Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe.
One more chapter to go after this. :)
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While the paperwork for the sale was being processed, Olivia moved her few belongings to one of the guest rooms above the stables that were not needed for paying guests. She spent her days going through the business details with Jenny and trail routes and workings of the ranch with Frank. Thom gave her a quick lesson on how to tack up a horse with western style saddle and bridle and she practised every day. She made a point of seeing each horse daily, but gentle Sierra was quickly becoming her favourite. She also made a trip to the nearest larger town to buy more clothes and also to pick up some books on how to run a business and a ranch, which she read every evening deep into the night.
Then, a little less than two weeks after the sale was completed, Jenny and Frank said their last goodbyes and drove off in a removal truck. Olivia watched the Harts disappear from sight and then returned to the farm house. The old couple had left her most of the furniture, so the house was still furnished, but it looked rather impersonal, with decades' worth of mementoes and photos having been removed. Olivia had little to personalise the rooms with, but she was content to keep it that way, at least for now. It did occur to her that nights in the farm house could feel pretty lonely by herself. She looked around with some unease, wondering what dark autumns and winters here were like. She suppressed a shiver and checked that her gun was still securely strapped to her ankle. No matter how enthusiastically she had purchased the ranch, this would still be a huge adjustment for her.
The following morning Thom mentioned that he needed to pick up a new saddle for one of the horses from a nearby town. Olivia thought it would be a great opportunity to sell her Land Rover, since the ranch's two pick-up trucks were sufficient for her needs. Besides, the sooner she got rid of a car purchased during her escape from Vegas, the better. Thus she arranged to meet Thom in the town later that day, so she would get a lift back to the ranch, and drove off in her car.
Selling the Land Rover took almost no time at all, especially as Olivia was not too concerned about getting the best possible price for the vehicle. As she had plenty of time after the paperwork was signed and the car handed over, she walked through the streets to see if there was anything else she needed to pick up. She stocked up on a few toiletries and some groceries. She was planning to get lunch from an Italian restaurant further down the road when a poster on a vet practice window caught her eyes and following an impulse once more, she walked in.
The waiting room Olivia found herself in was spacious and the walls were covered with posters advertising dog foods, worming medications and other dog paraphernalia. A muscular man wearing a white coat and a t-shirt proclaiming 'K-9 Dog Training' appeared from one of the examination rooms and looked at Olivia with interest.
"Can I help you?" He asked, walking closer.
"Your window said something about trained guard dogs?" Olivia pointed superfluously towards the window.
"Did you have anything in particular in mind?" He smiled at her.
"Umm, a dog that guards?" Olivia suggested, raising an eyebrow.
"Come this way, we have some dogs in the kennels at the back," he motioned her to follow as his smile widened to a grin.
Olivia followed him past a couple of examination rooms and out of the back door, where large kennels were set up on both sides of a paved path. In the kennels were all manner of large dogs, who all perked up at the sight of people. Most of the dogs started barking, but quieted down at the trainer's signal. Olivia noticed that one of the dogs that had stayed silent was a Doberman immediately to the right of the back door. The dog looked at Olivia with clear interest and slowly wagged his tail. There was something in the dog's brown eyes that appealed to Olivia, but she forced herself to look around all the kennels and take in several German Shepherds, Rottweilers and what looked like an Akita. They all seemed perfectly capable as guard dogs, but something had her returning in front of the Doberman's cage. The dog lifted one of his large front paws to rest against the chain link wall of the kennel and cocked his head.
"This is Duke," the trainer said, "he's only two years old, but he will make a great guard dog one day. He's still a little green, though." He opened the kennel door and called Duke out. The dog trotted out with a wagging tail and eagerly sniffed at Olivia's offered hand. When Duke was done smelling her, she moved her hand to rub his ears, causing his tail to wag even more.
"I want him," Olivia said, turning to the dog trainer. "Would you be able to train him to do something specific, though?"
"What do you have in mind?" He asked, expecting to be asked to train the dog to give paw or roll over.
"Can you teach to have full alert guarding reaction to the smell of mercury?" She asked.
"When he would be smelling mercury?" The trainer looked puzzled.
"That's not important. Is that something you could teach him to do?" Olivia was fighting to keep her voice neutral and not to show her frustration. She was not used to being questioned like that.
"Sure, in a couple of weeks," he replied slowly. "Provided that you won't keep him around mercury, it's just as poisonous to dogs as it is to humans."
"Of course not", Olivia was quick to reassure him, "it's just a precaution. So I can pick him up in two weeks?"
When Olivia finally met up with Thom, she was carrying several more shopping bags containing most things she would need for Duke. Thom's eyebrows rose when he saw what Olivia had purchased.
"Didn't Dexter go with Jenny and Frank?" He frowned.
"Yep, he did," Olivia replied smiling, "so we're getting a new canine resident in two weeks."
"Yes ma'am," Thom replied, still puzzled.
Olivia didn't elaborate further, but settled into watching the scenery go by in companionable silence. She could feel that Thom was bursting with questions and could not suppress a small smile. After a while Thom's curiosity got the better of him.
"So what made you want to purchase a ranch in Montana?" Thom asked, adding quickly, "if you don't mind my asking, that is. Your accent doesn't sound like it's from these parts."
"I've worked for the federal government all my life and I simply fancied a change." Olivia replied, deliberately avoiding commenting on her origins.
"Fair enough," Thom said, guessing that he would not get much more out of his enigmatic new boss.
Two weeks later, Duke came to live on the ranch. He seemed extremely pleased to see Olivia again and greeted all the ranch employees as well as the horses with good-natured enthusiasm. But when Olivia deliberately broke a thermometer containing mercury, the demeanour of Duke changed in an instant and he began barking a loud alert bark. Olivia smiled as she cleared the mercury into an air-tight container and then gave Duke the command the dog trainer had taught her.
"Enough, Duke." The dog fell silent immediately and trotted to Olivia, who praised him and stroked his smooth coat. "I think you will do very nicely indeed."
Olivia knew she was pregnant even before she took the test. Her periods had been erratic at best in the other reality, but she had expected things to settle down once she was back in the right world. When nothing happened, she began to grow uneasy. Her morning coffee making her nauseous enough to run for the toilet sent a cold dread to the pit of her stomach and she almost ran to her car. She avoided the nearest town and went further out to get a pregnancy test. She took it in the toilet of a coffee shop and waited impatiently for the designated time, before she got the confirmation she had suspected. She leaned against the stall door to stop her knees from giving away. She never thought that her one night with Peter would lead to a child and as it dawned on her that she was carrying Peter's baby, she had to cover her mouth to stifle a sob. She drove back to the ranch feeling a familiar numbness slowly creep over her body. Thom found her later in Sierra's stall, crying against Duke's neck while Sierra rested her nose against Olivia's shoulder. He felt like an intruder and quietly retreated, making a mental note to keep an eye on his new employer.
Olivia could not keep her pregnancy a secret very long, but she said very little about it to any of the stable hands, who could not quite conceal the curiosity from their eyes. Although the pregnancy was entirely unexpected, it never crossed her mind to terminate it. She switched from reading farming books to pregnancy guides and began getting the guest bedroom ready for a baby. At night, when she woke from her nightmares screaming, she curled around her growing belly and let the tears begin to fall. Between the fear from her nightmares about Walternate's torture and her thoughts of Peter, she had plenty of reasons to sob.
As the pregnancy progressed, Olivia was forced to tackle a fear that had been festering at the back of her mind since her return – hospitals. Knowing she needed at least a couple of scans to check that the baby was healthy and developing normally, she reluctantly went to see a doctor to get a referral. She did not sleep the night before her scan appointment at the local hospital and by the time she was escorted to an examination room, her hands shook too badly to hide from the nurse. The ultrasound technician did her best to calm Olivia down and explained each step of the process as she went along, but despite this Olivia was pale and nearly hyperventilating. There was no pain or discomfort involved in the scan, but merely the hospital environment was enough to remind her of the injections and probes and the endless hours spent restrained in cold hospital rooms. When the scan revealed that everything was progressing normally, Olivia almost ran out of the hospital. She did not feel safe until she was standing in the lakeside paddock grooming Sierra, with Duke lying nearby watching her.
While Olivia was wrapped up in her pregnancy, she was also settling into her role in the Olive Branch Ranch. Her riding improved over the months until she had to stop because of the baby, and her photographic memory helped her learn the trail routes quickly. They had a steady stream of guests and the income from the business was enough to cover the costs of running the ranch, plus a little to spare for repairs and improvements. Olivia felt reassured by the early months and she knew that she could always supplement their income with gambling, although on a smaller scale than in Las Vegas.
Olivia enjoyed the simplicity of her new life, seeking comfort from the quiet pleasures of horses chewing on grain and Duke barking at a fresh blanket of snow outside. This all seemed so very far removed from the gruesome things she had investigated with the Fringe division, but she was glad she had played her role in safeguarding the reality of all the people who had no idea of the horrors threatening their existence. Although her brilliant memory never allowed her to forget the things she had seen, the sadness for all those who had lost their lives because of Fringe events was beginning to gradually ease.
Sierra gave birth to a healthy appaloosa filly a little before Olivia's baby was due. Olivia had moved Sierra to a bigger stall away from the other horses that so she could foal without interruptions. She slept in the nearby stall and checked up on the mare every couple of hours. As was often the case, however, the mare managed to foal without anyone watching and in the morning Olivia found her calmly feeding the small foal, looking slightly smug. She gave Sierra some hay and then gently patted the filly. The foal turned from feeding to look at the human before her, but then returned to the task at hand.
"Welcome to the world, Shale," Olivia smiled.
When her own labour started, Olivia got everything ready calmly and without hurrying. After the nurses had to give her oxygen because of hyperventilation during her second scan, she had realised that she would never be able to give birth in a hospital. That left her with the option of a home birth, which was only marginally less frightening. She read guides on home births, but made sure she did not mention her intentions to her doctor. So there she was, stoically drawing a bath for herself and spreading a water-proof sheet on the bedroom floor. The bath helped her through the early labour, but towards the end all she could do was try to breathe through the waves of pain. Duke watched her as she panted on the floor, but opted to keep his distance. As her screams echoed in the otherwise quiet farm house, Olivia had enough time between contractions to be glad that the worst was taking place during the night when no one else was around.
Just as the new morning's sun rose above the horizon, Olivia and Peter's daughter was born. As Olivia saw Peter's eyes staring at her from the face of the newborn, all she could do was cry tears of relief, exhaustion and joy. She was overwhelmed by the feeling of love she felt for the tiny baby, even as her daughter let out her first cries. She gently cut the umbilical cord and cleaned the baby with a stack of towels she had reserved for this. After the baby had her first meal, they both fell into exhausted sleep, while Duke continued his vigil over them.
When she woke up, Olivia was sore and achy, but happier than she had felt in a long time. She fed, changed and dressed her daughter and then strapped her to a car seat. She knew she would have to take both the baby and herself into the hospital for a check up and she felt much more relaxed about it now that she had been able to give birth in her own terms.
Thom, Will and Mark were leading horses to various paddocks when Olivia emerged from the house with the car seat and their astonishment knew no bounds when they spotted the baby by her side. They all crowded around Olivia to offer her their congratulations and to see the new arrival consider them with serious eyes.
"Did you know you were having a girl?" Thom, who was usually able to get a few words out of Olivia, asked.
"Not officially, but part of me always knew," she smiled.
"What is she called?" Mark in turn queries.
"Skye," Olivia replied after a moment's hesitation, "Skye Isabel."
"Welcome to the ranch, Skye Isabel Lane," Will tipped his hat as a greeting to the new born. Olivia flinched almost imperceptively at the mention of her fake surname, but Thom was the only one who noticed. He filed this new piece of information about his employer in the same place where he had already noted that Olivia never spoke of her past, seemed to hate doctors, had immediately bought a Doberman as a guard dog and always carried a hand gun with her. There were too many strange things about this woman who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere to purchase the ranch. Thom was not usually one to pry, but his boss left him burning with curiosity.
Their trip to the hospital was mercifully quick and both Olivia and Skye received a clean bill of health. Olivia got told off for not having called an ambulance to take her to the hospital, but she claimed that once the labour was established it was over too quickly for an ambulance to even get to the ranch. This hospital experience was positive enough for Olivia that she immediately made arrangements to see a plastic surgeon about having the tattoo at the back of her neck removed. She left the hospital with a new spring in her step and on the way home stopped to stock up on diapers and other baby essentials, while Skye slept peacefully in her car seat.
Olivia soon settled into a routine with Skye. She did not get much sleep during the early months, but her years with the FBI had taught her to get by on too little sleep. She kept Skye with her wherever she went on the ranch and as the weather improved in the spring, the baby often had her afternoon naps in or near one of the paddocks. The horses seemed to understand how precious the little girl was and were remarkably careful around her. Sierra's foal had taken a particular liking to the baby, which made Olivia very glad, as she planned to keep Shale as Skye's own horse.
As months flew by and Skye grew to an inquisitive toddler, both mother and baby flourished. The healing was so gradual that Olivia barely noticed how a weight slowly lifted from her shoulders and how she gradually came back to life after countless months of numbness. First she stopped reaching for her gun every time Duke barked at a squirrel or a magpie, then she stopped flinching every time he barked. After a while she noticed that she had forgotten to take her gun out of the safe in the morning. The nightmares of Walternate's experiments plagued her the longest, but eventually she woke up one morning and realised that it had been over a week since she had woken up screaming and shaking with fear. The nightmares still returned occasionally, but somehow the terror no longer gripped her as it had once done.
As the haunted look in her eyes was slowly replaced by happiness and the overwhelming sorrow lifted, Olivia began to miss Peter more and more. It was not just his quick wit, warm hands and the private smile reserved just for her that she missed, but also his staggering intelligence, determination and this gentleness when dealing with his father; the brilliant, confusing Walter, whom she had learned to love as an extension of Peter and in his own right. Once she allowed herself to miss Peter and Walter, her heart also ached for the forever patient Astrid and the impervious Broyles. Thinking about Rachel and Ella brought tears to her eyes. Ella would soon turn 10 and she knew that both her sister and niece would be delighted to learn about Skye. Although she longed to write to or call Rachel, something was still holding Olivia back.
Most nights sleep came easily to Olivia, but occasionally she spent hours staring at the dark ceiling above her. She played in her mind a hundred and one little conversations and moments she had shared with Peter. None had seemed significant at the time, but now she wished that she had paid more attention to how his eyes changed colour with his emotions or the way he used his hands when he was explaining something. The memories made her miss him so much she struggled to draw breath. Although they had spent only one night together, Olivia's heart and body ached for his presence near her. While she saw aspects of Peter every day in their daughter, she could not help wishing she could see him again.
The idea was so simple she could not believe she had not thought of it before. If she was able to create windows to an alternate reality, surely she would be able to see things in her own universe. She had not used her abilities since she had sealed Walternate's rift, but they were like a muscle that protested sudden usage, but that nevertheless worked. She cleared her mind and willed herself to see over distance and obstacles. After a moment or two a shimmering window opened before her, showing her the living room of the Bishops' house. Judging by the clutter around they still lived there and Walter still had his bed in the living room, which made Olivia chuckle quietly. Walter was sitting on his bed, drinking something milky and playing with a yoyo. Peter was sitting on the sofa, looking relaxed but tired. He had hardly changed since she had last seen him, although there was a hint of sadness in his eyes even when he smiled at Walter.
As she watched, Peter got up from the sofa, said something to Walter still smiling and headed for the stairs. Olivia tried to make the window follow him, but she lost control of her ability and it vanished. Assuming he was headed for his room, she opened a new window upstairs and sure enough Peter appeared a moment later. He undressed until he was wearing only his boxer shorts – causing a faint blush to creep to Olivia's cheeks – and then got into bed. He turned to face the window, drawing her attention to a framed photograph on his bed side table.
She had no idea someone had taken such a photo, although she did remember the day. The photo was of her and Peter sitting at the piano in the lab. He was clearly playing something, smiling as his body was leaning towards her. She too was leaning closer, her smile radiant as she looked at Peter. Olivia had never realised how obvious her affection for him was. As she watched, Peter picked up the photo and brushed his thumb against her loose hair in the picture. Although the window did not include sound, Olivia could make out that Peter sighed her name before setting the photo down again. The hint of sadness she had noticed before was now naked hurt in his eyes, making her throat tighten and tears threaten to fall. As Peter lay down and looked like he was settling for hours of sleeplessness, Olivia let go of the window, which faded away. Seeing Peter had clarified her thoughts and made her decide that she was ready for a small change.