A/N: Here is the next chapter, and this is a long one. We're getting closer and closer to the end of this tale, less than ten chapters remain.
Thanks to my fabulous beta, Uroboros75 and to my readers; your reviews never cease to make me smile :)
Enjoy everyone.
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~ Honoré de Balzac
Chapter Seventeen: Trepidation
It was like a thousand eyes were boring into him at that very moment.
Peter had never thought it would be so difficult to return to the place he once tried to call home, to the place where nothing and everything belonged to him.
"Walter," he called as his father stood back at the car, a hint of intimidation in his posture.
"Are you are coming?"
Walter looked at the building; Peter could tell that his eyes were scanning over it. He could almost fell a sense of foreboding in Walter's stance, the posture of a wary vulture.
"No, son," he said, his expression hardening. "I don't think so."
Peter turned to his father. "Walter, are you alright?"
Walter placed a hand on the rim of the door, his fingers flexing against the metal. "I don't have a good feeling about this place, Peter."
"Well, if it's any consolation, there isn't much about here that makes feel all warm and fuzzy inside either," he said.
Walter's silence was his only answer.
"Tell you what," Peter offered as he placed a gentle hand on Walter's shoulder. "You can wait here with Agent Simons while Astrid and I go up, alright?"
Walter nodded with a weak smile. After returning the gesture with a bit more enthusiasm, Peter turned back to the building.
The apartment gazed back at him, swallowing his reflection and that of Astrid as he stepped towards the doors. The monolith rose into the sky, encrusted with sunlight and silver. Peter blinked against the spear of light that pierced his eye before motioning for Astrid to follow him into the building. Agent Simons remained behind to watch Bolivia.
He was thankful for the lack of a lobby (something which he had previously thought was a mark against hospitality), but now he realised how very useful it would be. The locks were of little problem for him, the numbers tumbling through his veins like wine as he drummed his fingers over the keys. The numbers clicked in recognition, and with an obnoxious beep the door opened.
They quickly made their way to the elevator, which took a few anxious minutes to arrive.
They both sighed heavily when the doors opened to yield no one else. Peter stepped in behind Astrid and pushed a button, the doors sliding shut in front of him.
It wasn't hard for him to remember the number of the floor; it was two before the thirteenth floor.
He only remembered it so well because there was no thirteenth floor in the building.
He'd asked Wal– the Secretary – about it once, but he'd brushed it off as superstitious babble that he heard here and there when the building was first being constructed.
Architecture was no concern of his; so long as he had something over his head, he would be satisfied.
Peter could think of a few things he would like to hit him over the head with at that moment, all of which were not readily available. His hand rested near his gun, perched in the holster at his hip; though the space between his fingers was still less than comforting.
When he first mentioned the apartment to Astrid, she looked at him as if his common sense had been left behind in the other universe.
"Isn't that exactly where Walternate will expect you to go?" she had said, voicing her concerns.
"No," he replied. "He expects me to come after Olivia; and knowing Walternate, he'll be keeping her in the safest place he knows."
"The complex on Liberty Island," she answered.
"Bingo," he said. "So we go in, get what we need, and get out."
"And what is it exactly that we need there?"
He hushed his voice then, quieting to a whisper so that Bolivia wouldn't hear.
"When Olivia came to take me back, I didn't have a chance to swipe the blueprints to the machine." He turned his head for an instant to check the road. "So, provided Walternate hasn't already taken them back to Liberty Island, we'll take them for our own uses."
"And if he has?"
"Then we proceed to Liberty Island and get Olivia the hell outta there."
The conversation ended on that note. He knew that there was no questioning Astrid's loyalty; she would stand by him to the end, even if, by some cataclysmic turn of events, Olivia was nowhere to be found. But he hoped – and even dared to pray – that no such thing would happen. He was growing weary of the grand game of chess Fate force him to play.
But in his experience, the one thing that he learned from chess was that it was very difficult to take out a well-played Bishop.
The elevator doors opened with a small ping and Peter stepped out.
"Which number is it?" Astrid asked, her eyes scanning the various doors.
"Apartment 1110," he said, motioning down the hall. "It's just up here."
By the time they reached the door, Astrid had made an important realization.
"Peter," she said. "We don't have a key."
He smiled sheepishly. As he fished into his pocket, he thought how delightful it was to have certain tricks stored up his sleeve. His silent thanks went to Olivia for the inspiration as he reached to pick the lock. From the corner of his eyes he saw Astrid's eyebrows flinch along her brow.
He turned his head a little more. "Astrid," he said, catching her attention like a fish caught in midair. "You alright?"
She nodded, the bob of her head shaky in its indecisiveness. "Yeah. I'm just not... a fan of breaking and entering."
He smirked. "Don't think of this as breaking and entering. Think of it more as... improvising."
She shook her head and sighed. "Peter Bishop, the very definition of improvisation." She quirked her lips slightly, her head tilting on a gentle angle. "Remind me to check a dictionary when we get back."
"What's wrong with the ones over here?" Peter asked as a wiry click sounded inside the lock mechanism.
She looked at him as if he'd just walked into the lab in the absence of pants, halfway to mimicking Walter's Tuesday tradition. "Are you kidding me? With my luck there'd be a picture of you grinning like a Cheshire Cat."
He pushed the door open, a grin splitting his face like the skin of a soft peach. After Astrid had stepped inside he followed, closing the door quietly behind them. The apartment was as spacious as he recalled. The vista before him was a mirror reflecting his own memories; but the memory was a capture of light and geometry, with angles cutting into air. The apartment itself was a shoebox of old photos, emblems of things preferably forgotten.
Peter's eyes scanned the room. The room appeared untouched; he was tempted to run his fingers over the dark cherry table and see if his fingers came back tinted grey.
Astrid had moved to the kitchen, her steps wary against the linoleum. Peter noticed her one hand was never far from her revolver, reduced to a small glint of silver beneath her jacket. He could tell by the slight hitch in her shoulders that she felt uncomfortable.
He had a similar sense of trepidation as well, waiting for a certain pressure to appear along the tip of his spine. It would be accompanied by a soft voice, muted to his ears only.
He shook his head, as if to clear his face from an imaginary rain that had trickled onto his brow. When he'd settled again his eyes continued scanning, trained spotlights speckling the room in his gaze.
Then he saw them, nestled on the table like wrinkled flowers of a decaying bouquet. The blueprints were a deep cerulean, etched with ivory white thistles of printing and instructions. Peter approached and gingerly picked them up, hefting them under his right arm.
"Astrid," he called and she appeared in the kitchen doorway. He held them up with quirked eyebrow. "Not too hard to find."
"I'm surprised Walternate hasn't moved them by now."
"Yeah," Peter said, shuffling through them. "Let's not jinx it, though; all I need to ruin my day is the sight of a bazooka aimed at my face."
Then his hand stopped abruptly while flicking through the pages. The taut curves of his lips crumbled into a frown.
"Peter," Astrid asked as she stepped towards him. "What's wrong?"
"There's a page missing," he said, and he began searching, his eyes flitting about the room.
"Well, it has to be here," Astrid said. "Unless Walternate took it."
Peter sighed heavily. It was one of the more critical pages, and deciphering the inner workings of the machine in its absence would be a far lengthier affair.
"Damn it," he hissed. "If Walternate took it, then the only way to get it back is to barge right into his office on Liberty Island."
Astrid's eyes were wide, trying to conceive some sort of solution. "Let's check around here first. It could still be lying around somewhere in the apartment, so maybe we should jus–"
But her words were cut by the sharp sound of a foot against the hard wood lining the floors. They both turned to the sound and saw a form in the dark shadows of another doorway.
"I think that this," said Elizabeth Bishop as she stepped from the doorway, "is perhaps what you are looking for." She held a hand up gingerly, the once absent piece of paper clutched between her pale digits, which she held close to her chest.
"Agent Farnsworth," she began, eyeing her strangely. "You aren't dressed in your uniform..." She trailed off, then looked to her son in shocked realization. "You brought someone from the Other Side here with you? Peter, why?"
Peter reached out for her arm, gently resting his open palm on her. "Look, she's with me. She's the Astrid from the other side. There's no need to worry."
"But why, Peter?" she pleaded. "Why risk something that could damage our world even further? You saw what has happened over here. Was that not convincing enough?"
Peter said nothing, his brow flexing like a wrinkled cloth.
"Your father has been trying to prevent things from getting worse, Peter. Are you really going to take away the only hope we have?"
Astrid stepped in, her shoulders drawn back. "Mrs. Bishop, we aren't here to cause any damage. We're only here to recover something that belongs to us."
Her brow creased. "You mean these?" she said, crinkling the page between her fingers.
"No, Mrs. Bishop," Astrid said. "We're here because –"
"– Because our Olivia Dunham was taken," Peter snapped, his voice harsh like a whip. "And we're here to take her home."
She sighed heavily, tossing the crumpled page on the table. "And where do these... designs come in? I've tried to study them, to understand why your father had you working on them, but I still don't understand them."
She crossed her arms, her mouth curling into an anxious frown. "I don't understand any of this, Peter. You return home after being missing for twenty-five years and leave barely a week later. You don't leave any sort of explanation for your absence, and Walter said that there was some sort of misunderstanding between you two, and that you'd be back soon. Is this what he meant Peter? Because how can I know?"
"You can't," Peter answered. "Waltern– Walter isn't giving you all the information. But I can. If you want answers, I can give them all to you right now."
She nodded slowly, her lower lip curling over the upper one before she answered. "That name that you called your father earlier, the one you almost called him now. What is it?"
Peter sighed. "Walternate, the... Walter from the Other Side calls him that."
Elizabeth sat down, a few loose curls from her bun bounced like springy vines. Her eyes fell to her hands, wrinkled with something Peter suspected was more than aging. "It's strange," she said. "I've heard in passing your father mention a name. Perses. But I never thought anything of it until I –"
"Until you looked it up in Greek mythology," Peter interrupted, sitting down with the papers in his lap.
She nodded solemnly. "The Greek God of Destruction."
"Original," Peter said dryly.
"Not a very pleasant nickname either," Astrid added.
"Peter," Elizabeth said. "What is this machine? Why did Walter have you work on it?"
Peter folded his hands together, blinking his eyes a few times. "It...I'm honestly not quite sure. What I do know is that the reason Walter had me working on it was because... I am the power source."
Her hands came up to her face, curling over her lips. "You are the source? But how? And for what?"
"We don't know," said Astrid, crossing her arms on her knees. "But we think that it may be able to destroy universes; in this case, ours."
She shook her head. "Peter... do you know what your father vowed to do when the searches for you stopped? He vowed to make this world safe for you. He believed so much in the prospect of you returning that he would do anything to keep this world from falling apart."
"Apparently, his efforts have expanded to include sacrificing that which he originally set out to save," Peter chimed.
"No," Elizabeth snapped, standing a moment later. "Peter, I refuse to believe that your father would resort to means such as these. All he ever wanted was for you to come home. Will you really take that from us again?"
Peter had already stood next to her. "I'm sorry... Mother, please..."
He reached out to hug her, his arms curling around her petite form. He could feel the pronounced curve of her shoulder blades, more defined than he remembered. He ran a gentle hand over her back and listened to her soft whisper in his ear, a final plea.
"I'm sorry," he repeated when they at last parted. "But this isn't my home anymore."
She looked away for an instant, and Peter saw Astrid frowning deeply. When she turned back her eyes were crinkled with deep lines. "Take them," she said with a motion towards the pages. "If you don't belong here, then those pages don't either."
Peter looked to the pages in his hands before passing them to Astrid, who began walking towards the door.
Peter held out his arms in an expression of defeat and slight helplessness.
"Look, I –"
But Elizabeth Bishop cut him off with the flick of her pointer finger over his lips.
"Despite everything that has happened, Peter, and whichever side you now choose to call home, you are still my son. Remember that." Then she removed her finger, and a befuddled Peter backed away.
When he reached the door he looked back, and saw the silhouette of his mother draped in the ethereal sunlight that poured in the windows.
Peter raced out the front door of the building, rushing for the SUV. He stopped abruptly, however, when he saw the open door, cracked like a broken eggshell. Astrid ran to the open door, looking in.
"Peter!" she called, sticking her face out of the car, her brown eyes wide. "Bolivia's gone! Agent Simons is unconscious."
Then another thought occurred to him.
Walter.
He dashed for the front door, the schematics crushed beneath his arm, and pounded on the door. "Walter!" he said. "Walter, open the door!"
A puff of grey hair peeked over the edge of the window, followed by a pair of frightened eyes. After a brief moment of fright where Astrid reached into the front seat to console him, Walter flicked open the lock.
"Walter," Peter said, reaching a hand out for his shoulder. "Are you alright? What happened?"
Walter shook his head for a few moments before answering. "That deceptive, trickster of a woman knocked out Agent Simons and then proceeded to threaten me as she escaped."
He ran a hand through his hair. "She pointed a gun at me, Peter. I could see it; it was like looking in the dark eye of a shark. I knew that if I got too close to it I would fall into its abyss and become part of that darkness."
"Where is she now?" Astrid asked, tending to a groggy Agent Simons.
Walter shook his head, a slight grimace on his face. "I don't know."
Peter clapped a gentle hand on Walter's shoulder. "It's okay Walter. You're fine now." He reached for the blueprints under his arm. "And look on the bright side; we picked up a little present for you while we were gone."
"Ah, excellent!" Walter exclaimed. "Nothing like a bit of constructive conspiring to lighten the mood. Wouldn't you agree, Aspirin?"
Peter looked to Astrid, who simply rolled her eyes.
His smile soon faded when he heard the sirens, screaming like raging eagles in the distance. Then horror bloomed in his stomach when he saw the broadcast on a large screen standing only metres away from him.
It was Olivia Dunham, with the designation of Fugitive affixed to her name.
And when the images of Central Park cropped up, Peter jumped for the driver's side of the car. "We need to move, now!"
Dun Dun Dun DUN...
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