ii.
Peter doesn't quite fit into the child-sized space he'd left behind.
Maybe it's because he knows the things that the people around him haven't got a clue about. Maybe it's because of the way his mother looks at him now. Maybe it's because he can't stop wondering what happened to her when she'd popped back home without Peter in tow.
He grows up smart, well-educated, everything Dr. Walter Bishop's son ought to be. He also grows up a little bit aimless. He tries a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but nothing sticks. Not the doctorate in physics he didn't quite finish, or the one-year stint as a seventh grade English teacher. Not even the three months he spent helping a definitely-not-legal organization hack into some government servers on a subversive information-gathering mission.
He'd picked up a few interesting tidbits of knowledge during that particular sojourn, though.
The one thing he never tries is anything that's remotely connected to his father. Nothing to do with Bishop Dynamics. Not a hint of a government contract. And absolutely no ties to Fringe Division.
Peter's pretty sure that's not how Dr. Walter Bishop envisioned his son turning out.
-x-
One day at a magazine stand, he runs into her, red-haired and smiling but Olivia nonetheless. She's there in the eyes, in the furrowed brow and the quirk of the head while she studies something she doesn't quite understand.
He's not sure if he'd have known her after all these years, but he doesn't have to guess. Olivia Dunham's story on this side happens to be one of those bits and pieces Peter's picked up along his meandering way.
He bumps into her again twenty minutes later at a nearby bagel shop. Casually, of course. And he gets her number, because Peter Bishop can always get the ladies' numbers when he wants.
-x-
It's fun while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.
They go out on a date or five, and he even shares her bed once or twice. But like her hair, like his family, like this world, that doesn't quite fit either. She smiles too much, is a tiny bit zany and far too quick to laugh. She lacks that serious quality, that intensity of spirit that drew him to the Olivia-in-the-mirror all those years before.
She doesn't act as though if she breathed the wrong way, the universe around her might disappear.
In the end, they part on friendly enough terms. And that's it, he supposes. It wasn't Olivia that was so unique, that drew him in with a force he's never felt anywhere else. It was just the secret they shared.
He's a little disappointed, but mostly, he's relieved.
-x-
Months go by; another year, then two. Peter perfects the performance art of driving his father crazy, and his father drives his mother away.
"Your father doesn't need me anymore," she says to Peter at dinner the first night she stays in his apartment. "The work he does is bigger than any of us."
Peter knows better. He knows that what's been broken between them has been broken since he was a boy, a page torn out of their marriage too soon and in too strange a way. By the time he came home, the story had rewritten its own ending.
But he lets her go without speaking the truth aloud between them, and he waves her off a week later to travel the world, to find her own new universe. And when she writes, when she calls, she sounds happy. Like she was becoming the woman she was always meant to be.
-x-
Peter's not sure what brought him here today, to this block, this street, this exact corner. To this moment, walking down the sidewalk and lurching to his right to avoid plowing down a figure barreling around the bend a little too fast.
The downturned face and the pulled-back hair finally register three steps farther on, and he draws up short, pivots around and stares hard at her back.
She's stopped, too, but she hasn't turned to face him.
He'd seen Liv — red-haired grown-up not-Olivia — in a TV newsclip just the day before, her swagger unmistakable on the figure striding across the background as a reporter chattered on about yet another New York landmark lost to Amber. So he knows this blonde-headed version isn't her.
"Olivia," he says, voice pitched low.
Her shoulders rise and fall with the deep, sharp breath she takes.
"Olivia," he calls, more urgently, "it's —"
"I know," she says, her voice cutting through his.
Though how she can possibly know is a mystery to him, trapped blind on the other side of the mirror as she was and without a reflection to stalk.
Olivia stands there for a beat longer, completely still; then she spins and crosses the ground between them in a few long, smooth strides. "I have to find Walter." She grabs his wrist and tugs him after her down the sidewalk.
"You mean your Walter?" he asks, trailing along.
"I mean Walter."
-x-
She protests being hauled off to his apartment at first, and it's not only because she'd had some other plan in her head until their paths intersected. "Peter," she says, pulling him off the sidewalk and into a tiny, dingy alleyway, "your father —"
"Does not come to my apartment," he cuts in, finishing for her.
She raises an eyebrow, radiating skepticism. "Really."
"Olivia, I haven't spoken to the Secretary in two years. No, wait." Leaning back against the bare concrete of the building next to them, he considers the statement for a moment. "More like three," he concludes finally. "You see, I'm wasting my life. Squandering my potential and that second chance I got. Also, it's quite possible I'm the reason for everything that's wrong with the world."
Olivia opens her mouth to speak, but he raises a hand and waves her off.
"And you don't need to point out that I actually am the reason for everything that's wrong with the world, by the way. I figured that out on my own."
"I wasn't," she says, shaking her head. "And anyway, it's not you, it's —"
"Walter," he says, pushing away from the wall again. "We always come back to that." He holds out a hand to her, palm up. "Look, do you trust me? I can keep you safe, at least. Give you a place to sleep. I owe you that much."
Peter counts the seconds as Olivia stares down at his outstretched hand, one-two-three-four-five. On six, she reaches out and grabs it with her own.
-x-
The trip to his place wouldn't be long by subway or cab, but it takes them the rest of the afternoon, stuck on foot as they are. He works out the logistics of getting her a Show Me as they talk, whom he can bribe and which server he can hack and what her on-record background ought to be. She's not talking much, so there's plenty of time to plan. It would be easier if he knew what he was planning for, exactly, but broad daylight on the streets of New York City isn't the best place to discuss the details of what the hell she's doing here on the wrong side of the divide.
She waits outside while he picks up dinner at the Middle Eastern joint around the corner from his apartment, then he ushers her though the building door and into the ancient, creaking lift.
"That smells amazing," she says, her face relaxing a touch, freer now that they're alone again.
"Can't go wrong with kebabs," Peter says with a half-smile. "Also there's baklava."
"God." She lets out a tiny groan. "If I die right here, please feed me before you call the coroner," she says.
He laughs softly as he leads her down the hall.
-x-
They eat in near-silence at his tiny table next to the window, and he can't help noticing the glances she keeps stealing outside, taking stock of the street below, the building across the street, and the sky up above. He waits as long as he can stand, letting her finish her food and making her a second cup of tea once she's done. When she's about halfway through that one, he leans forward and folds his hands in front of him on the table.
He looks her straight in the eye, unwavering. "Tell me why you're here."
Sighing, she sets the mug down on the table. "We came to find William Bell. Walter and I."
Peter blinks, surprised. "William Bell? Multi-millionaire, eccentric genius, only three people on Earth know what he looks like? That William Bell?"
Olivia nods. "Except here's the thing you don't know. He's supposed to be our eccentric genius. Our William Bell."
"Huh." He sits back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. "Now that's a plot twist I didn't see coming."
"Yeah." Olivia wraps her hands around her mug and stares out the window.
"I take it that didn't go well."
She shrugs. "The finding him part went just fine. It was afterwards things got a little off track."
This woman had a real gift for understatement.
-x-
It takes some cajoling, but he gets it out of her eventually: name, date, and serial number of everything that's happened to her since she crossed over from her side to his. After that, he packs her off to bed. She's obviously exhausted, asleep with her eyes open in the chair across from him, and now he knows why. Days have passed since she'd narrowly escaped the trap that had snared Walter at William Bell's penthouse, and she's been on the run the whole time.
Living on the lam's not easy in a world where they check your ID at every street corner.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks when he pokes his head around the bedroom door to check on her one last time.
"Why do you trust me?"
"Well, I don't have a whole lot of options at this point," she says.
Peter thinks maybe he doesn't, either.
He shuts the door behind him as she's crawling into bed, and he heads back down the hall and gets to work. Olivia's Walter won't be in some conventional detainment facility, of that Peter's got no doubt. They wouldn't have a duplicate of the Secretary of Defense — the most powerful man in the country, quite possibly the world — just sitting around for anyone to stumble over. Because if the simple fact of his existence were revealed, the Secretary would have to tell everyone he'd been lying to them all these years.
Secretary Bishop does not admit to mistakes, let alone outright fraud.
A few hours and an illegal login or two later, Peter's pretty sure he's got the answer. He's correlated the times he'd so carefully extracted from Olivia with his father's route and the locations of a handful of off-the-book properties Peter's not supposed to know about.
Once he's got all the data in one place, it's child's play. Which is fitting, really.
-x-
Olivia tips her head to the side and purses her lips, considering the map he's scribbled and the explanation that goes along with it. "I don't know," she says slowly. "Wouldn't he at least try to hide his tracks?"
Peter shakes his head. "Why would he? He's the most powerful man in the country."
She shrugs, and Peter pauses, captivated by the way the gesture goes from her head all the way down to the tips of her fingers, a series of motions that say I'd really like to believe you, but you sound like a crazy man.
He probably is, but that's not at issue right now.
"Look," he says, laying his palms flat on the table, "there are millions of people in New York. Millions of tiny little data points flitting around from here to there, and no one cares. Taking yourself off the grid's what tends to get people's attention. And if the Secretary disappears? Well, that's headline news right there."
Olivia pulls a face, but she nods, grudgingly. "All right," she says. "Take me through it again."
So he does, following the trace from Liberty Island to an upscale restaurant in Manhatan and on to the penthouse where Helen Panagos, newly-minted CEO of Lockheed & Grumman, lives.
None of those are unusual stops, as far as they go; certainly a night spent with Dr. Panagos is nothing out of the ordinary for Peter's father. But the 45 minutes the Secretary spent in Brooklyn between work and dinner, well, that's just not normal.
"The only thing near this location," Peter says, tapping his finger on the map, "is a little brownstone I happen to know is owned by one William Heinrich Abbott."
"And William Heinrich Abbott is?" She gives him the prompt even though she already knows the answer.
He leans back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head, and gives her a sardonic grin. "Secretary Walter Bishop."
-x-
They set out for his father's off-books townhouse driving a car Peter borrows from a woman he used to teach with. On the way, they make a pit stop at one of Peter's least upstanding former employers.
"This isn't Brooklyn," Olivia says, her voice pitched low to keep from carrying up the dimly-lit street Peter's leading her down.
He holds up a hand and turns into an even dimmer alleyway, stopping at a metal door covered in dents and scratched-up, fading paint. He picks the lock, jams the security system, and makes his way across the floor and up a metal staircase with Olivia trailing behind.
"I'm not a bad guy," he says, opening a crate on the balcony to reveal a small cache of not-particularly-legal weapons that would prove far more useful than the couple of sidearms he'd had in his entry hall closet. "I just have interesting friends."
"Present company included?" Olivia asks from just over his shoulder.
"Without a doubt."
-x-
Peter pulls the car into a space around the corner from their target with the sort of practiced swoop only a long-time city dweller can manage, shifting into park as he turns to peer at Olivia in the darkness. "If all we meet is professional security, we'll be fine," he says in one final effort to make her understand. "Or even regular DoD. But if it's Fringe agents, Olivia …"
"Yeah," she says, and Peter can make out the sharp, tight nod of her head even in the dim glow of streetlights filtering through the car window.
He returns her nod. "As long as we're clear that this is, in fact, suicidally stupid, then I'm all in."
He hears the soft huff of her laughter, and even though he can't see the smile that goes with it, he can imagine it. A smile far too knowing for a little girl in a field of tulips, all the horror and the hope in the world hiding within.
-x-
They case the street, walking down it like friends out for an evening stroll. Peter's hoping for a lucky break, for a nearby house on one side or the other that's obviously unoccupied, giving them a way to get to the alley in back unnoticed. Anything's better than knocking on the front door. But window after window is lit, some of them open, and a few of the stoops even boast small groups of men and women chatting as they drink their beer or watch their children playing on the sidewalk.
Peter's about to suggest rounding the corner and checking the houses on the next street over when a fellow leaning against a light pole and reading a newspaper straightens up and heads straight for them. He's standing in front of Olivia before Peter has time to do more than tense up.
"Agent Dunham?" he says, rubbing at his furrowed brow before he runs his hand back through his hair. "I didn't know you were on this detail."
Olivia rolls her eyes and shrugs, not missing a beat. "Neither did I till I got the call."
"Night off?"
"Not anymore," she says, and the two of them both grin and shake their heads in the sort of well-worn camaraderie that only long-time veterans of the same war can share. Long-time fellow veterans or their alternate universe doppelgangers, at least. Peter is impressed.
He's even more impressed when he watches her work inside. A swift chop to the side of the neck takes out the agent who'd brought them in; a shout for help from Olivia brings the rest of the detail down from upstairs. They cluster around their comrade, checking his pulse and wondering aloud about whether he was sick, but before they can call for medical assistance, Olivia's got them down too. With swift, sure movements, she checks to make sure they're really out, then she makes her way through the remaining three rooms on the first story, checking to be sure they're alone.
Peter's still blinking a bit in surprise when she's heading up the stairs.
-x-
The door of the first bedroom is wide open, and Walter's right there, bound to a chair with his eyes closed and his head hanging down, chin against his chest. Olivia leaves Peter at the doorway with a nod towards the stairwell and clears the rest of the floor. He watches the stairs and front door until she returns and brushes past him, crossing the floor to kneel in front of Walter.
Peter's not sure what he's supposed to be feeling right now, looking at the man in the chair who both is and isn't his father.
"Walter," Olivia says, her voice low and gentle. She tries again when he doesn't respond, putting her hand to his cheek and patting him a few times. "C'mon, Walter. Time to go home."
He grunts a little as he stirs at last, his head lifting an inch or two from his chest. His eyes open a crack, then blink a few times in the stuttering rhythm of someone fighting hard against an overwhelming urge to stay asleep.
"That's it," Olivia says, laying her hand on his arm as he starts to pull against the restraints. "You're fine."
He shakes his head a little and finally manages to open his eyes all the way. "Olivia," he says, a slow smile stretching across his face, "I'm so glad you came."
His voice sounds more like she's visiting him for afternoon tea rather than breaking into an undisclosed location to rescue him, and the corner of Olivia's mouth twitches in response. "Wouldn't miss it, Walter," she says. She pulls a pocketknife out of her back pocket and flips it open, setting to work on his restraints. "How're you doing?"
"Hmm." Walter furrows his brow and purses his lips. "They gave me," he begins, tipping his head to the side, "some very interesting drugs. I don't think —" He breaks off as he glances past Olivia's shoulder and spies Peter for the first time.
"Walter?" she prods.
Walter gives his head a little shake. "I wasn't hallucinating before, but I think perhaps I've just begun." His voice is stronger and steadier now, and for the first time Peter can hear an echo of the man who raised him and of the Walter he'd met on the other side so many years ago.
Olivia tosses the last of the restraints to the side and straightens, reaching down to grasp Walter's forearms and help him up out of the chair. "Nope. No time for that now, though. We have to move."
-x-
They exit the building through the back door, dragging a still-groggy Walter along with them and leaving the handful disabled Fringe agents behind.
Peter hates to think about the amount of trouble that's going to cause Liv in the morning.
They head down the alley and up the rear steps of the house closest to their parking place. The back door's unlocked, and Peter pushes it open, calling out, "Fringe Division," in the most official voice he can muster, an attitude he figures he's probably channeling from all those years living with his father. Olivia keeps her arm around Walter, urging him through the kitchen and the living room and down the front steps while the people in the house stare in confusion at what they must assume is the Secretary.
Actually, this little episode is likely to cause a whole lot of people no end of trouble tomorrow.
-x-
"Where are we going?" Walter asks, his voice high and tight, almost childlike.
"The theater. The old opera house."
"Can't we go back to —"
"They sealed it," Olivia says, cutting him off. "In Amber. There's no way."
Walter makes a sound of distress. Peter doesn't need to glance over his shoulder into the backseat to know the older man is clinging to the door handle so hard his knuckles are turning white. He'd grabbed on the minute Olivia had put him into the car and hasn't let go since.
"It's okay, Walter," Olivia says, low and calm. "This is from your backup list. And it's the closest spot to where they were holding you."
"Olive —"
"I'll manage fine, Walter."
Walter sighs. "I know. You always do."
Peter can't quite make out how much of Walter's upset and confusion is from whatever cocktail of pharmaceuticals he'd been given back at the secretary's townhouse and how much is something else altogether. Given Olivia's patient words and her obvious lack of alarm at Walter's state, Peter's beginning to suspect that the balance tips more towards the latter than he'd initially thought, but he doesn't have time to consider that right now. He corners the car, pulls into an alley, and cuts the ignition. "Here we are," he says, turning to face Olivia. "Now what?"
-x-
They locate the side entrance to the theater in the alley without any trouble; Peter stands watch up at the street corner while Olivia works on the door with his set of lockpicks.
"Got it," she says at last, her voice pitched low but still carrying all the way up the alley to reach Peter. He's about to turn away and join them when the first in a line of black SUVs barrels around the corner several blocks away. He draws in a swift breath and trots back to Olivia and Walter.
"Come on," he says. "We'd better move. That's trouble on the way."
-x-
They move down the corridor past storage areas and dressing rooms, their flashlights illuminating props and chairs and costume racks along the way. The deep silence of the building is almost comedic given what they all know must be happening on the other side of the old building's sturdy brick walls. Peter's imagination fills in the missing sounds: tires screeching, car doors banging, agents shouting as they coordinate their assault.
There doesn't seem to be any way out for him now. He'd walked into this with an old debt and a childlike faith that somehow he'd come out the other side the same way he always did, scot-free and with no one anyone the wiser. He'd be able to repay his debt, send Olivia home, and walk away, never to think about her or Walter or their world again. Curtain down. Time for Peter to move on to the next act.
But it turns out that after nearly a lifetime of moving from one act to another without giving a damn what he was leaving behind him, Peter's stumbled unexpectedly into the final scene, and no one's even bothered to hand him a script.
-x-
"It's here," Olivia says as they cross the open area backstage. "Over here." She takes a step out from the wings and onto the stage. Moonlight filters dimly through the domed window in the ceiling, filling the room with shadows that could be hiding the whole of Fringe Division for all Peter can tell. But when Olivia plays the beam of her flashlight around the house, the bright spot of light illuminates only empty seats and closed doors as it slides up to the balconies and down along the aisles.
"Looks like we're still on our own," Olivia says, her voice low, "but we'd better hurry."
Peter doesn't have to imagine the sound of the Fringe team that's coming for them now; the thumps and shouts from the lobby are muffled but growing louder. There's no time to think, no time even to hesitate, but even so, Peter takes the last few steps onto the stage slowly, lagging behind the others. Olivia turns, holding out her hand, beckoning with her fingers impatiently.
"Olivia." He looks away, up the aisle towards the doors. "I can't —"
"Yes, you can."
"No, I can't. Not again."
"Peter…." She drops her hand, takes a step back towards him, then another. Slowly, like she's approaching a wary child or a wild dog. When she speaks, her voice sounds like that, too. "Peter, you have no idea what they're going to do to you when they come through those doors and find you here. You have no idea what they're capable of. If you'd seen the things I've seen, lived the last few years of my life … you can't stay here."
He knows she's right. There's always been so much more to it than Fringe Division protecting the homeland. It's why he's stayed away, out on the far-distant edge of things. But still. "This is my home."
She nods, as though conceding. "All right. I understand." But she takes another step closer, then two more, closing the distance between them. She reaches out again, her hand hovering close to his wrist without actually touching. "But do you really belong here any more?"
Someone's hammering at the exterior doors now, and Peter hears footsteps coming from backstage. Beyond Olivia, Peter sees Walter look up and around, his head swiveling fast, his breathing rapid. "Olivia," Walter says, loud and clipped. "We need to leave. Now."
But Olivia's gaze stays solid on Peter, unwavering.
The park. The house. The playground. A fleeting few hours of his life and an impossible field of white tulips. He shouldn't trust her.
He's never trusted anyone else.
"Well?" she asks softly.
Peter nods. "Okay. Let's go."
The first door bangs open, followed by the rest, and Fringe agents flood into the room, down the stairs and up the aisle and out of the offstage wings. Peter's gaze is caught by the rectangle of light in one of the doors, by the silhouette of a man standing straight and broad-shouldered as he watches the operation unfolding before him.
Peter can't move. His feet are stuck fast to the ground.
But Olivia grabs Peter's wrist, and she grabs Walter's hand, and they shift —