A/n: Okay, so I had a dream about something like this, and then I was listening to the Transformers theme music, so if you want to get a feel of what I was going for just youtube Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Matrix of Leadership (film scores channel on pandora, check it out) and this came to mind. I admit I tweaked the ending. Somber piece. AltLivia/OurLincoln.
In the End
REDVERSE:
Eleven months, and seventeen days after they closed the bridge between universes, David Robert Jones attacks their universe.
There was silence. Then the crackle of white lightening ripping through the streets of New York. Men were grabbing their wives, and women were grabbing their children and scattering in every direction. Cars stopped in the middle of the road, it was just like Olivia had imagined it, the apocalypse. The moment when they couldn't hold their world together anymore and it was torn apart at the seams.
Olivia felt herself fall to her knees, she felt the harsh grinding of concrete on skin and saw the red of her blood before she had even fallen. She felt someone tug at her arm and pull her to her feet. They wouldn't leave behind the fallen, not if it was one of their own. She looked up from the dust and dirt clouding her vision and saw Lincoln, his glasses cracked and dirty, pointing up at a rooftop. She was seeing two of him. All she could hear was the pounding vibrations of combat boots against the Earth. She lurched forward again, her red hair sweeping forward. This time he caught her in his arms. He was a lot stronger than he looked beneath his pristine suits, but she was the strong one. She had to be.
Tears prickled at the corner of her eyes as the sky above them faded into black. She clung on to him, but she couldn't find her strength when her world was dying in front of her eyes. When they made it to the roof, the two of them were the only ones left. She crumpled to the ground and looked above her. The moon was hiding behind the shadows of the rain clouds, afaid to illuminate the now desolate streets. The opaque clouds spewed electricity and rain. She felt the water burn and soak through her heavy uniform. She looked at him. A deep cut ran down the side of his face and in seconds he too collapsed down beside her. She reached for him to make sure he was real, that he was there.
He closed his eyes and relished her touch, it was the only thing tying him to reality. She looked at him and the only thing she could hear now was the sound of her own heartbeat.
"I'm sorry," she whispers in his ear and he smiles sadly.
"Don't be. If I could go back, I wouldn't change a thing." He holds her closer, bring her head to rest on his chest until the sound of her heartbeat is replaced by the steady rhythm of his. The city falls into a silence, sticky sweet serenity that they know is only the eye of the storm.
"I wish we had more time." She burrows deeper into his chest and reaches up to capture his lips in her own and in that moment there are no words. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. When she breaks away she sees that he's holding back his own tears with all the strength he had left in him.
"They're gonna find us. Peter and Olivia and Walter and when we wake up, we'll be at the lab on their side and then we'll make up for lost time."
"Promise?"
"Promise." He brings her face to meet his again. "Walter will have you hooked up to all sorts of machines and Astrid will feed you all the pie you could eat. She stress bakes."
"And there'll be coffee." She brightens up a little bit.
"Yeah. Damn, I miss that stuff. You and the other Olivia can pretend to be twins." Olivia scrunches up her face at the notion, and Lincoln quickly takes his remark back. "Or not."
"We could go to IKEA and buy that couch you couldn't fit in the apartment," Olivia muses and Lincoln laughs. He had really liked the couch, but there was no way they could get it into Olivia's apartment without tearing the door down.
"We could see that new Captain America movie you wanted to see."
She can see the next storm cloud coming and all of a sudden Captain America is the last thing on her mind. Below them, there are no signs of life, just the rustling of leaves and howling wind. She curls up in his arms and waits for it. Maybe they will save them. The other Olivia had special abilities and Walter...what couldn't he do? The air began to get colder, and white flakes rained from the sky above them. Snow. It was snowing. Lincoln shivered and let out a clouded breath of air.
"They'll come for us. They have to." She felt the words more than she heard them, his cold lips pressing against her freezing temple. She hates the cold. A layer of ice is beginning form on the roof top and the cloud is now just a few hundred meters away. Her ears are ringing from the unsavory silence.
Olivia thinks about how Lincoln is beside her, and they're going to come out of this together. They had to. Freezing pellets of ice are now falling from the sky. She closes her eyes and thinks about how tomorrow was Charlie's birthday and the present she and Lincoln had hidden under their bed, her apartment and how she's certain she forgot to lock the door behind her, the weatherman saying that temperatures would reach the high eighties next week, and Lincoln and his promise to her. He always keeps his promises.
She thinks about her doppelganger and what she and Peter were doing right now. She thinks about Walter skittering around the lab and Astrid trying to keep him out of trouble. Lincoln pulls her into him until she's crushed against his limp body, leaning up against the wall. The cloud has drifted overhead. At once the sky breaks open, spatting out roaring thunder. It's starting again.
It's warm in Lincoln's arms. They're always the last thing she feels before drifting off to unconsciousness every night, and this is no different. Lightening strikes again. She drifts off to the reassuring, uneven cadence of heartbeats. Her own? Lincoln's? She can't tell anymore. The last thoughts she can remember are of the other side. They're not going to save them. Not this time.
Afterword: Review?