she can't possibly know nor have a clue.
He knows what's worse now. He'd have preferred fury, hate, anything but that smile full of hope and love.
He can't meet her eyes. Steeling himself he takes her hand –his life line. Perhaps that tether to something real will help – she's real!
He'll have to break her heart, he'll have to change everything.
"I'm sorry, Olivia." He hopes he conveys the regret he feels in those brief words.
"Don't apologize. You were the only thing that got me through. If it wasn't for you, I would never have made it back. You saved my life."
And he knows. That moment, no matter what, he knows it's over.
The afternoon sun that filtered through the window blinds adds an eerie unreal atmosphere to the room.
His body rises from the chair of its own accord, with an undeferred momentum. He doesn't even realize what he's doing until he has to brush away her fringe to kiss her forehead.
He finishes what got interrupted more than a year ago by her coming back to life.
He kisses her goodbye.