chichuri

Fic: Priorities (Peter, Olivia)

2009-12-16T02:23:56Z

Title: Priorities
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia
Word Count: 617
Rating: PG
Summary: Missing scene from August. Peter convinces Olivia to take the day off.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.8, August.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.

Priorities

When Peter ducked into the office, Olivia was where she'd been for the last two hours: hunched over the table she'd staked out as her own, tapping her fingers against the pile of files and taking notes as she put together her report.

If anyone ever needed to play hooky—hell, deserved to play hooky—it was the woman who was determined to waste what was looking to be a gorgeous fall day inside a dusty and chemical-laden lab. He shook his head, dropping into the chair across from her. "Go. Report to Broyles, then spend the day with your niece."

She looked up, blinked at him for a moment or two while his words registered. "We still need to question the victim. And the paperwork—"

"Is nothing that can't wait until tomorrow." He raised his eyebrows, daring her to contradict him; the tilt of her head told him he was right. "And," he continued, "it's not like I haven't questioned people before." Tougher targets and in worse circumstances, but he didn't think reminding her of those details would work in his favor.

She glanced down at the pile of papers, then back up at him. "I shouldn't," she said, but he'd never heard her sound less happy about making the responsible choice.

"Olivia." He waited until she gave him her full attention. "Go make that memory with Ella." Bringing Ella into this was pure emotional manipulation, he knew, but if took manipulation to convince her to take some time for herself he was prepared to pull out all the stops. He was her partner now; it was his job to shoulder his share of the burdens, if only she would trust him enough to let them go.

She was wavering; he could see it in her eyes, in the twist of her mouth. He waited to see if it had been enough to pry her away from her perceived duty, marshalling his arguments for the next stage of his persuasion just in case. He'd just about decided to bring out the bigger guns when she finally nodded.

"Okay," she said hesitantly. "If you're sure."

"I got this." He grinned, holding her eyes and willing his certainty into his expression. Anything to convince her to take off for a guilt-free afternoon.

She searched his face, the last of her reluctance ebbing away. She smiled in return, one of the relaxed, honest ones that made her eyes light up. "Thank you, Peter."

He shrugged, leaning back as he watched her gather everything up and shuffle it into a neat pile. "You go have fun. You do remember fun, now, don't you?"

She chuckled as she pushed back her chair and stretched, her entire posture loosening like she was shedding her burdens along with the kinks in her back. "I think I do. And if I don't, I've got Ella to remind me." With a last adjustment of the pile, she stood. She made it half way to the door before she wheeled and said, "You'll brief me tomorrow?"

"Every word."

"And don't forget to—"

"Are you going to go or are you going to stand around all day second-guessing me?"

She ducked her head, offering up a wry smile and an apologetic shrug. He rolled his eyes as he shooed her off. With a spring in her step and a swing to her hips she left this time, already on the phone to arrange the meeting with Broyles.

The echo of her footsteps faded. When he was sure she was free and clear of the building and hopefully not about to have second thoughts, he retrieved Walter and went to see a girl about a man.

Fic: Old Fashioned Justice (Nick, Olivia, Peter)

2009-11-07T07:55:50Z

Title: Old Fashioned Justice
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Nick, Olivia, Peter
Word Count: 1431
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nick, Olivia, and Peter execute the man who tried to have them killed. AU.
Warnings: Torture, mind control, prompt.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Execution (hanging). This is set in the Choke Chain 'verse, an AU where Peter, Olivia, and Nick all work for the ZFT, and is a sequel to Chain You Down .

Old Fashioned Justice

Jones breaks protocol. Rather than getting an anonymous phone call notifying them of a blind drop at an anonymous location, a large envelope containing their assignment is handed off to them by an unassuming young man Nick recognizes as one of Jones' protégés. Olive immediately commandeers it, elbowing Peter when he tries to read over her shoulder. She hands off the pages to Nick when she's finished with them; he hands them to Peter.

The file is thick, containing not only everything needed to do the job, but a wealth of information tracing years of Victor Farley's motives and actions in betraying the organization. As always, the intel is meticulously thorough. The envelope also contains another break in protocol: Jones left them a note. As promised, he wrote, Olive, Nick and Peter were assigned this mission both because they are the best and because they have a personal stake in the matter. The only thing that Jones has dictated is how Farley is to be executed.

"Hanging?" Peter asks, glancing from Jones' note to Olive.

She flips through the file. "Apparently, two decades ago he tried committing suicide by that method. We can make it look like he succeeded this time."

"So we're officially executing him, but they want to keep this one quiet?" His lip curls. "Sure. Whatever."

"He's a traitor, but he's in a key position. We don't want the CIA to know we've infiltrated their ranks; it could get ugly for the other operatives we have in place." Olive is outwardly calm, but her agitation rolls through Nick as if it's his own. She hates that Farley would betray the organization that she so fiercely believes in even more than that he ordered her execution.

She doesn't fool Peter any more than she fools Nick. Peter studies her, and Nick feels him ghosting along the edges of Olive's mind. She pretends to ignore the scrutiny, but Nick can tell she knows exactly what's going on. Peter lets the silence drag on for minutes before asking, "You okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because this guy tried to have you killed?" Peter's gestures are jerky, his anger strong enough to vibrate through Nick.

She shrugs and buries herself deeper in the file, spreading the contents on the scarred wood of their workroom table.

Peter's still staring at Olive more than the file. He doesn't understand her yet, not really, but he's making progress. She's a puzzle that equally enthralls and annoys him, which is almost exactly the way Olive feels about him. Nick thinks it's cute, they way they circle around each other poking for weaknesses. They're growing comfortable with each other, perfecting a rhythm both at home and in the field that lends stability and strength to all three of them.

Nick shakes his head and continues reading. He doesn't care about the whys and the hows of killing Farley, just wants to eliminate the threat to his partners and move on before it disrupts their peace of mind any more. Granted, he'd rather tear the bastard apart and hoist bloody chunks aloft as warning to every other idiot who'd think to cross them, but he'll bow to the necessity of keeping it quiet. The reasons behind the death will spread to those who need to know.

~***~

Olive plans the operation with ruthless detail, going over every part until she's sure every possible contingency has been accounted for. It takes her two weeks to finalize the details, two weeks during which she refuses any input from Nick or Peter. Rising tension fuels her intense focus instead of the calm clarity that is typical of her mission planning.

After his first two attempts at offering suggestions get his head bitten off, Nick leaves her to it. Peter keeps pushing her, only backing off when she completely blows up at him, and even then just for a few hours. Nick monitors them both. Generally, the periodic explosions calm Olive down, but on the odd occasion when her anger starts to spill over into something darker and more dangerous, Nick gives her a break by distracting Peter with humor and video games, and one afternoon even drags him out to the range when Olive's patience wears down to nonexistent.

~***~

Peter bypasses the alarms, being careful to leave no trace of tampering. While Olive goes to raid the garage for rope, Nick eases into Farley's head and overrides motor skills, leaving him conscious but unable to move. By the time they reach the study Farley's scared shitless. His agitation only increases on seeing them. Nick gives a toothy grin, Peter smirks, and Olive is deadly serious.

"You know who we are." Olive leans against the desk, hands flat on the wood and leaning forwards. "You know that betraying your associates is a bad idea."

Nick pushes gently against Farley's mind, ramping up his terror to the edge of what his heart can take. Peter recognizes exactly what Nick is doing and smiles at him behind Olive's back. Despite her efforts to keep it from him, Nick dimly feels Olive's exasperation; she may not be protesting Nick's elaboration of the plan but she's eager to finish the job. He's not so eager; he trades glances with Peter and sees the same impulse in his eyes: make Farley suffer for as long as they can. But Olive calls the shots and Olive wants this done quick.

Nick walks Farley into the middle of the room, to where Peter is looping rope around one of the exposed beams. Olive pulls the chair out from behind the desk, rolling it under the rope and adjusting the seat up as high as it will go. It's too much coordination to force Farley to climb up himself, so Nick just holds him docile while Peter and Olive carefully maneuver him up and arrange the loop around his neck. When they're done, she scrambles up on the arm of the chair to finish tying the rope around the beam.

Nick releases Farley's paralysis, all but the arms, and untangles himself from the man's mind. Now the fury and terror are all Farley's own, but just as intense as when Nick was helping them along.

"Freaks," Farley spits. "You never should have been created. Jones should have been shot for insisting we keep and train you."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Peter rolls his eyes, glancing at Olive. "You want to do the honors?"

She doesn't answer for a moment, just stands and watches Farley. She turns Farley's words around in her head, her deeply buried uncertainties giving more weight to them than they deserve. Nick sends a burst of reassurance and Peter snarls at Farley for making her doubt herself.

"It's not over," Farley says as Olive kicks the chair away. Peter's eyes widen and he swears, trying to stop the fall.

There's a crack, and Farley is limp, his neck broken.

"He knew something." Peter stabs a finger towards the swinging body as he turns to Olive, who's staring at him with eyebrows raised. "Damn it, Jones didn't get everything on him."

"Crap," Nick breathes. He should have thought of the possibility. Should have worked with Peter to strip Farley's mind before killing him. Given time, Nick could have teased out the truth, if he knew the questions to ask; he had done it before. A stupid oversight, trusting Jones' people had discovered everything about Farley when his treachery had gone unknown for so long.

Olive cycles through irritation, anger, and guilt, then suppresses them, settling into focused calm. "He could have been playing us, trying to buy time."

As much as Nick hopes she's right, he doesn't dismiss the possibility that Jones had missed something so readily. A prickling between Nick's shoulder blades and a whisper in the back of his skull suggest there's more to this, pieces they're missing that will come back to bite them on the ass.

Peter echoes Nick's misgivings. "No," he says insistently, jaw clenching as he opens his mind and shares what he'd caught from Farley in the seconds before his death, a tantalizing glimpse of hidden agendas that Jones had entirely missed. It only serves to confirm Nick's unease. "This isn't the last of it."

Olive rocks back and forth on her feet, considering, then shrugs. "We did our job. Anything else we'll deal with when it comes." Deal with together, she means, and her faith that the three of them can handle whatever might be coming floods their link. Their minds tangle together briefly, the desire each of them has to keep the others safe building and solidifying into a ruthless commitment to protect each other no matter what.

They strip all trace of themselves from the scene and disappear back into the night.

Fic: Mirror Darkly (Olivia)

2009-11-04T03:43:18Z

Title: Mirror Darkly
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Character: Olivia
Word Count: 1829
Rating: PG
Summary: Olivia plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with a version of herself from another reality.
Warnings: Prompt, character death.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Man vs. Vehicle (train). With thanks to muselives and crazylittleelf for making sure this wasn't completely and utterly confusing to someone outside my head.

Mirror Darkly

The clouds flit back in front of the moon, rendering the abandoned train yard even darker. The figure Olivia has been following is gone. She grips her gun and concentrates, senses open to the slightest hint of where her target is hidden.

Not really reassuring, losing sight of the psychopath she's playing hide and seek with in the shadows of the rusted railcars. Not even when—or perhaps especially when—her target shares her face. Through a glass darkly, another Olivia from another universe where things went very, very differently.

She catches a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye. She turns, taking careful aim, but there's nothing. A footfall behind her, and she whirls and fires at a familiar shape that ducks behind the rusted hulk of a boxcar.

Her doppelganger's chuckle is chillingly familiar. "Not bad. Why're you still letting the FBI and Massive Dynamic pull your strings?"

"Because I'm not a psychopath."

"Can you really call me a psychopath when mostly I'm killing myself?"

~***~

Olivia darts backwards into the shadows, out of sight, listening for her other's footsteps. She's good, as good as any of the hers she's targeted.

Time to see just how good.

She reaches out, feels for the ebb and flow of the fabric of reality. Shifts through to a parallel world.

A quick scan of the area shows no major differences. The layout's the same, the rusted carcasses of trains are the same and in the same places. Night's a little clearer, not as many clouds playing peek-a-boo with the moon. She's been here before, already gone head to head with this version of herself.

A ripple cascades through realities and her other self steps through.

Adrenaline rushes through Olivia and she tightens her grip on her gun. Some of them never learned the trick to sidestepping realities, too caught up in Bell's exhortations of "can't be done" to open themselves to the possibilities. Some learned to sidestep, but were hopeless at tracking the movements of someone else. And some could do it all, but never learned to deal with the timeslips, making themselves easy targets to someone prepared to pick them off. This one, though, is as quick as any of them. Maybe quicker.

~***~

Olivia narrowly avoids a bullet fired moments after she followed her doppelganger into the new reality. A breathy laugh comes from the direction of the bullet.

"Not bad, Liv. Not bad at all. You've actually started to make use of your talent at this sort of thing. Become sure enough of yourself to start exploring your limits."

"Is that what you call this? 'Exploring your limits'?"

"I call this my personal crusade."

"Who do you work for?"

"Myself. C'mon, Liv. What did the FBI ever do for you, really? In the end, all they're good for is killing everyone you ever loved. And Massive Dynamic is even worse."

Unease curls through Olivia's belly. Distraction or truth? "What do you mean?"

"Trying to keep me talking, Agent Dunham? Too scared to just look in the mirror, so you're using all those hours of studying the worst that humanity has to offer to figure out what makes me tick? Here's a bit of information for your profile: You don't kill me tonight, I'm going to keep coming after you."

Reality ripples and her doppelganger disappears again. Olivia braces herself and grabs at the ripples, running as she pulls herself through to the other side. She hits the ground and rolls, narrowly avoiding another bullet.

"You'll have to do better than that," her doppelganger taunts.

If Olivia doesn't take control of the situation, she's dead. Her doppelganger is focused on taking her out and won't stop until she accomplishes the task. Olivia knows herself, even as twisted as the self she's facing is.

She won't stop.

Olivia bares her teeth in a feral grin and feels for the weakness between realities. "You want me? Come and get me."

And she steps through the barrier into another world.

~***~

"That bitch," Olivia breathes. This is the first her who has taken the initiative. This one is different. More advanced. Maybe she could even handle the truth.

Olivia considers opening the lines of communication. This one might be convinced, if she's seen enough. The thought is discarded quickly. Death is the only possible solution. They all need to be dead.

Olivia keeps a hold of the reality she needs to find, circles the place where her other self disappeared. She shifts realities at a run, comes through with all her senses attuned to the new world around her, and still misses the whine of the bullet until it clips her shoulder.

She flings herself to cover before the second bullet, crouches and reaches for her shoulder once she's sure she's hidden. Just winged her, really, but the burn tugs at her arm with every movement. She's never been wounded by one of her targets.

Is she getting careless, or is this one really that good? That good, her instincts say, and she hopes pride isn't overriding common sense.

Good enough to turn the tables, she decides after exchanging a few rounds while dodging between rusting hulks of boxcars. Olivia's no longer leading her other self on a merry chase but periodically trading off the lead. She's pretty sure one of her shots connected, but her shoulder burns even more, blood soaking her sweatshirt. Should have stopped bleeding by now, but there's still blood trickling down her arm. The bullet had more than winged her.

She shifts realities, this time hoping for a moment to recover her breath.

~***~

Her hip hurts. The wound's not lethal but it slows her down, pain dogging every step, and it's still bleeding sluggishly. Olivia leans back against the railcar and tries to slow her breathing, wondering who's on the run from whom now.

Her skin prickles, and she can feel her doppelganger prepare to move. Olivia reaches out, feels where the doppelganger is going, and lets the rippling opening between worlds slingshot her there first. Her shot hits more solidly this time, and her doppelganger clutches her right shoulder, eyes wide, gun dropping forgotten to the ground. Olivia aims between the eyes, determined to finish this.

And hears the click of a gun empty of bullets. Cursing, she starts to reload, and her doppelganger sprints behind cover.

But she left her gun behind with the pool of blood.

Doesn't mean she's unarmed. She should have her holdout gun strapped to her ankle, maybe another if she's come prepared.

Olivia hears her doppelganger's shallow pants, can imagine the pain she must be in. "Come out and end this," Olivia calls out, circling to find a spot where she can see her target but not be seen.

"That's what I'm trying to do," her doppelganger snarls. "They'll use us to destroy everything."

"Who?"

"Massive Dynamic." Her doppelganger says the name with a level of hatred and loathing that borders on madness.

Olivia shudders at the tone, wondering exactly what could have triggered that murderous rage. "I'm not letting them use me," she says.

"You just don't know yet." Her doppelganger's voice is bleak. "I didn't think it. Doesn't matter what world we're in, they're all the same. I'm not leaving good old Massive Dynamic anybody they can use. I promised I'd stop it. I promised."

The yard is still echoing with her doppelganger's words when she sidesteps into another reality.

~***~

Olivia nearly blacks out from the effort it takes to shift realities so quickly, but she grits her teeth and perseveres. And then she does it again, and again. If she goes fast enough, for long enough, she can dodge her tail. She'll heal up, come back later.

Her other self will be ready, prepared for the attack, but it has to be done. Killing her, all of her, is the only way to stop Massive Dynamic from destroying her universe. From destroying all of the universes. Peter had said that Olivia was the key. They'd tried to stop him from telling her, but they'd been too late. Holding his cooling body as she watched Walter and Astrid staring sightlessly across the lab in matching and mingling pools of blood had only burned that knowledge deeper. The key has to be destroyed before Massive Dynamic can rip the fabric of reality apart.

She promised to stop the destruction any way she could. She holds to that promise, and pushes herself to run faster and farther. There's no shame in running away to recover, not when she knows she'll come back to finish the job.

~***~

Olivia's head throbs in time with the scatters of starbursts that dance behind her eyelids. Her doppelganger keeps shifting realities, already starting to disappear before Olivia has arrived, almost faster than she can keep up. Only almost, because she's pushing herself to follow, paying no attention to anything except where her target has gone next. She's gaining, with each shift adding seconds to the time they share the same reality. Not enough to get off a shot, not yet.

It's almost too late when she registers the bright lights and throws herself backwards, feeling the rush of the train. Her doppelganger isn't as lucky, tossed twenty feet to hit a nearby box car, then slipping to the ground with a thud. She lays there, unmoving, sprawled like a broken doll. The train whizzes by without stopping.

Olivia hugs the ground and watches the train, heart thumping as she realizes how narrow her escape had been. When the train has passed, she pushes to her feet, scanning the very much still in use train yard with wary eyes, and cautiously limps towards her doppelganger.

Blood trickles out of her mouth and her eyes are glazed with pain. She fumbles in her pocket. Olivia backs up and aims her gun, but it's not a weapon in the other woman's hand. She clutches a USB drive, and waves Olivia closer.

Olivia kneels by her doppelganger, and the woman presses the drive into her hand. "Stop them, 'Livia," she whispers. "Don't let Peter and Walter and all the rest have died in vain. Please. It has to have been worth it. Please let it have been worth it..." And her eyes go blank and her body limp.

Stopping her doppelganger isn't as satisfying as Olivia had expected. Not as satisfying at all.

Olivia gathers herself in her arms and feels for the familiar tug of home. Pulls both of herselves there on the last dregs of her strength, back to that abandoned train yard full of relics of a past day. The headache all but blinding her and her consciousness fading in and out, she pulls out her cell phone and dials. She needs help, and fast, and there's only one person she trusts since everything became so fucked up. "John," she whispers when her husband finally picks up. "I need you."

Fic: Just One More Day (Olivia/Peter)

2009-11-03T00:53:08Z

Title: Just One More Day
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing: Olivia/Peter
Word Count: 1813
Rating: PG
Summary: Olivia finds out that Cortexiphan has unanticipated side effects.
Warnings: Prompt, character death.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Illness (cancer).

Just One More Day

An unanticipated side effect. That's what Walter called it, putting a sugar coat of science onto the reality she has to live with. Not of the Cortexiphan, not of itself, but of the body's reaction to the effects brought about by the drug. Unlimiting the possibilities of the mind had a similar effect on her cells. The result? Cancer. Fast moving, inoperable. Eating her alive, day by day. No telling where it originated, because by now it's infested every major system of her body.

Seems the human body wasn't built to shift between realities and trigger unexplainable events, and now she's paying the price. Of course, others have already paid the price for her jumped up abilities, so it's beyond time that she pay as well. She bitterly wishes Bell and Bishop had thought through all the possible repercussions before injecting hundreds of innocent children. Before injecting her.

Peter's expression is inscrutable, the blank mask he put on to hide his reaction marred only by the faint furrow between his brows. He's been silent and still, barely even breathing, since Walter relayed the news.

She breaks the silence. "So how long?"

Walter can't meet her eyes. Where Peter is unreadable, every line of Walter's face shows guilt and grief. "Without intervention, months. Perhaps a year. There are some therapies we can try—"

"No." She hardly recognizes her voice, distant and hollow and hoarse as it is. "Don't prolong the inevitable."

"Olivia." The furrow between Peter's brows deepens. "You have to fight this."

"Why bother?"

Peter comes alive, grabs her shoulders. His blankness shatters into fear and sorrow. She meets his eyes, and his fingers tighten almost painfully. His touch forces her to acknowledge this is real, and not just one of the nightmares that haunt her sleep.

"I've served my purpose in the damned war, Peter. I'm tired." Beyond tired. They won, but too many people she loves were caught in the crossfire. Dead because of her. For her, winning wasn't victory but revenge, and it tastes like ashes.

He pulls her against him, murmuring, "We'll figure it out." She lets his warmth penetrate her perpetual cold, but still feels like ice.

~***~

Peter doesn't let it go, won't permit her to slink off and let what will happen, happen. He tracks her down to where she's holed up in her apartment. She lets him in, can't not let him in. He and Walter are the only tethers she has left in this world, the only friends and family she hasn't managed to destroy.

Besides, Peter Bishop wouldn't let a little thing like a lock stop him if he was set on seeing her.

"You can't just give up," he says as he enters. No lead up, not even waiting until he's through the doorway before making a flat out statement that's practically an order.

She closes the door and leans against it, watching him stalk across her living room. "I can."

"Olivia." He levels a stare at her. "You have to fight this."

"Why is it so important to you?" It comes out too bitter, and she retreats into the kitchen to fiddle with glasses to avoid facing him. Her hands are steady, for the moment, her body mostly pain free. Within weeks that will change. Months, at the most. Soon, in either case.

He stops her with a touch and turns her to face him. Raw agony lines his face, and he cups her jaw in his hands. He's shaking, she notes absently. She's still steady, but he's shaking. His mouth comes down to hers, a gentle kiss that barely brushes across her lips.

Her breath hitches and her eyes close, involuntary responses she couldn't stop if she wanted to. She leans forwards and deepens the kiss, responses which she could stop, should stop. This has been building between them for years, but she thought she'd sacrificed any chance at it along with everything else.

Except they don't have a chance, not really.

She pulls back, but he doesn't let go, sliding his hands along her jaw line and into her hair. "Don't," he says hoarsely.

"I'm dead either way." Somehow he's broken through her numbness, because she's fighting back tears. "It's only a matter of time."

"I'll take what I can get."

She loses her battle against tears; he's not doing any better. She doesn't trust herself to words, just nods and resolves to dredge up the energy for one more fight.

~***~

Her days become injections and medications, weeks of poking and prodding as Walter does his mad science. Peter hovers by her side every step of the way. Her nights are full of Peter, both of them fiercely making the most of every second she has left.

The progression of the cancer slows to a crawl. Weeks turn to months, and the cancer doesn't get any worse.

She wakes up warm and sated one morning three months after the diagnosis, Peter's arms around her and his legs tangled with hers, and realizes that, whether she deserves it or not, she hasn't been this happy for years.

And perhaps never this content.

~***~

"So what is this?"

She blinks up at him, at his furrowed brow and the muscle jumping in his jaw. His arms cage her, and his stare is intense and worried.

"What is what?"

"You and me, being together. Why did you give in? Are you just indulging me because I'm in love with you, or are you here because you want to be?"

"Peter?" She studies his face, trying to figure out where this is coming from. It's not like him to be so uncertain, especially of her. She wishes she knew what was going on in his head to cause him to second guess his nearly infallible ability to read her. And his admission he loves her is a first. Although they've been together for seven months, by unspoken agreement they never talk about love or commitment because it's a reminder of a future they don't have. Even without the words, though, she knows how he feels. She sees his love in his eyes every time he looks at her.

He's still watching her. No matter how she tries, she still can't tell what he's thinking. He repeats the question, softer this time. "Are you indulging me? Simple question."

"Peter." She reaches up to cup his cheek, rubbing her thumb against his stubble. She shakes her head and flips them, putting him on his back and her sprawled on top.

Not as easy as it should have been, she notes. Despite all of Walter's therapies, she's losing strength.

She banishes that thought, leans down to touch her lips to his in a soft kiss that deepens with underlying desperation. "I'm indulging myself," she says when they break for air. "For once I get what I want, for what little time I have left."

"And I'm what you want," he says slowly, caution warring with hope in his eyes.

She barely keeps herself from laughing. She doesn't deserve him. She traces the line of his jaw, runs fingers back into his hairline. "For longer than I could let myself admit. Stupid thing, falling in love with my partner."

His breath catches in his throat, and he frames her face with his hands. "Yeah?"

"Yup." Stupid thing to tell him when it will only bring him more grief, but she couldn't keep the truth from tumbling out, not when he seems to need it so much. Besides, watching that glow of happiness in his eyes makes her want to fight all the harder to live.

~***~

She notices the shaking first, and with it the deep-seated pain that doesn't go away. Peter doesn't miss the signs, either. They look at each other, but neither has words. It's been over three years, three stolen years she hadn't planned. Three happy years she'd never thought to let herself have.

It was always going to end in heartbreak, only this time she's not the one that will end up breaking. And she hates that he helped put her back together and she's repaying him by tearing him apart.

"Don't, 'Livia," he whispers, stroking her hair. "Stop thinking about it. I wouldn't trade one minute."

The sound she gives is equal parts chuckle and sob. "It's annoying when you do that."

"I know you. Martyr complex, I swear."

"Hedonist."

"And proud of it, sweetheart." He says it with a cocky arrogance that makes her grin and a smirk that she can feel against her forehead.

She holds on tight because she knows that soon she'll have no choice but to let go.

~***~

Once the cancer takes hold again, it sweeps through her system like wildfire. In less than two weeks mostly healthy deteriorates into pain racked and bedridden. Walter proscribes a cocktail of drugs that only work to dull the pain, and she knows that no matter how she fights nothing will buy her time.

Olivia and Peter talk for hours, all the little things they never shared but that now seem so important. And the closer she gets to the end, the more she dwells on how it began, those days that, for better or worse, changed the course of her life forever.

The day she met him.

"I thought you were a pain in the ass when I met you," she says softly. Her voice is always soft these days, with all her energy caught up in not spending the time she has left in a drugged daze.

He shifts to his side, watching her. She studies him in turn. He hasn't changed much. A few more wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, a few strands of grey sprinkling through his hair. "Cute," she says, "but still a pain in the ass."

He laughs, brushing hair away from her face, fingers lingering after he secures the strands behind her ear. "And my smooth charm changed your mind?"

"Nope." She grins at him. "I just learned to like you too damned much for it to matter."

"Hmm." He smirks, and his eyes go distant, remembering. "I was smitten by the way you had the balls and the poker face to blackmail me without any hard evidence."

"Were you?" She raises her eyebrows, amused.

"Oh, yeah. Course, it was embarrassing as hell that it was a Fed that conned me, but still."

She laughs and closes her eyes. "We were good together, weren't we?"

"The best. Both as partners and as lovers." He curls around her, a warm and solid shelter against the coming cold. "I love you, Olivia Dunham."

"Love you, too." She cups his chin and pulls him into a kiss. When they separate, she leans her head against his chest with a sigh and, giving in to exhaustion, settles into sleep.

She doesn't wake up.

Ficlet: Final Strike (Astrid)

2009-11-02T08:05:54Z

Title: Final Strike
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters/Pairing: Astrid, Peter, Olivia, Walter, Olivia/Peter UST
Word Count: 918
Rating: PG
Summary: Fringe Division must deal with the consequences of a devastating weapon.
Warnings: Prompt, character death.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Volcano.

Final Strike

Astrid grabs hold of the lab bench as the second tremor shakes the building, this one much stronger than the first. She rides it out with head down and knuckles white; somewhere behind her glass shatters. When it's over, Walter pokes his head out of Gene's stall and Peter and Olivia come out of the office.

"What the hell's going on?" Olivia warily eyes the ceiling of the lab as she makes her way over to the computers.

Astrid hadn't liked the way the lights had swayed, either, and resolves to be under something if another quake hits. Curious, she pages through news reports on the earthquake. "They're reporting a magnitude of 5.7 for this quake, epicenter somewhere downtown." She looks up, brows furrowed. "I didn't realize the East Coast got such strong earthquakes."

"A common misconception, my dear." Walter absently wanders around the lab, straightening equipment that had fallen. "Although most often not nearly as dramatic as the ones on the West Coast, seismic activity can and does occur in the region. This isn't even the biggest earthquake that has occurred in New England. One in 1638 was estimated to have a magnitude greater than 6.5." Walter sounds excited, which amuses Astrid to no end. At least someone is enjoying himself.

"So, these earthquakes are normal?" Olivia asks.

"Probably," Peter says. "We get something like 30 quakes a year. Mostly we just don't feel them." Out of the corner of her eye Astrid sees him moving closer to Olivia, doing that leaning and smiling thing again while he explained. Olivia is a top investigator; one of these days Astrid hopes the woman will become as astute about her personal life and realize how much Peter likes her.

Astrid refreshes the page and her blood runs cold. "Um, guys? The news is saying there's magma flow on Beacon Street."

"Magma flow— lava?" Olivia sounds shocked. "Like a volcano? There's a volcano in downtown Boston?"

Peter grabs the computer next to Astrid, his fingers flying over the keyboard. His face is white when he finally looks up. "Underneath Boston," he says grimly. "And it's about to erupt."

Olivia has her phone to her ear before he's done speaking. "I've got to see how we can help with the evacuations— Damn it, no signal."

"We can't outrun this, 'Livia," Peter says softly. He's watching her, eyes pained. "The whole region is going to blow, and soon. The distance this is gonna spread, there's no way to clear the area in time."

Astrid's mind goes blank, trying to comprehend. If Peter says there's no way to run... "How?" she asks finally. "How could something like this happen?"

"I think... perhaps..." Walter is pale, and when he speaks again his voice is hushed. "Belly and I, we theorized a, a terrible weapon of sorts, when the threat of the other reality became apparent. One that would target not the people, but the foundation of the planet. It was just a theory, mind you, never something we actually designed. We abandoned the idea, determined there was no way to control the reaction. Once it started..."

Peter swivels and stares at his father. "What are you saying, Walter?"

Astrid's chest tightens as she watches news updates pour in. "Now there are reports of magma in Roxbury and Everett. And in Cambridge."

"Nowhere is safe." Walter turns, hands shaking. "Peter, check for increases in seismic activity across the world."

Peter continues staring at him for a moment, expressionless, then nods. A few keystrokes, and he's looking back up. "Seismic activity everywhere, with Boston at the center of it all."

"It will get worse."

As if in answer to Walter's words, the building shakes again. Astrid holds on for dear life. Peter snags her arm and Olivia's to drag them into the doorway; Walter's already there. They huddle together on the floor as the building shifts and groans.

"So we're dead," Olivia says flatly. "They won."

"To have caused destruction in this manner..." Walter clears his throat. "If this was triggered by the method we theorized, the damage will not be contained just in our reality. Those who started this chain reaction may not realize this, but the soft spots, those pinprick connections between universes, will cause leakage. With the magnitude of the energy that will be released here, those holes will be forced wide open."

"So not just this world—"

"But all the worlds." Walter nods. "Of course, it is of no matter to us, because we'll be dead."

"Little comfort, Walter," Peter says, and Olivia nods in agreement.

The lights flicker and go out, and there's a flurry of grey outside the window. Volcanic ash.

Peter and Olivia lean close to each other. He murmurs something into her ear. She looks up, eyes wide, and their fingers tangle together.

Another shake, and Astrid hears the crack of stone and the hiss of steam. She sees a red glow outside the windows and the glass starts to melt, even as the building starts to shake apart around them.

"Running would only put off the inevitable," Peter murmurs. Olivia almost laughs, and Astrid closes her eyes.

Astrid finds Walter's hand, and Olivia's, and they all huddle together. Together at the end, just like they've been together since the start. She focuses on their skin against hers, on the panting of their breath, and keeps her eyes squeezed closed to block out everything else.

There's a flare of red hot pain and then white, only white.

Fic: Carrying On (Olivia/Peter)

2009-10-30T02:36:49Z

Title: Carrying On
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters/Pairing: Peter, Olivia, Walter, Astrid, Ella, Olivia/Peter
Word Count: 2490
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Olivia and Peter must cope when the world gets hit by an epidemic.
Warnings: Prompt, character death.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.5.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for my death_bingo wild card space, prompt: Illness (sudden).

Carrying On

"It's a cold."

"Some cold to have chewed through your immune system, especially that quick. You didn't have any symptoms eight hours ago." Didn't have any symptoms when she slipped out of his bed in the hours before dawn, he thinks, but he doesn't add that, not when they aren't alone in the lab.

Her cough reduces the effectiveness of her glare, and he grins at her to hide his concern. She's too pale and her hands shake, just the smallest bit. He doesn't like the sound of her cough, either; it sounds like it's settled into her chest just a little too deeply.

"Walter, come here and take a look at her," he says, and the look she gives him promises payback, of the unpleasant variety.

Walter wanders over, studies Olivia from top to bottom. "You do not look well, Agent Dunham."

"A cold Walter." She crosses her arms across her chest, her expression as close sulky as Peter has ever seen. "Not that uncommon."

"Uncommon to you." Walter cocks his head, listens as Olivia coughs again. "I don't like the sound of that cough," he says, echoing Peter's silent assessment. "What other symptoms do you have? Exactly when did they start, and in what order?"

She rolls her eyes and glares at Peter again, but settles down to answer the questions.

~***~

"I hate your flu."

"Cold."

"Flu," he says, voice precise, if hoarse. "Influenza virus. Identified and categorized by Walter."

She can't help but smile at him, irritable though he is. She likes watching him sprawl on her couch, even when he's pale and clammy and miserable. Likes that he came to her, that she can take care of him the way he cared for her. "You get grumpy when you're feverish."

"Bite me."

She tilts her head slightly, and her smile broadens. "Really grumpy."

He starts to cough before he comes up with an appropriate response, and she lays a hand between his shoulder blades to steady him.

"Next time you get the flu, can we try not infecting me, too?" he asks, trying to sound irritable but mostly sounding plaintive.

She rubs his back, runs her thumb along the nape of his neck. "Next time, don't kiss me when I'm sick."

~***~

Olivia hangs up the phone, her face the careful blank of when she's hiding her feelings, but her eyes are shadowed. "Astrid's in the hospital, chest pain, trouble breathing. It— she's in serious condition. And the hospital is reporting dozens more cases like hers."

Walter's head comes up, eyes wide. "Serious condition? She was fine not five hours ago; the illness has advanced to that stage in that little time?" He doesn't sound surprised, only worried.

Olivia nods. "Apparently. We'll get you out there so you can take a look."

Peter waits until Walter has rushed off to confront Olivia. "What aren't you saying?"

She doesn't meet his eyes at first and now he knows something is really wrong. She fiddles with her phone, tucking it into her pocket resolutely before she lifts her head to look at him. "They're not sure if she's going to make it. If any of them are."

~***~

Walter only looks up from the microscope when Peter shoves the results of the DNA analysis into his hands. He studies the papers for a few minutes before nodding gravely. "As I suspected, this is the same strain that I isolated from you and Olivia a few days ago."

Olivia pushes up from the chair and paces, stalking from the computers to the lab benches and back again. "Why did it hit her so much more strongly than me and Peter? Why are we different?"

"Your immune system is hardier, by virtue of the experiments done on you as a child. Peter, perhaps, has some sort of partial immunity derived from being exposed to different strains in the first seven years of his life. For the others, their immune systems have never been challenged with anything quite like this. This is a unique variant, truly remarkable. Quite unlike anything I have ever seen. Possibly unlike anything this world has ever seen.

Olivia turns and stares at Walter, feeling herself growing cold. "This world? It came from elsewhere?"

"Perhaps, yes, a variant carried over from an alternate reality, a silent passenger between worlds. It may have been affected by the passage, however, just like a person would be. The version that ended up here could be quite different than the original."

"I brought it with me, on one of my jumps between worlds?"

He blinks, seeming to catch just what he's implying for the first time. "I... well, perhaps. There's no way to know, really. It could have been engineered. There's no telling."

"But it could have been me. I was sick first. I could have done this."

"The first one sick at Fringe Division. Not the first documented case." Peter shoots up and grabs her arm. "Don't do this to yourself, Olivia. It's not your fault."

She searches his face, can't tell if he's lying or not. He catches what he's doing and snorts. "I'll show you the damned data. I've been tracking the spread of this strain since you got the call about Astrid, trying to figure out its point of origin. And that origin was not with you."

"If I'd stopped the First Wave when I had the chance—"

"Or if I'd gone with you to see Nina and prevented the shapeshifter from making that call. Or if we hadn't stopped Jones from crossing over. Or if Walter hadn't taken me from the other side. Olivia, we can play this game for hours. There are thousands of variables that got us here, and every one of them doesn't rest on your shoulders."

She wants to believe, but can't stop the guilt that tightens in her chest.

~***~

Walter looks up from the lab bench for the twentieth time in ten minutes. "I'm sure we could help them," he repeats doggedly. "We need to go back and investigate the symptoms further."

Peter rolls his eyes. "I'm sure they don't need—"

"But I can get a better feel for her symptoms if I see her— see the patients for myself."

"Walter." Peter puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. "If you want to go visit Astrid all you need to do is ask."

Walter nods and turns to get his coat. Peter swears there are tears in his father's eyes although they're gone by the time he returns.

Astrid takes the intrusion with good grace, seemingly amused by Walter. She knows him well enough, Peter suspects, to realize that Walter's obsessive need for details about her symptoms is masking his genuine concern about her well being. She pokes at him with gentle humor between bouts of coughing, and Peter doesn't let Walter tire her out. They cede their place by her side to her parents when they rush in.

"She's not going to make it," Walter whispers mournfully as they enter the elevator. "Most of them won't."

~***~

They bury Astrid on a clear fall day, sun shining almost painfully bright and sky impossibly blue. Peter stands beside Olivia, face impassive, huddling in his jacket like it's forty degrees colder than the actual temperature.

It feels colder.

Olivia can't believe Astrid's gone. Assistant turned friend, who had taken her assignment to Walter's lab with good humor and infinite patience. Olivia doesn't know how they will ever manage without her.

When Olivia is called upon to speak, she stumbles through the appropriate words, but doesn't remember what they were when she finishes. Peter speaks next, and she listens more to his tone than what he says. Walter, when it's his turn, babbles, but it's heartfelt babble. Peter's hand finds hers, somewhere during his father's recitation, and she laces her fingers with his and holds tight.

At the end of his speech, Walter starts coughing, deep, racking coughs that are chillingly familiar. Peter's grip becomes painful and his eyes agonized.

~***~

"Walter—"

"No, Peter." Walter's voice drops to a whisper, pleading through his coughs. "Don't send me to the hospital. Please, son. Let me die here."

The hospitals are overcrowded. There's nothing they can do for him that Peter can't. "All right," he says finally, voice tight no matter how gently he tries to say the words. "If that's what you want."

Peter just watches, hands clenched, as Walter nods and shuffles off to the couch to sit down, pausing as another bout of coughing tears through him. It's his blunt acceptance of the inevitable that guts Peter. He stares at the man that he's both hated and loved, and can't imagine losing him.

Wonders how much more time he has before he does.

~***~

Peter doesn't say much, but his expression shifts from worried to resigned as his father's symptoms progress. Olivia watches him fuss over Walter and her heart aches. She's suddenly self-conscious, feeling like she's intruding on their private moments of pain. "Do you want me to go?"

"He'd want you there." Peter turns and grips her hands, his expression desperate. 'I want you there', his eyes say, and she squeezes back just as strongly.

Walter holds out longer than many, stubborn to the last. It's not until the early hours of the morning that he breathes out and never again breathes in. Olivia huddles close to Peter's side, her arm around his back and her forehead on his shoulder, while he bows his head and tears run down his face.

~***~

Olivia's eyes go unfocused, the way they always do when she peers between realities. Peter spends agonized minutes watching her. He's seen this before, had even tossed ideas back and forth with Walter about how and why it happened, and he is still afraid she won't come back to herself. Won't come back to him.

His throat tightens when he thinks about how fascinated Walter would be watching her, how he would be grabbing instruments and taking readings and ordering Astrid and Peter around. He ignores the stinging in his eyes and focuses on willing Olivia to open her eyes.

She snaps back into this reality with a gasp and her eyes immediately seek his. "It's not just us," she says starkly. "The other reality, they've been hit equally hard. Wherever this virus came from, it's decimating both of us."

"That's almost comforting," he says, wishing he could feel happier that the inevitable war between universes has been delayed.

She nods. "At least we'll have one less avenue of attack to worry about."

~***~

"...late yesterday afternoon... nothing we could do... still in critical condition..."

Olivia nods and says the right words, then lets the phone slip from her hand when she hangs up. She can't think past the scream that fills hear head and threatens to overwhelm her.

"Olivia? Olivia, what's wrong?"

She blinks and Peter's there, hands warm on her face as he peers into her eyes.

"Rachel... Rachel's dead. Yesterday. They don't know if Ella's going to make it. I didn't even know they were sick; last I talked to them they were fine, holed up for the duration. Why didn't I know they were sick? Why didn't they tell me?"

She realizes she's shaking and tears are pouring down her face. He pulls her against him and she lets her last pretenses of control unravel. He doesn't try to comfort her with meaningless protestations that everything's going to be all right, doesn't say anything, but the warmth of his arms around her and his hands in her hair tell her she's not alone.

~***~

"Ella? Honey?" Olivia perches next to her, eyes glued to her face, and brushes damp strands of hair away from her cheek. Ella is in one bed of dozens in the cafeteria that's been converted into a hospital ward, one of many impromptu wards erected around the city.

Forty percent of the population is sick, worldwide. They expect seventy percent will catch the virus before this is over, and only anticipate three quarters of those to survive. As one of the few who are immune and reasonably healthy, there are a thousand tasks Peter should be doing to help the city through the disaster. And he will, right after he makes sure one deeply grieving woman who means a hell of a lot more to him than anyone else doesn't take on one too many burdens and shatter.

~***~

Olivia wakes from a restless doze when Peter shakes her shoulder. Her heart constricts and she searches his face, not daring to look at Ella.

He smiles, a tired smile but one tinged with the first glimmer of hope in days. "Her fever's broken," he murmurs. "It's too early to say for sure, but..."

She barely dares to say the words. "She may make it?"

He nods and she drops her head, eyes stinging and hands clenched on her knees. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, then another. He rests a hand on her back in silent support.

~***~

By the time Ella's cries wake Peter up, Olivia's already out of the bed and in the girl's room. He follows, more slowly, to make sure he's not needed.

"It's only a nightmare, honey," Olivia murmurs, running gentle fingers through Ella's hair.

Ella nods, but her eyes are fearful. Olivia curls around her and croons softly until Ella falls back into a fitful sleep. Peter leans against the doorjamb, watching them, providing whatever silent support and comfort he can.

Ella's not healthy, not yet, but she's out of the hospital and getting better every day. The important thing is she's recovering. Most people didn't. Many countries never will. America got through it pretty damned well, considering, and even then the recovery effort will take decades.

Olivia untangles herself from Ella and gives Peter the ghost of a smile. Her eyes are sometimes still shadowed, and he catches remnants of guilt flickering across her face when she thinks he's not looking. He's grateful for Ella; without her niece to take care of Olivia would have worked herself into her grave trying to make up for perceived wrongs.

He catches her hand as she walks by, holding it tight. She looks up, surprised, and a real smile warms her face.

"Hey," she says, curling her fingers around his. She comes willingly when he tucks her against him, settling her head against his shoulder with a sigh.

"Hey." He nuzzles her hair and places a kiss on the top of her head. "She all right?"

"She will be," she says firmly. She moves far enough away to look him in the eyes and adds more softly but with equal conviction, "We all will be."

Studying her face, a weight he didn't even know he was carrying lifts, and he feels lighter. Walking backwards, he leads her back to their bed.

Ficlet: Seal the Deal (Peter)

2009-10-29T03:03:42Z

Title: Seal the Deal
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Character: Peter
Word Count: 637
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter plays a deadly game of chance to gain the trust of a crime boss.
Warnings: Prompt, swearing.
Spoilers: Nothing specific.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Russian Roulette. Not what I'd originally intended to write for the prompt, actually.

Seal the Deal

Click.

"Your turn."

Peter stares McCafferty down, takes the revolver without breaking his gaze. The gun is a solid weight in his hand, the wood of the grip warm against his palm.

"Well?" Albertson asks coolly.

Peter doesn't look at him, just raises a sardonic eyebrow and continues to meet McCafferty's eyes. "Savoring the moment. Might be my last, after all." Peter stretches the moment even longer for the drama, then spins the cylinder and nestles the muzzle under his chin.

Click.

He doesn't flinch, just bares his teeth in a feral grin as he rides that addictive rush of adrenaline. He glances at Albertson, who continues to watch impassively from his sprawl in the massive armchair. "Enough?"

"Not yet."

Crap. Peter so fucking wishes he'd been able to palm the damned bullet. But no, McCafferty might have fallen for it, but Albertson isn't so easily fooled. One of the reasons Peter never did like playing to an audience. Especially when the audience is the man he's trying to negotiate a deal with.

In one of the unfortunate cases where rumor is all too true, Albertson requires this game of anyone who wants into his inner circle. And always, the game is played against someone pulled from his own ranks. The wanna be crime boss wants minions who don't flinch, the ones who keep spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger without breaking a sweat. Whether he considers it proof of loyalty or insanity, Peter doesn't know. Pretty fucking much guarantees that every single man Albertson has under him has balls of steel or a death wish. In some cases, both.

Crazy son of a bitch. And crazy that he's been able to draw so many who are willing to take the risk.

Peter shakes off regrets. He knew this was a fucking stupid move at the outset, a gamble that probably wasn't worth the rewards. His reputation will be made if he succeeds, but every spin eats away at his probabilities of getting out alive. In theory, each pull is preceded by a new spin, so each man makes his own luck. In actuality, although each pull gives equal odds of survival, the cumulative odds go down with each succeeding round the game is played.

Had he been able to get away with it, he'd have trusted his skill at sleight-of-hand over luck any day.

McCafferty takes the gun again, spins the cylinder with a flourish. When it stops spinning, he grins at Peter and squeezes the trigger.

Click.

And back to Peter.

Can't stop now. At this point, his odds of survival are better if he plays the game than if he breaks and runs. Albertson is none too fond of cowards.

Peter spins the cylinder, listens to it come to rest, pulls.

Click.

He twirls the gun around his finger and smirks. "Again?" He doesn't have to look at Albertson to see the nod. It's a break in routine, continuing the game. Usually all that's requires is one spin, at most two. Never three, not that Peter's caught wind of. Either Albertson doesn't trust him or is using this as an opportunity to get rid of McCafferty. Or both. Or neither. Who the fuck knows?

McCafferty's smart enough to know something's wrong and takes the gun more slowly this time, glancing at his boss for confirmation. Spins the cylinder, hesitates before positioning the gun. Peter watches MCafferty's muscles flex as he pulls the trigger.

Bang.

The blood and brains spray in a wider radius than Peter would have believed possible.

Peter doesn't let the giddy relief show in his expression or stance, just turns to Albertson and asks, as casually as can be, "We got a deal?"

Albertson leans forwards and steeples his fingers, studying Peter with interest. "Indeed, Mr. Bishop. I believe we do."

Ficlet: Chasing Down Answers (Olivia, Peter)

2009-10-22T21:20:20Z

Title: Chasing Down Answers
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Olivia, Peter
Word Count: 715
Rating: PG
Summary: Olivia, Peter, and the FBI storm a ZFT facility in order to find the man who may have all the answers.
Warnings: Prompt.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.4.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Suicide (seppuku).

Chasing Down Answers

Swat team at her back and Peter at her side, they storm the old office building, a warren of hallways and rooms that had been converted into labs and offices and holding cells. The maps showed a maze, but Olivia's pretty sure it had been remodeled into further confusion in the fifty years since the building plans had been filed. All she can do is hope, as they cautiously move deeper into the facility, that no one misses a well-concealed hidey-hole and that no escape routes have been overlooked.

A patter of gunfire somewhere behind them suggests that, as expected, not all occupants are going peacefully. The whole facility is ZFT run and they'll capture everyone they can, but all they need is a single man: Michael Hayashi, the man who holds all the answers. Intel says he hasn't left the place for the last three months, so there's no way to take him quietly. With the building surrounded and all possible avenues of escape cut off, it's down to a room to room search.

They clear the first floor, then the second. They've just started their sweep of the third when Hayashi emerges from a room down the hall. He doesn't seem surprised to see them, just bows slightly before wheeling and taking off at a run.

"Shit!" Olivia sprints after him, Peter at her heels. Every answer she wants is in Hayashi's hands, and she'll be damned if she lets him get away. She takes a left, a right, dead ends into another hallway and doesn't see him.

"Left!" Peter shouts, outdistancing her as she sees the closing door he spotted. Peter has the lead, keeps the lead, but it doesn't matter which of them catches up first, just that one of them does. Her hip hurts and she'll pay for it later, but it doesn't matter. This prize is worth any price.

"Locked," Peter says when he reaches the closed door, stepping aside as he rummages around in his pockets.

She lifts her gun and aims at the window set into the door. Her bullet barely even cracks the glass; whoever renovated the building was thoughtful enough to make the glass bulletproof. Shot hasn't even stopped echoing when Peter's at work on the lock. She leans over him and peers into the room, matches the location to her memory of the map. Inner room, no exit. They have their suspect trapped; now all they need is to get him in handcuffs.

Hayashi looks up from the desk, smiles, and pulls a short sword off the wall.

A chill runs up her back. "Peter!"

"Working on it," he snaps, then starts swearing as the lock proves stubborn. All Olivia can do is watch through the window.

Hayashi keeps his eyes on hers. Lifts the sword up, thrusts into his stomach, jerks the blade to the right.

"No. No, damn it!" She pounds against the door, then digs her fingernails into the doorframe.

He meets her eyes again as he withdraws the sword, then slowly, deliberately, raises the blade to his throat and impales himself.

Peter shoves open the door and she rushes in, gun trained on the suspect, Peter only a step behind. Checking Hayashi for a pulse tells her what she already knows: the answers they need just slipped through their fingers. Again.

Always a step too slow, no matter what they do to close the gap.

Peter looks up from the computer. "He didn't have time to wipe his files, doesn't look like. We might get something from them."

She shakes her head. "They're too smart to put anything in writing, they always have been." She paces from one side of the room to the other, stopping at the edge of the pool of blood to glare at the body. "What we need is in his brain."

She listens to herself, repeats the words, and her head snaps up.

"Is is worth it?" Peter's voice is neutral, his expression unreadable.

Ignoring the fear that curls through her, she meets his eyes. This time she's going in with her eyes open, knowing all the possible repercussions. "Given what he knows?"

Peter nods curtly, already pulling out his phone. "Walter? We've got a body for you. And we're going to need the tank."

Fic: Message Delivered (Olivia, Peter, Nick)

2009-10-22T00:32:22Z

Title: Message Delivered
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Olivia, Peter, Nick
Word Count: 1228
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter, Olivia, and Nick get an assignment to kill their target in an unusual manner. AU.
Warnings: Violence, torture, prompt.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.4.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: Device (Rube Goldberg). This is set in the Choke Chain 'verse, an AU where Peter, Olivia, and Nick all work for the ZFT. Takes place between Chain You Down and Slip Off the Choke Chain.

Message Delivered

"It's stupid."

"Not my idea."

"It's still stupid."

Peter tossed the wrench on the table and glowered at Olivia. "Fine. You tell your bosses their orders are stupid. Until then, I'm building the damned thing, as instructed."

"Your bosses, too," she said. Peter ignored her, rummaging around in his toolbox.

Nick had already abandoned the discussion—pointless argument, he had called it—retreating into the living room with a roll of the eyes and a shrug, but Olivia couldn't let it go. She much preferred being set at a target with basic instructions from up above, not a needlessly complicated plan already in place with little or no wiggle room as to how the job would go down. Being forced to follow complicated instructions from their superiors almost invariably led to things blowing up in their faces. Occasionally literally.

Olivia circled the contraption. It still looked like half a hardware store had taken center stage in their workroom. A demented hardware store, one that had been mated with something that almost looked organic and spat out its progeny into the drop cloth Peter had spread on the hardwood floor. "It'll be a bitch to transport. And we'll have to do live capture, which is going to be problematic. And we'll have to line up a secure location to bring him to, where no one will hear him screaming."

"Are you saying we can't pull it off?" Peter's tone was a hairsbreadth from a taunt.

She glanced through the doorway to Nick but didn't take the bait, just crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against her skin. "I'm saying it's an unnecessary risk. A bullet in the brain kills him just as dead."

"This provides torture and death. Twice the fun with half the work. We strap the subject down and we're good to go."

"And we'll have to camp out and wait, make sure the job is done."

He looked up at her again, amusement edging along their link and crinkling the corners of his eyes. "You just don't want to sit there and watch."

She raised her eyebrows. Not the only reason, not even the most important reason, but okay, she could admit it was a factor. Besides, he'd know if she were lying. "Yeah? And?"

"And you'll just need to bring a book." He smirked at her before turning back to the device, tightening joints with a screwdriver.

"You're enjoying this," she said, finally separating out his amusement at her from his enthusiasm for the project. "You're not any more happy than me about their dictating our actions, but you're positively gleeful about actually building the damned machine."

Peter glanced up, back down. "It is an interesting challenge to build a working prototype to their admittedly vague specifications."

"'Interesting challenge', my ass," she muttered, not fooled by his overly precise words or his carefully neutral tone, not now that she had a read on what was going on in his head. "You're like a kid in a candy store with a handful of money."

"Okay, so it's a fun challenge." He dropped the pretense of disinterest and grinned.

She gave in to the inevitable. It was hardly the first time she had to follow orders she disagreed with. Peter might as well get as much fun out of the assignment as he could. "Will it be done in the timeframe?"

He gave her a snappy salute. "Done and loaded in the car by 8:00 AM tomorrow, just in time to take it to South Carolina and acquire the target."

~***~

"I said live capture was going to be a pain in the ass." Olivia rocked back on her heels and scanned the area for anyone that might be watching. No nosy neighbors, not that she could see. Granted, Peter would have told her if he caught signs of anyone near enough to observe their little bout of kidnapping, but he still could have missed something.

"Mission profile left out the minor detail that Evans weighed in at over 300 pounds." Peter grunted as he and Nick lifted their unconscious target into the trunk. "Should have set the weight trigger differently," he added, staring at Evans with narrowed eyes. "And I'm not sure how the extra weight will affect the movement sensors. Might go faster if he struggles more, might go slower."

"I can't believe it took three darts to put him out." Nick gave Evans an extra poke before draping the blanket completely over him and closing the trunk. "Hope it doesn't kill him before we get him strapped down."

"He just needs to hold out half an hour."

Nick smiled sourly. "With our luck today, he'll go twenty-nine minutes. Whole thing would of been easier if you let me shut down his brain from a distance."

"You relearn how to shut down the target without inducing a stroke half the time, then we talk. Until then, if we need them conscious..." Peter hefted the tranquilizer gun.

Nick scoffed, his irritation spilling through Olivia, but didn't disagree with the truth. They were learning to adapt to the new twist Nick's abilities had taken, even if none of them—Nick most of all—were happy about the situation.

It was fifteen minutes to the abandoned house, ten to lug Evans in and get him secured and strapped down, another ten while Peter muttered curses and fiddled with the arms of his device.

Olivia surveyed the setup critically as she paced, shaking her head. Evans looked like he had some sort of mechanical creature surrounding him with its dozen pairs of legs, its head curled over his, its tail curving between his legs to rest on his groin. She wondered how many bad science fiction movies Peter had watched to come up with this design. "I swear to God, if he breaks the damned chair I'm putting a bullet in his brain, orders be damned."

"Nah, he'll just be allergic to the counteragent." Nick plunged the syringe into Evan's neck, and within minutes the man was groggily awake.

"Hi." Peter grinned, a toothy, sharp-edged smile with no little malice. "You've pissed some people off."

"How... Wha—" Evans looked around wildly, yanking at his bonds. "Who are you people?"

"Messengers," Olivia said. "We want to make sure your people get the message that they shouldn't be dicking around in matters they don't understand, and you're going to help us deliver it."

Nick patted Evans on the head, then walked back to Olivia and Peter. "I still think he's going to bleed out before he takes the knife to the heart."

Peter's grin turned even nastier. "Probably. Starting the dissection from the lower abdomen isn't the most efficient way to get there. But I think it'll make the point pretty damned well."

Peter hit the top button on the remote and the mask descended onto Evan's face. As he panted, eyes wide and darting around as though if he searched long enough help would appear, condensation gathered until it dripped down tubes into the heart of the machine. Gears turned and knobs clicked, slowly gaining in volume. The first set of knives pierced Evan's skin. The weight of his blood, funneled into the bowls beside him, triggered the second set of arms to start their work.

It was a long time before the room stopped echoing with his screams.

Fic: Afternoon Hike (Peter, Olivia, Nick)

2009-10-21T01:29:40Z

Title: Afternoon Hike
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 1287
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter, Olivia, and Nick chase after a target. AU.
Warnings: Violence, prompt.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.4.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: spontaneous combustion. This is set in the Choke Chain 'verse, an AU where Peter, Olivia and Nick all work for the ZFT. Takes place before Slip Off the Choke Chain and after Chain You Down.

Afternoon Hike

Everything would have gone smoothly if their first target hadn't managed to make a phone call to Marcia Nolan seconds before they'd taken care of him. By the time they got to the ass end of nowhere where she lived, she'd bolted.

"She yanked the hard drive before she took off," Nick said when he emerged from the house.

"Coffee's still warm," Olivia added, following a step behind him. "Can't have been that long."

"Car's still here." Peter banged on the hood, straightening from his slouch. "And no indications she keeps any other vehicles. She's on foot."
Nick studied the driveway, absently kicking a stone away as he stared at the drifts of leaves. "Unless somebody picked her up."

Peter shrugged. He hadn't noticed any sign of it, but tracking was hardly his forte. Maybe Nick would pick up on something he couldn't. "Then she signed that person's death warrant, too."

"Damn it." Olivia holstered her gun, ran fingers through her hair. Her irritation cascaded into Peter, making him edgy. "I hate New England. Everything always goes to hell when we have a job in New England." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she turned to look at him; he could feel the effort she was making to tamp down her emotions. "Peter? Anything?"

"Give me a sec." Peter propped himself against the car and closed his eyes, filtering out the familiar hum of Olivia and Nick's minds as he dropped into a half-trance and extended his senses to the farthest edges of his range. He scanned the area, detecting the barest trace of a frightened emotional signature somewhere to the east, the only other human being around for miles. "Somewhere over there, I think." He waved a hand in that direction. "She's not close."

When Peter opened his eyes Nick was staring dubiously in the direction indicated. "Those are woods, dude."

"Great powers of observation, Nick."

"You know anything about tracking people through forested areas?"

Peter smirked. "I thought they trained you guys for everything."

"Urban trained," Olivia said, words clipped. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the forest that backed the isolated house. "The types of things we get sent out for generally need people around. Not many people in the deep forest."

Well. So there was something they couldn't do. He kept the amusement from his face, but from Olivia's glare didn't succeed in keeping it out of their link. "Walk in the woods won't hurt any of us."

Nick eyebrows went up. "Do you know how quickly the number of ticks with Lyme disease is growing? And mosquitoes with West Nile?"

"Doesn't matter." Olivia pulled a backpack out of the car they'd stolen just outside of Montpelier, sorted through the duffle and transferred items. "We need that drive, and we need her dead."

Nick took another long look into the forest before muttering, "This is one of the days I hate this job."

~***~

Three hours later the sun was hanging low in the sky, the fall afternoon had gone from pleasantly cool to downright chilly, and they were still hunting Nolan.

The forest went on for miles. The house was backed by a state park, according to Olivia, who as per usual had mapped every inch of the territory while planning the mission. And Nolan knew this forest, or at least knew more than a little about making time through forested terrain. Peter, Olivia, and Nick were getting closer, but only because their prey had bolted in terror and tired herself early. That was the only good thing about her being terrified; the downside was that no matter how many times Nick rode Peter's link to Nolan and tried to slow her down, to stop her, anything, he couldn't get a grasp on her mind.

"She's going on pure animal instinct. It's like raking my fingers through water," Nick complained after the fifth attempt, pushing off the tree he'd leaned against and stalking between Peter and Olivia to resume the chase once again. "Maybe if I got within reach."

"We get within reach, we can shoot her, slow her down that way." Peter considered the abrupt snap of Nick's steps and the way his hands were clenched against his sides. Probably shouldn't have baited him, not when Peter could feel Nick's frustration and growing anger.

Olivia watched Nick with worried eyes. "I'm not wasting bullets. We get within reach, I'm going to strangle her."

~***~

It was twilight before they caught up with their target, although under the trees it seemed even darker. Nolan turned just as they spotted her, prey sensing a predator had come within striking distance, and her eyes went wide. She bolted, weaving between trees, her harsh panting and the crunch of her feet on the leaves making her easy to follow. Olivia swept in from the left, Nick from the right, and Peter stayed right on her tail.

And suddenly Nolan was a pillar of flames lighting up the darkness.

Peter reared back at the blast of heat, yanking back the hand that he'd reached out to grab Nolan's shoulder. "Olivia—"

"I didn't do it! Swear to God." She circled the bonfire that their target had become, eyes narrowed as she studied the quickly diminishing flames.

Peter looked at Nick, who shrugged and said, "Well if she didn't do it—"

"I didn't!" Her brows dropped as she whirled, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at Nick, then Peter. "Which you both know damned well, because you could tell."

Peter nodded, reluctantly. She had a point. "There's no one else within miles of this place, unless something was left here that she ran into. Or she carried some sort of device with her?"

"Flames looked like they ate her from the inside out," Olivia said. "Whatever it was, it didn't come from an external source."

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Spontaneous human combustion? Seriously?"

"I suppose there are stranger things," Nick said, sounding more amused than surprised. He grabbed a stick and crouched to poke at the still-smoking remains. After a moment Peter joined him. The fire had mostly burned itself out, leaving glowing coals where once was living flesh.

"We're part of the stranger things." Olivia surveyed the wooded area, sighed. "They're going to blame us, anyway, no matter what we tell them."

Peter used his stick to pull Nolan's backpack from the top of the corpse, separating the charred and melted fabric until he found the hard drive. "Thing's somewhat intact."

Nick took the drive, grimacing at the heat as he turned it over in his hands and studied it with critical eyes. "Might be able to get something from that."

Olivia tilted her head thoughtfully, tapping her foot. "And we did need to kill her afterwards, anyway."

"All right." Peter sifted through possibilities, considering how to put together a story for the bosses. "We can spin it."

"Mission's not a total failure, then." Nick secured the drive in his pack and stood up to survey their surroundings. "Now how the fuck do we get back to the car?"

Peter met Olivia's eyes and both turned to look back the way they came. The only light came from the smoldering corpse behind them. Even with flashlights, there was no easy way to make the trek back before morning. While they could probably make it back in one piece, there was no reason to risk a broken neck now that Nolan was dead and the hard drive in their possession. From Nick's scowl and Olivia's exasperation, they had reached the same conclusion.

Peter sighed. It was going to be a long, cold night. "Well, kids, anyone bring any marshmallows?"

Ficlet: Redressing the Imbalance (Olivia)

2009-10-16T00:33:09Z

Title: Redressing the Imbalance
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Olivia, Peter
Word Count: 582
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Olivia and Peter get captured by a radical splinter group of the ZFT.
Warnings: Violence, character death.
Spoilers: Through episode 2.4.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters. Stories like this are one of the reasons that is probably a very good thing.
Author's Note: Written for death_bingo, prompt: human sacrifice.

Redressing the Imbalance

Olivia swims out of unconsciousness to hazy shapes of light and dark flitting around, a jumbled murmur droning in her ears. She starts to press her hands to her face, trying to clear her muzzy head, and can't even lift her arms.

What?

She can't think, can't remember. She tries to force her eyes into focusing, tries to kick her brain back into gear, but it all feels so heavy, like navigating through molasses.

She hears her name, isolates those syllables out of the drone. Hears it repeated again, heavy with worry and an undercurrent of bitter fear, followed by swearing and threats directed at someone she can't see.

Peter. That was Peter.

She smells some sort of heavy incense that itches her nose but doesn't hide the musty stench permeating the room. The drone resolves into rhythmic chanting, a bastardized mix of Latin and German, but she can't make out more than those hints of familiarity. Her vision sharpens into figures made shapeless by robes and anonymous by hoods pulled low, backlit by torches flickering against the walls. And the memories leading up until now tumble free.

The cult. A radical splinter branch of the ZFT that had turned the manuscript into an obsessive, destructive religion. And she and Peter strolled right into their trap.

She's yanked onto her knees, positioned so she can see Peter strapped down to a chair. A hand stays at the back of her neck, fingers digging deep and holding her there.

"Behold the redressing of the imbalance," a voice hisses into her ear. "A wrong made right to clear the way for you and yours to triumph in glorious battle."

"No," she struggles to say, but her tongue is thick in her mouth and all she chokes out is a croak. Peter catches her eyes and she can see his fury, his fear, and his acceptance that his luck has finally run out. She pulls at her bonds but her limbs are still heavy, her responses dulled.

A figure steps out of the circle of people surrounding them, pulling a knife out of the folds of his robe and lifting it high. The light seems to glint on the blade, refracting blue as the point slides between Peter's ribs and into his heart, and when the blade emerges there is only red.

Peter holds her eyes as blood pools around him, and she can see his life ebbing away until the room is echoingly empty even filled though it is.

No. God, no.

With the emptiness comes enough focus to burn away the drugs clutching at her. Too late, she silently screams, and the only thing she can do is direct her fury at the one holding the still-dripping knife. He wavers and smokes and explodes.

Too late.

And the rest, all the rest, who stood witness while her partner—her friend, her best friend—was sacrificed to their insanity. They waver and smoke and she drives the collective force of their explosion outwards, scorching the walls but leaving Peter and herself untouched.

Too late.

She scrabbles at the ropes and they burn at last, searing bone-deep agony into her wrists and ankles. She stumbles to her feet, to Peter's side, but stripping away the straps that hold him down changes nothing. He's gone, eyes sightless. She pulls him into her arms and collapses to the floor, kneeling in his blood and rocking him until her eyes are raw and there are no more tears.
__________________________

Feedback is always welcome.

Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (5/5)

2009-09-17T08:08:45Z

Title: Chain You Down (5/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 4197
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to crazylittleelffor betaing the entire thing.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4

Chain You Down

Chapter 5

When Olivia reports on her visit to St. Louis, she is curtly told that all three of them will be debriefed at the organization's earliest convenience, details to follow later. Olivia holes up in her room, except for occasional excursions to the kitchen to scavenge for food. Nick periodically braves her to poke at her wounds—Nick tells Peter they're healing well, which is as expected—but leaves her alone otherwise. Nick's mood slowly spirals darker after each visit, until he's irritably snapping at Peter.

Peter figures he fucking deserves it, given what he's considering doing. Planning to do. He stays away from both of them as much as possible, wandering Chicago by day, hitting the bars at night, and keeping his feelings wrapped as close to him as possible. He's only at the house to sleep, and his dreams are uneasy mishmashes of darkness and betrayal.

As the days pass Olivia gets more and more tetchy, Nick starts to slide more firmly into depression, and Peter wonders when the shit is going to hit the fan.

It's a Tuesday night, as Peter slips into the house only hours before dawn, when Nick initiates the confrontation that's been prickling between Peter's shoulder blades for days. Nick melts out of the shadows as Peter steps into the dark hallway, and asks, without preamble, "So what are you going to tell them?"

Peter shrugs off his jacket and tosses it at the coat rack as he ambles into the living room. "Nick? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The organization. Our superiors. When they debrief us about Olivia's mission, they're sure as fucking hell going to ask you what happened. So I repeat: what do you intend to tell them?"

"Don't know. Depends on what they ask."

Peter doesn't expect the gun, not from Nick, not even when he's angry. Nick's the amiable one: moody, yeah, but for the most part easy going and eager to please. Except now, on the other end of the gun, eyes cold and dead.

Peter stares down the barrel and wonders if he's going to make it out of this alive. He'd missed the paranoia that curled around the edges of Nick's depression, but now it's unmistakable, a dark roil that weighs down the air. He's seen it too many times from too many people to underestimate it, not even from someone he almost considers a friend.

Friends could kill him just as dead as enemies, and more easily because they're the ones that have snuck under his guard.

He forgets Olivia's not the only stone cold killer in the house. Both she and Nick trained as soldiers. Partners. Let off the chain for missions, separately or in pairs. Stupid to forget, when he's seen Nick in action. It may be Olivia who usually does the dirty work, but it doesn't mean Nick can't or won't. They protect each other, and a threat to one is a threat to both. No matter what, they have each other's backs.

The right words are important; careful manipulation of them is Peter's only hope at extracting himself from this mess. Hell, both of them. If Nick fires the gun, there's a chance he might regret it when he comes to his senses. Unless Nick has figured out that Peter is thinking about selling them out, in which case Peter might as well kiss his ass goodbye right now.

Maybe that's why Nick was waiting in the dark with a gun.

Peter has to believe whatever he says. While Nick primarily projects emotions, sucks at sensing them from anyone but Olivia unless actively trying to manipulate his target or touching their skin, he's sure as fuck good enough to pick up on a blatant lie. Taking a deep breath, Peter says, as nonchalantly as possible, "Do you really think I want to tell those assholes anything they could use against us?"

Nick doesn't move, and, if anything, his expression grows colder. "If you think it might get you off the hook? Yeah."

Well fuck.

After a moment of hesitation Peter drops his mental walls, which tops the scale of monumentally bad gambles, but he's not going to think on the stupidity too closely because he needs to sell this. He needs to be able to read Nick's reactions and he's just as fucking dead if Nick doesn't believe him as if Nick picks up anything from Peter's unprotected mind. Besides, unshielded reads as honest and Peter's pretty fucking sure Nick can tell whether or not someone's trying to block him. Every little bit of edge helps. "Not even for that."

It's the truth. Fuck him, but unlooked for, unasked for, it's the truth. That more than anything makes Peter want to bolt, leave all this behind and fuck the consequences. He clings to the fact that he doesn't want to rat them out, puts it firmly in front of the uneasy knowledge that he might still do it, and holds Nick's gaze without a trace of guilt.

Nick stares at him. Peter stares back.

Peter feels the moment when the tide turns even before Nick slowly lowers the gun. "Okay," Nick says. "That much I'll buy." He settles on the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table as casual as can be. The gun disappears—under one of the pillows, Peter thinks, which is probably where it came from in the first place, since both Olivia and Nick have picked up the habit of squirreling weapons away in the damnedest places all over the house.

Peter can't tell if Nick really believes him or is just letting it go for the moment. Nick is back to looking like Peter's video games buddy of the last few months, but Peter doesn't forget the cold stranger, the male mirror to Olivia. Won't forget it, not if he values his skin remaining intact. He watches Nick warily, senses extended to catch any twitch of emotion. Probably pretty fucking stupid, because Nick or Olivia could reach in and pull out any damned thing from his head, but if Nick's about to change his mind Peter wants as much of a warning as he can get.

Nick just clicks on the television and starts flipping through channels. Doesn't say another word, which is perfectly fine to Peter, who doesn't have a fucking clue what to say. Or why the whole issue has suddenly been dropped, no more questions asked. After a moment, Peter slips upstairs to stare up at the ceiling and wonder what the fuck he's going to do.

~***~

Peter's in a run-down bar in the middle of Chicago when an uneasy feeling prickles the back of his skull, distracting him from the drink at hand—not a loss—and resolves into Olivia. He feels her reach out to him with urgency and concern, and picks up wavering images of Jones. He's not there now, but soon.

Fucking hell. He projects back reassurance, hopes his determination to get back there as soon as fucking possible makes it through. He can all but feel her nod, and she fades.

Even sprinting, he barely catches the train, dodging through the doors just as they're closing. He stands and pants, out of breath, and tries not to think for the rest of the ride. Masking unease with insolence, he strides through the front door of the house ten minutes after Olivia's spiking tension warns that Jones has arrived.

Jones sits at the dining room table, cup of tea held in his hands with the same faux-casual studied bullshit as before. A quick sweep reveals his muscle, tense with anticipation: two in the house, one lurking in the backyard and one in the van.

Whatever's going on, Jones is prepared for more than just a debriefing. Peter doesn't like any of it one fucking bit.

Olivia and Nick stand ramrod straight, expressions blank. On the surface they're no more than Olivia and Nick shaped statues, devoid of personality, showing themselves off as the good little soldiers Peter first thought them. It fucking pisses him off even more.

"To what do we owe the honor?" he tosses out, coming to rest next to them. He bares his teeth in almost a grin, doesn't bother to inject it with either charm or sincerity.

Jones doesn't look at Peter, just continues to study Olivia and Nick like a cat with a mouse trapped under his paw. Or a scientist studying the not entirely unwelcome results of a particularly interesting experiment. "I was just asking Miss Dunham to explain the unmitigated fiasco that the Branson mission became."

Peter folds his arms across his chest. "What about it?"

Jones taps his fingers against the cups—irritably, Peter thinks, and he's fucking delighted to have gotten under Jones' skin. Other than the movement, Peter reads nothing from the man, just like before, but not for want of trying.

"He thinks I displayed serious errors in judgment. And he's questioning my—" Olivia glances at Nick, "—our ability to work as a team."

Nick's voice whispers in Peter's memory: So what are you going to tell them? Prime opportunity here to take control of the room and spin any story he wants, manipulate any ending to this confrontation. Jones's guards are poised to take Olivia and Nick down if need be, and Peter can stroll away scot-free. He takes a deep breath, blows it out, realizes there's no decision to make.

"There was a problem," he says with a careless shrug. "She took care of it. Looks pretty fucking open and shut to me. How the fuck was she to know they'd wired the place to explode? We're lucky she got out." Possible. Fuck, even plausible. Made even more sense than the fire Olivia started hitting a gas main, which is still the story the newspapers are selling. What better way to kill a highly trained super soldier than trapping her in an explosion and dropping a building on her? Of course now he'll have to obtain a copy of the arson reports to see if there's evidence to back up his theory.

Olivia's surprise and Nick's relief surge through Peter. Jones just stares at him, eyes narrowed, and Peter glares back. Jones fucking wanted Peter as part of the team? Well he's fucking got it. For better or worse, Peter stands with Olivia and Nick.

His old life's in the same ruin as those buildings Olivia torched and there's no way he can go back to what he was before, not if selling out Olivia and Nick is part of the bargain. Peter doesn't pretend to much of a conscience but betraying them has somehow become one of the few lines he can't cross. Not if he's going to live with himself.

"An interesting hypothesis, Mr. Bishop," Jones says finally. "So you support the theory that someone in the organization tried to kill Miss Dunham?"

"I don't think it was the first time they tried to come after us." Peter pauses. Fuck, did Olivia and Nick report the unanticipated twist to their time in Boston? They had to have, hadn't they? Doesn't matter, he can spin it to their advantage if they didn't. He opens himself to Olivia and pushes emotions and images towards her that he hopes convey the direction he's about to take. "I think they made their first attempt in Boston. Tipped off one of my old associates and tried to set up Olivia and Nick using me as bait." Peter wouldn't have lived through the night either, but the focus needs to be on the others.

Jones places his cup on the table and steeples his fingers. "The Boston... situation? I was unaware there was more to it than your allowing your past to catch up with you."

Peter shrugs. "Big Eddie was too prepared. If he didn't know Olivia and Nick would come after me and had no clue what they were capable of, he wouldn't have had that many guys guarding the place."

"The snipers," Olivia murmurs. "He shouldn't have had snipers waiting. The rest were cannon fodder to distract us." She glances at Peter, brow wrinkled. "That's why they left you alive but injured. They wanted to make sure our attention was on getting you out while they funneled us to where their snipers could get off a good shot." Her tone sells cool disdain, but amusement and solidarity thrum through the link. She's following his lead, and Nick, who Peter feels through Olivia, is doing the same.

"Makes sense," says Nick. "Sorry, sir, that we didn't put it together earlier. We just assumed the guy was really pissed at Peter. File said he would have reason to be."

"Besides," Olivia says, tone chilling into arctic anger, "Bishop didn't bother sharing his assessment of their forces. For all we knew, that much resistance was to be expected." Olivia gives Peter a none-too-gentle mental poke to underscore that she's actually serious if not actually angry.

"A compelling theory." Jones watches all of them, eyes flicking from one to another. "I take it all of you are together in this?"

Olivia glances at Peter before she answers. "Yes sir." Nick nods. Peter just stares at Jones, arms folded across his chest.

Jones nods slowly. "Very well, then. I'll look into these allegations. In the future, be more prompt in sharing your concerns."

"Yes, sir," Olivia repeats quietly.

Voice grim, Jones adds, "This isn't the first incident that has suggested dissidents within our ranks, and I find the possibility most distressing. Rest assured, if it does prove to be true I will call upon you to deal with the problem. If the fire didn't already take care of it, that is."

He rises to his feet, lips curled into the slightest of smiles. "It seems I have all I need. I trust there will not be a repeat of this unfortunate incident?"

"No, sir," Olivia murmurs, eyes dropping.

Peter meets his gaze squarely. "Root out the traitors in your organization to make sure we don't get put in that position again."

"Oh, trust me, Mr. Bishop, they will answer for this. Loyalty to those we work with is of the utmost importance to us. See that you remember that."

As Jones passes by, Peter catches a flicker of sharp satisfaction, of pleasure that everything has fallen together as hoped. Olivia's still linked deeply enough to catch it, too, as does Nick. Peter wonders if he'd been played. If they'd all been played.

Too late for regrets, now. Time to start planning for the future.

It's the last thought shared between them before Peter eases out of the link.

Nick breathes out when Jones and his minions leave, his relief projecting strongly enough to make Peter giddy. "Fuck," he mutters, staring out the window at the black Lincoln pulling out of the driveway. "Barely sidestepped that one."

Olivia nods, glances at Peter. "You stood up for us," she says, expression neutral.

At the last fucking moment. After being so fucking sure that he didn't care, that he wanted to—that he could—barter them away for his freedom.

She's still staring at him, so he manages a nod and keeps his thoughts as locked down as he can. Which may or may not be fucking much, not anymore. His mind had been walled off from hers in Chicago and she still pushed through to him. She's in his skin and he's now made it fucking permanent by giving up his only chance at getting away, but the thought of losing her—fuck it, losing both of them—makes him feel more sick than the thought of being tied to her this tightly.

"No more solo missions." He turns, watches Olivia's eyes go dark. "That's what got you in trouble. We all go, watch each other's backs, or none of us."

"That's not—"

"I'm not fucking kidding, Olivia. That was the second time someone tried to kill you. What happens if you miscalculate again and die out there? If Nick dies because you sent him out alone? You really think they're going to let another fuck-up slide?"

"A single miscalculation doesn't mean there's a pattern—"

"If someone's out gunning for you, you put people you trust at your back." The word 'trust' tastes sour, because who the fuck is he to imply they should trust him? He nearly sold them out.

"And you know so much about trusting people at your back." This time the disdain is back for real, as if she's the voice of his little-used conscience snapping at him, and it's more than he can take.

"How would you know? You don't know a fucking thing about me," he snarls. "Nick does, maybe. I talk to Nick. Most times? If you don't avoid me, you order me around. Not really conducive to getting to know a person." He knows even as he's saying the words that it's a gross misrepresentation of their relationship as it stands. And he'd been perfectly happy keeping his distance because he didn't intend to stick around long enough for it to matter.

Didn't do a fucking bit of good.

Olivia backs up a step and turns her face away, her hurt pulsing through him. Nick glowers at Peter, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

Peter can't fucking win this. Doesn't want to, doesn't have the right to. He shakes his head and escapes. Not far—he can't bring himself to leave—but out of the confines of four walls and the presence of the two people—fuck it, two friends—he almost betrayed.

Despite the fact that it's early evening, the day is sticky and hot, a Midwestern summer at its worst, but he'd rather be out in it than inside the house. He refuses to call it running or hiding. He goes no farther than the driveway, and he's in plain view of the house. Hell, he doesn't even bother to shield his mind from hers, not really; she knows where the fuck he is, clear as day. The engine of the Cherokee has been sounding rough for the last couple of weeks, and he's been meaning to muck around under the hood. This is as good a time as any.

Tinkering soothes him. He forgot how much, the last months, had set it aside in favor of plotting how to abandon his new life. Now all he has to do is figure out how to live the life he chose.

He's deep in the guts of the engine, well on the way to rooting out the problem, when he feels her settle on the grass, watching him. He doesn't acknowledge her.

"You're good at this," she murmurs, breaking the silence about fifteen minutes in.

"You sound surprised," he snaps back, not bothering to play nice.

She's skirts at the edges of his mind, not trying to delve in, just hovering at the outer edges and combing through the stray bits he hasn't bothered to hide. Her eyes flick back and forth across his face as she reads his expression, sinks into his emotions. He locks down the things he really doesn't want her to know, lets her do whatever the fuck she wants with the rest.

"You enjoy it," she says at last. "Putting things back together the way they should be, making new things."

"Is there a point to this somewhere?"

She withdraws back into herself and takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

He straightens, hits his head on the hood, and fuck does it hurt. Rubs the back of his head as he stares down at her. She sits cross-legged and skims a hand over the grass in front of her, back and forth, head tilted as she watches the movement. With hair cascading down her back and gleaming in the sun, legs long and bare, and toes painted red, she looks like a teenager. Then she meets his eyes, and she's seen too many things to pull off wide-eyed innocence without an effort she's not bothering to make.

"You were right," she says, her gaze staying steady on his. "I should have known you were good at this. I should have known you enjoyed it. I shouldn't underestimate you. And I should have listened."

He's still deep enough in her mind—or she's deep enough in his—that he knows without question that she means it. Every word is the truth, backed by regret. He leans back against the SUV and folds his arms across his chest. "Is there an apocalypse no one told me about? Hell freezing over, maybe?"

She shrugs a shoulder and drops her eyes, plucking up a dandelion and studying the petals. He can feel the echo of her count, although he's not sure she even knows she's doing it. Nerves. Being out here apologizing to him makes her nervous, but she's determined to make things right and if this is what it takes she's game.

And he can't take it, not when he's the one at fault. "Your people brought me in to spy on you," he says abruptly, and braces for the worst.

"I know." She's not angry. Doesn't even seem concerned. "Nick guessed that they made some sort of deal to get you to stay." Her lips curve up slightly. "I was too pissed to look at it rationally, or I'd have made the same connection. Even before your intentions started leaking to where I could pick them up."

His breath huffs out. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and settles for, "And I'm not dead?"

"Nick recommended I give you a chance. Eventually I gave in and agreed." Her smile broadens a little more. "I do listen to him occasionally."

"Once every blue moon?"

"A little more often than that." She tilts her head and sighs, her amusement fading into irritation. "Not really unexpected, anyway. They keep trying to bug us, like they think we won't notice. It was only logical that they'd get as many different uses out of you as possible."

He studies her with narrowed eyes. "You could have arranged an accident, easy. Why take the risk of leaving me alive?"

"The boy you were wouldn't betray us. I gambled that the man he's become wouldn't, either."

"Fuck it, you gambled on me?" He shoves away from the SUV, runs both hands through his hair as he stares at her. Lunatic. She's a fucking lunatic. "You gambled that I'd come through on your side? Hell, Olivia, I nearly sold you out. Why the fuck are you trusting me?"

"But you didn't sell us out, even though you had no reason not to." She flicks her hair back behind her ears and, despite her recent injury, pushes to her feet in one smooth movement. She stalks close enough that he can feel her body heat against his skin. "You could have told Jones I was unstable, just like you planned to. You didn't. You even confessed, fully expecting to take whatever punishment I would dish out in retaliation. Like it or not, Peter, you're one of us."

He doesn't have an answer for that, so just shakes his head in disbelief. "I'm trusting my hide to a crazy person."

"Takes one to know one," she says promptly. "Besides, if I'm wrong and you betray us I'll hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands, just so you won't be disappointed." Her amusement warms the words, flutters against his skin.

He snickers and runs a hand along his ear. "Um, yeah. Thanks. Truly."

She fidgets for a moment, then takes a deep breath. "So, here's the question: do you want to stay?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"You do." Her voice is neutral, but her eyes are hopeful. She doesn't veil her mind, wants him to see what's under the words, and it takes him a moment to work out the meaning behind what he's picking up.

She's offering the freedom to choose his own path, no strings. If he leaves now, she won't stop him. She'll cover his ass with Jones, no matter how much flack she'll get for it. Nick's lurking in her head, too, and feels the same way. They'll unquestioningly support him, no matter which option he takes.

He's never had that, not from anyone. Not that he remembers.

He can take off, travel the world. Do whatever he wants, as long as he keeps under the radar. Or he can stay, be forced to work for their bosses at whatever missions get thrown their way, with Olivia and Nick by his side.

He touches her shoulder and says, firmly, "I'm not going anywhere."

She smiles, a little shy and a lot glad, and her happiness warms him. "I'm glad you're here." She doesn't say it, but he hears unspoken: finally home.

Propping himself up against the sun-warmed metal of the SUV, he watches her amble back into the house and realizes she's right. For the first time in years, he is home.

And he's smart enough to realize he doesn't want to lose it again.

THE END

back to Chapter 4
_____________________________

Author's Note 2: To everyone who's been reading, thank you. This story is over double the length of anything I've attempted before, so it has been an interesting challenge to try to assemble this many words into some sort of coherent form.

If anyone is interested, I have a bit of a side story posted. Off Balance and Falling Deeper takes place during Chapter 2, and is an expansion of the scene where Peter interrupts Olivia and Nick arguing; I found I needed to write Olivia's take on how the argument started before I wrote Peter's reaction. Other Choke Chain 'verse stories will probably pop up in the future, because this universe still won't get out of my head.

Fic: Off Balance and Falling Deeper (Olivia, Nick, Peter)

2009-09-17T07:42:47Z

Title: Off Balance and Falling Deeper
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Olivia, Nick, Peter
Word Count: 1532
Rating: PG
Summary: Nick tries to convince Olivia to give Peter a chance.
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Bit of a side story from Chain You Down. In Chapter 2, Peter interrupts Olivia and Nick arguing; I found I needed to write Olivia's take on how the argument started before I wrote Peter's reaction.

Off Balance and Falling Deeper

Up at dawn, one hundred sit-ups, then half an hour in the training room before breakfast. Her morning routine doesn't change, no matter how everything else does.

Two words sum up everything that is now making her life chaotic: Peter Bishop.

Nick wanders down, late, probably up until all hours. With Peter. Again. He's played havoc on the routine she and Nick have spent years perfecting. No matter how Jones might insist, Peter isn't one of them, will never be one of them. It doesn't matter if he's lurking in her head, he doesn't belong here.

Despite herself, she reaches into that space that has been empty for so many years, follows her link to him. He's sleeping, deep in dreams of narrow escapes into freedom.

Nick grins knowingly at her; she feels his amusement as she drags herself back into her own skin. She still has problems staying in tune with one of them—the one that she occasionally wants to allow deeper into her head—and not the other, and the echo of her reaching out to Peter resonates through her link to Nick.

She taps at the punching bag and glowers at Nick. "What time did you finally crawl off to bed?"

"After two," he says, unrepentant. "Peter was beating me; I had to turn the tables."

She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't bother to clamp down on her disapproval, either.

He laughs softly and takes over the punching bag. She idly counts off his blows, echoing the count through their link. She's at 53 when he says, "You should give the guy a chance."

She knows he feels that way, has known for a while, but now that he's stated it out loud she can't ignore it. "We don't need him."

"We do."

"Why? We've done fine for without him."

He shrugs, sidesteps the issue. "Someone needs to keep an eye on him."

"If Jones wants him, he can put someone else on babysitting duty."

"He's got useful tricks up his sleeve, abilities we can use. Have you even looked at his file? Really studied it, including reading between the lines?"

It's annoying when Peter pulls that condescending act; from Nick it's infuriating. Glaring, she shoves at the bag and targets him with a kick he easily avoids. He rolls his eyes and breaks away, circling. She keeps her arms up and her hands fisted.

"We don't need him," she repeats. "We're doing just fine on our own."

She feints, he ducks, she circles. He bounces on his toes and watches her with wary eyes. "They put you two together for a reason."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does. Olive, we've been off balance since—"

"Shut. Up." Two punches, a left and a right, and this time she means it, going at him at top speed. He barely avoids the first, but the second connects, hard, and he winces away.

"Shit, Olive," he mutters, then she keeps him too busy ducking and weaving to talk. She ignores the stinging pain of the blows he lands on her, just focuses on him.

A lucky foot sweep trips her up and she's on the floor, pinned before she can roll away.

"Listen to me, Olive," Nick says insistently, knee planted in her stomach. "I'm spending enough time trying to convince him that you're not some ice queen. You have got to—"

"You've been talking about me?" When they're this close his surface emotions are wide open to her, and his conversations with Peter are in the top layers of his mind. She reaches in and grabs images, emotions, with barely a flicker of guilt. Sorts through scenes, bits and pieces of who she is shared with Peter, things he can use against her.

Nick said ice queen, but she knows Peter's thoughts aren't nearly so complementary. Maybe she is a monster. Maybe that's why Peter left in the first place. Idle thought and not true, even if sometimes she wonders if it's why she's so far from normal. What sets her apart. Why they chose her.

She sees the flames when she tries to blink away her hurt, remembers the burning and yelling. Snaps out of the past and into the present with effort. "You're supposed to report his actions to me, not the other way around." The betrayal is sour, roiling through her, and the words come out more broken than pissed.

"Olive?" Nick touches her cheek, his worry sliding against her, and she shoves him off her and out of her head, retreats to the other side of the room.

She pushes bitter memories down, hides her worries away so Nick can't see them and pity her and Peter can't find them and use them against her. "You can be buddy-buddy with him if you have to, but you have no right to bring me into it."

"I'm not playing anything. I like the guy." He leans against the opposite wall, folded arms a mirror to hers, expression just as impassive. "He was my friend too, or are you forgetting about that?"

She locks down her thoughts, blocks Nick from her mind. Shaking her head, she takes the stairs two at a time. Nick follows after, snagging her wrist when she hits the kitchen, and she whirls on him, shoves her free hand against his chest. "We agreed we couldn't trust him."

"You decided. I said we needed to reserve judgment."

"What? Are you trying to say he's one of us now?"

"I'm saying let go of your fucking bullshit grudge and see him for who he is. Keep at it and you'll make sure we'll never be able to trust him."

She glares at him; he glares back, crowding her and keeping her trapped with an iron grip. The worst is he's right; she knows he is, he knows she knows he is. But she can't give, not on this. Not now.

"I see him," she spits out. "Hell, half the time he's crawling through my head whether I want him to or not. He's a loose cannon, Nick, with no loyalty to anyone but himself."

Nick shakes his head. "On the surface, yeah, but you know that's not all there is to him. I've told you, over and over, reported every little bit he let slip that I thought might convince you, but you just don't want to listen."

"So you're reporting on me. Of course you are."

Olivia flushes with chagrin at Peter's sardonic drawl. Despite her years of rigorous training, despite having a line into his head, he'd caught her unawares. He leans against the doorjamb, hair sticking every which way, eyes shadowed, and mind as solidly blocked against her as it's ever been. His expression shows wary cynicism and distrust.

Oh, hell. He'd trusted Nick, as far as Peter was capable of it. Now he'll be watching every word he says, every emotion he lets loose. They've lost one of the few edges they have against him.

Nick glances at Olivia and tries to tamp down his irritation so he can soothe Peter. "It's not like that—"

"Of course it is. You're a team. Partners. Why would I expect independent thought from either of you?" The sarcasm and disdain drip from Peter's voice.

"Because you're so much better?" Olivia scoffs. "Your only thought is how you can turn the situation to benefit yourself and how to slither your way out of it if it can't."

"Olivia," Nick snaps, glaring at her. "For once, let it go. Leave him the fuck alone."

She backs up a step at the wash of his anger; this time she walls herself off from him so thoroughly that he barely exists as a shadow in the back of her mind. Nick gets angry so rarely, she forgets he has a whiplash temper when provoked, forgets how much it hurts on the rare occasions he uses it on her.

Peter's eyes narrow and the furrow between his eyes grows deeper. He rides their link into her head, brushing through the outer layers of her walls and scraping through to what's underneath. She lets him, for a moment, lets the familiar touch of his mind ease the ache his disappearance left, then she stops him cold. He resists, and they scrabble before she can shove him back out.

Her link with Nick is tighter, but Peter is more likely to sidestep the obstacles she throws up to keep him out. Maybe his skill as an empath is better suited to slipping through emotional barriers to peer underneath, or maybe he's just less polite about it. Either way, he's better than he was; whatever other tricks he's gained from their years apart, he's a more skilled and more ruthless empath than he was as a boy.

Of course, back then she had less she wanted to hide.

"Fine," she finally says, voice brittle even to her own ears. She wants to say something else, to Nick or to Peter or to both of them, but she can't find words in the chaos of her mind. She swallows and whirls, blindly finding her way out of the house, away.

Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (4/5)

2009-09-16T04:37:23Z

Title: Chain You Down (4/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 4477
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to crazylittleelffor betaing the entire thing.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3

Chain You Down

Chapter 4

There's crushed metal and blood and in that screaming silence a gaping chasm of loss sucking him into fathomless depths. Before Peter hits bottom—if there is a bottom; dread tells him this fall never ends—he wakes, panting, sweat-drenched sheets twisted around him.

"Olive?" Nick's worried voice comes clearly from the next room, despite the thickness of the walls in-between. "Olive, wake up. It's a nightmare, you're having a nightmare."

Not Peter's nightmare, Olivia's nightmare. He can feel it lingering in the air and raking his skin. He pushes to his feet, stumbles out his door and through hers. Olivia thrashes against Nick, gasping, trapped by whatever her mind's conjured up. Fragments lance through Peter, and he closes his eyes to stop them from sucking him back in.

Nick looks up, relief softening his worry. "Peter—"

"Got it."

Peter grabs her hand in both of his and focuses on calming her. Skin to skin edges him even further into her dreams, and he shudders as he's swamped by grief and terror. "Olivia, c'mon Olivia. Wake up. Nick, what the fuck is going on?"

"This happens, sometimes," Nick murmurs, rocking her. "When she's stressed, when things go wrong. She gets so lost."

Her eyes snap open and she bolts upright, shuddering. Even in the shadowed room he can tell her expression is raw, stripped of every layer of the defenses she usually thrusts between herself and the rest of the world. She hides in Nick's arms as she shakes.

This is more levels of not right than Peter could ever find words to express.

He rubs her back, closing his eyes and breathing deep as he sinks further below the surface and soothes the tangled mass of emotions spiking off her back into control. And she's not blocking him. Not at all. Nick's there too, a dimly felt presence across her mind as they work to a common purpose. Slowly her trembling eases and the terrors slip back into the dark recesses of her mind.

And then the walls snap back up, shoving him out as they envelop her, and he staggers back into himself.

"Get out of my head." Her head's down, hair straggling in front of her face to hide her expression, but her voice is feral.

"Olive..." Nick brushes her hair aside, and runs a thumb along her cheekbone. She looks up, eyes wild.

"Get out. Both of you." She tears herself from their arms, launches herself across the room before whirling back on them. "Five minutes. I want five minutes alone in my brain. Five minutes when I can feel something and not share with the rest of the crowd. It was bad enough when it was just Nick, but now if it's not one of you, it's the other."

Peter slips off the bed and approaches her cautiously. "Olivia—"

"Don't." She jerks away before his fingers do more than brush her arm. "Don't touch me. I'm going out."

She grabs shirt and pants from her closet, sandals from under the bed, and he barely has time to blink—or appreciate the unanticipated flash of skin—before she's changed and out the door.

"What the fuck?" Peter glances at Nick, then back out the door.

Nick blows out a breath and flops back on her bed. "Leave her."

"Will she be...?" Peter can't find the words. 'All right' doesn't cover it, because the glimmers he caught of the darkness behind those nightmares is the furthest thing from 'all right' he can think of.

"She gets like this, too." Nick sighs, covering his eyes with his forearm. "Usually after the nightmares."

Peter leans against the doorjamb and stares down the dark hall, listening to the retreating rumble of her car moving at speeds considerably faster than the posted limit. He wonders why he's so damned worried. She can take care of herself, has been for years. She and Nick have been doing this since long before Peter got forced back into the picture.

A memory of the despair that stalked through her nightmares flashes through his mind; he shakes away his renewed concern irritably and pours all the sarcasm he can muster into a defense against it. "So this is normal?"

"Is any of what we are normal?" Nick snarls, shooting upright. "It's a reaction. It's a crack. One of the few weaknesses she allows herself to have, and only because she hasn't figured out how to carve it out. If she had her way, she'd wall herself off from everything and be nothing more than the perfect shell."

Peter turns and stares at Nick, taken aback by the anger that laced the words, an echo of Olivia's anger before she left. If this is her weakness, it's Nick's as well. Peter pastes on a smirk, shakes his head and asks, "So, when will she be back?"

"When she's ready." Peter is silent, but Nick still answers the next question, grudgingly. "She'll go out, find someone normal, someone who'll buy whatever facade she wants to show. Lose herself for a few hours until she can force the demons back into hiding."

Peter pieces together these tidbits of information—and maybe a thousand other impressions he's collected in the past months—and wonders what Olivia's so scared of that, in her weakest moments, she'd rather be comforted by anonymous arms than the person who's been with her for years.

When he raises his eyes, Nick's watching him, expression too knowing. How much has Nick figured out? What else has he picked up when Peter's shields have been down? Peter shutters his mind and his expression, and Nick's eyes drop.

Peter has been here months, but how much does he really know about what Nick's capable of? Or Olivia? For all he knows, they know everything that's going on in his head.

No. If they really knew, he'd be dead.

Not important now. He fights down the unease and asks, as casually as he can, "Normal, huh?"

Nick shrugs a shoulder. "We all have our dreams." He shoves up from the bed and out of the room, not bothering to turn on the lights. Peter listens to him thump down the stairs, follows more slowly. Three weeks took care of the bruises, but the deeper damage is still healing. Now that adrenaline is wearing off his ribs ache. Nick's in the kitchen fiddling with the coffee maker by the time Peter reaches the first floor.

Peter raises his eyebrows. "Waiting up for her to come home? How sweet."

Nick jabs the 'on' button. "Don't want to share the experience of her fucking some guy. Mostly 'cause it'll piss her off and she'll come home and use me for target practice."

Peter blinks, not sure if he heard Nick right. "What's that?"

Nick smirks. "I sleep, I chance living through whatever she's doing, like I'm sharing her head. More likely when one of us is... hmm. Highly agitated. Strong emotions deepen the bond, y'know?"

"And if she's asleep and you're awake, can she...?"

"Yup."

"No wonder she's pissed." Peter has been trawling other people's heads for years, but never really considered what it felt like to be the one invaded. If he sticks around for much longer will he be condemned to this, too? His skin crawls at the thought of losing that much more privacy. Fates, the bitches, are having their little laugh at his expense. "And it doesn't bother you?"

"Which part?" Nick raises an eyebrow. "Being in her head all the time? We've been crawling around each other's brains for three quarters of our lives; bothers her more than me. And even if I was inclined to care, her fucking some guy—or girl—is her business, not mine. Besides, it's not like she loves 'em."

Nick isn't jealous, but there's something else underneath. Pleasure, maybe. Lust. Unable to resist, Peter edges into the outskirts of Nick's mind, narrowing his eyes as he sorts through the emotions, then smirks. Nick likes being in her head a little too much when she goes on these jaunts of hers.

Nick catches the expression—or maybe he picked up on Peter brushing through his mind—and his cheeks redden. "Shit. How the hell... ah, fuck. Don't tell Olive. She'll fucking eviscerate me. Keep me alive so she can do it again."

Peter leans against the counter, watches Nick grab mugs from the cabinet. "So you two can keep secrets from each other."

"All the fucking time."

And therefore maybe Peter has been keeping his secrets from both of them. Or maybe they've been leaking out, like Nick's just did. "How? You link with her pretty damned freely."

Nick shrugs. "It's been four months since you guys reconnected. Give it a couple years, and you'll figure out all the tricks to keep your own headspace. It's harder on her, actually. She has to learn to manage two sets of connections. Trying to tune into one of us but not the other's been fucking her up."

Peter looks out the windows into the shadowed back yard. Would he be here in a year's time? Not if he has his way. Distance worked before; going overseas might stretch the bond between them until it subsides back into wherever the hell it had been before he was dragged back.

He can only hope.

This is just further proof he should make his escape as soon as possible. Not only will he be better off without them, but they'll be better off without him. Benefits all around.

~***~

It's well into the afternoon before Olivia straggles home. Nick finally gave up and left the house hours ago; his disgruntled response to Peter's concern was that she was fine and could track him down if she wanted him. Peter stayed to stand sentinel, even if he wasn't quite sure why.

He watches through half-lidded eyes as she hesitates when she sees him, giving him a small nod before slipping up the stairs. The patter of the shower continues long enough to run the hot water past icy.

When she pads back downstairs, her hair's dripping; the oversized grey sweats she's wearing—Nick's, he's pretty sure—make her look like she's barely an adolescent. She stops in the living room doorway, shifting from one foot to another, then tilts her head. "I'm grabbing a sandwich. Want anything?"

He nods and rises. The soft words were offered like a peace offering, and if she's unbending enough for that he's meeting her half way.

She doesn't quite meet his eyes, just studies him with quick, sidelong glances.

He sits at the kitchen table and watches her rare domesticity. She only speaks to ask what he wants, and makes sandwiches with the same precision and focus with which she plans missions. When done, she slides his plate to him and settles across the table, staring at her sandwich rather than eating.

"I'm sorry," she says abruptly, looking up. "I shouldn't have—"

He cuts her off with a shake of his head. "I'll live. Are you all right?"

Her eyes stay on him but her head lowers, and she fiddles with her napkin. "What did Nick tell you?"

"That you have nightmares. That you like to go out for company afterwards. That you'd shoot him if he went to sleep while you were doing so."

"Nick talks too much," she mutters, her eyes dropping, but the corner of her mouth lifts slightly. "I wouldn't shoot him. Torture him for a bit, maybe."

"Does it help?"

She doesn't pretend she doesn't know what he's asking. "Sometimes." She leans elbows on the table, chin resting on her hands. "Not always."

"Not this time?"

She doesn't look at him. "No."

He starts to reach out, hesitates inches from her skin. She stares at his hand, eyes shadowed and unreadable. Reaches out and catches his hand as he starts to withdraw it. He studies her; she studies their interlocked fingers.

"You waited for me," she says. Her nervousness flutters against him, laced with curiosity.

No use denying it, not with them touching. "I was worried. Besides, it's not like I had anything better to do today."

"Thank you." She squeezes. Looks up at him, shy and uncertain.

This is Olivia. Not the soldier, but the woman who hides within. The one who lingers in the pathways she carved in his mind years before, who as a child he trusted with his life even if he can't remember why. Who he's still doesn't really know but is almost starting to like and maybe, just maybe, to understand.

He squeezes back.

~***~

The next few weeks she's restless, whiplashing between uncharacteristically outgoing and bitchy something like a hundred times a day, until Peter almost wishes she'd go back to giving him the cold shoulder. Almost, but not quite. Nick seems more amused than concerned, so Peter takes his cue from that. It would at least be nice if she had taken a summer class so she had a reason not to be lurking in the house at every second of every day. A mission that would give her an excuse to go out and work off the twitchy energy that's been building would be fucking wonderful.

She has no more nightmares. None that creep into his sleep to wake him, anyway.

When the cell phone finally rings—he's started calling it the Batphone, to Nick, although never to Olivia's face—she practically pounces on it, notes down details of their assignment with a neat hand. Peter peers over her shoulder, trying to get a look at her notes, but she moves to block him, folds the page and stuffs it in her pocket before he can get so much as a glance.

"I'll take this one," she says, her stance casual but excitement thrumming along her nerves.

Peter studies her. "Alone?"

"Yup."

He debates picking her pocket, but the slightest of tension in her shoulders suggests she expects it. It was easier before she'd interrogated him about exactly what he could do. This is one of the days he regrets being honest in that particular conversation. "That's what it says?"

"That's what I'm saying."

He stares at her and she stares back, not giving an inch. He glances at Nick, who's watching but not worried, then back at Olivia. He knows all about taking chances he knows better than to take, and bets she does too. He tries poking through her emotions to see where her head is, but she's not playing, veiling from him all but her eagerness to get out of the house and her stubborn instance that she's right. Finally he shrugs and backs down. Better to pick and choose his battles with her, and this one's not worth the effort. "Fine. Whatever. I'm sure you know better than I do."

Her eyes narrow and she studies him, but he doesn't give away any more than she. She nods, warily, looking like she's expecting more to the argument, but he doesn't give it to her.

Nick leans back and grins slowly, eyes cutting between Olivia and Peter. "Huh. So you two have finally figured out how to play nice."

Peter chokes down the urge to hit him upside the head as he walks by. Olivia doesn't stop herself, just punches him none too gently on the shoulder on her way upstairs.

~***~

Twelve hours after she left, Nick drops his controller and shoots to his feet. Head tilted and eyes distant, he circles the room, stopping in the southwest corner. "Something's wrong."

"How do you know?" Stupid question, but it slips out before Peter can stop it. Now that he's paying attention, he feels it, too. Ants crawling along his spine, a primal sense that something is off kilter.

Nick switches the TV to CNN, grabs his laptop and pulls up news sites. "Something this bad, there'll be fire. I can feel the fucking fire. Southwest. What the hell is southwest of here?"

"Where'd she go?"

"Did you really think she slowed down long enough for an explanation?"

"I figured she'd tell you."

Nick stops long enough to turn and stare in disbelief. "Yeah, right. She operates on 'need to know'. She was flying solo, so I didn't need to know."

It was one thing that she'd decided to go this one alone—she and Nick have been doing that since the moment Peter got here—but Peter always assumed they knew enough details to cover each other's asses if things went bad. "Fucking stupid."

Nick shrugs, not denying but not agreeing, either.

Peter stares out the window, fingers tapping restlessly against the sill. "So, what, we go after her?"

Nick leans back, eyes not seeing the cream walls or the crammed bookcases but whatever he's picking up from Olivia. "We wait," he says, finally, his tone layered in doubt. "She'll make her way back to us. She's dodging the authorities. If we go to extract her, could draw attention."

Peter would bet his life that those are Olivia's orders, not Nick's, but he can only trust that Nick would have countermanded them if he deemed the situation dire and he's not worried enough to do that. Not yet.

Nick's hands suddenly fist tight, then release, and Peter's stomach clenches as Nick mutters, "She's hurt. Fuck it, Olive, what the hell happened?" Nick refocuses on the laptop, scrolls down, then goes pale. "Fuck. Here. This is where she was."

Peter swings the computer around and glances through the article, a breaking news report on two buildings burning just outside St. Louis. One had collapsed; the other was engulfed but standing. Always playing up the sensationalism of any situation, the journalist gleefully reported that while the collapsed building was being renovated and was mostly deserted, the burning one was not. The exact death toll is unknown, but most likely well past the double digits. The authorities were quoted to be blaming a gas main explosion, but the person who dashed this story off sounds dubious, spreading hints of arson and terrorism throughout the brief article.

Nick keeps calling up articles, following the story by as many different avenues as he can, while Peter paces, unable to settle for any length of time. He can't get a good read on Olivia, as much as he tries. Part of it is distance—the farther away she is, the more tenuous the bond—but more of it is that she's actively blocking him, damn her stubborn ass, setting barriers against him more firmly the closer she gets until he can't say where she is, only that she exists.

She's white and hollow-eyed when she comes through the door hours later, one arm clutched against her stomach, the other trailing against the wall. Nick's at her side before the door closes shut, Peter two steps later.

"Olive? How bad?" Nick reaches a hand out to her, hisses when he sees blood.

Peter peers into her face. Her eyes are glassy, her brows drawn together. Fighting pain, at the minimum. She's not giving anything else away. "What the hell happened?"

Her eyes focus, flick to his. "Unexpected resistance," she says in a tone that says the conversation is over.

He ignores the unspoken order. "And the fire?"

"Collateral damage. That's all." The words are jagged. "Acceptable losses for a mission like this."

Peter catches her when her knees give, lowers her gently to the ground. He brushes the hair from her face, runs fingers along her chin as he tries get a read on how she really is, but she's a hollowed out shell filled only with the shadowed conviction of her words. Hidden so deep within herself there isn't an Olivia left to find.

She closes her eyes. If not for her weight in his arms, her warmth against his chest—and she's cold, too cold, so that warmth is negligible—he would think she isn't there at all.

He rests his chin on her head and stays wrapped around her while Nick pulls away clothing and makeshift bandages to ascertain the extent of her injuries. A wicked gash along her midsection, a crease where a bullet tore along her arm. Most of the blood isn't hers, but enough is. Too much.

"Wounds looks clean, but should be stitched," Nick says, anger at whoever hurt her lacing the words. "Get her on the couch while I get the medical kit."

She doesn't protest when Peter scoops her up, and that worries the fuck out of him. When he sets her down she latches on, a bruising grip around his wrist, and doesn't let go until he settles himself behind her and she's propped against his chest.

Nick stops and stares when he sees how they're arranged; Peter just shrugs and tilts his head towards Olivia. Nick raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment. He starts to prepare a syringe—anesthesia, Peter assumes—but she shakes her head.

"Olive?" Nick's question is carefully neutral, but Peter picks up the underlying dismay, no less intense than Peter's own.

"Just do it, no shots," she says flatly

Peter stares up at Nick, and considers. Between the two of them they could force the issue—probably—but they'd pay for it later, in more ways than one, and she'll use energy fighting them that she doesn't have to spare. Better to let her have her way, no matter what screwed up reasoning she has. Peter holds Nick's eyes and says, "Get her something to bite down on."

Nick doesn't protest, just nods, which means he reached the same conclusions.

Olivia rouses from her slump to glare up at both of them. "I don't—"

"At least that," Peter says, adamant. She's right, she probably doesn't, but it gives her something else to be pissed about, maybe enough to distract her mind from the pain.

She stares at him, then gives a shallow nod, slouching back and closing her eyes. She obediently bites down on the wadded cloth Nick provides, although her expression is sour.

Peter settles a forearm across her collarbone, traces calming patterns against the join of her neck and shoulder with the other hand. She stiffens as Nick probes the sluggishly bleeding cut on her stomach, muscles tense under Peter's hands. Bright pain surges through her, and Peter closes his eyes and submerges into it, riding it out alongside her. He feels every one of the thirteen sutures as in his own skin. The score on her arm is a cakewalk by comparison. He listens to her breathing steady and feels the pain ease to a dull throb as Nick finishes bandaging her wounds.

"Done." Nick rubs a hand up and down Olivia's arm. "You okay?"

She spits out the cloth and nods without opening her eyes, snaking an arm around his shoulders. Nick leans back against the couch, his head against her thigh.

Peter thinks she's fallen asleep when she shifts and sighs. "Whole mission went to hell."

Peter's brows drop as he studies the bandage wrapped around her middle. Just a little deeper and she wouldn't have made it back. "We got that."

Nick thwacks Peter's leg, then asks, softly, "What happened?"

"I was supposed to interrupt a clandestine meeting, kill everyone, and get the papers being passed on. Low numbers, light resistance. Simple job. Easy to keep quiet, just like they wanted." Her eyes flicker open, but they're focused on the past, not the present. "They were expecting me. Whole thing was a set up from the get-go."

Peter's hand stills against her shoulder. "By who?"

"Someone high up," Nick murmurs.

Olivia nods. "Has to be, to know our orders, but they didn't name any names." She clears her throat, continues even more softly, "They got me with a tranq when I walked through the door. Said I was a liability and a mistake, that the loose ends of the project had to be terminated. Their mistake was that they figured they had me subdued and outgunned so they kept talking, kept explaining why what they were doing was for the best."

"How'd you get away?" Peter still can't read her emotions, can't get a good feel for what's really going on in her head.

"I panicked." She fiddles with the edges of the tape across her chest, shame heating the edges of her words. "Like a raw recruit. I panicked and let my control slip and suddenly there was fire everywhere..." Her memories of terror, of eliminating the threat in an explosion of fire and ash, ghost through Peter's head then ebb away.

"Jones won't be happy," Nick says quietly. Peter feels Nick's understanding and reassurance, tainted with curls of fear, but has nothing to add, not a fucking thing.

"Jones will be pissed. Fucking up isn't permitted." Her voice is heavy with irony and cynicism. "I know better. I know what's at stake."

The snick as the pieces he's been looking for fall into place is practically audible. She fucked up, and he could do nothing to stop it.

He slips free of her mind—he didn't even realize he'd tangled himself so deep while trying to figure out how she really was until he started extricating himself—and tightly shuts himself off from her. Drops his chin to her head and wonders why the fuck he feels like he got punched in the gut.

Not bringing backup to help suss out the situation was a bad judgment call, one that cost the mission. Doesn't matter that they'd been betrayed; she shouldn't have gone in alone. She knew better. And then, on top of that, letting her powers get wildly out of control brought neon visibility to a quiet little retrieval mission. Fuck-ups that huge usually lead to bullets in the brain as a warning to everyone else that that sort of shit isn't tolerated.

Jones' words echo through his head: ...if you can bring me evidence that Miss Dunham's control is breaking down, and that your presence is doing nothing to halt the effect... Accidently blowing up her targets, which in turn led to one building blowing up and a second still burning, with the associated unintended deaths? Things didn't get much more out of control than that, and the organization they work for doesn't seem the sort to have sympathy for extenuating circumstances. Add in the nightmares, maybe throw in her reactions to them? This is his exit plan, if he spins the facts right, and he's a fucking master at spinning the situation to his ends.

This is what he wants. He's given up months of his life to crap he doesn't give a fuck about and it's well past time to find a reason to get away.

Even knowing what will happen to those he's leaving behind.

back to Chapter 3 / on to Chapter 5

Fic: Death of Maybe (Peter)

2009-09-14T22:08:45Z

Title: Death of Maybe
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Character/Pairing: Peter, Walter, Astrid, Olivia, Peter/Olivia UST
Word Count: 2438
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter mourns Olivia.
Warnings: Character death, some swearing
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: This was inspired by alamo_girl80's speculation post after the season finale. I plotted the story and wrote half of it within a week of the episode, and it's taken me until now to finish tinkering with the rest.

Death of Maybe

"Car accident... New York... did everything they could to revive..."

Peter's first reaction is to wonder why she was in New York. A masking thought, a stutter as he tries to understand—accept—what Charlie is saying. His second, numb disbelief. His third, hollow agony that's beginning to rake through the numbness.

It can't be true.

"I want to see the body."

"I'm not sure it's—"

"I want to see the fucking body, Charlie."

The agent makes noises of acquiescence and says he'll contact Peter when it's been arranged. Peter recognizes motions made just to soothe the crazy, but it doesn't fucking matter what Charlie thinks. Not now.

Peter stares at the desk, at the stack of files on the Susan Pratt case she'd been going through less than forty-eight hours before. The piles she'll never straighten back into military precision, never tuck under her arm to carry back to the FBI, never replace with another stack as the endless cycle of investigations marches forward.

Not endless. Ended. It's all ended.

Because he doesn't want to scatter the files to the floor, he stalks out of the office and stands staring out into the lab, powerless to go further.

"Peter, who was... Peter? Peter, what's wrong?"

Walter stares at him worriedly, eyes flicking back and forth across his face. Astrid rises from her spot at the computer, looking equally concerned.

Peter had a poker face, once. Right now he doesn't fucking care.

"She's dead." At the blank looks, he specifies. "Olivia. She's dead."

"Oh, no," Astrid whispers.

"Are they sure?" Walter asks, blinking rapidly. "Because I can think of at least—"

"Yes, they're sure," Peter snaps, and then takes a deep breath, blows it out. "A car accident. Some asshole T-boned her SUV." He ruthlessly ignores the lump in his throat, pushes away the pain that tightens his chest. "Charlie's getting me in to see the body. Just... just to make sure."

"I want to go with you."

"Walter..."

"Please, Peter. I... I need to see." Walter looks shaken. Too many shocks in too few days. He cares for Olivia, too, and he doesn't take well to losing the things he cares about.

Fuck. Right. "We're leaving in half an hour."

Walter nods and shuffles off. Astrid's still staring at Peter, eyes wide and expression compassionate. "Are you okay?"

Okay? Right now, he can't even grasp a definition of the term, much less feel it. And the events of the last few days don't help. He tries not to think about the other Olivias that may be out there, somewhere, going about their lives in their own realities, but it's almost impossible not to consider 'what if'.

They aren't his Olivia. His Olivia died in twisted metal.

"Peter?" Astrid's light touch on his arm brings him back.

"Fine," he grinds out. "Perfectly fine. She's dead. It's hardly the first time I've lost a friend."

But it's the first time he's lost her, and the sympathy in Astrid's eyes tells him his efforts the past couple of months to bury the shift in his feelings have been for shit. He remembers to hide from Olivia, to hold himself that step away so she doesn't have a clue. He remembers to hide from Walter, because he doesn't need his father's brand of encouragement. He's less discreet around Astrid, forgets that although she's been good-naturedly playing Walter's lackey for the last eight months, she's FBI trained and damned good at her job.

She nods slightly and squeezes his shoulder, then goes to play assistant to Walter.

~***~

The drive is virtually silent. Walter keeps starting to talk, then stutters to a halt only a few words in before Peter even has a chance to tell him to shut up. Some distant part of Peter thinks he should find some sort of words to reassure his father, but he can't find the energy to fucking care.

Later. He'll deal with it later.

He slides into a parking spot near the hospital, stares at the dashboard as he grips the steering wheel. Walter sits quietly beside him, and Peter supposes he should be grateful that the man isn't babbling nonsense or running off into traffic. Peter finally pushes himself out of the car, uses the momentum to carry himself down the sidewalk and through the door, where he takes quick footsteps down echoing halls. No need to put this off any longer than he has to, despite his chest tightening more with every step. Walter straggles behind.

The guy in charge nods to them when he sees their IDs and motions towards a closed door. He tries to engage them in conversation that falters at Peter's glare.

The room is stainless steel and chill despair, not the softened-edged viewing room they used for grieving families but a place of stark science used to give those families the comfort of how and why. She's lying on cold metal, her familiar curves shrouded by a clean white sheet. Scrapes mark her cheek and chin, but no further evidence of the accident is visible. Peter stops and swallows, forces himself forwards.

His shudder isn't entirely due to the cold.

There's no doubt it's Olivia, her eyes closed, her skin pale, her body empty without the driving force of her personality. She looks smaller, younger. Not asleep, because even on the odd moments he caught her napping in the office she'd been so fucking dynamically alive. He tries not to imagine the injuries that lie hidden. If he focuses on who she was, he might be able to remember her alive and smiling, not broken and empty.

He feels broken and empty.

Behind him, Walter's bugging the coroner for details about the autopsy. Despite Peter's best efforts to ignore the conversation, words like "massive trauma" and "internal injuries" filter through. Walter shuffles to the table, head tilted as he studies her. He reaches forwards, grasps the sheet. Peter grabs Walter's wrists and squeezes until he lets go.

"No."

"But I need to—"

"Give her privacy, for once." They'd spent enough time pawing over her private life; the least he can do is shield her this last little bit.

"I must insist—"

"Then contact Broyles yourself and leave me the fuck out of it. I will have nothing to do with whatever desecration you have planned."

He dimly realizes he's yelling and people are hovering around the doorway making noises about calling security. He stalks stiff-legged to the wall and leans his forehead against the cool tile, closing his eyes against it all.

A warm hand settles on his shoulder, and Walter murmurs, "I cared for her too, son."

"Yeah." Peter swallows, trying to clear the lump in his throat. "I know that."

"If I study what happened, perhaps—"

"Sometimes there isn't anything, Walter," Peter murmurs, exhaustion dragging him down. He opens his eyes and turns to Walter, to the lines of worry and pain carved into his father's face, and says, as gently as he can, "She's dead. You can't change that."

The stubborn flash that darkens Walter's eyes fades back into sorrow. "If I could do anything..." He doesn't finish the thought, just turns to study all that's left of the woman who was their friend.

Peter avoids looking at the white-draped table, keeping his eyes steady on his father. "I know, Walter. Believe me, I know."

~***~

Peter mourns her with a bottle of whiskey in hand, same as the stuff they'd been drinking when tracking down background on Raul Lugo. The taste that burns along his tongue brings back the memory of the light in her eyes as she laughed at his bar tricks, the mischief as she showed her chops at counting cards. Crystal fucking clarity, he can see her, like she's still sitting across from him and not laid out on a cold slab in the morgue.

He shivers and takes another gulp.

His phone buzzes. Getting up and crossing the room to answer it is too much effort, but she instilled a sense of responsibility in him, damn it. If he's honoring her memory, he might as well honor that one last time. He pushes up and grabs the phone, leaning against the table while answering. "Bishop."

"Peter, I need a favor."

It's her voice. It can't be, but it is.

"Olivia?" he rasps out. It's probably a trick. A hallucination. The first signs of the breakdown he's half expected for years. But all he wants is to hear her voice again.

"What's wrong?"

Oh, that's a fucking loaded question. He can picture her, match the wrinkled forehead and narrowed eyes with the concern he hears in her voice. He almost laughs. Almost. But if he does, it will come out hysterical, and then he'll break. He slides to the ground, leans his head against the wall and digs his fingers into the carpet. "Well, you're dead, for starters."

Ten seconds. Twenty, and he would think the hallucination has faded out except for her quick breathing on the other end of the line. An oddly endearing detail for his brain to have conjured up, but he's sorry to have shut her up because all he wants to do is hear her voice and pretend it's all okay.

"I'm what?" Her voice has gone flat neutral, not the tone that says she doesn't believe but the one that says she's trying to come to terms.

"Car accident. Car nailed you." He swallows. "I saw your body." Doesn't come out as steady as he intended, not even fucking close.

"I didn't have... wait. In New York? Silver sedan, almost hi—" a pause, and he can all but see the shake of her head as she corrects herself, "did it hit the front passenger side of my SUV?"

"Yeah."

And now she sounds as unnerved as he. "But I swerved. I avoided the accident."

The anger kicks out before he can stop it, anger tempered by a growing kernel of hope. "Then where the hell have you been?" Maybe. Just maybe.

"I..." she hesitates, sounding lost, finally continuing with, "New York. A different one. With William Bell."

Different New York. Different reality. Different Olivia who died?

"Well, you might want to notify the Feds, because they think you're on a slab right now." His brain finally stops stuttering. "Fuck, Charlie went to notify Rachel."

"Oh, hell." He can hear in her voice the wide eyes and horrified expression as it hits her. She keeps him on the line while she calls Charlie and Rachel, then checks in with Broyles. Peter just stares at the phone and hopes this is real.

~***~

Peter doesn't trust that he hadn't dreamed the phone call until the next afternoon, when Olivia hesitantly walks through the door to the lab. Astrid spots her first, greets her with glad cries and hugs. So does Walter, who dabs tears from his eyes. Peter waits until they're done before pulling Olivia into his arms, content to watch others prove she's more than just a phantom before he tests the reality for himself.

Peter holds her a little too long, memorizing the warmth of her body along his, the silken tangle of her hair in his hands. She hugs back just as hard, and when she pulls away her smile is dimmed by the ghosts of what might have been.

It's Walter, of course, who ruins the mood by stating what should have been obvious. "I'm sorry, Peter, but how do we know this one is ours?"

Peter doesn't fucking care. She looks like her, sounds like her, smells like her, reacts like her. Feels like her. It's her. But Olivia, practical, forthright Olivia, nods slowly, another layer of haunted taking up residence behind her eyes. Even after eight months he only reluctantly acknowledges that, when it comes to everything Fringe Division touches, nine times out of ten "impossible" is more properly "improbable"; she always does accept the possibilities more readily than he, even when she has just as much at stake at disproving them.

On this one, though, Peter's not letting go of "impossible" without a fight.

Olivia paces to the end of the room, stands staring at the cabinets full of glassware and chemicals and curls her hands around the edge of the lab bench. "How can we tell?"

"Scars, broken bones, anything medical and dental records could quantify as different between the two of you." Walter grabs up a manila folder—autopsy report, Peter notes, and from the glimpses of blonde in the photos he has the sinking feeling that he doesn't ever want a closer look at that file. "And shared memories, we should look at those, too. There might be more subtle clues as well, perhaps—"

"This is more than enough to start," Peter says firmly.

Olivia pivots and nods, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "Let's get this over with." Her voice is devoid of emotion, and Peter watches Olivia sink deeper and deeper into impassivity the more questions Walter asks.

In the end, it's the little things that separate the Olivia who's alive from the one in the morgue in New York: a scar four inches too low on the dead Olivia, a metal filling their Olivia lost and had replaced with a composite filling, memories that intersect perfectly with those of Peter, Walter, and Astrid. The Olivia who belongs here is the one standing before them.

Her shoulders sag when the verdict comes down, a brief collapse as the weight she's been carrying is lifted. When she looks up, her expression is determined. "Okay," she breathes out. "Okay. So what happened? Where did I—" she shakes her head, "she, where did she come from?"

Astrid shrugs. "Maybe she stepped over from another dimension?"

"A possibility, certainly, but not the only one." Walter punctuates his words with vigorous sweeps of his arms. "She could be a clone, or an evil doppelganger, or some sort of shapeshifter—"

"Walter!" Peter snaps, but he can't stop himself from grinning. Olivia glances at him, her eyes still shadowed, but she raises her eyebrows and smiles as the familiar patter of speculation and insanity starts ricocheting between the four of them. Back to business as usual, as if the last day hadn't been spent in mourning. Maybe it's just easier for them all to set might-have-beens aside, or maybe the constant spate of life-altering revelations have just left them jaded.

Peter knows he'll move past it eventually, but he won't forget. And he'll do everything he can to keep from losing her again.

Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (3/5)

2009-09-13T22:09:09Z

Title: Chain You Down (3/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 6782
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence, torture
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to crazylittleelffor betaing the entire thing.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2

Chain You Down

Chapter 3

The first few jobs are barely worthy of the name, low security gigs that don't make use of any of their unique talents and certainly don't need all three of them there. Neither Olivia nor Nick try to pretend the jobs are anything different. Peter is pretty sure Olivia's arranging for them to take all the scutwork the organization can throw at them. His chaperones watch his every fucking move, study how he handles himself. Olivia offers up the occasional thoughtful little critique, as if he isn't already a fucking pro at this shit. Nick just stays out of it and lets the two of them bicker.

Even with the arguing, Peter considers their relationship a marked improvement on the last couple of months. She's talking to him, at least, and the conversations sometimes even approach civil. As spring officially gives way to summer—not that the temperatures spent the last couple months paying a damned bit of attention to the actual season—Olivia's eagle eye appraisal of Peter's faults mellows to almost approving.

Olivia reluctantly allows that Peter has earned the freedom to have nights to himself on the rare occasions they're not out on out on the road, giving him the chance to contact Jones. Not that Peter tells Jones much of anything. Just enough to appear cooperative, and not a fucking bit more. He keeps his observations as brief as possible: not lying, but not being entirely forthright, either. He knows better than to show all his cards if he wants to stay in the game.

Missions mean road trips. Although being trapped in the Cherokee for hours on end with Olivia and Nick has its down sides—they never let him drive, which is fucking annoying, and their choice of music ranges from tolerable to dubious—the stories they tell are almost worth it. The drive to the job is reserved for settling into the mindset of the mission at hand and other boring crap, but the drive back is full of stories about previous missions from their years in the field, and is both fascinating and instructive. Nick's the better storyteller, playing up both the routine and the strange into hilarious and sometimes macabre entertainment. Olivia underplays, relating a report rather than telling a story, but it's even more interesting to listen to what she leaves out than what she says.

When Olivia picks up the phone one evening in late June, he can tell from her eagerness and Nick's excitement that the mission's for real. She listens for a few minutes, anticipation threading with wariness as she nods and jots down notes.

"We're hitting a lab in the Boston area," she mutters after she hangs up, tapping the phone against her palm as she stares out the window. Peter can feel the edges of her disquiet, of Nick's concern. She refocuses abruptly, tilts her head towards Nick as she turns sharp eyes on Peter. "Is he ready?"

"Olive." Nick's tone is chiding. "He's more than ready. You know that."

Peter pointedly looks from one to the other. "Do I get a vote?"

"No," she says, then raises her eyebrows. "Are you saying you don't want to go?"

"I'm saying I'm tired of being treated like a particularly dumb third grader."

The ghost of a smile flickers over her face and she nods, although her expression is reluctant. "Okay, then."

Nick grins. "Just remember to look both ways before you cross the street. And don't play in traffic. Oh, and if you see any strangers? Don't take candy from them."

Peter tosses a throw pillow at him and heads upstairs to change.

~***~

The drive is uneventful, twenty hours of Nick and Olivia trading off shifts while whoever isn't behind the wheel catches sleep while they can. Just like every other time, they don't ask Peter to drive. This time Peter doesn't offer, figuring Olivia needs the distraction from whatever is eating her. She's much less enthusiastic than he is about seeing the city of so many significant events in their childhoods, and it's making her moody.

He can barely remember the nine years he and his parents lived in the old house in Cambridge; he keeps getting more and more flashes of his past with Olivia and Nick, but the memories focus on them and them alone. He knows Boston better from when he'd returned after a couple years on the move, figuring if he was going to run he would try to find some connection to his past along the way. It hadn't worked; the only thing he found in Massachusetts was trouble. He hadn't felt any more a part of Boston than any other place he lived before or since. Still, he has fond memories of the city from before everything went to hell.

Going back for any length of time is probably a bad idea, but a night shouldn't be an issue. Be nice if he could reconnect with old acquaintances while he's there, but he'll take what he can get.

They stop off in Natick to meet their contact. Peter waits in the SUV with Nick while Olivia learns where they're hitting and picks up the keycard and building plans they'll need to do the job. Not the usual way of things, Peter gathers, but not so unusual to cause any concern; the job should be simple enough that not much advance planning will be needed. He's already figured out that while Nick and Olivia are brilliant at many things, they're not the most competent burglars. They're fine with simple locks and alarm systems, but anything more complex and they run into issues that are often resolved with careful—and occasionally gleeful—application of C-4.

Not that he objects to the judicious application of explosives, but sometimes it's just better to keep a lower profile.

And sometimes, Peter thinks, as the deadbolt remains engaged when they slip the keycard into the electronic lock at the back door of the seedy building housing Weymouth labs, they just didn't think to pack the explosives in the damned SUV.

"Shit." Olivia tries the card again, hits the lock as her annoyance spikes, but the light stubbornly stays red. "Nick?"

His eyes go distant a moment, then he shrugs. "As far as I can tell there's no one I can control. Place is empty."

Peter studies the security system. Not a newer model. Not even a particularly impressive model. He pulls out a few tools—he'd believed in being prepared for anything before hooking up with these two, but since they started telling him stories about previous missions gone wrong his concept of 'anything' has expanded a thousand fold—tweaks here, snips there, and the lock snicks.

He grins and toes the door open. "We going in or we standing here arguing about it?"

Olivia looks at him, looks at the open door. "Huh."

Evidently, she hadn't believed him when he mentioned his experience at B and E was probably more extensive than theirs. "I'm just full of surprises."

Nick claps him on the shoulder. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

"Keycard was supposed to work inside, too." Olivia shoves the card in her pocket, cuts her eyes towards Peter.

"Good thing we got Peter."

She nods, expression thoughtful. "Yeah. Very." She looks upwards, brow wrinkled. "Cameras are out. Let's do this."

"Cameras are...?" He checks the security system, glances towards Nick. "She takes out cameras?"

"Didn't I mention?"

"Think you left that part out." And it hadn't come up on any of their other excursions, either. What else hadn't they told him?

"Nick. Peter."

Peter shakes off that question to consider later and shoots Nick a dry look. "She summons."

"She does that a lot."

"Boys. Less chatter, more mission."

The hallways are deserted, but the maze matches up to the map of the facility that had been provided. Other than the keycard snafu this isn't any different than every other mission they've taken him on; even one of them there seems like overkill. "What particular part of our skill set led your bosses to give this to us, anyway? I'm sure they have people more competent at B and E."

Olivia shrugs. "Don't know."

"And don't care?"

"They give us the job. We do it."

"Aren't you a good little soldier."

"Could be a test," Nick offers.

"They test you?"

"They've never stopped testing us." Olivia glances back at them, then away.

There's something in her low murmur that sets Peter on edge. "What happens if you don't pass?"

"Failure is not an option." The look Nick exchanges with Olivia is bitter, almost grim, and the remnants still linger on his face when he turns to Peter and smiles. "Welcome to the wonderful world of the experimental soldier. Having fun yet?"

"Boatloads." Which is not exactly untrue. Granted, he's fucking sick of following orders, but the jobs themselves are a kick.

"It's probably not the job, but the sample we're retrieving," Olivia says. "They do that, sometimes. Send us out when the mission is important, not because it's difficult. Our record is nearly spotless."

"Nearly?"

"A couple minor hiccups. Nothing deemed overly worrisome."

Nick nods. "We know this 'cause we're still in the field. Major hiccups don't get that privilege."

Olivia turns again, meets Peter's eyes. "Too many major hiccups are cause for permanent retirement. Remember that."

If the hiccups are found out. Unstated, but lingering between them. Warning or threat?

Her somber mood gives no answers.

The lab is just where the map says. The lock on the door isn't any more of a challenge than the one outside, and in less than a minute they walk into a state of the art room with matte black lab benches and shining chrome highlights that looks like it has been pretentiously designed to scream "high tech lab" and impress the yokels. The huge, walk-in freezer is in the back.

Olivia studies the elaborate lock next to the freezer, pivots and stares at Peter. "Can you do it?"

"Oh, yeah." It's not all bravado, but he's less certain than he likes. What the owners hadn't spent securing the building or the room, they more than made up for securing the freezer. He pulls the faceplate off and studies the system, traces circuits and considers his best method of approach.

He drops to his knees and begins tinkering.

"How long is this going to take?" She's three feet away, peering over his shoulder. He looks at her, and she's watching the lock like if she stares at it intently enough she can snap it open with her mind.

Fuck, maybe she can? No, if she could do that, the keycard not working would have been a nonissue.

He returns his attention to the security system, tries to ignore her. "As long as it takes."

She's still hovering, close enough that her impatience prickles at his skin. He stops again, turns again, and glares at her. "Back. Off."

"What?" Her brows drop and her eyes narrow.

He rolls his eyes. "Go... guard a door or something and leave me alone."

She blinks and snorts, amusement twitching at her lips, backing away with a wide sweep of her hands. "Fine. I'll patrol the building, make sure there aren't any surprises."

"You have fun with that."

She slips off and he settles into cracking the security system, Nick a silent presence guarding his back.

He finishes navigating the maze of connections just as Olivia bounds back into the room. "Got it," he tells her. "Freezer's open."

"Good, because we've got company. Someone's coming through the front doors."

"What?" Thinks through every part of the circuitry—belatedly, and he could fucking kick himself for getting cocky—and answers the question. "Silent alarm on the outer door. Fuck."

A quick brush against the interloper's minds gets numbers but not much more. "Four, maybe five. Hard to get a good read."

Nick's eyes go distant, and he shakes his head. "Too many, with too much self-control. I can't take them all down."

"I got it." Olivia's guns are out. Her face is impassive but excitement and determination glow in her eyes, pulse through their link. "Get the vials."

Nick waves a sketchy salute in her direction. "I'll fog 'em up when they get close."

She nods and disappears around the corner. Peter walls off his mind, since he has no particular desire to feel the pain as their lives wink out. Adrenaline, familiar and much missed, pools through him as the stakes suddenly skyrocket.

He yanks open the freezer, steps into frigid air with shelves that stretch back for at least ten feet. Neatly arranged stacks of Petri dishes, canisters, and boxes line the shelves, but no glowing sign points to their target. Nick props open the door and takes one side, Peter the other, scanning for anything labeled HEP135-B-9. Whatever the hell that stands for. Nick finds a box near the back and empties it of the vials, carefully placing them into the insulated container they brought for transport. He drops the container into his backpack.

Peter jerks and turns at skitter of gunfire, sounds barely audible to his ears transformed into a pattern of seeking and eliminating targets in his head. Olivia, cool and focused, doesn't even notice she's drawn him in.

Nick grins. "She's used to linking fully with me. Shielding her mind doesn't fit into her working headspace, not when we're doing this for real."

She's calm. Not joyful, precisely, but fiercely satisfied at the world rendered down to black and white. "She's good," Peter murmurs. And a little frightening, in her single-minded way, but it's anything but a condemnation.

"Fucking best." Nick shoves the freezer shut behind them. "C'mon. Let's go see what sort of armed guards this place has protecting it."

Peter follows Nick, his sense of Olivia growing stronger the closer they get. The gunfire has ceased by the time they emerge into the building's lobby, a space as studiedly shabby as the lab was high tech. Olivia's crouched next to four bodies, riffling through pockets.

"No ID's," she says. "Mercs maybe? They were good, whoever they were."

Nick crouches beside her, searching the rest of the bodies. "Someone wanted something safe."

"What we came here for?" Peter watches them work, tries to reconstruct from the positions of their bodies and the flashes he'd gotten from Olivia what went down. Four on one, and she came out on top with barely a hair out of place. He hopes to God he'll never have to go directly against her.

She shrugs. "Who knows."

Peter catches a flicker of movement from the hallway at the other side of the room, hasn't even gotten his gun free of the holster when she's pivoted, still in a crouch. The sharp retorts of her shots followed by Nick's ring in his ears as the man slumps, blood pooling from his head and chest.

"Fuck!" Heart hammering, Peter drops his mental shields and scans for any sense of life. Nothing. Not in the building, not as far as he can sense outside.

"Thought there was another lurking around." Olivia rises to her feet, flips her ponytail back over her shoulder with a twitch of her head.

Nick sighs. "How 'bout a warning, Olive?"

"You're slow. Be faster next time." She smirks, doesn't holster her guns but rolls her shoulders back as she starts relaxing. She stalks around the room, peeks out the front door, then says over her shoulder to Peter, "Not bad, but you need to do better. We'll work on it." She glances back outside. "We'll go out the front."

"Cameras?" Peter asks.

"Down. Of course."

He checks for signs of life again, just in case. The night is still, no one out lurking in the shadows. "We're good."

"Yup. We are." She stretches like a cat and saunters out the door, attention flickering back and forth as she surveys the area, guns held loosely in her hands.

They make it back to the SUV without incident, pile in and divest themselves of the accoutrements of criminal activity. Three minutes and they're a bunch of college kids out for a night on the town, anything that says different hidden under a protective layer of twenty-something clutter in the back. Nick takes the wheel, driving towards downtown Boston.

Peter sprawls in the backseat, adrenaline still humming through him and making him edgy. The last thing he wants to do is be trapped in their hotel room until morning. "We're alive, they're not; we should celebrate. A drink, my treat. I know just the place."

She hesitates, tapping thoughtfully at the dashboard. Glances at Nick, who grins coaxingly although he doesn't take his eyes from the road. She rolls her eyes, but nods. "One drink. Then I have to meet our contact and pass off the samples."

Peter checks where they are, then directs Nick two streets over and one down to a kitschy little place where they'll blend in but the drinks won't be watered. Not one of his old hangouts, but not a place he wouldn't be caught dead in, either. They're carded, of course—even if they weren't actually underage, they could probably do a decent job passing as high-schoolers, so the chances of their getting in on looks alone are nill—but their ID's would hold up to a far more rigorous examination than that of a bored bartender on a busy Thursday night. Peter settles for scotch, Nick and Olivia for beer, and they find a table in the corner where none of them will have their backs to the room.

~***~

Nick turns to Peter, gestures becoming broader as he continues. "Y'see, we needed to get him out of there, and nothing I was trying had an effect—drugs or alcohol or fuck knows what pickling his brain cells—so she challenges him to a drinking contest, with her as the prize. You could see him thinking, little slip of a girl, it'll be the easiest fuck of his life—"

"Nick!" Olivia thwacks him on the arm. Given how hard she's laughing she can't quite pull off stern or outraged, as much as she tries.

"What?" Nick ducks the second swat, edges his chair away from Olivia before she can try for a third. "You know that's what was going through his head!"

Peter watches the interplay between them with amusement. Apparently the night they reeled Peter in was far from the first time Olivia played bait while Nick stalked their target, and Nick's set on relating a few of the more interesting, much to Olivia's chagrin. After the first story she tried to derail him, to little success. Every mission Nick's pulling up tonight feature her in a role Peter isn't used to seeing: the glib con artist. And fuck, but if half the things that Nick is saying are true, Olivia might even be a match for Peter in that area.

Nick turns his attention back to Peter and continues. "I figured her plan was to throw the game, get him to follow her out to claim his reward. So they sit down, side by side, and she proceeds to drink him under the table."

Peter glances at Olivia, who's shaking her head, then back at Nick. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Olivia props her chin on her hands and glowers at Nick with fond exasperation. "You left out that he was three sheets to the wind before we even got there."

"Details. You still outdrank half the rest of the bar, too." Nick waves his hand dismissively, turning back to Peter. "It was fucking awesome. Course she was hammered, though she held it together pretty damned well, considering."

Peter turns to Olivia and grins. She's somewhere between embarrassed and amused, head ducked but still meeting his eyes through those long lashes of hers, and he can't resist good-naturedly poking at her just a bit. "And how did you learn to drink half the bar under the table? Didn't think they'd let you off your chain long enough."

Her glare is half-hearted at best. "Good genetics?"

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have tried pulling off that stunt without knowing exactly what your limits were."

She acknowledges the truth of that with a lift of her shoulder and runs a finger around the rim of her glass. "Used to drink with the soldiers at one of the places they kept us at as teenagers. They thought it would help them get into my pants—well, some of them, anyway—so I took the chance to... practice my covert interrogation skills."

"She'd get details of stuff they weren't telling us," Nick puts in, leaning sideways to nudge Olivia with his elbow. "And she'd never let me help."

"They always told us to learn how to operate independently." Her crooked grin is mischievous. "I was just following orders."

"Why, Dunham," Peter says, impressed in spite of himself. Not quite the rule-abiding little automaton he expected her to be, and he's happy to see it. Easier to work with her if she's not insisting on toeing the line every fucking time. "You rebel, you."

She shrugs, but looks pleased. "It became a game. Despite everything, they never expected a teenage girl could get the better of them, not really. Not until..." Her smile dims, her expression fading from happy to haunted, and Peter's pretty damned sure what she's seeing isn't the bar.

"Olive?" Nick grabs her hand, and she looks up and blinks.

"Anyway, they learned to be scared of me, and that put an end to it." This time her smile is bitter. "Not long after, they cut us loose for field trials."

"Is that what they call it?" Peter asks, watching the interplay between them. They're leaning towards each other, just a bit, and Nick still hasn't let go. Solidarity against the memories.

"Better than being cooped up in the compound." Nick takes another swallow. "At least now they're not watching our every move and poking us with needles every other day."

"And we're doing something useful rather than endless rounds of training exercises."

"Not to mention less boring."

Peter snorts. "Yeah, I know the feeling."

Olivia raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Two months, we had you on training runs and you complain. Took six years after you left before they gave us anything interesting to do."

He does a quick calculation. "Fifteen?"

"Yup."

He was fifteen when Walter died, when he went on the run and never looked back, and he'd still had more of a childhood than either of them. He'd been eighteen before he'd had to kill anybody; he bets they'd done that while they were still hobbled by training wheels.

If not for Walter that could have been his life, too. Now, he at least has the memories of not being caged to sustain him.

She finishes up the beer, puts the glass on the table with a resounding 'thud'. "Got to meet our contact. Nick?"

Nick finishes his glass, wipes his mouth with back of his hand. His and Olivia's eyes meet. She tilts her head and eyes Peter consideringly, then tosses him a hotel key. "I want to be on the road by eight AM."

He turns the key over in his hands, running his thumb along the teeth. "You're leaving me here? Alone?"

She nods; her lips lift in a smile although her eyes remain solemn. "You've more than earned it." She looks like she wants to say something else, then shakes her head and shoots to her feet. He sips thoughtfully at the beer as he watches them wend their way through the crowd and out the door.

Calculated risk on her part, leaving him alone on ground more familiar to him than her. A thousand places in this town he could disappear into, and she'd have a hell of a time trying to pry him out. The temptation to do just that edges along his nerves, the lure of freedom so fucking strong he can taste it.

But no. He leaves now, he has Jones and his lackeys on his ass. He waits, he can develop an exit strategy with long term viability. He can lay low for months, a year, if that's what it takes to plot a lifetime of freedom.

It's not even a bad place to hole up. Nick could almost be a friend, and Olivia... well, Olivia is sometimes a pain in the ass. Pretty when she smiles, though. Or laughs. She's fucking beautiful when she laughs, eyes free of wariness and glee lighting her face. A different person. Just a damned shame she doesn't do either of them more often.

He doesn't let himself wonder what memory had dimmed that smile. He doesn't need to know.

A last swallow and he takes off, making the most of his one-night-only return tour of Boston. He does the rounds of all his old haunts, catching up with old acquaintances as he indulges in the first breath of real freedom he's had in months. This is his normal, his life. What he'll be so fucking happy to settle back into when he's served his term.

He's coming back from the bathroom when he takes a fist to the stomach before he even realizes he's not alone. A punch to the kidneys drops him to his knees.

"Peter Bishop." He doesn't recognize the voice, but even two words and he recognizes the tone: bully boy who gets his rocks off pushing people around. "My boss wants to see you."

Peter's dragged out the front door and no one even twitches, all turning a blind eye to the scene. Fucking hell. He thought they still had his back—or at least would have given a little fucking warning. No fucking way some of them didn't know what was about to go down. He should have fucking expected it, should have known he was the only one who would look out for his ass. None of them were going to risk going against Big Eddie's people, not if they wanted to stay alive in this town.

Only took months out of the game for him to lose the edge that kept him alive for so long. And that downtime is no fucking excuse, not given what he's spent the last months doing. Olivia would be so fucking disappointed. At least she gets her wish: he's gone from her life, just like she wants. And maybe that's what this was all about, why she unbent enough let him off the leash tonight.

That thought is acid in his stomach.

His captors truss him up and shove him in the trunk of an old Buick, bouncing his head off the edge as they dump him in. Pain greys the world, and he can feel the trickle of blood running down his head. He scrabbles at the ropes but they're too tight, tight enough that he's losing feeling in his fingers. His head pounds more with every pothole the car dips into, and he's pretty fucking sure it hits every fucking one. The uneven grumble of the engine, which is in desperate need of work, makes his head hurt even more.

An interminable amount of time later the car grinds to a halt. They yank him out behind a nondescript warehouse with lighting more perfunctory than effective, push him through the door and secure him to a chair in the middle of an echoing room. Another twisting attempt at the ropes makes no more headway than before.

"Bishop. How nice of you to join us." Big Eddie. Of course.

"Could hardly turn down the invite." Peter knows he's a self-destructive fucking idiot. He shouldn't have gone out on the town, shouldn't have made himself a target. Shouldn't have given Olivia and Nick a chance to sell him out, if that's what they did, or Big Eddie a chance to catch wind of Peter's return, if they hadn't. He doesn't cling to any illusions that he'll live through this. Once Eddie's gotten his jollies, Peter's destined for a swim in the harbor, or maybe a mudbath in a young block of concrete. It'll hurt first, though. Eddie'll make sure of that. And from the twisted waves of anticipation coming off him, he's going to enjoy it.

Eddie's grin is a narrow slice of a smile. "You should have stayed gone. Glad you didn't, but you should have. Got to say, kid, you piss people off something fierce. Don't think I've ever met anyone so talented at getting under so many people's skin."

Peter tenses against the first blow, not that it does any good. Soon the world narrows into a haze of pain and his life is counted by how many more breaths he'll take before it's over.

~***~

Maybe he's not dead, Peter dazedly considers some time later. Eddie and his goons may be working him over, but while they've maximized pain they haven't yet done anything permanent. And Eddie's anticipation hasn't twisted into a killing mood. He's looking forwards to the money he's about to make on the deal. Waiting for something—someone? Biding his time.

The explosion that rattles the windows isn't it, but Eddie is neither surprised nor concerned. He flips open his phone, snaps "Deal with it" to the person on the other end, then gestures for his two goons to stay while he leaves to do God knows what. Nothing good.

Peter glares at his guards with bleary-eyed defiance, sees the blood spray from their foreheads before he even registers the shots. Nick swings through the door and, on seeing Peter, gives a manic smile. "Miss us?"

They didn't betray him. The relief sets Peter reeling more than the torture had.

"What're you doing out there, causing a war?" he finally manages, blinking his eyes rapidly.

Nick lopes to Peter, knife in hand. "Making things up as we go along. We really weren't prepared for an extraction mission. The guy who grabbed you knew something was gonna go down, though, 'cause he's practically got a whole fucking army out there. Punks, mostly, but they're warm bodies keeping us from you." Nick makes quick work of the ropes, gets a shoulder under Peter's arm when he staggers to his feet. "It's letting Olive blow off steam, which y'know? Not a bad thing. She's fucking pissed."

"Not exactly here by choice." Peter hisses as he moves, pain making the process nearly as much fun as the original torture. Maybe just soft tissue damage, maybe broken bones. Nothing permanent, but only just.

"Oh, she's not pissed at you." Nick peers out the door, gun at the ready, before guiding Peter through. They move down the stairs, hugging the building. "Wants to dismember the fucking hell out of the bastard who took you, though. She's taking it personally."

"Why?" Peter stumbles, pain jarring ribs he's pretty fucking sure are broken, and Nick pauses to steady him. "My own fault," Peter adds through clenched teeth. "My own past coming to bite me on the ass."

Nick shrugs and pulls away, leaving Peter leaning against the side of the warehouse. "Stay here a sec," Nick says, then he's around the corner and gone. A minute later he's back, Olivia at his side.

Her head tilts and her eyes narrow. "You okay?"

"Just peachy."

Her gaze rakes him up and down, completely focused on him as she assesses every injury with deceptively cool eyes. Underneath the surface calm she's revved and worried, practically vibrating against him from four feet away. He's fucking glad to see her, to feel her in his head.

Nick smirks and thumps Peter's back affectionately—although the sentiment is welcome, it fucking hurts, and Olivia scowls irritably at Nick—then once again gets a shoulder under his arm. "Ready to make a break for it?"

"More than," Peter says.

Olivia ducks her head and smiles, just a little, then her head goes up and she whirls. One gun is trained on each of the guys who stepped around the corner while her back was turned. Her fingers are tight against the triggers, but he feels her reluctantly decide not to take the shots, not with Nick and Peter already in the sights of the opposition and no guarantee she can drop her targets before they fire. Nick levels his gun at the third, but when three others emerge from behind they're outnumbered.

Why Eddie's people didn't shoot in the first place, Peter doesn't know, but now it's a standoff, neither side willing to start the firefight that's going to end with deaths on both sides.

Fuck. Well, the freedom was good while it lasted.

Big Eddie saunters from the warehouse, grinning. "'A' for effort, but put down the guns, sweetheart. Both of you."

"Tell your people to put down their weapons." Her guns hold steady, and her voice is as cool as if she's the one running the show.

"Six to one. Are you stupid?" He shakes his head. "Tell you what, I'm feeling generous. I'll let you and your boy walk away, forget you even tried something this stupid. Impressive, by the way. Don't know how the hell you pulled it off, but impressive."

Olivia tilts her head towards Eddie, but doesn't take her eyes from her targets. "Peter goes with us."

"Bishop?" Eddie's grin turns mean. "Nah, I got plans for him. 'Fraid that's not gonna happen."

"No, don't be stupid," Nick mutters under his breath. "Don't piss her off. She's close enough to the fucking edge as it is, don't push her over." He's worked up enough that pictures are carried on the waves of emotion rolling off him, images of fiery destruction edged in alarm. Peter hastily walls himself against them before Nick's anxiety can fuck him up.

"Knock them out," Peter whispers, barely moving his lips.

"Not with us in the line of fire," Nick murmurs back. "Can't overwhelm that many and drop 'em, and I haven't studied them enough to predict which way they'll jump if I just influence them."

"Big Eddie."

Peter feels more than sees Nick's frustrated shrug. "They might start shooting if he drops, I don't know how he'll react if I throw emotions into him, and I don't have time to take control of him."

Between Nick's agitation and Olivia's growing rage, it's a fucking bitch to concentrate. Something's off about the situation. They should be dead already, not living long enough to negotiate. Olivia and Nick just took out a huge swath of Big Eddie's men. Given that he's a vindictive shit, he wouldn't let the blow to either his ego or his organization slide.

He's stalling, waiting for something.

Peter arrows into Eddie's mind. Tears through to the core, to gloating images of snipers moving into place and a plan well-executed. He tosses the images to Olivia as soon as he interprets them, to Nick who's also in her mind. Stays linked tight with them as he searches for the people he knows have to be hidden close.

And he finds them: two on flanking rooftops, one in a window across the street. He feels them lining up the shots, sees images of Olivia and Nick framed in their sights filling their minds.

Olivia narrows her eyes as she acknowledges the information. Fury scorches through her. The goons' guns go incandescent and Peter shudders through the waves of pain. One gun explodes, sending the man holding it spinning backwards less an arm. The other guns fall as soon as their owners can let go. She's firing before the weapons even hit the ground, and Peter drops as the deaths slam through him. The physical pain swamping him grounds him enough to wall off his mind for all he's worth, because he so fucking does not want to know any more about how it feels to die, or to be yanked over the edge into the great beyond as well.

When his head stops spinning, he thinks to check Eddie. His empty eyes stare at Peter, blood pooling around his head and gut.

"Should have left Big Eddie alive," he says conversationally. "We can't question him if he's dead."

"Y'know what?" Olivia snarls. "Not really my top priority right now." Despite her protestation otherwise, a thread of guilt curls through the anger that still blazes through her, and she sneaks a glance at Big Eddie before turning her full attention on Peter.

Nick takes point, scanning the area with wary eyes as Olivia holsters her guns and crouches down next to Peter. She stares at him, head cocked, assessing his condition both with her eyes and her mind. Satisfied with what she sees, she grabs his hands and pulls him to his feet. She squeezes his hands briefly, her concern rippling along his skin, then steps back, eyes still trained on him.

Peter leans against the wall until the world steadies, focusing his attention on the corpses. The guns are half-melted and still smoldering. "The fuck?" he mutters. Fire with no visible means, triggered by Olivia's heated glare. Fragments of memories escape from hiding. "Pyrokinesis?"

"Yeah. Sometimes." She shifts from one foot to another, her concern for him giving way to nervousness, flares of her anxiety reaching out to tug at him then retreating.

More fragments emerge. He remembers burning heat, vain attempts to shield her while the flames jump higher and higher in response to her increased terror. "You nearly killed me," he says, startled. "Nearly killed both of us. Fire got out of control and we were trapped."

She goes statue-still, not even breathing, but despair surges through her as she stares at him, eyes wide.

Reasons that puzzled him for years become clear. "That's what finally spooked Walter. Why he cut ties and spirited us out of the country." But why bury Peter's memories? So he wouldn't protest leaving his friend, his partner? Or because Walter hoped that with distance and memories suppressed, the bonds between them might snap and free them both?

"All I knew was that I reached out and couldn't find you," she whispers. "I thought I was being punished. Maybe that—" She stops and shakes her head, but he can feel the rest of the words in her well-worn grief: 'that you were dead'. That she'd killed him.

"He moved us oversees for four months, then took a teaching position at Stanford. By the time we were in California my memories of everything before were spotty at best. I had years of gaps." His early years are hazy, and all that's left of the years between the summer he met Olivia and the winter overseas are random fragments. All the pieces that featured her were squashed and paved over until barely a muffled echo was left.

He studies her, this missing piece of his past. She came to his rescue, Nick by her side, charging in with no concern for her own life. Granted, she outclassed Big Eddie's minions by about a thousand fold, but still. "You came."

"Of course." She bobs her head, looking up at him through long eyelashes. Says it like it's self-evident, like there was no question of her and Nick risking their lives to save his hide. Despite the fact that he'd been thrust into her life against her will, despite the fact that he was pretty sure she still didn't want him there.

Despite the fact that, from the looks of things, he'd been the unwitting bait for a trap.

He doesn't say it, doesn't want to offer that possibility until he has a better handle on what's going on. Maybe this was just part of the process, the 'training' they mentioned. They've been doing this a fuckload longer than him; certainly they'd know if something was off, even if they didn't bother sharing with him.

He continues staring at her, brushing the edges of her mind with the lightest of touches just for the bafflement of knowing she's there. She's stroking against the edges of his mind in turn, seeking reassurance that he's alive, if not entirely well.

"Guys? Not that this isn't fun and all, but we should take off before they scrape up reinforcements and more firepower."

Olivia turns at the sound of Nick's voice, and Peter feels the echo of him through Olivia's mind: just as concerned as Olivia, just as glad they got Peter back intact.

The last person who gave a fuck about Peter's well being is five years dead.

Peter swallows against a throat strangely tight. "Yeah. Beyond time to leave."

back to Chapter 2 / on to Chapter 4

Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (2/5)

2009-09-10T22:34:03Z

Title: Chain You Down (2/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 6947
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to crazylittleelf for betaing the entire thing.

Chapter 1

Chain You Down

Chapter 2

Peter's sure Olivia and Nick are taking the scenic route to where ever the hell their home base is. Normally he'd approve of the caution, but after forty hours he can feel Olivia's irritability no matter how tightly he guards against her or how she walls herself against him. This sensitivity is new—he's been trapped with Nick for just as long and is doing just fine keeping him out—and it pisses Peter off. No one's supposed to be able to get this close to him, and she's in his head without either of them fucking trying. The only thing Peter can figure is that his defenses are compromised because he spent his unremembered childhood as Olivia's partner. Whatever the fuck that means.

Nick's got the patience of a saint, maintaining an even temper through the first thirty-five hours, but even he gets edgy during the home stretch. Peter only knows it's the home stretch because anticipation starts seeping through with the irritability, not because Olivia—or Nick—has told him anything.

At least Nick's been talking at all. Olivia has barely spoken to him since they started this God-forsaken little road trip, mostly reducing her communication to glares with the occasional snapped order to break the silence. She's a champion at ordering him around, too.

Involuntary incarceration in an SUV has given him plenty of time—too much time—to study this woman he's suddenly been chained to. He's determined that Olivia counts to calm herself—cars, sign posts, ways she's going to eviscerate him, who the fuck knows. It's a silent count, but by now that doesn't matter, since it pulses through him in tandem with her aggravation. He's going to hear that count in his dreams—has been on the occasional catnap—and it pisses him off that he can't even escape her in sleep. She's also determined to hate anything he likes—be it music, food, or choice of conversation topic—is a demon behind the wheel, and refuses to let him drive. He'll have to understand her a hell of a lot better if he's going to maneuver his way out of this one, but right now he's too completely fucking fed up with everything to do with Olivia Dunham to fucking care.

Nick pulls off the highway near Chicago, drives down tree-lined local roads and into the very picture of a suburban neighborhood. "Home sweet home," he sighs. "About fucking time."

He turns into the driveway of an two story brick bungalow snugged into close quarters with a line of similar houses, parking beside a late model green Chevy Cavalier. A few anemic evergreen shrubs line the front of the house and the lawn is the unappealing yellow-brown of grass in the last throes of winter. Nothing distinctive, nothing too out of place.

Peter's out of the back seat before the vehicle is shifted into 'park', surveying the area while stretching out the inevitable kinks from being shoved in a small space for so long. Looking around confirms what he saw on the way in: it's a suburb, just like thousands of other suburbs surrounding hundreds of cities. He shakes his head. "So the suburbs of Chicago are the fashionable location for assassins of a shadowy terrorist organization?"

"Good central location and near a major metropolitan airport if we need to get somewhere quick." Nick moves to stand beside him. "It's a nice neighborhood. Quiet. Friendly, but not pushy. C'mon, let me show you the house."

Peter glances sideways at Nick, whose small smile and slowly relaxing tension show how glad he is to be back, and follows him inside. The scuffed floors are of some dark wood; a living room with an overstuffed couch, chairs, and television are to one side of the entryway, a dining room with a dusty table and chairs on the other. In front of him, a steep and narrow staircase leads to an upper level. The place looks comfortable and lived in, with a throw blanket over the couch, small knickknacks scattered on the shelves, and books everywhere—lining the bookcases, stacked on the floor, piled on tables.

Not the paramilitary installation he'd been expecting, but a home, with Peter about to play the role of the barely welcome house guest. He hasn't stayed in a place that looked this comfortably lived in since his father died.

He'd have preferred the isolated compound and the austere little cell he'd been envisioning.

"Kitchen's in the back, bedrooms are upstairs." Nick gestures towards each with a casual wave. "Basement's outfitted with weights, punching bag, and a sparring mat. Third bedroom's free, at the front left of the house; stuck a bed in there when we knew we were retrieving you. Jones' people will send out your stuff in a few days. Let me know if you need anything else."

Olivia brushes past them, scoops up the backpack beside the door. "I've got class. Nick?"

"I'll keep an eye out."

"Good."

Peter watches her head for the car before asking, "Class? Like, going-to-school type class?"

"Our orders are to blend in and look normal when not on assignment. According to her, college is normal."

"She make you go to class, too?"

"She makes me register. Occasionally I show up." Apparently the tour of the house is finished, because Nick thumps down on the couch and grabs the remote from the coffee table. "And we're not assassins. Or terrorists."

"No," Peter says, mocking. "You're soldiers on the side of the angels fighting a war against another dimension."

"Yup."

"Bullshit."

"Believe what you want." Nick shrugs, then flips on the television and holds up a Nintendo 64 controller. "Golden Eye?"

Peter settles beside him on the couch. "Badass soldiers play video games?"

Nick tosses him the other controller and offers up a cocky grin. "Badass soldiers kick ass at video games."

~***~

Video games quickly become ritual, a form of bonding between him and Nick. Although Olivia still barely acknowledges Peter's alive, she thaws enough to blitz in occasionally, grab a controller long enough to frag both their asses, then whirl out. Nick observes, amused, that she's only deigning to play the games she knows she can kill them on.

He and Nick talk more words in an hour than Peter generally trades with Olivia in a day, and when he airs his frustration with his current lot in life he finds Nick a sympathetic ear to vent at. Peter watches to make sure he doesn't reveal anything too incriminating, but he keeps up with the sarcastic commentary about the joys of involuntary incarceration.

Besides, they would expect him to protest being here. They'll be more suspicious if he doesn't.

"She doesn't want me here," he mutters a week in, after Olivia once again abandoned them for class without a word towards Peter, although her displeasure at his presence came through perfectly clear. It's not that he cares, not when he returns the sentiment tenfold, but he has to live here and constant exposure to her keeps him twitchy.

"Probably 'bout as much as you want to be here," Nick answers without looking up from the screen or letting up from mashing buttons.

Distracted, Peter's swordsman dies a bloody death, efficiently killed by Nick. Tossing the controller to the coffee table, Peter shoves himself upright and paces from one side of the room to the other. Practically the boundaries of his life, these days. "So why the fuck am I here?"

"Following orders. Liking them's immaterial. Besides, our superiors have good reason." Nick glances at Peter, then back at the TV. "You really don't remember?" It doesn't come out quite as casual as Nick probably intends.

Peter debates, decides the information is nothing they don't already know. "Bits. Mostly, no."

Nick shakes his head and sighs. "No way you can understand, then."

"I understand I'm tied to her and don't even know why. Or even how."

"Trust me, she's as thrilled about it as you, and she doesn't have holes in her memory. You piss her off. She..." another glance, and Nick fidgets a moment with the buttons of the controller before continuing, "well, she doesn't do well when her patterns are disrupted, which your being here does."

Peter raises his eyebrows. He wonders what Nick's game is. Nick is on her side, Peter doesn't doubt that, but more and more Nick's been sounding like he's trying to elicit enough understanding to mediate a truce. Maybe he's as tired of living in the middle of an undeclared war as Peter is, or maybe Peter is just being played. No way to be sure, not when he has no idea what Olivia and Nick are capable of and if he can trust his ability to tell their truths from lies. "Do you spend your life making excuses for her?"

Nick shrugs. "You're stuck with us. I'm just giving you a heads up." He glances in the direction Olivia went, then back at Peter. "She doesn't precisely dislike you, y'know. She just doesn't know how to deal with you."

Peter leans against the arm of the couch and shoots Nick a look of disbelief. "Really? Because she does a pretty damned good imitation of not liking me."

"Her first impulse is to shoot things she doesn't like. She hasn't shot you yet."

"She wants to."

"No. Well, maybe. But give her time, she'll warm up once she gets used to the idea."

"From Arctic to just cold?"

Nick snickers, but looks vaguely guilty about it. "She's not that bad."

"To you."

Nick doesn't deny it, just shakes his head and goes back to the game.

~***~

It's two weeks before Olivia decides to stop ignoring his existence. She stalks into the living room and, hands on her hips, surveys Nick and Peter through narrowed eyes. "Have you two been doing anything other than sitting on your asses in front of that television?"

Nick smirks, not looking away from the screen. "Sitting on our asses in the kitchen."

"Or lying prone on the bed upstairs." Peter gives her a toothy grin since it generally pisses her off. "Been doing that for seven, eight hours every night."

She taps her foot, not amused, although her irritation isn't strong enough to push through the tenuous mental walls they've started to assemble against each other. She glowers at Peter and growls, "We're responsible for making sure your training is up to speed. Downstairs in five so I can see how much work this is going to be."

Peter waits for her to clear the room and head into the basement before turning to Nick. "She serious?"

"Not always." Nick sighs, perching the controller on the arm of the couch. "But yeah, we are supposed to be overseeing the holes in your training."

"What fun. Not only am I trapped here, but I get forced workouts as well." Peter rolls his eyes and slumps down, head tilted back against the pillows.

"Eh. You might be able to weasel them down to a couple days a week, if you keep under her radar. But not if you piss her off now. Better do as she says."

"Like you always do?"

"Do you really think crossing her is a good idea?" Nick gives a mock shudder and a sly grin.

"Personally, I consider pissing her off a plus."

"Braver man than I. Or stupider. Not really sure which, but I'm leaning towards stupider."

"I'm sure you'll find out which soon enough." Peter pushes to his feet, glances back at Nick. "How screwed am I, really?"

"Depends on how pissed off she is, but I'd say pretty damn screwed."

"Lovely." Peter shakes his head and heads down to his doom.

He's only poked his head down here once, on one of his earliest scouting expeditions to pace out the boundaries of his cage. The wood paneling makes the room dark, a trick of perception rather than reality since the room is brightly lit. Heavily curtained windows high on the walls let in no sun to supplement the overhead lights. Mats line the entire floor, weights on one side, empty space on the other, with a punching bag hanging from the rafters dividing the sides. Olivia is across the room, stretching, and Peter stops for a moment to study how flexible she is.

And fuck, but is she ever.

"Waiting isn't going to make it any easier," Nick murmurs, slipping past him. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't hurt you. Much."

"Yeah, like that's gonna do any good." Peter edges across the room, pausing before reaching the mat. Olivia impatiently gestures him forwards. Her stance looks casual at first glance, but the slight bend to her knees and her lightly fisted hands suggest otherwise. Peter steps onto the mat, ready for anything but staying well out of reach.

He forgot how fucking fast she is. He barely has time to blink, and he's staring up at her, the back of his head throbbing from where it hit the mat. "Fuck."

"Again." There's nothing he can read in her eyes or voice, nothing but calm in her mind. Even the irritation from moments ago is gone, probably appeased by the thought of giving him a concussion.

He considers not sitting up, but since she probably won't let his being prone stop her from beating on him he heaves to his feet and prepares to be dropped to the floor again.

She circles him this time, throws a few punches and watches him block them. He turns with her, not letting her out of his sight and keeping out of her reach except when she closes. Even her touch against him when she lands a blow isn't enough to give more than the quickest of glimpses into her head, and unlike anyone else he's tangled with there's no connection between what she does and what she feels.

After the third unsuccessful attempt to brush against her mind, she snickers. "You think I spar regularly with someone who can poke through my mind and don't know how to keep my opponent from reading me?"

"Would have been nice."

Tilting her head, she studies his struggle to counter her random flurry of punches and kicks. He feints left, punches, and she shifts out of the way despite looking like she's barely paying attention to what she's doing. "You use that trick as a crutch. Expecting to get a preview of what someone will do and use it against them. We'll have to break you of that habit; too damned many times something like that could be turned against you." She's talking more to herself than him, or maybe to Nick, who's watching from the sidelines. It's probably even true, but it's fucking annoying to hear her exposing his weaknesses.

The fight keeps on like that, her every move designed to dissect apart the faults in his response. She barely pulls her punches, keeping out of vital areas but landing blows that vary from stinging to fucking painful. Probably monitoring his tolerance for pain along with every other fucking thing.

He grits his teeth and thinks of it as one more reason to hate this whole fucking situation.

After half an hour of playing the cat to his mouse, she declares Peter barely competent at hand to hand, then drags him out of the house and to a private gun range a half hour out of town. Nick tags along—whether voluntarily or by unspoken command, Peter can't tell—and keeps up a string of dryly entertaining banter throughout the drive.

"Used a gun in the last eleven years?" She throws the question over her shoulder as she strides inside at a pace Peter refuses to run to keep up with.

"Once or twice."

Her sharp glance is disbelieving, but she doesn't comment further, just shoves shooter glasses, ear plugs, and a Beretta into his hands and points to the target.

The weight of the gun in his hand is reassuring if not completely comfortable. As he sights down the barrel, arms still aching from the unaccustomed workout, the urge to shove that smirk down her throat by showing off nearly overrides common sense. Instead he aims the shot off center. And the next, and every one after that until the clip is empty. Not enough to seem hopeless, but enough to obscure exactly what he can do with the weapon. Reloads, and does it again, with the target fifty feet farther away.

The wrinkles in her forehead deepen with every shot, and her eyes narrow. Her suspicion tickles the edges of his mind. "That's it?"

He holds the gun loosely by his side, finger light on the trigger. "You want something more?"

"I want to see what you're capable of."

He smiles, all teeth, and shrugs.

"Fine, then. Here, watch." She draws her gun, squeezes off a half dozen shots in quick succession, then motions Nick to do the same. She's a fucking marksman. Of course she is. Nick, though, isn't much better than Peter, even if he is one hell of a lot more practiced.

After the demo, it's a repeat of the sparring match. She runs Peter through his paces again and again, corrects stance and grip and all the while analyzes his every fucking move until he's beyond ready to drop.

Olivia's lecturing him about adjusting the placement of his feet for about the hundredth time when Nick, sprawled at the sidelines, interrupts with, "Olive, you're making me tired. Not doing any of us any good at this point."

She arches an eyebrow and rakes him with a haughty glare. "Do you want to take over?"

"Sure," Nick says easily. "Not a bad idea, actually, with you set on playing the whole dedicated student thing for all it's worth and finals fast approaching."

She opens her mouth, closes it. "Fine," she says, glowering at Nick, who grins. "He's all yours. Just be sure he's making progress."

"Progress it is."

She doesn't let herself be lured into conversation on the drive back, just deposits them in the driveway and drives off. Nick looks at Peter, shrugs, and they wander back into the house.

~***~

It takes time, but Peter learns how to reduce Olivia to the faintest whisper of a prickly and irritable presence in the back of his mind. Takes a shitload of effort to keep it up on a constant basis, but it's worth it to know she's not prowling about picking up God knows what and to avoid being constantly bombarded with how little she wants him there. The new barriers will become second nature soon enough, just like the ones he uses to keep from being overwhelmed by random emotions. Of course, if she's feeling something strongly fragments still leak through, but that happens more and more infrequently as she grudgingly starts accepting his presence.

Even without the constant glimpse into her mind, it's easy to tell when Olivia isn't happy, that's for damned sure. As her overt hostility eases he learns she actually can smile—at Nick—and even approaches charming. But not around him, not if she thinks about it. Except for their infrequent sparring matches, she goes out of her way to avoid touching him. He follows suit, gladly; if he gets too close, even his best efforts can't keep her out of his head. Or him out of hers, but finding out what she's feeling generally isn't worth it.

She welcomes the same contact from Nick she avoids from Peter, leans into Nick's touch whether she realizes it or not. Peter votes not; if she knew, she would make damned sure not to let the affection be seen. Olivia considers Nick more than a partner, more than a friend; their bond is closer than most lovers Peter's seen, and it's not just because they spend so much time crawling through each other's heads.

Peter doesn't have a fucking clue how they can stand it.

Life settles into routine. Nick initiates half-hearted training sessions every few days, usually in response to Olivia's badgering. Other than the occasional reminder to Nick about Peter's training and periodic assessment of Peter's skills—usually ending with him laid out on the floor and aching in muscles he didn't even know existed—she leaves them to their own devices.

Olivia attends class regularly, Nick irregularly. Periodically one or the other disappears in response to a call on the cell phone Olivia carries everywhere, although neither of them share the details of their missions. There's an unspoken understanding that Peter will be part of it when they determine he's ready—where 'ready' means 'when Olivia is willing to have him at her back', so sometime south of never, if Peter is any judge. And he's never left alone: someone—usually Nick, but occasionally Olivia—is always there, watching him. Making sure he doesn't bolt.

The only good thing about being constantly monitored is that he can't report to Jones without them knowing it. It buys him more time to figure out exactly how much information he needs to trade for his freedom and how hard it will be to dig it up.

It's weird, though; for the first time in years, he's not looking over his shoulder at every moment. There's something almost relaxing about no longer waiting for the past to catch up with him. When he lies in bed at night, staring up at the ceiling in a room that feels more like his than anyplace he's stayed in the past five years, he marks off the days until he can make his escape.

~***~

He's woken by what sounds like a screaming fight, although the voices disappear as soon as his eyes snap open. He sits up and rubs his eyes as traces of anger filter in. Olivia and Nick, engaged in some sort of argument and showing the first chink in the casual solidarity they've shared since Peter arrived.

This should be good.

He slips downstairs. He can tell they're talking about him but can't make out anything but anger and the occasional word until Nick's strident "I've told you, over and over, reported every little bit he let slip that I thought might convince you, but you just don't want to listen."

It's not a betrayal. It's not even a fucking bit unexpected, but hearing the words out loud are still a shock. "So you're reporting on me." He takes a breath, blows it out. Props himself against the doorway and crosses his arms. "Of course you are."

Nick glances at Olivia, shakes his head. "It's not like that—"

"Of course it is," Peter drawls, interrupting before the half-lie loses even that little resemblance to truth. "You're a team. Partners. Why would I expect independent thought from either of you?"

"Because you're so much better?" Olivia pulls her arm free of Nick's grasp, spine ramrod-straight. "Your only thought is how you can turn the situation to benefit yourself and how to slither your way out of it if you can't."

"Olivia," Nick snaps, his anger pulsing through his voice, leaking into the air. "For once, let it go. Leave him the fuck alone."

Olivia steps back, eyes wide in shock, a single surge of hurt escaping before she locks down all her emotions and smooths them from her face. Curious, Peter pushes at her mind, trying to see what's behind the shell. Catches another glimpse of her pain and a hint of despairing need before she shrugs him off with an ease that's infuriating.

"Fine," she says, voice empty, pivots and is out the door, out of the house.

"Oh, hell," Nick mutters. "Fuck." Peter thinks Nick's going to go after her—he sure as hell looks like he wants to go after her—but instead he shakes his head and collapses into a chair, propping his elbows on the kitchen table and burying his hands in his hair. He looks tired, expression in his eyes far older than his years. "Say it. Take your hit while you can."

"Say what? That I'm surprised? Why would I even fucking expect any different?"

"You wouldn't. You're smart enough to have considered all the angles. Just... make sure you really know what's going on."

Peter stares at Nick, but doesn't say anything, just wheels and retreats into his bedroom to lie back and stare up at the ceiling, wondering where the fuck the guilt, disappointment, and betrayal came from.

~***~

Things go tense. The easy camaraderie Peter had with Nick—false camaraderie, he fucking knew it was false, but it was something to distract him from the fact he's trapped in a situation he hasn't figured out how to win—evaporates. Now that the lies underneath his supposed friendship are exposed Peter's lost his taste for playing at it, and after a few attempts to convince him otherwise Nick leaves him alone. Neither of their relations with Olivia are any better; on the rare occasions she's in residence Olivia avoids Nick as much as she avoids Peter.

Peter puts up with the rising tension for a week before he can't fucking take it anymore. At midnight, after both Olivia and Nick have retreated to their bedrooms, he slips out the door, keys to Olivia's car in hand. The nearest bar is on the outskirts of what passes for downtown, and he holes up at a corner table to revel in anonymity and soothe his frustration with alcohol.

He's on his second beer when she walks in. She offers a friendly smile and a nod to the bartender, who greets her by name and doesn't try to card her. He can see the bared teeth behind the smile, although to anyone else her expression would probably pass as pleasant. She stalks to his corner and slips into a seat where she can see the room, the door, and him.

"A beer," he snaps in response to the unspoken accusation. He holds up the bottle as evidence, takes a long drink to wash away the sour taste of the walls closing in once again. "I can't go out for a fucking beer?"

"Sneaking out without telling anyone?"

"You would have nixed the idea," he grinds out through clenched teeth. "Or forced Nick to trail along. I wanted an hour by myself. You fucking try being watched all the time, see how you like it."

"I did." Her eyes grow colder, which he didn't even believe was possible, and he has to suppress a shudder as icicles of her rage shatter against him, fragmenting into resentment and betrayal. "From nine to eighteen, and a few hours most days in the six years before that. Not that you even remember the part you were there for."

"Shit." Closing his eyes, he can almost remember cameras and scientists and hours of tests. He wants to apologize but he doesn't fucking know why, other than the simple fact no child should be treated like that. "But be it as it may, it is not my fault."

"No. You left."

"That's on Walter. I had nothing to do with it. Fuck, he made sure I didn't even remember it."

She taps on the table, a complicated arrhythmic beat. "You took my car."

"Didn't want to walk. Don't have cash for a cab." And because it would piss her off when she found out, but she probably knows that one already.

She slaps her hands on the table. "Damn it, Peter."

"What?" He raises his voice, beyond caring whether anyone would hear the conversation. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

"I don't know." She gives an irritated look at the heads turned in their direction and scowls, folding her arms across her chest. "It wasn't my idea in the first place."

"Well, don't blame me, 'cause it sure as fuck wasn't mine."

"I know that," she mutters. He stares at her in disbelief and she throws up her hands. "I do. It's just..." she shakes her head and shrugs. "I'm sorry, all right?"

"No, you're not. You just wish I was playing nice and following your people's fucking program. What the fuck is your problem, anyway?"

She stiffens and her jaw tightens. A direct hit, and he didn't even need to tap into her head to figure it out.

"Fine." She flattens her hands on the table and leans forwards. "I think you're dangerous. If the organization wanted you, they should have kept you somewhere more secure until you agreed to cooperate, then only let you out on a leash until they were sure you'd behave. Putting you into the custody of two active field agents, no matter why they thought we needed you, was stupid."

She keeps her eyes on his, her frustration prickling against him as she continues. "I don't know why you're still here, but I don't trust that you're not going to leave the second you have a chance. If that chance comes when we're in the field, you could be endangering Nick's life. And mine. And if something happens to Nick because of you, I will kill you. Not quick, not clean, but as painful as I can make it." She continues holding his eyes as she leans back and spreads her hands wide. "Happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Do I look like I'm trying to go anywhere?" Peter glances pointedly around the bar. "I could be halfway across Illinois by now. And Nick I liked, before he confirmed he was ratting me out. But I still don't want to see him hurt, even with that."

She snorts, disbelieving. "Everything I know about you says you're looking for the way out and you don't care who you hurt along the way."

"Well, maybe you don't know everything about me."

"I know as much as I need to."

Peter laughs bitterly. "Sweetheart, you don't have a fucking clue." At least he sure as fuck hopes she doesn't, or he's looking at a seriously reduced lifespan. She hasn't said anything that suggests she's caught on to his ulterior motives, but that may not mean anything. Is she good enough to be playing him? Would he be able to tell if she was?

"Fine. Whatever. Don't know, don't want to know, because I don't think you're going to be around long enough for it to matter." There's no deception in her voice, and no answer to his questions, either. She taps her fingers against the table, scans quickly through the room before meeting his eyes again. "But don't take it out on Nick. He doesn't deserve it. It was my idea to keep a watch on you, not his."

"You really think he wouldn't have on his own?"

"I think if I hadn't pushed he would have kept anything you said to himself. He's good at keeping secrets." Sounding slightly exasperated she adds, almost as an afterthought, "And he likes you, God only knows why."

He blinks at her claim that Nick likes him and that she just unbent enough to tell him so. Could be a trick to regain his trust, but as far as he can tell she hasn't been lying about anything since she came in the bar. With a shake of his head, he retorts, "Since he likes you, I'd say his taste is suspect," but there's not nearly enough bite to the words.

Her hands still and her eyes narrow. "Did you just insult me or yourself? 'Cause I'm not sure if I should laugh at you or kick your ass."

He's surprised to realize his huff of laughter is real. "Fucked if I know."

They stare at each other, and Peter realizes he doesn't hate her, even suspects she doesn't hate him. She's as trapped as he, and just as pissed about it.

She catches the shift of emotions—he doesn't bother hiding it, just like she probably let her frustration with their situation leak through—and the side of her mouth almost lifts in a smile. "I'm too tired to kick your ass, anyway."

Raising his eyebrows, he mutters, "Yeah, right," and is rewarded with an actual smile, one that reaches her eyes.

"I'm getting a beer," she says abruptly, pushing away from the table. "Since I'm here anyway."

He nods, sipping his own beer as he watches her walk up to the bar and chat up the bartender, returning with something from a local microbrewery.

Their silence is almost companionable, and he leaves without protest when she finishes.

~***~

Tentative peace with Nick is made by settling beside him on the couch for the first time in days. Nick gives a quick sideways glance but doesn't say anything, just passes the second controller and shifts games to something that allows them to beat on each other. They've settled back into wary banter by the time Olivia strides into the room brandishing her cell phone.

"Nick?" After a few seconds with no response, she crosses her arms, tapping her foot and glowering at him. "Nick!"

"Five minutes, I swear," he mutters, mashing buttons furiously.

She stalks to the wall and yanks a power cord out of the electrical socket—going for the Playstation, not the TV, and Peter's damned sure the choice is deliberate—and the screen snaps to black.

"Olive! Shit, I was just about to beat his ass."

She grabs a black duffle from the hall closet, and starts shoveling in what looks like half their arsenal and a ton more odds and ends. "This'll take both of us."

They exchange a look. Peter's sure there's more going on than he can see but neither are leaking anything he can pick up.

"Not a good idea," Nick murmurs. Olivia cocks her head and narrows her eyes.

Nick sighs, sprawling out on the couch, and glances at Peter.

And Peter's on his on his knees, left wrist handcuffed to the old behemoth of a radiator, with vague memories of overwhelming despair that had short-circuited his ability to resist. Nick's apologetic, Olivia impassive.

"Fuck!" He yanks, but neither radiator nor cuff budge.

She holds up the key, then pockets it and returns to packing the duffle.

"Bitch," he snarls. He should have fucking bolted across state lines, not gone out for a fucking beer. And here he'd thought they'd reached an understanding, that he could almost come to like her.

She shrugs, unperturbed, surveying him with cool eyes. He stops struggling. He's not about to give her the satisfaction. Not now. Not fucking ever.

Nick glances at him. "Olive—"

"He'll bolt." The flat certainty in her voice pisses Peter off even more, especially after last night.

Nick raises an eyebrow. "And this will convince him not to?"

"He'll be here when we get back."

"Eventually—"

"Eventually is not now."

Peter clangs the cuffs against the radiator. "Get these the fuck off me.

"You don't get a vote." She doesn't even bother looking at him, just methodically finishes packing the bag with enough supplies to take on a military base. Which, for all he knows, she might be about to do.

He sneers. "Neither does your lapdog, apparently." Tethered to the floor, he can't look down at her, but does the best he can with sarcasm and a smirk. "What, sweetheart, scared of someone else being right?"

She turns at that one, meets his glare before shouldering the bag and stalking out the door.

"Sorry, man." Nick stares after her, shaking his head. "Three or four hours, tops. This shouldn't take long."

"Goddamn it, Nick."

"Nick."

A rueful glance and shrug, and Nick follows her peremptory summons.

Peter yanks again—the cuff bites into his wrist, again—then leans back and bangs his head against the wall. Fucking untrusting, control freak bitch. She's not leaving him here, chained like a dog, just because she thinks he should stay where she fucking puts him.

He leans to study the cuffs. Double locks, good quality, secured around his dominant hand. This'll be a fucking pain in the ass.

~***~

Thirteen hours later she strides through the door, stops so fast Nick nearly runs into her.

"What— oh." Nick leans over Olivia's shoulder, blinking.

Peter tosses the cuffs at her; she catches them one-handed, eyes never leaving his. The malicious glee of catching her flatfooted, of watching her poker face fray into shock, has just ratcheted up to one of his favorite things, ever. She's off guard enough that darts of confusion whirl past her mental walls, and he relishes every moment of watching her flail for solid ground.

"You picked the lock," she says, voice small.

"Easier than dismantling the radiator." He'd considered that, just for the hell of it, but then he'd have to put the damned thing back together. He pushes off the couch and swaggers into her personal space, making use of every inch he has on her. "Looks like someone didn't do her homework."

Nick slips past them, drops the bag in the corner, and leans up against the wall with his arms crossed. His expression is impassive, but his eyes are bright and amused.

Her eyes flick down, study the cuffs; she rubs her thumb idly over the lock. "You didn't leave." Her eyes rise back to Peter's and her head tilts. "I was sure you'd leave."

"And I said I wouldn't. Besides, you'd track me down." Not the only reason, but part of it. The part he's willing to share, anyway.

She shrugs in acknowledgement, but her brow is still creased. She glances at Nick, who grins.

"Told you."

"Mmm."

"You should listen to me."

She raises her eyebrows.

"Might be nice if once in a while you realize I have something valuable to say."

"Don't push it." But she gives Nick that small smile, the one that reaches her eyes and brightens her face. It fades as she glances back down at the cuffs.

Peter expected her to be pissed, not curious and baffled. It disconcerts him, so he pastes on his best knowing smirk. "Next time you want to cuff me, ask first." He fills the words with charm and sex, and accompanies them with a lecherous appraisal up and down her body. Not a hardship. Not a hardship at all.

She freezes, head lowered, looking up at him with wide eyes. He's sure she'll rocket from startled to pissed off, wants her pissed off, but her eyes warm and her lips curve upwards. "I'll remember that." Her voice is low and throaty, spiking an entirely unexpected bolt of lust through him.

Oh, holy fuck.

There's an extra swing to her hips as she saunters off, and against his will he follows the movement until she turns the corner, imagines their sway as she jogs up the stairs.

Nick moves to stand beside him. "As good as that look is on you, you might want to pick your jaw up off the floor."

"Just when I think I know what to expect from her." Damn, but her legs are long. And her ass looks great in those pants.

"Don't even think about it," Nick says, but from the angle of his head, Peter bets he's thinking the same damned thing.

Peter shakes his head and laughs. "Nothing in the world can stop me from thinking."

The look Nick gives him is unimpressed edging into dangerous. Maybe even a hair possessive. Or protective. Hard to tell with Nick, what with his emotions bottled as tight as Olivia's. Two months and Peter still doesn't know if there's anything more between Nick and Olivia than a very close friendship.

Doesn't matter. Won't matter. He does not care either way.

"I'm not stupid." Peter shrugs. "Or crazy." Getting involved with her would be both. Getting attached—to either of them—would be worse. He's gone as soon as he's figured out how to extricate himself.

"She's playing you."

Peter snorts. As if he wasn't quite aware of that without Nick's little heads up. "I just didn't know she was that good."

"You have no idea."

Peter looks at him sharply. Could be a double meaning. Could be nothing. Nick's expression gives away nothing.

Derailing that chain of thought, he asks, "Three or four hours?"

"Things went a little weird. And we didn't cause it," Nick says with a snort, starting to unpack the bag. After a moment Peter helps, coiling rope that had been shoved into the bag haphazard and looking in askance at cans of green and blue spray paint he was pretty damned sure hadn't come from the house. Of course, he was chained to a fucking radiator at the time, so he might have missed something.

Finally, when Nick doesn't add anything, Peter prods him. "Define 'weird'."

"Guy went invisible."

"Huh." He blinks, considers. Wonders how they dealt with it. Might explain the spray paint, actually. "Do things like that happen often?"

"More than you might expect." Nick shrugs, then looks up with a grin. "You'll find out."

"Really."

"We start training runs tomorrow, see how you handle being in the field."

Peter tosses the last of the miscellaneous crap in the box and shoves it back in the closet, then turns to Nick. "Seriously?"

Nick gives him a shit-eating grin and thumps him on the back. "I finally managed to convince her it was beyond time, although the fact that we could have used another empath to track the target did help considerably. You still being here when we got back sealed the deal. Congrats, man. You just graduated into the big leagues."

back to Chapter 1 / on to Chapter 3

Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (1/5)

2009-09-10T00:21:36Z

Title: Chain You Down (1/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 4060
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to crazylittleelffor betaing the entire thing.

Chain You Down

Chapter 1

Peter leans against the wall, idly watching and cataloging flashes from the blur of movement, snatches of the emotions that pull against him. Pounding music and gyrating bodies mix into a riot of white noise; strobe lights render the scene visible only a snapshot at a time. With visual, mental, and auditory stimuli numbed, the welcome burn of alcohol sharpens his focus.

He flags them as soon as they enter. Like him, they're dressed to fit in, but they're not part of the mindless crowd. Both blond, tall. Maybe brother and sister, by looks and the way they move, but they lean into each other with more intimacy than a normal sibling bond. A quick conference in the doorway and the boy peels off, moving deep into the club. The girl sidles up to the bar, eyes flicking every which way. Lock on his, even across the shifting bodies on the dance floor. It's a punch to the gut, an instant flare of attraction that curls lazily around the base of his spine.

He damn well hopes they're siblings.

He moves into the throng, and he can feel the instant her eyes break from his. She's still there when he pushes free, still studying the room. Still alone. Up close, he sees she's young, probably no more legally entitled to the beer cradled between her hands than he is to the whiskey he's been tossing back. Her hair is long and straight, her skin pale, and her expression flickers between predatory and uncertain.

He offers up his best charming grin. Her eyes dart into the crowd before latching onto his. Slowly she returns the smile. Not quite a grin, but something warmer than mere politeness.

The curl of attraction solidifies into something stronger.

He leans against the bar, doesn't edge into her space but puts himself at the boundaries. She's only a few inches shorter than he is, nearly meets him eye to eye. He can't catch a thing off her emotions and it's too soon in the game to touch her to try for more, so he'll have to play this one off body language alone. And that body language says wary but intrigued.

She just watches him and fidgets with the beer, not speaking but not going anywhere, either. He orders another shot of whiskey, waiting until the drink is in his hands before making a move. "You're not like the rest of the sheep," he says casually, sipping.

She goes still, stops running her fingers up and down the neck of the bottle, stops breathing, even. "No?"

He blinks. He expected amusement, maybe annoyance, but this is neither. Interesting reaction, like she thought she was fitting in and is unhappy to realize otherwise. He still can't get a whiff of her emotions but she's on edge, that's for fucking sure. He's going to lose her if he doesn't defuse this, and quick.

"You're classier than this crowd." A lame line, and he bets a pretty blonde like her has heard every line in the book, but it's the quickest thing he can think of to spin off of his opening.

Lame or not, she relaxes. Not entirely, but he'll take what he can get.

"Classier?" She takes a swallow from the bottle and tilts her head. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only the classy ones. Which," he swivels his head to scan through the crowd, then turns back to her, "yeah, you're the only one of those here."

She laughs, low and throaty. "High opinion of yourself or low opinion of them?" Voice and expression sell amusement but her eyes are watchful. Waiting.

Waiting for what?

And he fucking knows something is wrong. Instinct rather than reason, but the whole situation screeches something is off. He grabs her wrist, meets her glare with his own while he tries to punch through the walls shielding her mind from his and get a read on the situation he's been stupid enough to saunter into, but she's locked down tighter than anyone he's ever known. He backs off quick, turns to lose himself in the crowd, when he feels the sting of the needle against his neck.

Her partner. Her fucking partner.

His world slides sideways and crashes into black.

~***~

When he fights out of nightmare-laden dreams, he's curled on a concrete floor, head throbbing from whatever the fuck they gave him to knock him out and muscles protesting the length of time he's been lying on the hard surface. However long that has been, because he doesn't have a fucking clue.

Fuck.

He grimaces against the headache and stretches all senses to assess the situation. Nothing to hear. Smells of must and concrete. Flickers of emotion, but nothing close and no one familiar. Opening his eyes, he cautiously pushes himself upright and surveys his prison. Small, windowless room, the single fluorescent light centered on the ceiling doing no justice to the green-tinged beige of the cinderblock walls. No doorknob or lock on his side of the door, although their removal looks recent. A camera hangs overhead, blinking red light showing his every move has been recorded.

He circles the room, twice, resists the urge to pound the walls. Ignores the camera. Mostly. No fucking way he can take it apart and turn it into a weapon before they come to stop him. The camera will tell them—whoever the fuck "them" are—that he's awake, whether he fucks with its circuitry or not.

He studies those flickers of human life, combing through for any indication of what the hell is going on. Determination, some amusement, satisfaction of a job well done. No images carried on the tide of emotion, no sense of the person behind them. Nothing he can fucking use. Whoever these people are, they keep themselves from leaking their feelings all over the fucking place.

There's no telling how long until the bastards choose to make themselves known. He leans against the wall opposite the door and taps against the concrete. Who the hell did he piss off enough to warrant this? Big Eddie's reach doesn't go much beyond Boston, certainly not all the way to the West Coast, at least Peter doesn't fucking think. And he's kept his head down—mostly— since he bolted from New England because attention from the mob drew attention from the sorts of people his father spent years disentangling him from.

The sorts he's pretty damned sure just grabbed him. It's the only thing that makes sense.

When he gets out of this mess, he's going to find out who the hell ratted him out and make them pay. He has no illusions. The problem with developing a web of contacts from the less than savory side of life is that too many people recognize him and too few people are above being bought. While he delayed the inevitable by staying a moving target, only luck has kept him free for five years. Luck that just ran out.

It would help, though, if he remembered more about who the fucking hell these people were, something more detailed than his father's insistence they were dangerous and not to be trusted. Given that Walter got himself murdered, his concerns were probably more than paranoid rantings, but it's still shit to go on. His father had been one of them until dire consequences to his son had outweighed the potential knowledge to be gained, and if Walter had backed away, whatever had happened was pretty fucking dire.

It would be useful if Peter could remember more than maddening fragments, but that's all he has left. Partly because he was young, partly because his father, in his infinite wisdom, buried the memories. Not erased—Walter had been adamant about that, insisted eliminating them would cause a whole fuckload of other problems, and not just for Peter—but hidden so deep whole chunks of time are blank. Until something triggers a memory, and even then nine times out of ten the flashes are more frustrating than helpful.

From those scattershot memories and his father's ramblings he's pieced together that he'd been some sort of guinea pig in a series of undoubtedly illegal human trials. His ability to tune in on people's emotions is a pretty fucking big clue something had been done to him. "An unexpected and unintended side effect," Walter said on one of the rare occasions he could be badgered into talking about the past, and his expression had been haunted. But while it suggests a whole hell of a lot about why they might want Peter, it doesn't say a fucking thing about who they are and why they conducted the experiments in the first place.

The only way he'll find out is to wait and see. He slides to the ground and rests his hands on his knees. Conserving energy and waiting for the right opportunity are second nature, even if he doesn't fucking like it.

His stomach is grumbling by the time he feels them coming down the hall. Two men, one unhappy, one impassive. The lock snicks open and Grumpy and Impassive fill the doorway. Big, armed. The muscle.

Peter doesn't move. "Room service at last? About fucking time."

"He wants to talk to you."

"He who?"

Neither answers. Grumpy motions him out, one hand on his gun in warning; the flashes Peter reads say he'll be happy to use it if he has to. Impassive is bored.

Peter clambers to his feet, studying them. They move like they know how to use their muscle to their best advantage—professional leg breakers, maybe—but not like they've worked together. He debates making a break for it, discards the thought as stupid. Not yet. Not while they're expecting it.

As he steps out they fall in next to him, herd him down a maze of hallways as unmemorable as the impromptu cell. He forgoes even the pretense of mental barriers in order to soak up each little emotional twitch he can turn against them.

They push him into the middle of a room with the same decorator as the one he just left. Maybe thirty feet square, no windows, only door the one he came in. Probably soundproof, if the thickness of the doors and walls is any indication. A man he doesn't recognize sits at a table on the far side, drinking from a china cup. Two familiar blonds flank him, guns openly carried at their sides. Peter can't read anything off of the man—the boss, probably, given the deference with which the two at his side address him—and the blonds are as impenetrable as they were in the club.

"Mr. Bishop." The man smiles and puts down his cup, tugs lightly at the sleeves of the jacket of his well-tailored suit. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. I apologize for bringing you here in such a manner, but you have proven a very difficult man to contact."

Peter crosses his arms across his chest and squares his shoulders. "So you kidnapped me to have a little chat?"

The man shrugs. "I deemed it the best way to ensure your attention."

"You could have called."

"And you would have left without a forwarding address."

Peter smiles tightly, watching the blonds playing bodyguard watch him and wondering what their usual role is. Unlike Grumpy and Impassive, they're not two yahoos yoked together for the duration of the job, but professionals used to working together. They show an awareness of each other that suggests a long partnership, and that just doesn't compute with their youth.

Not that whoever—or whatever—they are matters. When Peter gets out of here, he'll make damned sure to bury himself so deep they won't have a fucking chance at finding him again.

After a moment the boss continues. "I am David Robert Jones. I believe you're acquainted with Miss Dunham and Mr. Lane." Jones watches him closely. Peter has no clue what the fuck reaction the man expected, but he seems disappointed by the lack of response. After a moment, Jones continues. "Mr. Lane manipulated your emotions to ensnare you. It's one of his many talents."

Dunham shifts her eyes towards Lane in a questioning look. Lane doesn't respond, doesn't even twitch, but he might as well have shaken his head in denial. Jones doesn't catch it, wouldn't have even if he'd been looking straight at them. Peter wouldn't have, either, if he hadn't been so focused on them, and even then it's just the faintest of hints.

She gets the message loud and clear, and looks disconcerted.

Whatever Jones thought they'd done, they didn't. And they didn't bother to correct their... boss? Mentor? He can't get a read on the relationship. He files the fact away, along with the additional confirmation that Jones has people with some sort of psychic abilities, exact capabilities undetermined.

The muscle is nervous, watching Dunham and Lane warily. Correction, watching Dunham warily. Concern, some outright fear, all directed at her. He files that away, too.

A quick scan tells him no one else is close to this room, all busy in other parts of the building. Grumpy and Impassive are paying more attention to Jones' bodyguards than to Peter.

Peter gives a friendly smile, one that forgives all transgressions and opens the door to further negotiations. Plants an elbow in the throat of Grumpy and grabs the man's gun, shoots Impassive. Peter's swinging the gun on Jones when it's snatched from his hand and he's shoved back into the wall. His world stutters into pain as his head bounces against the concrete, an arm at his throat and a gun in his face.

Expressionless hazel eyes stare into his and she leans into him, blocking air.

Annoyance and suspicion prickle against him. They're controlled ruthlessly, but as close as she is, her emotions curl through his skin and hum through his brain. A familiar hum, one that eases into long-unused pathways of his mind like it belongs there.

Eyes wide and hazel, hair chin-length and blonde. Terror and defiance, affection and amusement, dim flickers of thousand memories. "Olivia," he croaks out, blackness scattering his vision as Lane—Nick, his memories supply, her shadow and support all those years ago—steps up to touch her shoulder.

"Olive. Olive, let him breathe."

"You didn't remember." She barely breathes it, and shock surges off her, followed quickly by guilt and betrayal. She lets go abruptly and he drops, hunching over as he struggles for air. "How can you not remember?"

His head fucking hurts and his lungs burn. The pain distracts him, and it's seconds before he realizes that while her emotions twist through him, she's returning the favor. He locks down, barricading his mind against further intrusion, and uses the wall to prop himself up as he pushes to his feet.

No one's ever turned his trick back on him. What pisses him off more is that having her in his head feels so damned familiar.

Nick's hand rests on her shoulder; her head is cocked towards him, eyes slightly unfocused as if she's listening. Gun's still pointed at Peter, so he doesn't move. He's not underestimating her this time.

"Please forgive Miss Dunham. She gets a trifle... enthusiastic."

Peter doesn't miss the trace of rebuke in Jones' tone. Neither does Olivia, who backs up three steps and ducks her head slightly. Still watching Peter, but watching Jones as well.

"I think," says Jones, eyes steady on Olivia, "it would be best if Mr. Bishop and I had a private discussion."

"Sir," she says, low and intense, turns a half step towards Jones. Nick's eyes stay on Peter, keeping watch while his partner isn't.

"He won't hurt me." Jones also watches Peter, assessing. "He values his own life too much to take the chance."

"Want to bet on it?" Peter snarls. Not the smartest of comebacks, not when it sends Olivia stiffening into high alert, her attention snapped back to him.

Jones just smiles and steeples his fingers. "Oh, I think you'll be very interested to hear what I have to say."

Olivia's chin drops further and her eyes narrow. "At least let Nick—"

"I need Mr. Bishop clear-headed for this, although I do appreciate your dedication to my well being."

She exchanges a look with Nick, then nods and stalks over to Peter. "Anything happens, I take it out on your skin. Personally."

He smirks down at her; given how tall she is, the slight dip of his head required isn't nearly as condescending as he'd like. "Any time, sweetheart."

"Separate corners, guys," Nick murmurs, a speculative grin curving his lips as his eyes flick between Olivia and Peter. "C'mon, Olive. You can taunt him later. Peter." Nick nods to him, pulling Olivia away and out the door.

"A cup of tea, Mr. Bishop?"

A casual question. No acknowledgment of the bodies in the middle of the room, like losing men is an everyday occurrence not even worthy of mention. Fuck, even Olivia and Nick hadn't seemed perturbed. That level of ruthlessness means nothing good, not for Peter. "What the fuck do you want with me?"

Jones raises his eyebrows but doesn't seem surprised. Or concerned. "Oh, I think you already have some idea of that," he murmurs, sipping from the cup. He studies Peter for a few moments—making him wait, probably some sort of point about who is in charge—then continues. "Or perhaps not, given Dr. Bishop's determination to remove you from the program. Is what Miss Dunham said true, you don't remember?"

"I know you people experimented on me as a kid." Not an answer, but he doesn't want Jones to know how little clue he has.

"Not... precisely, but near enough to the truth, I suppose. Dr. Bell and Dr. Bishop were quite the visionaries. You've met our greatest successes from the trials to date."

"The Bobbsey twins?"

"Closer than siblings, although not related by blood. During the initial phases of the drug trials, the children were partnered so they would always have someone to lean on. Miss Dunham and Mr. Lane's partnership dates back to that time."

"Good for them. What the hell does that have to do with me?" Other than that it was his father who tampered with them in ways they never could have understood, not back then. Peter should have fucking known. Where one freaky power came from others would as well.

Jones watches him steadily. "Miss Dunham's situation was... unique. While she was more than able to provide stability to Mr. Lane and his emerging abilities, it became apparent that the reverse was not true. So, contrary to established protocols, a second partner was introduced, one who was deemed more capable of providing the reassurance that she needed."

Cropped blonde hair and scared out of her mind; all he wants to do is comfort her and he's gratified and terrified when she collapses into his arms, the sobs tearing through her all but shaking her apart. He blinks and the memory fades. He doesn't like the sort of sense all this is starting to make. "Me. You put her with me."

"Very good. After you left she seemed to be fine, so we determined that your presence was no longer necessary." Jones sighs. "However, I'm afraid that our initial assessment of the situation is changing as they mature. With only each other to lean on, there are signs they are becoming... unreliable. Perhaps even unstable. Suffice it to say, their instability is not a risk we can take."

Peter knows all about eliminating risks. If no other steps can be taken to neutralize possible harm, eliminating risks usually involve a bullet and a body dumped where it'll do the most good. "And now you think my being here can provide this stability you're looking for."

"Precisely."

Peter takes two steps to the wall, turns and stalks to the table, sidestepping the growing pool of blood. Fingers curling at his sides, he looks down at Jones. "Let me ask you this. Why do you think I care? What's in it for me?"

"I take it you don't care about their well being?"

Peter shrugs and schools his expression into polite disinterest. "For people I barely remember meeting as a kid? Not particularly."

Jones lifts a manila folder an inch thick, flips it open. Pulls out a handful of photos and says, as he slides them across the table, "We're certainly asking nothing of you that you haven't already done during your rather colorful furlough."

Peter settles into the second chair before touching the stack. Flipping through, ice pools in his stomach. Surveillance photos of him in Boston, Atlanta, Savannah, Jacksonville, Seattle, and more. Not every place he'd been in the last five years, but too damned many of them. He hadn't been safe and hidden; they'd waited until they needed him before they made their move.

"Mr. Bishop, I have a proposition." Jones leans forwards slightly, eyes intent on Peter. "As I said, all we have is suspicion that all is not well with our protégés as we've encountered some... difficulties monitoring them since they were sent into the field. If you can bring me evidence that Miss Dunham's control is breaking down, and that your presence has done nothing to stabilize her, I will consider your obligation to this organization to be finished and your life will be once more your own."

A combination of threats and promises, those Peter expected. What surprises him is the honesty behind the words. Most of the time, he finds it pretty fucking easy to separate the truth from the lies. Body language could be mastered, but emotions rarely lie. Even if he can't tell what someone is feeling, he can usually detect falsehood. Every bit of skill he's learned over the years says Jones isn't lying.

Peter does this, he's out. But it can't be that easy. "And if I don't play ball?"

"Given the strength of the bonds that developed between the children, our experiences have taught us that if one partner is eliminated, there are... unfortunate consequences that force the elimination of the other as well. However, given the circumstances, if you help us we will make an exception."

As expected, if Peter doesn't play ball, he earns himself a summary execution.

But only if they can find him.

"Let me get this straight," he says, buying time to think. "You want me to spy on them."

"I want you to become a part of their team," Jones corrects. "You will also give me regular reports on their behavior."

"Do they know?" Peter jerks his head in the direction of the door, where he can dimly feel Olivia pacing and Nick leaning against the wall.

"That we brought you in to become part of their team, of course. The other?" Jones raises his eyebrow. "You would hardly be an effective mole if your targets knew they were being watched. If they knew... well, I doubt Miss Dunham would take it well."

If Peter talks, he's dead. Just about what he fucking expected.

He doesn't trust that Jones is telling the whole truth, but if Peter bites, he gets time. Time to plan his escape. Time to gain their trust and find out enough about these people to make sure when he goes to ground he stays off their radar permanently.

And until he can lay down an exit plan that has a chance in hell at working, he doesn't see any other fucking choice. He grits his teeth and concedes. "All right. How can I refuse your generous offer?"

At a gesture from Jones, Peter opens the door. Olivia sweeps into the room, followed by Nick. Jones gives them a curiously fond smile. "Mr. Bishop has agreed to join us. You can brief him on the details on the way back."

Olivia barely glances at Peter. Her expression is not happy; her irritation cascades through her emotions and into his. Nick, by contrast, offers up a welcoming grin and says, "Good to have you back."

Back it is. Back to something Peter doesn't remember being a part of, and for what he hopes will be for as short a fucking time as possible.

on to Chapter 2

Ficlet: Sandwich Mooching (Peter, Olivia)

2009-07-12T17:21:24Z

Title: Sandwich Mooching
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Peter, Olivia, Walter
Word Count: 661
Rating: PG
Summary: Olivia pries case details from Peter over lunch.
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: I had this mostly done in April, then set it aside. Finally decided it was time to dig it out and polish off the jagged edges. Thanks much to alamo_girl80 for the beta.

Sandwich Mooching

He's just started unwrapping the sub when she slips into the chair across the table from him, twitchy and intense and a little too pale, a file clutched in her hand. Her eyes flick down to his lunch, back up then down again, before she pulls them away and resolutely meets his eyes.
He raises an eyebrow. "You're gonna mooch off of me, aren't you?"

She blinks for a moment, mouth open, startled by the interruption of whatever she was about to say. "I—"

"Did you get lunch?"

"Um. This morning's meeting ran long. And I need to get this report done."

"Breakfast?"

She winces slightly and shrugs.

He continues to unwrap the sub and separates the two halves, lifting one half to his mouth and nudging the other just slightly in her direction.

Her eyes narrow. "Well, I wasn't." She grabs the unguarded half, bites down and sighs happily. "S'good. Thanks."

"I suppose you want chips, too?" He tears open the bag of Lays, puts it in the middle of the table within easy reach of them both.

"Since you offered." Her color's better and she's steadied.

"You gotta keep up your strength one way or another."

"Yes, because I'll need it while napping through this afternoon's budget meeting."

"Trying to dance around why the Harvard lab's a financial black hole?"

She chokes while trying to hold back laughter. "Point," she says when she stops coughing. "But right now I need the details on the Patterson case."

He winces and lowers the sub. "While I'm eating? Aww, come on."

Her eyes glitter with cheerful malice. "Report needs to get done. Before this afternoon."

"You're as bad as Walter. And after I shared my lunch with you and everything."

She pops another chip into her mouth and gestures for him to talk, amusement twitching at the corners of her lips.

He gives a put-upon sigh. "Gruesome plague details over lunch it is."

He keeps his answers to her questions brief and to the point, and she jots down his observations with a precise hand while finishing off her half of his lunch. Licking her fingers clean, she retreats to the corner and her computer to mutter over the details. He leans back and watches while finishing his own lunch a little less enthusiastically than he started it. Sans chips. She munched through the last of those while he was talking.

She's oblivious to anything but the glowing screen when he slips out of the office. Walter looks up from dissecting a mutant rat-thing from a case a few weeks ago, the reason Peter had left to eat elsewhere in the first place.

"Did Miss Dunham eat the half of the sub you were going to offer her?"

"Hush, Walter," Peter mutters, glancing back and allowing himself a smirk. Bishop: 1, Dunham: 0. Conning her into eating had been fun, but the woman really did need to stop skipping meals. He couldn't always be there to make sure food got snuck down her gullet.

Walter's watching with an odd little smile. Peter shakes his head and asks, irritably, "What?"

"You've always taken good care of her. Making you two partners was a brilliant move."

Peter rolls his eyes. "Because it was all your doing, micromanaged from the depths of St. Claire's?"

Walter's smile tinges with sorrow, and he whispers, "No, son. Not that time." He wanders off, muttering under his breath as he walks away from the stripped open corpses to tinker with something across the lab.

Peter stares after him, drumming his fingers absently against the top of the lab bench. Something in the tone of his father's voice... Shadows move in Peter's mind, echoes of memories he can almost recall.

The sound of glass crashing to the floor derails his contemplation. "Walter!" he snaps with more amused tolerance than irritation. Leaving the past to the past, he goes to see what mess he gets to put right this time.

Fic: In This Together (Peter, Olivia)

2009-07-10T19:12:18Z

Title: In This Together
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Peter, Olivia
Word Count: 1268
Rating: PG
Summary: Peter comforts Olivia as she broods over the aftereffects of dreaming Nick's life.
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: This was started the day after "Bad Dreams", as my reaction to that episode, and was promptly derailed by another story the next day; I finally got a chance to write the rest. Thanks much to alamo_girl80 for the beta.

In This Together

Peter knows from the beginning that this isn't going to end well. Olivia's not ready to talk and Walter doesn't understand the concept of boundaries, especially when he's got unresolved questions waving a red flag in his face.

Despite Peter's best efforts to derail him—and Peter pulls out all the stops, short of completely shutting him down—Walter asks Olivia thousands of niggling little questions, each more intrusive as the last, trying to piece together exactly how the bond between Olivia and Nick had affected each. She starts out restless, a feral glint in her eye, and holds out for five minutes—maybe—before she blows up at Walter and storms out of the lab, the door echoing as it slams shut behind her.

"Was it something I said?" Walter asks, blinking.

"Everything you said," Peter mutters, grabbing his coat to go after her.

"But I'm just trying to—"

"Can it, Walter." He turns, door opened, and snaps, "And leave her alone until she's ready to talk about it."

The wind rips at him as he stands for a moment cataloging every place he's found her in the last few months. She'll want distance. Space. He guesses the river, and he's right. She's huddled on a bench, the scarlet of her blouse a bright patch against the grey day.

She shivers in the wind, thin cotton devoid of either suit jacket or coat no defense against this year's mockery of spring. He shrugs off his coat, drops it over her shoulders as he settles beside her, and watches the river's choppy reflection of the clouds overhead.

And waits.

"I'm tired of other people being in my mind," she bursts out finally, sitting up and glaring at him. "I'm tired of not being able to trust my own thoughts, of wondering, 'Is this one John? Or maybe Nick? Which is me and which is someone else carrying me along for the ride?'" She settles her elbows back on her thighs and stares broodingly into the water. "At least with John it was my choice. My fault."

Peter studies the coiled tension that rides her frame, like she's about to jump up and run away from the fears she can't control. Or, more likely, jump up and confront them head on. She would, too, if she had something tangible to knock back. Or someone. But all the possible culprits are out of the picture. Well, except one, and if she's not going to bring up Walter's role in it all, neither is he.

"John's gone," Peter says at last, when he's sure she's not going to share anything else without further prompting. "And Nick's in a coma."

"But what did they leave behind?"

"Memories," he says firmly. "That's it."

"Is it?" She buries her hands in her hair, fingers digging into her scalp like she can pull out the offending images. "Is it only memories when I can't trust what's them and what's me?"

She almost manages to keep the near-frantic panic out of her voice, but not quite. Not if he's listening for it. And as much as he'd love to say whatever words she needs to bring her peace, he's not going to lie. Not if her worries could end up reality and he'll still have to look her square in the eyes day after day. So he admits, "I don't know," and hopes like hell her fears are groundless.

She jerks her head up and stares at him.

He rolls his eyes at her disbelief. "What? Walter's the one who always pretends to have all the answers. This is all so far out of my league it might as well be a different world."

She huffs out an almost-laugh. "And that has new and disquieting implications now."

"Tell me about it," he mutters. Hell, even without the implications from the ZFT manuscript, with everything he's seen in the past months it is a different world from the one he'd been living. And for her it's even worse. He reaches out, touches a hand to her shoulder, and she leans almost imperceptibly into his touch.

"I don't remember," she says, nearly whispering the plaintive words. "Nick told me he knows me, called be by a nickname I haven't heard in years. But I don't have a clue. Nothing. Wouldn't my parents have mentioned it? Wouldn't I remember something like that? Wouldn't I know?"

He debates, almost lets it drop, then chooses his words carefully. "I have... gaps. Places in my childhood I don't remember anything. And Walter as a father."

It takes her a second, and her eyes widen. "But he's your father."

"But he's Walter."

They stare at each other, and he watches her finish following the implications to their inevitable conclusions.

"Crap," she breathes out.

"That about sums it up."

Her expression is more sympathetic than horrified. She relaxes, bit by infinitesimal bit, dropping her hands back into her lap and slowly uncoiling under the relief of mutual understanding.

Neither of them is alone in this. It's as odd a thought to him as it probably is to her.

He clears his throat and says, "Look, can you do anything about it? The memories?"

"I don't know," she says blandly. "Isn't that what Walter was trying to figure out?"

He smiles a little at the trace of humor that finally brightens her face. "True. Okay, are they interfering?"

"Is thinking I'm going crazy interfering?"

"Crazing and functioning are not mutually exclusive." He doesn't add 'look at Walter'. He doesn't need to.

"No," she says slowly. Thoughtfully. She stares back out at the water, her fingers tapping at her knees. "Not once I got a grip on it. And some of them were even helpful."

"Look, we change all the time, right?" After she nods, giving him a sideways glance as she does so, he continues, "New memories and experiences shape us every second of the day. Just think of this as a new experience."

She raises her eyebrows, her expression dead dry. "Like mental hospitals?"

He snickers and nods. "Yeah. A lot like that." Although he doubts she'll learn to love it, maybe she can come to accept this as the new status quo.

She tucks the edges of his coat around her and sits back. "And if the 'new experiences' start overwhelming the old ones?"

"They wouldn't dare."

"Peter—"

"Then we figure out what to do next. We take this one step at a time." She looks like she wants to object; he shakes his head and rests his hand on hers until she meets his eyes. "Don't borrow trouble, Olivia, it's going to track us down soon enough."

"And it's not going to stop. As soon as we get our footing something new tries to knock us down." She sighs, her eyes haunted, then shrugs. "But you're right. I can't do anything about it." She slaps her hands against her knees and shoots to her feet. "Thank you, Peter," she says with a crooked smile.

"Anytime," he murmurs, rising to stand next to her. He's surprised and a little uneasy to realize how completely he means it.

She tilts her chin up to look at him, new determination in her eyes. "So Walter's interrogation might actually help?"

"Maybe. Or it might be a waste of time. With Walter you never know."

"I'll take my chances. At least it's doing something."

She hates to sit still. He nods in understanding and falls into step beside her. And together, they walk back to the place that might hold all the answers they need.
_______________________

Feedback always welcome. Concrit is love.

Ficlet: No Longer Fantasy (Olivia/Peter)

2009-06-29T12:41:58Z

Title: No Longer Fantasy
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Olivia/Peter
Word Count: 765
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Peter finally gets what he's dreamed of.
Warnings: Smut
Spoilers: Season 1.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for Porn Battle VIII. Prompts used: imagined, reality.

No Longer Fantasy

"I used to dream of this, you know," Peter mutters against her throat before continuing down her body.

"Dream of what?" Olivia asks, watching as he scrapes his teeth against her breast. Her breath catches in her throat as he takes the nipple into his mouth, sucking gently; his fingers skim down her hips. He has this half-smile when he looks up, one devoid of cynicism or sarcasm. Happiness, maybe. And lust.

"Of touching you." He brushes one thumb over her nipple, the other over her clit; her hips jump as the sensation spikes through her. "Of tasting you." Still stroking lazy circles around her clit, he laps at the other nipple, licks down her torso, his stubble prickling her skin as he drops open-mouthed kisses along the way. Nuzzles her curls and replaces his thumb with his tongue. "Of watching you fall apart around me." Two fingers slide in and curl up, just there, and she's gone, arching off the bed and shaking and calling his name. "Of hearing you scream my name. Just. Like. That."

She can't help but snicker even as she still shudders with the aftermath. There's too damned much satisfaction and amusement in his voice not to. He slides his way up her body, grins down at her.

He doesn't grin often enough, and she loves the way his eyes light up when he does. She runs her thumbs along his cheekbones, to the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Does it live up to your expectations?"

He tilts his head, considering. "Well, in my fantasies you were less likely to accidently break my nose when I went down on you. When I make you come the jerking of those hips of yours is deadly."

"It is not," she protests, laughing.

He's laughing, too, and a knowing smirk twitches at the corner of his mouth. "Oh, I like it, once I learned to watch for it."

She rolls her eyes and pulls him into a kiss, tasting herself as her tongue dances against his. He rocks into her and she moans, wraps her legs around his hips as the heat curls through her again.

"Better," he murmurs, nipping lightly at her jaw as he withdraws, thrusts deeper. "Better than I could have dreamed."

"Sweet of you," she gasps.

"And true."

He's staring at her, and his eyes are suddenly so serious, his expression so honest, that she can't think of anything to say. She bites her lip and swallows, tries to tell him with her body how much he means to her, how scared she is of losing him. Her fingernails skate along his back, her hips surge to meet his. She grabs his shoulders when his thrusts become ragged, and he reaches down between them to press against her clit. She shatters, and she dimly hears her name on his lips as he follows.

He drops his forehead to her shoulder, presses a kiss there as he catches his breath. When he flips onto his back, he pulls her with him. She sprawls bonelessly against his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart while he runs his fingers through her hair.

She traces meaningless patterns across his chest, enjoying the feeling of his skin and the light sprinkling of hair against her palm. "What do you dream of now?"

His fingers pause, then continue, but there's something careful about the way he touches her. She props herself up on his chest and studies him. He watches her warily, hand stilled against the back of her neck.

"Peter?" She doesn't know if she's curious or worried, and her voice wavers between the two.

He doesn't say anything for the longest time, just stares at her with no expression she can read, then breaks the silence with, "I dream of forever. With you." He offers the words defiantly, like he's daring her to protest, and his eyes are guarded.

She blinks. Blinks again, tilts her head, and tries to figure out how she could have not seen this coming. If she even could have seen this coming. Peter Bishop always has had a way of turning her expectations sideways.

"Okay," she says finally, nodding, and curls up against him. "I can live with that. However long forever ends up being around here, anyway."

She can't see his eyes, but his shock transfers into the hesitant way he brushes her hair behind her ears and the amazement in his voice. "I'll take what I can get."

And for once, she hopes, they're both going to get what they want.
________________________

Feedback always welcome. Concrit is loved.

Ficlet: Inescapable Fantasies (Peter)

2009-06-28T20:01:42Z

Title: Inescapable Fantasies
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Peter, Peter/Olivia
Word Count: 509
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Peter can't get her out of his head. Episode tag to "Bad Dreams".
Warnings: Smut, swearing
Spoilers: Through "Bad Dreams".
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Written for Porn Battle VIII, but the idea has been lurking in my head since the episode aired. Prompts used: imagined, reality.

Inescapable Fantasies

Peter stares up at the ceiling, sleep not even a hope. Maybe Olivia will be able to find rest, at least, now that the source of her all too real nightmares has been put out of commission. Peter, on the other hand, may never sleep again. The instant he identified the sounds Olivia was making while held asleep by flashing lights and dreaming another person's life, he knew he was so fucking screwed. Except not literally, which is part of the problem.

Not that he's thought about it. No lurid fantasies of seducing her in her office, of her laughing and nipping at his lips as he kissed her, of feeling her fall apart around him. Not a fucking one, not that he'll admit to. Because she's a friend, and she needs all the friends she can get. Not another lover. Especially not him as a lover.

If only he could convince his libido of the fact. He's making an effort to do the right thing, for once; the least his body could do is cooperate. He does not need his dick informing him that she could be comforted much more thoroughly than by a simple hug or pat on the back. Neither does he need to be unable to sleep because the sound of her as she came keeps running through his head on permanent replay.

The occasional daydreams of her beneath him—on top of him, beside him, whatever—are bad enough, but now he's got a soundtrack to go with it, breathy moans that hint at what he might be able to draw out of her. Only hint, because he sure as fuck can do better than the poor kid whose quickie she experienced, but enough that those moans will haunt him, waking and sleeping.

When he closes his eyes he sees her grinning up at him, eyes sparkling and every inch of that pale skin bared. He pushes into her, slow and lazy; her eyes flutter closed, that damned moan breathing out from her parted lips, her fingernails biting into his shoulders. He leans down to kiss her, braced on his forearms so he can bury his hands in the golden tumble of her hair, and she rises to meet him, hips canting upwards and driving him deeper—

His eyes snap open the reality of the shadowed ceiling, to his father snoring lightly and shifting in his sleep.

Peter pushes his palms against his eyes and tries to wipe the images from his brain. So fucking screwed. And he can't even jack off to the fantasy, not without lingering guilt that he's somehow betraying her trust, and he has no fucking clue where that's coming from, either. He doesn't do guilt. Not until now.

He bangs his head against the arm of the couch in frustration, then pushes to his feet. One ice-cold shower, coming up. And maybe by morning he'll have figured out how to look at her straight without giving away what plays through his mind in the darkest hours of the night.
____________________

Feedback is welcome. Concrit is loved.

Ficlet: Need Versus Nature (Peter)

2009-06-22T12:16:23Z

Title: Need Versus Nature
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Peter, Peter/Olivia
Word Count: 754
Rating: R
Summary: Peter always knew this would end badly.
Warnings: Angst, smut
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Prequel to Another Stop Along the Road. Originally written for Porn Battle VIII. Prompts used: memory, loss.

Need Versus Nature

It's need that drives them together.

One fall evening, when the warmth of the day bleeds into chill and a particularly brutal case has stripped them both of their defenses, Olivia reaches for him, touches her lips to his in a kiss both hesitant and desperate. Peter catches her in his arms and deepens the kiss before she can think better of it and shy away. He steals this moment for both of their sakes. She needs to forget her world has shifted, that in her childhood is buried a forgotten history that winds around her to disrupt her life at erratic intervals. He needs to remember there is a reason not to run, that there is more in Boston than a twenty-four year old headstone engraved with his name and the sour taste of his father's betrayal.

He tells himself it was inevitable, anyway, that all they've been waiting for is the right excuse.

She leads him to her apartment, to her bed. Unbuttons his shirt with grave determination that lightens to a grin as he teases her, even startles to a snicker after a particularly outrageous claim. He skims her shirt over her head and settles his mouth over hers before the grin has left her lips, fingertips grazing over her skin and drawing forth a moan. Her hands settle on his shoulders and pull him closer, and she shifts the kiss from gentle to demanding.

She works the button of his jeans open, slips a hand inside to palm him, pushes him down on the bed while his eyes are practically rolled back in his head. Then she sinks down on him, around him, and all that matters is here and now. And it's all he expects.

But one night turns into three. A week into months. Whether he's tracing the curve of her breast or driving them both up and over the edge, she doesn't speak of the future. He doesn't ask. Neither do they speak of what brought her into his arms. When she's intent on losing herself in the taste of his skin and sating herself in his embrace, he's as committed to forgetting the past as she.

When he's willing to think, to consider the implications of this fling—he hesitates to call it a relationship, because it's so much more and so much less—he knows it's a mistake. Of course it's a mistake, one that can only end badly. They've done too much, too soon, and they're in too deep to go back. He isn't yet ready to trust her, not completely, and she hasn't mastered her fear of betrayal. But he's not ready to give her up, even if he's damned sure he'll be kicked to the curb whenever she's done with him.

If he closes his eyes when he kisses her he can forget that the heat in her eyes doesn't hide her anxiety that she's making the same mistake as with John, and he can set aside the bitter fear that she's right.

In the end, it's nature that drives them apart.

On the coldest day of the year, drifts from the snowstorm days ago still edging into the streets, an old friend and a scheme Peter spent years trying to bury come around to bite him on the ass. If Peter was just friends with Olivia he would have chanced it, told her and dealt with the consequences, but now he has too much to lose. She may be willing to twist ethics into knots in the name of justice, but she clings to her FBI badge with all her might. No matter how he might play consultant, he's still a criminal through and through with the sordid past to back it up.

The scheme ends up a case, Olivia ends up in the hospital, and the old friend—very deservedly—ends up dead at Peter's hands. And Peter's involvement in it all is exposed, as is the fact he tried to hide it.

She still needs him—to manage his father, to translate gibberish into useful information—but she's reclassified him from friend and almost something more to consultant and barely tolerated. The heat in her eyes chills to hate, wary suspicion the insurmountable wall she's wrapped around herself.

It's too late to run, so he stays, as grounded by her hate as he was by her touch. And every time he looks at her, he knows this was inevitable, too: that it would all come crashing down around him.
________________

Feedback always welcome. Concrit is love.

Fic: After All Is Said and Done (Olivia)

2009-06-04T23:30:45Z

Title: After All Is Said and Done
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Olivia, Peter, Astrid, Walter, Olivia/Peter
Word Count: 2083
Rating: PG
Summary: After four years, the Pattern is solved and it's time to move on.
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: As always, alamo_girl80 rocks for being willing to beta.

After All Is Said and Done

Olivia ambles down mostly-deserted halls flooded with light from the late afternoon sun. In four years the Kresge Building has become as familiar as the Federal Building, and she wants to make this final walk through last.

Four years, three months and sixteen days, to be exact. That was the length of time between being roped into a strange world full of the barely possible and sealing the last of the interdimensional portals. And now it's over. Fringe Division is closed down and their lives have newly become their own. Counterterrorism, while a good use of her talents, will be boring in comparison. New York is wonderful city, but it is Boston that has become home.

She'll miss the Division, and all the talented agents she's been privileged to work with. Broyles, who she started at odds with but who became her staunchest ally, is back in Washington already, enjoying a well-deserved promotion. Charlie, who without question and without hesitation always had her back, she misses fiercely; nightmares about his death regularly haunt her sleep. And there are scores of others, some moving on to new assignments, others dead, having sacrificed their lives along the journey to saving their world from destruction.

She'll miss her team even more. Together they've lived through betrayals from old friendships and testing of new, through everything the team knew of their lives getting wrecked apart and learning to depend on each other to put themselves back together. Through heartbreak and hilarity, and every other emotion in the spectrum. Astrid, Walter, and Peter have become family, and now that family is moving on, scattering away from Boston.

She smiles at Walter's name on the clouded glass, remembering as she opens the door the dusty and shadowed room she first entered, the lights that blew out when they first flipped the switch. Now the space is already half cleared out, more empty than it had been all those years ago. She knew Peter and Walter were debating putting the old lab in mothballs, at least for a little while, but she still aches at the sight.

Father and son bicker over some point about dismantling the electron microscope while Astrid packs glassware, carefully wrapping each piece before placing it in the box. They glance up when she enters; reflex, she supposes. How many times had she strode through these doors, bringing them details of a new case or badgering them about details of the one in progress? Hundreds, at least.

"Olivia!" Walter grins; Peter rolls his eyes, grabbing the metal cylinder in the hand Walter enthusiastically waves and packing it away. "Come to say goodbye?"

She leans her forearms against the metal rail and smiles. "And reclaim a few things I didn't grab last week." It's an excuse, she knows. Peter or Astrid would have been happy to bring her anything she'd left, but she wanted to see the place one more time, to say goodbye when the world wasn't at stake.

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" Astrid's expression is wistful. "I mean, that it's over."

Olivia nods, glancing around the space that has never looked this neat. "Almost unreal."

Peter looks up at last as he smooths down the tape on the box he'd just filled. "Just seems like yesterday we were dragging you out of the tank for the first time."

She laughs. The tank is still there, despite years of Peter threatening to dismantle it, and it will probably be the last thing to go. "And you were still trying to convince me it was a bad idea."

"Well, it was." He grins. "Just not the worst one you ever tried to coerce us into."

"You had your share of bad ideas, Mr. 'I'm sure this is a foolproof plan'. Aren't you supposed to be a genius?"

"Even genius isn't proof against occasional stupidity."

"Occasional?"

The grins they share are entirely too silly for two grown adults, but Olivia thinks they've earned the right to more than a little silliness. Astrid shakes her head and laughs. Walter's already moved to another part of the lab and is organizing bottles of chemicals by a system likely known only to him.

Astrid sighs as she closes up her box. "I'll miss all of you, y'know. I never thought I would, those first few weeks here, and I know this sounds weird, but this has kind of become home."

"Yeah," Olivia murmurs. "It has."

"We've certainly spent more time here than our homes. And since one of us has been splitting her time away from home between here and the Federal Building, that's saying something." Peter smirks up at Olivia; she snickers and shakes her head.

"Well," she says, pushing herself back upright, "that one who you're implying works too much better finish up so she can go home."

She pats Gene's nose on the way to the office and stops just inside the room. Most of the files are already in storage, the room empty without the filing cabinets lining every wall. She walks to the desk she had used so often, running a hand over the scarred surface. It's old, battered, and not very big. Not even hers; she shared the space with everyone in the lab. She'll miss it more than the spacious cherry wood desk in her office in the Federal Building.

"Hey."

Peter.

Her unlikely ally turned best friend—her confidant, confessor, and coconspirator through everything the world could throw at them—lurks in the doorway like he has a thousand times before. Her heart gives that annoying little flutter like it often does when he's near, the one that makes her want to say to hell with regulations. Would have said it if she hadn't been burned so badly the last time and if getting to the root of the Pattern hadn't been more important than her stupid schoolgirl crush.

"So you and Walter really decided to leave, then?" She gestures to where Walter is now micromanaging Astrid's packing and still getting her name wrong. The Junior Agent deflects him with the amused exasperation of long practice.

"Yeah." He shrugs, glancing out into the lab then back at her. "Long past time to be splitting town, at least for a bit."

She grins and tilts her head. "Running from the memories?" She doesn't ask if Walter will go with him. That's a given.

He laughs. "Well, I'd have reason. But no. Just remembering there's a world beyond the Eastern Seaboard."

"Many worlds."

"Only one I'm interested in."

The one he'd chosen to stay in. She doesn't know what she would have done if he'd decided to go. At least she knows they'll share a dimension, if not a zip code. Not that he's given so much as a hint what he's going to do next. Suddenly curious, she asks, "Plans?"

"Waiting on a couple things." He glances at her, opens his mouth as if to say something, then just shakes his head. "I'll figure it out."

"You always do." She's sure he'll land on his feet; it's part of who Peter is. "Be careful. Wherever you end up."

His smirks. "Oh, I always am."

Impulsively, she reaches out and hugs him, hard. He squeezes back just as tight, hands tangling in her hair.

"Thank you," she murmurs. "For everything."

"You, too."

She considers telling him how she really feels, but it would be unfair. The time to chance that was months ago, not as he's about to walk out the door to resume the life she'd unceremoniously yanked him from. She's kept him tethered long enough. It's time to set him free.

She lets go reluctantly, straightens the front of his shirt and steps back. "Keep in touch?" she says when she finally looks up to meet his eyes.

"Always." His reply is quick and easy, and his smile crinkles the edges of his eyes.

There's a crash from the lab, and they both wince.

"I've gotta—"

"Go. Before he decides to blow the place up instead of leaving."

"I so wish that were a joke."

"You know you'll miss it."

"Yeah, I will. But I'm not telling him that." With a last grin he spins off to cajole Walter into playing nice with the lab equipment.

She gathers up the last of her odds and ends and shoves them in her pockets, surveys the room one more time, then slips out the double doors that lead from the office to the rest of the Kresge building.

She hesitates, door in hand, looking through the windows separating the office from the lab. She should go back in, be there for one last round of goodbyes, but it's not like she'll never see them again. They're doing dinner in a couple of days—in celebration of Olivia's promotion, according to Astrid; in celebration that the fucked up shit is finally done with, according to Peter—and there will be emails and phone calls and maybe meet-ups on the odd occasion when they're in the same town at the same time. It's only this chapter of her life she's finishing, not everything.

With one last look at the place of so much triumph and tragedy, she shuts the door behind her. Her shadow stretches in front of her as her footsteps echo through the hallway.

"Hey. Olivia."

And apparently she's not getting away that easily.

She turns. Peter, backlit by light streaming through the windows behind him, leans against the door to the lab watching her. "Say—hypothetically—I'd asked you out. What would you have said?"

Her breath catches. She can't make out his expression, not with the sunlight haloing him, and there's nothing in his tone to give her any clues. She chooses her words carefully. "I'd have told you that we were colleagues, and that it would be... inappropriate."

"And if I were to ask you now?"

She hesitates, searching his face, but there's still nothing she can read. "I'd ask you why."

"And if I said that I didn't want to lose you?" He pushes off the door and closes the distance between them, stops just out of reach and rocks back on his heels. "And that I've been crazy about you for longer than I want to admit."

Breathe, she tells herself. Remember to breathe. "Just hypothetically?"

"No." He shakes his head and his chuckle is more than a little rueful. "No, it moved past that stage... well. A while ago."

"I'm due in New York by the end of the week," she says slowly. She's never been any good at this and there are only too many ways she could screw it up. At least if she does, she won't have to see him every day.

He shrugs. "Walter likes New York. He's told me. Often. Especially in the past week."

Which suggests that Peter had been feeling Walter out on the idea or that Walter had picked up on something Peter hadn't been saying. Her heart flutters. Damn it, she's a seasoned FBI agent who's coolly dealt with horrors beyond imagination, and her heart flutters. She looks anywhere but at Peter, because if he sees her eyes he'll be able to tell just how nervous she is—and being nervous is absurd because this is Peter, who's been with her through everything. Besides, hiding her nerves is a lost cause, anyway, because he knows her, and has probably pegged to within a hairsbreadth exactly what's been going on in her head since before this exchange even began.

She takes a deep breath and focuses on his reflection in the polished marble of the wall. "I thought you wanted to leave the East Coast?"

"I can think of a thousand places we could go see. This new job of yours does come with time off, right?" It's only now, hearing the teasing in his voice, that it registers he'd been nervous, too. Not anymore. He waits until she meets his eyes before moving, stepping close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body and his breath ghosting against her skin.

"Even when it did, I've never been good at taking it, remember?" A smile tugs at the corners of her lips.

Eyes intent on her, he smiles back. "Then you need someone to convince you."

"Yeah." Laughing breathily, she reaches up to cup his jaw, stubble rough against her palm. "I probably do."

He wraps his arms around her and closes the distance to her lips.

_______________

Feedback always welcome. Concrit is love.

Fic: Another Stop Along the Road (Peter)

2009-06-03T22:47:47Z

Title: Another Stop Along the Road
Fandom: Fringe
Author: chichuri
Pairing/Character: Peter, Olivia, mention of Peter/Olivia
Word Count: 1459
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Another reality's Olivia comes to Peter for help on a case.
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Thanks much to alamo_girl80 for the beta and for helping brainstorm all the myriad possibilities offered by the show.

Another Stop Along the Road

The persistent knocking drags Peter from the first sound sleep he's had in weeks.

He doesn't have to check the peephole to know who it is. He almost doesn't open the door, but he hasn't yet ground out that instinctive need to hop to her commands. She's sopping wet—strange, since he hears no rain from outside the window he left cracked—arms wrapped around herself and shifting from foot to foot. She looks up, and the wrinkles in her brow relax. "Peter."

The relief in her voice fucking hurts. Lacing his words with as much venom as he can muster, he drawls, "So, sweetheart, what brings you to my door at one in the morning?"

It's the half step back and defensive set of her shoulders that finally clue him in. The bewildered pain in her eyes just twists the knife of guilt. "Shit. You're reality hopping. And you don't have a fucking clue what I'm talking about."

Her brow wrinkles again and she stares out the window of the hallway, at the moonlight streaming through to make patterns on the carpet. He watches her as he hasn't been able to for months, her eyes distant as she twists the pieces and finds the order in which they fit together. "Walter's déjà vu."

"Yeah. The extended edition. Which means you don't belong here."

"How do you—"

"Because the Olivia I know has been skimming through alternate realities long enough to know what she's doing." He gestures her inside and closes the door, leaning up against it with a self-mocking grin. He doesn't trust himself to get any closer. "She also hates my guts, so the fact you're talking to me is another pretty good indicator."

"What?" She stares at him, eyes wide. Whatever other differences between there and here, she hasn't learned to hate him yet. Her Peter doesn't have a fucking clue what a lucky bastard he is.

He drops his eyes from hers and crosses his arms across his chest. "Let me guess, you're still doing it unconsciously? You're emotionally invested in a case, need information you don't have access to, and all of a sudden you've popped somewhere else?"

"Is that why?"

"Yeah. Linked to emotions, remember? So when you're all caught up..."

"I end up somewhere I can get answers." Dripping water or not, confused or not, uncertainty has given way to determination. She's finally gotten her feet back under her and he's not sure if he's happy she's found her balance or not. "So why am I here?"

"Fucked if I know. You're the one who showed up on my doorstep."

She rakes a hand through her hair, spins to stare out the window. "I needed to talk to you. I was worried, too, wanted to make sure you were all right," she glances at him, almost guiltily, then drops her eyes, "but I needed to find out about your connections to Mountainside Industries."

And there it is, the mistake he's going to regret forever. Months later than it had been in this reality, but his sins are still crawling out of the darkness to lay him low.

"What about them?"

"I need to know how involved you were."

He wonders what changed, that she's only finding out about Mountainside now. How their universes are different. He asks the question that, while out of left field for her, has been burning in his mind since he first realized who she was. "Have you two slept together yet?"

Her head shoots up, and she's glaring at him with equal parts offense and curiosity. He smirks. "That would be a no, then." Maybe that was it, the key reason he hasn't screwed up in her particular slice of reality. Maybe by not sleeping with her, by not scrambling to bury the worst of his past when he realized he'd fallen hard, he put off the inevitable for a few more months. But his screwing it up is inevitable, just as inevitable as his falling for her.

Or maybe the reason is something completely different. Either way, he still bets the Peter there won't be ready to tell her what she needs to hear, not until he's boxed in a corner and doesn't have a choice. And she needs to hear it.

"My involvement," he says, "and I'm assuming the involvement of your Peter, was as deep as it gets."

She flinches, just a little, then stiffens her spine and squares her shoulders. Her ability to roll with the punches even while her world is crumbling under her feet is one of the things he most admires about her, even when he's the one delivering the blow. Maybe especially then.

"I had half interest, up until a few months ago—probably still have it, on your side. Ken Stevens, who had the other half, became a very former friend." He regrets the fallout, but the bastard targeted Olivia as the best way to put pressure on Peter. Stevens fucking deserved what he got, and at the time she'd been in no condition to object. "Stevens will do whatever it takes. Don't turn your back on him, not for a second."

She just studies him, eyes flicking back and forth across his face. He doesn't have a clue what she's thinking, but whatever she sees leads her to the right question. "How far are you— is my Peter about to go to stop him?"

"As far as it takes." The smile he pastes on is more a baring of teeth, and he's sure more than a little of the rage he still feels towards Stevens is leaking into his expression.

She nods slowly. "All right."

"If I'm guessing right, the shit's about to hit the fan." The shift in her eyes indicates he's dead on. He hesitates, debates. It might not be fair to him—the other him—but ... "Piece of advice? Cut me lose while you can. When my past misdeeds catch up with me... well. It's not going to be pretty. It'll be better for everyone if you're not involved."

Better for her, certainly, if she's not getting the flack for his mistakes. Better for him? He remembers the day she found out: shock giving way to pain, pain kicked away by betrayal, betrayal darkened to hate. Anything's better than seeing her go through that.

"I'll take it under advisement." Not a flicker of emotion makes it into her voice; she's gone even more impassive than before. Ever the consummate professional, not giving promises but keeping her options open. Add in cold with the occasional flicker of hate, and she could be the Olivia who's across town, probably still combing through files on her latest case.

This Olivia won't listen. Damn it, he knows her, and she'll leap before she looks. And he won't be there, either of him, to watch her back. Despite his warnings—because of them, even—she'll go in hard and fast and end up in the body bag his Olivia had narrowly avoided. He strides forwards and grabs her shoulders, startling her out of impassivity. He much prefers the heated irritation of the look she levels at him.

"Be careful," he says urgently. "The Mountainside situation... it's a tangled mess. I never should have gotten involved. Never should have..." He shakes his head, swallows. "I was young and stupid and so fucking arrogant to think I had it under control. Just... just watch your back."

She backs up a half step, and he drops his hands back to his sides. He doesn't move when she walks around him, or when she opens the door.

"I'll be careful," she says abruptly. "And thank you."

He turns to her. She gives a slight nod, and then is out the door.

He catches the door before it shuts. Standing in the doorway, he watches her leave and misses his own Olivia so much it hurts.

She stops just as she's about to round the corner and pivots, catching him watching her. Her expression softens, and there's compassion in her eyes. "Peter? Give your Olivia time. Whatever happened, give her a chance to come to terms." She pauses. Looks down uncertainly, then raises her eyes back to his and continues softly, "And don't give up. She'll never admit it, but she needs you."

She waits until he nods—he doesn't think he could choke out a word if he tried—before striding around the corner, probably shifting back to her little slice of reality as she goes. He's left staring at the spot where she'd been, his mouth dry and hands fisted, propped against the doorjamb because he's not sure if his legs will hold him otherwise.

And wonders if she's right.
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