A/N: Sorry for the long wait everyone, RL has been a little busy as of late but here is the next chapter of CW. I will not lie; this chapter is intense and some of you may need tissues by the end.
Thanks to my fantastic beta, Uroboros75.
Chapter Nineteen: My Acquaintance Fear
Charlie had more than an inkling of suspicion concerning their sudden orders to proceed to Central Park. As he jumped from the Fringe Division van he adjusted his jacket for the fifth time; the damn thing kept brushing up against his collar in the most irritating way possible.
Lincoln stepped out behind him. As the leader for the majority of Fringe Division's outings, he coordinated the show. However, Charlie noticed that it was more than the assignment his superior was dwelling on. After he'd given out some brisk orders – his voice echoing through the air with a metallic ripple – Charlie went over to him. Lincoln's brow was bunched up like an abused piece of paper; the poor kid was worried about Olivia. Charlie knew that it was weighing heavily on him.
Lincoln wasn't the only one; Agent Francis still wasn't buying the idea of an infectious parasite. Granted, their universe was virtually crawling with malignant infestations and bacteria, but someone like Liv didn't seem like the type to succumb to such things. He'd only been told the general facts; that Olivia was infected with a parasite that affected her judgement and perception. They'd been told to exercise caution, but Charlie felt like implementing something a little more rational. After all, it was Olivia they were dealing with.
"Hey, Linc," began Charlie. "You holdin' up alright?"
He gave a shallow nod and swallowed before answering. "Yes".
Charlie gave him a quick pat on the shoulder as a gesture of reassurance before walking ahead. It was eerie to him how events had unfolded, and it had all started with the return of Peter Bishop. He wasn't one to pin blame, but what the hell could possibly have inspired the other universe into this? He knew that it had been the other Walter Bishop who had stolen the Secretary's son, but his motives still eluded Charlie; why would a man break dozens of scientific principles for the sake of one life?
They fanned out into the park, spreading across the concrete rivers that spanned the area.
They had weapons at the ready, but the notion that they required them made Charlie's stomach churn. Lincoln looked no better; there was a slight tinge of green creeping over his face. He knew that it was far from easy to be searching for a colleague, but for Lincoln it was even more difficult. For him it was searching for a friend; a very close friend. Their experience with parasitic infestations only conjured vivid images of what disease had chosen Olivia as its new breeding ground, and that made Charlie regret the Red Vines he chose to indulge in earlier.
The team searched for several minutes, seeing absolutely no sign of Olivia. Charlie wondered if she had moved on after realizing they were after her; but the sudden crunch of tires on pavement drew his attention elsewhere, and with a quiet composure he drew his gun as an unmarked car crept from beneath the trees. He, Lincoln and the two other Fringe agents behind them quickly darted into the surrounding trees as Charlie clicked his earpiece.
"This is Agent Francis," he said into the device. "We've got an unknown vehicle in Sector Gamma. Standby for further instructions."
After a few more moments of nothing but the sharp grind of the pavement beneath the tires, the car stopped. Charlie held his gun to his side behind the cover of the shrubbery. From where he stood, he was having a hard time making out the faces of the vehicle's driver and passengers, and a quick glance to Lincoln' position told him that his fellow Agent was having the same problem. A short pop sounded before the driver's side door of the car swung open and someone stepped out. The realization of who it was only made the moment more stressful for Charlie; it felt like being punched in the gut by someone who was high on fury and a little too much scotch.
From the shrouded interior of the vehicle stepped none other than the infamous Peter Bishop, who appeared no different than the last time Charlie had seen him. Although the details of that night were slightly foggy on the part of a glass vase crunching against his skull, the memory of who smashed that particular vase into his head was quite vivid. It was only when he woke in the Fringe Division hospital two days later that he realized that that woman was not the Olivia Dunham he knew.
After a moment another man stepped out of the vehicle behind Bishop, followed by the Secretary's alternate and what he was surprised to see as Agent Farnsworth's double. The contrast between the Farnsworth he knew and this new one was sharp, imprinting itself into his mind. He crouched closer to the edge of the bush, the wind growing louder in its wail through the trees as he did.
"What's your call, Linc?" Charlie asked with a brief tilt of the head. "Do we take them now or wait it out?"
Lincoln narrowed his eyes in the bright sunlight, and there was a rather long pause between Charlie's question and Lincoln's response. Charlie thought for a moment that Lincoln hadn't heard him.
"Just wait," he said slowly. "I want to see what they're up to."
Charlie turned his attention back to the party of intruders; they exchanged a few words and glances and then began retreating back to the vehicle. Charlie saw Lincoln rise to a crouch, his own weapon curled between the pale arches of his fingers; he then tightened the grip on his pistol as well, the metal's cool sensation nipping into the soft tissue of his hand.
Lincoln raised a hand; he was preparing to charge. His earpiece crackled with the sound of Lincoln's commands.
"All units converge on the vehicle in Sector Gamma."
It was then that the chaos really began.
He couldn't say exactly what happened in the seconds following Lincoln's orders, aside from the fact that five minutes later he had a scratch on his forehead and was seated behind a large oak tree. Bullets echoed occasionally off the front of the trunk, and Charlie was thankful that it was as large as it was. A thick clunk announced another bullet gouging through the bark, this time close to Charlie's shoulder. He hunched them slightly in his discomfort; even a damn tree couldn't provide him enough cover.
When there was a moment of respite (from what he expected was a moment to reload weapons), he peeked around the edge of the tree and saw Bishop's vehicle. The side was puckered with bullet holes; Charlie was surprised that the engine wasn't smoking.
A few more rounds peppered the front of Charlie's contingent of agents, and Charlie knew that the doppelgangers were either running out of ammo or endurance; he sincerely hoped that it was a touch of both. The frequency of the rounds told him all he needed to know, as the time between each enemy shot grew and billowed into the air. Charlie felt the space in his throat tighten and expand, the walls of his trachea expanding and then deflating like a balloon. A few more shots went off, and then stopped.
Then there was silence; an eerie, consuming silence that filled the space around them. The sun disappeared behind a shroud of clouds as a gust of wind shrieked through the trees. Shadows cast their longs arms over the space between the two parties, and Charlie could taste the acrid tang of smoke in his mouth.
For a moment, a puff of sunlight blew onto the clearing and Charlie had to squint to be sure of what he saw there. The realization drained most of his words from him, save for two.
"Oh, shit."
Beneath an overhanging tangle of branches and a mound of thick shrubbery, Olivia watched as her friends fought the Fringe agents from this side. It was more than just the confrontation itself that worried her, but the very nature of it; her friends were outnumbered by a good margin and she knew of no way to increase the odds. Under normal circumstances, she would have cast apprehension to the curb and rushed headfirst into the fire, but these events were a far cry from ordinary.
Hours ago, she had a gun aimed at her temple. In that moment, a reel of her life had spun out before her eyes, made of everything she had ever known and loved. She had come close to losing that in that instant, and now she knew it was foolish to risk losing it again when unarmed, especially in a conflict where guns were the primary method of destruction.
She knew that if she went out onto that clearing that she would be shot, and the likelihood was great that she would die because of that. That notion, terrifying in its magnitude, rooted her to her spot beneath the canopy of muddled jade.
She could see Peter taking refuge behind the door of the car he'd arrived in, already covered in a smattering of bullet holes. Her respect for him bloomed wide, as did her affection for him; his absence had left a great deal of longing building inside her, and the sight of him once again was a great relief.
She wanted to be out there fighting with him, but the risk far surpassed any good that she could do. She hoped that by all intents and purposes the fight wouldn't tip over the edge of chaos; it couldn't possibly get any worse.
But she didn't quite realize what a naive notion that was; things can always get worse.
Peter squeezed off the last few rounds of his gun before ducking behind the door to reload. He cursed when he noticed that his supply of arsenal had dwindled to scarce amounts. He glanced to Astrid, but she was engrossed in a fight of her own, and Agent Simons was also absent from sight.
He was going to have to aim his shots very carefully.
Through a small portion of shattered car window, Peter took a scope of his remaining opponents. A quick flash of a gun revealed one in a bush about ten metres to his left, while two more denoted positions straight ahead. Peter shuffled to the edge of the door and snaked his gun around the edge before firing a shot, but it smacked the front of a tree and set off a burst of cinders instead.
He gritted his teeth and fired again, this time a grunt meeting his ears after the second shot flew from the barrel. He swiftly turned his head and peeked around the crumpled edge of the car door. His mouth went dry at the sight before him.
In the centre of the clearing stood Olivia, with a bright red stain blooming open on her belly. She brushed one of her hands against it and looked at it; Peter saw shock stain her soft face.
Oh fuck. No, no, no, no, no, no...
A hole exploded into existence in his chest, absorbing his good intentions in its miasma of blackness. He curled his lips over and over again, dragging his teeth across the surface of the lower one as the gun fell from his hands. He couldn't tell if his hands were shaking, only that his eyes were fixed on that single point of space before him. He felt the urge to run fill his essence, but it was not an urge to flee; it was the desire to run to the woman he loved and do everything he could to keep the life in her.
He would come to realize later that his legs could carry him much faster than he would have ever thought possible.
When he reached her side, the first thing he did was to reassure her. "Olivia! You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be just fine." He cradled her head of blonde hair in his right hand as he pressed a hand to her stomach to try and stop the bleeding.
When it got to the point where blood was oozing over the skin of his hand he gently moved his other one in to increase the pressure. There was so much red... so much blood.
Quietly and without much bravado he heard Olivia give a broken whisper. "Not... me."
"No, sweetheart, it's not going to be you because you're going to live, you hear me?"
She shook her head, her eyes dimming against her paling skin. "I'm not her," she whispered.
Peter froze. Air rushed out of his lungs in a silent gasp as his hands stopped the application of pressure to her body. Blood was gushing from the wound once again as Peter moved away from her. He had made two fatal errors, and at that instant he couldn't decide which was worse. He'd failed to recognize Olivia's alternate, but he'd also shot Bolivia. He couldn't fathom how he could have possibly managed to make the same mistake again. She wasn't Olivia; how could he keep mistaking her like that?
He ran his bloodied hands through his hair as his knees hit the pavement. How could he have so thoughtlessly fired the bullet? He looked back to Bolivia, who was now looking away from him, and he hated himself, absolutely hated himself for it. He'd threatened to kill her before, and now it appeared the he was going to succeed, but it made nothing better.
Death never made anything better.
From the other side of the clearing a sudden wave of people appeared, individuals in Fringe Division attire. Peter quickly backed off when he saw Charlie Francis, whose face was crunched with the strains of anger as he charged forward with a group of other agents. Peter reached for his gun, and then remembered he abandoned it back by the car. He fell back on his haunches and scrambled away from Bolivia, his hands scraping against the pavement.
Another agent who Peter didn't recognise made a beeline for Bolivia, quickly cradling her against his chest as she kept bleeding.
'Liv, it's okay," Peter heard him say. "I've got you."
A hand fell on his shoulder as Astrid appeared by his side with Agent Simons in tow. Her revolver was perched soundly in her hand, glistening with diamond sunlight. She looked to Peter and then to the Fringe Division agents, her eyes falling on Bolivia with pity.
Over the rush of voices and shouts, Peter heard Charlie yell for a medic two, maybe three times. By the time the man in white came rushing forward with an escort Bolivia's face had faded to shade of white comparable to snow. A part of him was relieved that for the moment, the fighting had stopped.
Another part of him hoped that she would live.
The medic tried to push the man aside, the one who'd been cradling Bolivia for the past few moments, but he adamantly refused. Blood pooled around her, slipping out of her like sand from an hourglass. Peter saw her lips move and thought for a moment he heard the name Lincoln before her eyes started to droop.
"No!" The man shouted as the medic pressed against the bullet wound. "Liv, no!" His face was flushed as tears fell from his eyes, trailing over his skin as he brought her face close to his. Peter was sure that he saw the other man's lips move slowly, outlining some final words that couldn't hear. Then with a final sight her eyes fell shut and she sank in the man's arms.
The medic pressed two fingers to her neck and waited for a moment. Then with solemn regret he shook his head. The man, Lincoln he supposed, began sobbing against her body.
Bolivia was dead.
Charlie looked to the body of Bolivia and Lincoln, and then to Peter. He shook his head. "You come from this universe. You are the son of the fucking Secretary of Defence and how do you show it? You come back and murder one of your own!"
"I was firing blind!" Peter shot back. "I couldn't know that she was going to waltz into the goddamn clearing right when your people were trying to blow us halfway to hell!"
"My people?" Charlie replied, his face dropping in disappointment. "Now you're going to play the blame game. How very noble of you, asshole." He took more than a few steps forward as he was only inches from Peter's face. His eyes loomed like angry embers as his muscles tensed. Peter reflexively clenched his fists.
"Stop," a voice said. Peter looked past Charlie, who'd turned around.
"Linc?" Charlie asked with a hint of surprise in his voice.
Peter could see the man huddled over the body of Bolivia. His eyes were downcast and his face marked with the paths of fallen tears. He looked frightened and small; it made Peter think of a lost child.
Lincoln's eyes moved from Charlie to him, and the torrential emotion pouring through his gaze was overwhelming. Lincoln brushed a stray blonde hair from Bolivia's face as he said. "Is this what you wanted?" He gulped as a small tremble went through him. "You come over here and do this," he said with a sharp motion towards Bolivia's body. "Is this what it's come to, destroying the people we care about to weaken us?"
Peter felt infinitely small at that moment, the scale of the world disproportionate to his miniscule size. His heart hurt for the man; he still didn't know where his Olivia was, and for all intents and purposes she could be as dead as her alternate. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Walter, who had only just approached from the shelter of the car, added to the despondent air with an observation of his own.
"Of all the things I have ever wanted to accomplish through science," he said softly, "this has never been one of them."
This was not easy to write, let me make that clear; killing off any character at all is one of the most difficult things I've ever done in a story.
Reviews are love.