Short one tonight, guys. I wanted to get something out since the next few days will probably be too crazy to write. Sorry, we're getting into it soon! Still love reviews like Walter loves RedVines; keep 'em coming!
When the door clicked behind Olivia's back, she pulled her phone from the purse and dialed without hesitation, waiting to walk down the hallway until the other end had been answered.
"Okay," she said into the receiver. "What do I need to do?"
Olivia listened to her directions over the phone, digging the keys for the SUV out of her purse as she walked outside into the light. By the time she was sitting at the wheel she had her task memorized. A quick drive to New York, one stop to collect the device and the other to meet her go-between and she would be done. Olivia figured by the time mid-afternoon had rolled around she could be back with Peter, with some clean excuse about paperwork and briefing Broyles. He'd never suspect a thing.
It was a clear, beautiful morning. Olivia would enjoy her drive.
How different it was, to be in a world that wasn't collapsing around her.
After two months on their side Olivia had begun to adapt to life without the things she had grown up with. Things were different on this side – the first she had noticed being that there were no Amber protocols (hell, no Amber for that matter) or new breaks about vortexes opening up in major cities. The viruses that she had learned to fear as she grew, the ones her mother worried about; Smallpox, Polio, they had been cured, eradicated or at least vastly prevented Over Here. Technology lagged; the secretary hadn't warned her of that, Olivia found herself puzzled by the lack of Show Me cards and ear pieces and security was much more relaxed. Well, sure, without the world collapsing around you there was no need to pinpoint every member of the human race the way they had Over There.
She had almost blown her cover multiple times now over the smallest of things. Being a couple years behind Over Here, left without the technology she was used to, Olivia could hardly care when some small luxuries that she hadn't even known she missed reappeared on this side. The first time Peter had brought her a cup of coffee Olivia knew she had acted too grateful; her eyes probably wide with shock and awe, which only earned her a smart comment and a smile, too friendly, from Peter.
"I've brought you coffee a million times, don't look so shocked." And he had rubbed her shoulder in the same way that Frank sometimes would, in a way that told Olivia that Peter was something more to the girl just like her. Piecing together just how together they were had been an entirely different story.
Visiting Harvard was another close call. Boston, nearly completely Ambered over, had been that way since Olivia was a girl; stepping into the city and onto the campus for the first time, realizing that it was almost a second home had left her humbled and quiet, too quiet for Peter, Walter and Astrid's liking. It was the moment she learned she had to watch herself.
Sheep, ball-point pens, airplanes instead of zeppelins. Avocados that just sat in the store, heaps at a time (and two in Olivia's fridge that had rotted upon Olivia's initial entrance into her pseudo-life. Oh, how livid she had been thinking her Other Self had let something so precious go to waste, until she went to the store and found she could have as many as she desired), not to mention pineapple. How long had it been since Olivia had tasted pineapple? She had ate an entire one in less than 12 hours that first week here.
Over Here, the inside of the Statue of Liberty, the Department of Defense, was a gift shop. What was the need of an entire Department of Defense without the tragedies that she knew first-hand? Fringe Division consisted of just about five people instead of five hundred and a private hospital unit. They were the outcasts and misfits; Olivia had heard their names bandied around at the FBI enough to know that they were considered lunatics and jokes. And that, too, the FBI, two decades out of service Over There still alive and bumping Over Here.
How quaint.
Over Here – it had earned the capital O and H in Olivia's mind. It wasn't a mock-reality anymore but somewhere as real, as real as New York or Maine or Texas had been Over There. It was a real place, with inhabitants just as real as the location.
Walter Bishop wasn't the secretary of defense. In fact, this Walter had been laughable to Olivia until their first case together and she had seen his brilliance. The same brilliance that had earned 'Walternate' as they called him the position he was in now. They were alike; brilliant to the point of madness but this Walter was humble. Kind. A human touch that she hadn't seen from the Secretary. It was hard to believe the man was a kidnapper.
Still, she thought she liked this Walter more.
And Peter – what had he called himself the first time they had met Over There? The Lindbergh Baby. The Lindbergh Baby, indeed, judging by the research she had done. The Peter Bishop that had been made famous Over There was barely above a crook Over Here and his written record had shocked Olivia. He had still managed to get employed by the FBI. Not what she expected from the Secretary's son but still, there was something about him. Something that made her forget her job and that he was a pawn in it, that made her want to stay with him. She had a life where she was from, but Peter hadn't made some of her decisions easy. Still, she was damn loyal and committed to her cause. Her world. Her people.
This world had to go. Her world had to survive.
And in the world that had to survive, somewhere, a woman said, I'm not from here.