Chapter XIV

The barren rose brambles found Walter, waiting outside the back door as Peter dropped from the window, seeking cover behind the shrubs. Walter only watched him, frowning flatly, "You look like a moron," he said, "They've cleared out, via bomb threat."

"I didn't want to get shot, jackass," Peter grumbled, rising and dusting himself, "did you get the information?" and Walter patted the laptop case at his side. Peter considered his gloomy disposition for a few moments, "…are you okay?"

"I'm not too terribly happy with myself right now, boy, and you don't look too sunny yourself. How's Olivia?"

Peter sighed, "Pissed."

"Hmm. Woman are such unreasonable creatures. Shall we?"

"Yeah." They strode off, toward the black iron gate onto the back street, "There's no one to see us of…?"

"Need I repeat the imminent threat of explosives?" Walter said, sounding slightly vexed. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his tactical fatigues, glaring up at the rain as if it were mocking him, and rebelliously ignoring the rivulet that ran down his temple, "Jesus, boy, offer me the menial courtesy of listening , when I speak."

Peter was silent for a few moments, before gathering his thoughts to realize the source of his fathers' fuming, "…How's Astrid?"

"Pissed."

Before he could stop it, a disheartened smile twitched over Peter's face, and he asked, "Did you forget her name again?"

Walter bared his teeth slightly, glaring at his son in complete contempt.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, that was tasteless. I know how all of this is, Walter- it sucks."

Walter stopped, and Peter slowed to a halt, looking back at him, "You didn't see her, Peter," Walter shook his head, water dripping from his hair, now nearly black in the downpour, "The way that she was, everything… I nearly gave up right there. God damn it, she was crying. I made her…" Walter covered his own eyes with his fingertips, his voice breaking slightly, "I wish she'd killed me."

Peter swallowed, answering softly, "I know, Walter. I know."

"They hate us, boy."

"We knew that this would happen when we started, Walter."

"I didn't think…that she would care… did you…?"

Peter stepped to his father, gently draping an arm over his trembling shoulders, "Come on, Walter. Let's get out of here, and I'll buy you a beer."

"We don't deserve to be caught! We deserve to get away with all of it, and let them go on hating us forever!" Walter cried, his fists balled and shaking at his sides.

Peter found himself lifting his other arm, his hands meeting around Walter's tensed and trembling form in a hug, "I know," he repeated in a hoarse whisper. His father had voiced everything Peter felt, and for once they were on the same level; self hatred.

"Can people change, boy? Or have we always been such bastards?" Walter asked into Peter's collar.

"I don't know, Walter. But, once a thief… always a thief."

xXx

The entire house seemed to jump and bulge, as the charges erupted in bright, silent flashes. The woodwork seemed to strip itself away from the house like a zipper being split apart. A rumble rapidly filled the air, and the sharp crack of windows shattering as bright flames erupted from them. The ancient manor was soon ablaze, the fire rushing away the dark in a tide of light that made the rain sparkle as it fell.

"Fire department?" An agent asked, and Charlie nodded.

"Yeah, you'd better get them down here. Not that this downpour won't put it out in ten minutes. Keep everyone clear of the area, we don't know if…" his thoughts were stilled as he saw Olivia's slumped form on the hood of a cruiser, "Yeah, go call 'em," he finished quickly, hurrying over toward his comrade.

"'Liv?" he questioned, keeping his distance. He knew better than to touch her, in such a state, "Are you alright, Olivia?" he asked gently.

"No, Charlie," Olivia answered quietly, staring down at her folded hands in her lap, "I'm going crazy."

"You saw Peter?" Charlie asked softly, taking a seat next to her. She did not reply, "Don't worry, 'Liv. We'll get them-"

"We won't get them, Charlie," Olivia said.

Charlie felt anger twinge him, and he bit it back, "I don't care what he said to you, 'Liv. He's got no chance against you, and he knows it. The Bishops won't get away with it."

"He doesn't want to get away," Olivia said, he voice calm. But as she looked up at the blazing house, he could see her pain, creasing her flawless face with sorrow, and it struck him like a needle to the heart, "don't you get it? They want us to catch them, Charlie."

"Every criminal does," Charlie agreed, "It's why they do it, really. For the recognition, the admiration."

"You have to admire them. Look at this, for chrissake," she raised her hand to the burning structure, "they're gutsy."

Charlie swallowed. Olivia loved Peter, and he knew it, in the same way he had known she had loved John. And, again, he wanted to stop her, to avert her from her path of self destruction, to keep her from her fatal attraction to things that would, ultimately, hurt her so badly. But he could not. What made Olivia beautiful to him was the way she could take the shot and get back up again. She was such a soldier. "Kid, let's get out of here. There's nothing going."

"Where's Astrid?"

"In the car. Not doing much better than you are, I think. She's the one who told us about the bombs, you know. That could have been us in there, if it weren't for her."

"Huh."

"Let's go, 'Liv."

But Olivia did not rise from her seat in the rain, "Peter… he said that he couldn't stop. That he was close to 'finishing it all'…"

"Of course. He just got the rest of the information. He's going to sell it and move on to other things," Charlie said patiently.

"But he said 'finish'," Olivia repeated, standing. She began to pace, "That's not something a repeating criminal would say, is it? No. No, the way he said it, it was like this hasn't been a bunch of random heists, that they're all just one huge one. That they're all just parts of…"

"Parts of what?" Charlie pressed,

"…Parts of something. I don't know. But if they're all the parts of just one thing, then he's not doing it because he can, he's doing it…because he has to," she looked up at Charlie, a familiar, sharp smile on her face, a glimmer of brilliance behind her grief-clouded eyes, "He's working for someone."

xXx

There was no sleep, that night.

The lights in the office of Olivia Dunham did not quit when so many others had, as she, Charlie, and Astrid worked tirelessly, files shuffling, an exclamation of realization, and sometimes a curse of defeat ringing in the empty, temperature-controlled air that tasted like the water in the half-filled Hygeia dispenser in the dark hall.

The dead boy was their key.

"This Raze guy- there's no record of him in the juvenile files," Olivia said, and Astrid leaned over the keyboard, sighing with slight impatience.

"Of course there wouldn't be, he designed the system."

"Convenient," Charlie frowned, "so what's he hiding?"

"Well…" Astrid pulled up a dusty file, and Olivia rolled her eyes as she spotted the familiar, sprawling hand script, and a stick figure beside a very square house with a puffy clouds rising from it's chimney, "This turned up in one of Walter's old files from the lab. Have you ever heard of a cellist by the name of Georges Von Thürer?"

"Oh, Absolutely. I'm such a huge cello fan, how could I not?" Charlie answered with sarcastic enthusiasm, "Can you just get on with this?"

"Well, apparently Walter did. And so did his partner, Bell," Astrid let the ancient, black-and-white newspaper clippings flutter to the desktop, and Charlie and Olivia watched over them, observing the pictures of a small, sickly-looking boy taking a bow beside his tall, dark instrument, "He was a music prodigy, but had a rare and fatal aging disease. Naturally, weird stuff draws Walter like a moth to flame… but anyways, he and Bell- it gets a little lingo-esk, here, but- apparently, they were trying to use something called the Methuselah to reverse the affects of Von Thürer's genetic aging."

"Did it work?" Olivia asked, translating the German headlines in her mind- Von Thürer Family At Risk of Loosing Genius Scion.

"Negative. Georges was reported to have died just short of his twelfth birthday," Astrid answered. She let a color photograph of the diseased Raze fall beside the old photograph of Georges, "and bam. One and the same."

Charlie gaped, "That's impossible. He'd be over fifty, by now."

Olivia and Astrid both looked up at him, "Imagine the impossible," Olivia said seriously, "that's what Walter does."

"It appears that the Methuselah worked," Astrid finished, "Georges has been living as Raze ever since."

"What does this have to do with the Bishops now?" Charlie asked.

"Raze was killed in the opera house the same night that Peter and Walter attended to watch his performance," Olivia said, "They were working for him."

"But now he's dead," Charlie said, "Why wouldn't they just quit and run?"

"A guy like Raze, he's pretty powerful, in the underground. He's hella good with computers- he was around when the internet was invented, why wouldn't he be? Someone with a family like Von Thürer would have a lot of pull anyway, so doubtless he's got denizens. What we need to do is get a hold of someone who knew about the deal Raze had going with Peter and Walter."

"Like who?" Astrid asked.

Olivia bit on the earpiece of her glasses "Damn it, I don't know. But you said he designed the system for the FBI. There's got to be something about him somewhere. Find that, and we've got something."

Many, many miles away, Peter and Walter sat in the welcoming shelter of a bar booth, and both said nothing to one another as they mechanically sipped from their longnecks. Every now and again, a rather intoxicated passerby would pause to ask if they were cops, given Walter's stolen uniform. Peter would only shake his head, and Walter would add, "We're actors," to satisfy them enough to leave. Silence would find them once more.

Peter was a little surprised. His father did not tend to drink, as he explained that alcohol affected him in the form of night terrors. But tonight, they both knew that there would be no room for sleep, in their thoughts.

"Guess what?" Walter announced, and Peter looked up. His father fixed him with a hollow smile, rising, "I have to pee," and he shuffled off.

Peter ordered another beer for himself and Walter as a waitress passed. His eyes strayed to the pool table for what could have been any amount of time, before his father returned, smoothing the long sleeves of his combat jacket over his gloves. Peter frowned, "Why don't you take those off, Rambo?"

"No, they're fun. Who's Rambo?"

Peter chuckled, shaking his head as he got to his feet with his beer, an handing Walter his full one, "Come on, let me show you how to shark at pool."

"There's no need to cheat, boy. I'll win anyways," Walter smiled, raising a brow as he followed after him.

Thirty minutes later, Peter was slapping a twenty dollar bill into Walter's upraised, padded palm, hissing a curse. Walter only smiled, leaning on his chipped-up, slightly bent cue. Peter chalked the nib of his own cue, and set to re-stacking the rack, muttering, "Best out of five…"

"Peter?" Walter asked, and his son looked up, bitterly expecting another mockery of his playing, Walter looked thoughtful, "Do you think this is all going to work out, for us?"

"You're the one with my money, Walter. It looks like it's working out fine, for you."

"I've already explained that my wages as a professor were quite paltry. And I don't mean this. I mean…all of this. Do you think it will be alright?"

Peter sighed. After a few moments, he smiled, "Yes, Walter. You'll see." he leaned over his cue, concentrating, "I break."

"That won't give you an edge," Walter answered, "You have to quit trying to cheat it out. Play, Peter, you're bright enough. Calculate the shot…"

xXx