BORDERLINE
CHAPTER 9: THE LAKE
The following week, Amy calls in sick to work for the first time in a year. She calls in sick because her foot keeps twitching without her permission, and she can't drive without flooring the gas every few seconds. She doesn't trust herself around vulnerable, sick people today.
She calls Peter, and asks for Walter. He's a little surprised, but he hands the phone over to his Dad. Amy describes her symptoms to him, trying to keep her tone light and unbothered, but she hears her voice tremble towards the end. She decides to take the bus to the lab.
Olivia and Peter have gone out to work a case together when she arrives at Harvard University, and she's relieved for the privacy. She has to hold on tight to the stair rail as she makes her way down the steps to the basement. Walter is waiting for her at the bottom, and offers her his arm to hold onto. She takes it gratefully.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, with the air of someone who genuinely wants to know.
Amy's answering smile is forced. "I've been better, but thanks for asking. How are you?"
He leans in, whispering to her conspiratorially. "I've finally found the completed ZFT manuscript! It was in a box of my old things, all along! Can you imagine?"
"Have you read it?" she asks, wincing as she feels a muscle in her leg go into cramp. She lurches unsteadily, hissing in pain, but Walter keeps a firm grip on her. He pats her hand encouragingly.
"No, I thought we could look at it together," he says.
In the laboratory, she sits down in a chair and Walter places a makeshift crown of electrodes on her head and tapes more to her limbs. Amy has to hold the arms of the chair hard to stop the tremor in her fingers.
"Strange," Walter murmurs, walking around a table to look at the data coming through on his computer screen.
"What is?" Amy asks, gritting her jaw. She focuses every particle of energy in her body on trying to keep still.
"There's nothing wrong with your nerve function. In fact, your parasympathetic nervous system seems to be firing much more rapidly than a normal human being's…"
Amy flinches at the word 'normal', knowing that she no longer fits into that category. She also thinks that Walter's assessment makes no sense: anyone looking at her would say that her motor-neurone function is tanking by the day. Not improving. "What about the blood sample I gave you last week?"
"Totally standard - as I suspected."
Sweat is beginning to bead on her brow and she leans back in her chair, trying to moderate her breathing. "Can you start me on medication? Haloperidol? Won't that slow it down?"
"…For now, perhaps." The look on Walter's face tells Amy what she already knows; she's getting worse by the day. It's unlikely that any drug will contain this, and she has no idea what waits for her at the end of the line. Cortexiphan is doing things to her body that modern medicine cannot reverse...What happens if she loses the ability to walk, or hold things? She feels herself tear up. "What the hell is happening to me, Walter?"
"It's almost impossible to know until your abilities fully manifest themselves," he murmurs, apologetically. "I am…truly sorry, my dear." Their eyes meet, and Amy knows he's apologising for something far more specific.
She takes a deep breath. Wipes at her eyes hastily with her sleeve. "OK, read me this manifesto thing."
There is nothing she can do to control what has been set in motion, but maybe hearing that someone else finds meaning in all this will help her.
"Oh yes!" Walter remembers, and hurries over to a cardboard box, filled with what looks like an extensive collection of vinyl records. He plucks out an old manuscript, waving it with one hand, and moves to sit next to Amy. She busies herself with peeling electrodes off of her skin as he riffles through the pages.
"I found it in between the Rolling Stones and Kate Bush! Hmm, here is the missing section -" he clears his throat, reciting fast and excitedly: "Our children are our greatest resource. We must nurture them and protect them. We must prepare them, so that they may one day protect us…"
Nurture and protect? Amy thinks. Her whole life, the only person who had ever protected her was Olivia. And who, in the end, was Amy supposed to be protecting?
She hears a door open and close and she lifts her head. A bald man in a black suit and a fedora has entered the lab, but Walter is still talking, completely oblivious.
"Walter -" Amy warns him. She attempts to stand, wanting to challenge this enigmatic, silent stranger, but her legs aren't working. She grimaces, staggering into a somewhat upright position.
Walter looks up and blinks.
"Hello, Walter," the stranger greets, in a calm monotone, and Amy feels a rush of confusion. This person knows Walter? She looks at them closely, trying to quantify the sense of detached otherness that they emit. Their features are smooth but bland, and somehow not easily memorable.
"Hello," Walter replies, faintly.
"It's time to go."
"Is it time?" Walter seems lost in thought for a minute, before agreeing: "I'll get my coat."
"Walter, you don't have to go anywhere with this man!" Amy interjects, bewildered. Despite the fact that Walter and the stranger appear to be on at least civil terms, she has a bad feeling. She doesn't understand what's happening, except for the fact that Walter seems to have made a deal with this person long ago - owes them a favour, somehow.
Walter touches her arm. "Yes, I do." He looks at the man. "Does she come, too?"
The stranger turns his huge, dark eyes on Amy, and she represses a shiver. It's like being X-rayed, as if this person is seeing to the very core of her. After a long moment, he nods.
Walter bustles around, now, brisk and practical. "You'll need your coat, Amy, and something to walk with - aha!" He produces a smooth wooden walking stick from one of the side-rooms and helps her into her coat. Amy notices that the stranger doesn't stare at her tremor, the way people in the street have started doing.
"Who is this person?" she whispers to Walter as they're lead out of the building. She tells herself that the only reason she is going is so she can help and protect Walter, but she has to admit she's also curious. And, besides, in her current state, she wouldn't be up to protecting anyone. The ZFT manifesto seemed wildly optimistic on that front.
She's surprised when the man drives them out of Boston and towards a lake so large, it might as well be the ocean. The radio plays harmless eighties music, and nobody talks.
"We've arrived," the stranger announces, parking next to a beach. It's a chilly, windy day and the lake is steely grey in colour, preceded by a flat stretch of pale sand. There's nobody around, and not much to see except for a few empty-looking holiday homes.
They walk out onto the sand, the stranger apparently unbothered by the cold. The quiet is dreamlike - the only sound coming from the waves and the wind. Amy struggles on the uneven terrain, staggering and cursing every now and then. Eventually, the man stops in front of one of the houses and looks at Walter.
"Do you recognise this place?" he asks.
Walter nods, apparently lost in memories. "This is where we used to bring Peter in the summer when he was a child."
"…David Jones is trying to create a bridge to a parallel universe. He cannot succeed…What you need to stop him is in there."
Amy squints at the unlikely-looking building. It looks as if it's been abandoned for years. She can't believe that anything important would be in there, but then again, Walter has kept his designs in stranger places. Walter walks towards the front door obediently, but Amy stays behind, hesitating.
"Why am I here?" she asks the man. When what she really wants to ask is: what's happening to me? Her grip on the walking-stick Walter gave her is white-knuckle. She's afraid she'll fall over without it.
"He will need you, too, at the end," he intones, matter-of-factly. Amy raises an eyebrow.
"Who? Walter? How are you so sure?"
But he shakes his head, and she gets the sense she's being dismissed. Amy looks up at the dilapidated, sad house in front of her and follows Walter. Across the sand, she turns back one last time to look at the stranger. But he's gone.
Once, this place was happy, she thinks, looking around the dusty interior. A framed picture of Peter and his Mom and Dad sits on a side-table in the hallway, and she smiles at the sight of it. She knows that Peter's childhood became complicated after his mother died and Walter began his descent into madness, but at least here, it looks as if there had been joy.
After hours of helping Walter search, Amy decides to take a break. Walter had grown increasingly manic and cranky when they hadn't been able to find what they needed - not that he remembers what that might be, in the first place. Normally, she's good at moderating his moods, but today she is lacking in patience and Walter needs some space. He needs Peter, not her. She heads outside for some fresh air.
With difficulty, Amy pushes the front door open and steps out onto the porch. The cool air from the lake hits her face, slightly damp and smelling of pine. She limps over to the swing-seat and sits down, resting the walking stick against the decking rail in front of her. She folds her hands in her lap, watching them twitch and vibrate until she clenches them into fists.
A crunching, shifting sound alerts Amy to the fact that someone is approaching. She looks up, expecting the strange man in the fedora, and lets out an audible sigh of relief when she realises that it's Peter.
"Hi," she smiles, pushing some hair out of her face.
He stops at the deck railing, canting his arms over it. "Why did you guys come here?" he asks, confused, looking up at his old home.
"This man turned up at the lab and brought us here. He said Walter needed something in this house, in order to stop Jones opening a portal to the other side."
"The man - what did he look like?"
"He was pale and bald. He was wearing -"
" - a black suit and a snazzy little fedora?" Peter guesses, finishing her sentence, wryly. "In that case, that would be the Observer." She chews on her lip and Peter walks up the steps to join her on the porch, sitting down on the swing seat next to her.
"How are you doing?" he checks, his gaze dropping down to her hands.
"...It's getting worse," she admits, resisting the urge to lie, or hide the tremor from him.
Then she feels both of Peter's hands, warm and large, enfolding one of her own. For a minute, the trembling stops, and her whole body relaxes. The feeling is a revelation. Slowly, Amy looks up into Peter's green eyes, seeing a softness there she hasn't seen before. It's so calming, sitting next to him like this, the warmth of his body shared with hers...
There's the sound of breaking glass from inside the house. She clears her throat, remembering Walter. She removes her hand from Peter's. "Your Dad isn't doing too great," she tells him. "He doesn't know what he's looking for in there, and it's stressing him out."
Understanding flashes in Peter's eyes. "OK, let's go in. You want some help?"
"No," Amy replies, firmly. She's done with self-pity for the day. "I can manage." She grabs the walking stick and Peter opens the door for her. She re-enters the house.
Amy watches him notice the framed photo in the hallway she'd looked at before. He picks it up, wiping a thick layer of dust from its surface.
"…You didn't tell me you were sick as a kid?" Amy comments, before she can stop herself. Now that she can see the picture more clearly - even if most of the colour has faded - it's obvious. Walter and his wife, in the prime of their lives, smiling energetically at the camera, the child in between them - Peter - pallid and lethargic.
"Yeah, apparently," he shrugs, setting the frame back down. "I don't remember it, but I think I had Walter and my Mom pretty worried there for a couple of years." A crashing sound from further within the lake house draws his attention and he raises an eyebrow. "…Now it's me looking after him, go figure."
Amy follows Peter slowly, unsure what to make of the anecdote. I don't remember it. Peter's absence of memory makes her uncomfortable, and after a while she realises it's because Olivia, too, doesn't remember the part of her childhood that Walter was involved in. There are too many gaps, too many blank spaces, where Walter's actions in the eighties is concerned.
They follow the erratic sounds to a bedroom, and find Walter pulling clothing from a wardrobe, throwing it behind him in a haphazard pile.
"It's not here, it's not here!" he's muttering - frenzied - his expression contorted by a deep frown. Amy shoots a helpless glance at Peter.
"Sure it's here, Walter," Peter replies, calmly. "We're gonna find it."
With Peter's help, Walter remembers what it is he's looking for. It's a device he made to close portals - compact, cylindrical metal, not much larger than a handgun. Amy has no idea how the thing works, but the science behind most of this stuff is beyond her, anyway.
Walter is clutching the device to his chest when Peter receives the phone-call from Olivia. He puts her on speaker and Amy stands close by, listening: the FBI have figured out where Jones is going to try to open the portal to the alternate universe. Reiden Lake. Olivia suggests that Walter and Peter meet them at the location with the device.
Peter hangs up the call, and Amy can already anticipate what he's going to say as he turns to face her. "I'm not staying behind," she states, flatly. She stares, daring him to contradict her.
"Well, that settles that. You drive, son!" Walter exclaims - agitation forgotten, cheerful once more. He claps his son on the back. Peter looks resigned, but leads them out to his car. Amy struggles getting into the front passenger seat, trying to pretend like she's not, and fools nobody. She can feel Peter's eyes on her face, and she studiously ignores his concerned look.
"This car belongs in a museum, Peter" Amy tells him, wryly, trying to inject some levity into the situation. She fiddles with the dials on the ancient radio.
"I can still make you walk, you know," he grumbles, starting the car and peeling out of the parking lot.
Night falls as they approach Reiden Lake, and the temperature plummets. Frost clings to the grass and trees. The sky is clear; the moonlight white and ghostly. Peter follows a dirt track off the road and parks the car behind a thick knot of brambles, killing the lights.
They sit there in silence, watching for signs of Jones and his team, when they're abruptly blinded by the glare of multiple flashlights. Instinctively, Amy flinches. She hears the car door wrench open, and someone is grabbing her roughly by the arm.
"Get off me!" she yells, crying out. She's slammed bodily against the hood of the car, chest first, her arm pinned behind her back. Her breath catches in her throat.
"Wait - wait! They're with me!" a familiar voice yells, and the grip on her arm loosens. Amy manages to turn, seeing her sister approaching them. Olivia is wearing an FBI wind-breaker jacket, her blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She's holding her gun, surrounded by a team of threatening-looking men.
A bright, blue flash of light draws their attention. It's coming from the direction of the lake, filtered by the trees. The light is accompanied by a high-pitched sound, like an engine whirring to life. Amy squints, trying to make out the source.
"It's Jones," Olivia murmurs, her face tightening. She signals to the cluster of FBI agents and, before Amy can say anything, they disperse in the direction of the light.
Amy shares a look with Walter and Peter. Barely a minute passes by before they hear the first gun-shot. Amy gasps, her shoulders tensing, her heart rate accelerating. They can hear shouting as the FBI and Jones' men exchange fire.
"We have to use this to shut the portal -!" Walter tells them both, urgently, looking down at the device in his hands. "Otherwise Jones will succeed in establishing the bridge, and he'll tear the fabric -"
"- Give it to me, I'll do it!" Peter interrupts his father, without hesitation. His expression is determined. But Walter hesitates.
"Peter -" Amy interjects, her voice shaking.
"Give it to me!" Peter instructs, vigorously, ignoring Amy. Walter hands the device over, showing his son how to set the dial to the correct setting.
Instinctively, Amy takes several steps after Peter as he runs up a steep bank. On the other side, she can hear yells, gunshots...pain.
…we must prepare them so that they one day can protect us.
What was any of this for, if she couldn't protect the people that she cared about?
Something inside of Amy tugs her forwards. Doubled over in a crouch, she darts through the trees, trying to use them as cover. The bright blue light is messing with her eyesight; spots of multicoloured brightness are punctuating her vision like morse-code. She stumbles on the wet leaves, feeling sea-sick, but reaching the top of the bank. Below her is the lake - inky black against the night sky, it's depth unknowable. David Jones has set up his equipment in a triangular formation close to the lake's edge, and the blue light is coming from a tool on the ground. The air above it seems to ripple and glimmer, the patch of space beyond it oddly distorted.
Urgently, Amy casts around for Peter and Olivia. She catches sight of Peter, edging forwards with Walter's machine in one hand. His gaze is fixed on the portal. But from here, Amy can see what Peter cannot. One of Jones' men approaching from his right, using a parked vehicle as cover. Amy watches as if in slow motion as the man rounds the back of the car and lifts his weapon.
Horror and fear consume her. She opens her mouth - maybe to warn Peter - every cell in her body wanting to move between him and the bullet that's about to be fired. Somewhere inside of her she feels a violent tugging sensation - pulling her with a huge amount of force - like she's a cannonball in reverse motion. For a split-second, everything disappears.
- And then she reappears and she's barrelling into Peter, hard, knocking him to the ground. There's the bang of a gun being fired, and the bullet flying over their heads. She looks down at Peter, his wide eyes reflecting her own feeling of shock back at her. The solid warmth of him underneath her is enough to make Amy realise the actuality of her moving twenty metres in a single moment. For a split-second, the intimacy of their position hits her - despite a life-and-death situation, or, maybe, because of it. The glimmer of light in her vision is distracting - makes her feel punch-drunk - and then with a grunt Peter is grabbing her tightly and rolling them - just in time - as another bullet bites into the ground where their heads had been.
Even as Peter finishes moving, the sheer momentum of his pulling her out of harms way rolls her an extra metre, onto her stomach. She feels grass and dirt beneath her fingers, and, trying to catch her breath, she pushes herself to her feet. Disorientated, Amy stumbles a few steps, and then turns.
She has no weapon of her own, and no ability to defend herself.
Not good, she thinks, meeting their assailant's gaze. She feels as if every cell in her body is vibrating, but it's not something she can control. Right now, she's a sitting duck. Amy freezes as the man lifts his weapon again, aiming it at her.
But then another shot rings out in the night and the man crumples, a bullet hole in his head. She looks around wildly for her saviour - Charlie Francis.
"Amy, get down!" Charlie yells, firing again at another of Jones' men.
But Amy's limbs won't obey her, no matter how hard she tries. There's the aura again. An old-movie film of patchy, multi-coloured light, followed ruthlessly by the pulling sensation.
- When she reappears, she is weightless, like a bird. Surrounded by the night sky, looking up at the stars. And then there is a lurching, horrible feeling of falling that only lasts for seconds before she hits the ground. Her left arm collides with something - a rock - hard. The shock of falling and having the wind knocked out of her is enough to euthanise the pain for several seconds. And then she feels it. Amy bites back a scream, managing to strangle it into a tight, pained wail. Her arm. Her humerus bone is definitely broken.
Biting down on her lip as hard as she can, she rolls herself onto her uninjured side, curling the broken arm protectively into her chest. She's now several feet away from Peter and Olivia, but closer to David Jones and his portal machine. The light is blinding, sending blue-white flecks dancing across her eyes. Amy lets out another moan.
"As you were, soldier," Jones smiles at her, tauntingly, the expression distorted by the bandages he has wrapped around his head and patches of disintegrating skin.
"Fuck you," she manages to spit out, in between waves of blinding pain.
He chuckles, and begins walking towards the warped field of air.
"Jones, STOP!" Amy hears Olivia yell at him. From her position on the ground, Amy watches her shoot Jones once - then twice. But he just keeps walking. Her heart leaps into her throat, and she stops breathing. He was going to succeed.
But as he is stepping into the portal, there's a crackle of energy. The bridge shuts - and in the end, it really is as easy as the light box test; as quick as a bulb turning off. Suddenly, the light has disappeared and all that is left is the smell of burnt skin. Jones - or what is left of him - sways on the spot. He's been cut cleanly in two by the shutting of the portal. Amy lets out a small sound of revulsion, hastily pushing herself backwards using her legs as his body pitches towards her. It hits the ground and rolls to her feet.
"Amy?!" A flashlight illuminates her face as Olivia runs towards her, skidding to her knees. "Are you OK?" Her eyes are wide and scared. She'd seen Amy teleport, maybe also seen her drop six metres from mid-air.
Amy realises that the tremor in her hands has stopped, and the tugging sensation is gone. The feeling of stasis is a relief. "I'm alright," she answers, truthfully, despite the fact her humerus fracture hurts more than she could have imagined. She'd take the pain over uncontrollably random teleportation. Awkwardly, Olivia helps Amy to her feet.
"We did it," Amy marvels in disbelief, shivering, as she looks down at Jones' still-smouldering dead body.
"Uhuh, maybe we can celebrate at the hospital," Olivia replies, dryly. "C'mon let's go."
Peter is hovering a short distance away, and as the two sisters approach, he pulls his coat off, tossing it around Amy's shoulders. "T-thanks -" Amy stutters - she can't tell if she feels cold because of the low temperatures, or if she's going into shock - she suspects the latter.
"It's the least I can do, considering you just saved my life," he replies, the corner of his mouth lifting. Amy smiles in return.
Peter is alive; Olivia, unharmed. Even if she'd visualised success on an existential coin flip, this is better than she could have hoped for. They won.
A/N This chapter is way longer than previous ones, but I couldn't bring myself to split it into two parts.
I feel like I've blasted through Season 1 of Fringe, but Season 2 seems to have more mythology and it's taking me a little longer to figure out how I want Amy to tie in.
As usual, leave a comment/review if you like this fic!
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