Fringe Secret Santa 2011!
Oct. 24th, 2011 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fringe_kinkmemeIn a festive mood for Fringe? For a gift exchange of fiction, art including icons, or vids?
Then you're about to enter the right universe:
1.
To SIGN UP, all you need to do is add a comment to this very post containing your request.
Sign-ups arebetween now and 1 Novemberclosed now. All the requests will be jumbled up and sent back out by 6 November.
2.
RESPONSES to gift requests are to be posted between 16 and 23 December --
ideally anonymously (with your reveal after Christmas, i.e. after 25 December, in your own fanspace). Two ways to do this:
a) Add your response as an anon comment to the request you've been matched up with. (For fic, that allows for roughly 3,000 words in one comment, multiples of course encouraged. Vids & art are trickier, but only a bit.)
b) Jot down the link to the actual response in a blog, on the AO3 (pseudonyms option suggested), or any other platform. (If you need an invite code for the AO3, tell us, and you'll have it in no time.)
If anon doesn't work for you -- no dummy accounts possible, or your working hours look a lot like Olivia's -- that's fine; post the link to your own fanspace with the response. Just, don't tell Alt!Astrid.
3.
Please don't sign up if you believe you'll be unable to complete a request given to you.
If you realise you can't make it, please tell us as early as possible, and we will try to organise a pinch hitter so that your recipient isn't left without a gift at the end of the fest.
4.
Now!
To join the exchange, post a request with the following information:
Happy holidays! And thanks to the ever-excellent mods over atsga_santa, from whom the template for this text is snagged with permission.
Feel free to snag this Fringe Secret Santa icon. More yet to come...
<||:)>
Then you're about to enter the right universe:
1.
To SIGN UP, all you need to do is add a comment to this very post containing your request.
Sign-ups are
2.
RESPONSES to gift requests are to be posted between 16 and 23 December --
ideally anonymously (with your reveal after Christmas, i.e. after 25 December, in your own fanspace). Two ways to do this:
a) Add your response as an anon comment to the request you've been matched up with. (For fic, that allows for roughly 3,000 words in one comment, multiples of course encouraged. Vids & art are trickier, but only a bit.)
b) Jot down the link to the actual response in a blog, on the AO3 (pseudonyms option suggested), or any other platform. (If you need an invite code for the AO3, tell us, and you'll have it in no time.)
If anon doesn't work for you -- no dummy accounts possible, or your working hours look a lot like Olivia's -- that's fine; post the link to your own fanspace with the response. Just, don't tell Alt!Astrid.
3.
Please don't sign up if you believe you'll be unable to complete a request given to you.
If you realise you can't make it, please tell us as early as possible, and we will try to organise a pinch hitter so that your recipient isn't left without a gift at the end of the fest.
4.
Now!
To join the exchange, post a request with the following information:
Blog: [DW handle] OR [LJ handle] OR [AO3 account] OR [ff.net handle] OR [...]The Fringe Secret Santa is open to fanfic, fanart including icons, and fanvids; on the fic side everything goes -- all we ask for is a minimum wordcount of 750, that kinks are tagged and warnings included.
E-mail: Should of course be working.
Things I'd like: Please request at least three things here...but ultimately feel free to add as many things as you'd like at this point. Doesn't mean you'll get them all, but there's no harm in asking, and it ensures you get a great Secret Santa match. If you'd like a specific pairing or character, then speak now or forever hold thy peace. Don't forget to ask for icons or vids too -- we all know the likelihood is low in a small fandom such as this one, but hey. Worth a shot!
Things I wouldn't like: If there's anything you wouldn't like to receive (pairing in a fic, French electropop for your vid, bright-green textures in your icons) then here's the place to mention it. Without character-, pairing-, or kink-bashing, of course.
What I can do: Are you great at a certain genre (gen, het, slash)? Are you the specialist for writing specific character/s or pairing/s? One of the excellent Fringe vidders out there, or an icon-maker with aspirations? One of the folks on tumblr who brighten every Fringe fan's day? As ever, specifics are great so your match brings you tears of happiness instead of, you know, the opposite.
What I can't do: If there's anything you feel you can't do, then please say so here. Same disclaimer as above applies.
Pinch hitter?: In the event of someone not being able to complete their gift are you willing to be stand-in writer, artist, or vidder?
Happy holidays! And thanks to the ever-excellent mods over at
sga_santa, from whom the template for this text is snagged with permission.Feel free to snag this Fringe Secret Santa icon. More yet to come...
<||:)>
Re: Snow and Lights
Date: 2011-12-20 08:20 pm (UTC)Class Twelve (Alt!Olivia/Alt!Lincoln; Over There in the Amber!verse; future post-"Wallflower")
Date: 2011-12-20 09:06 pm (UTC)CLASS TWELVE
(So you can read these almost 7,000 words in just one post. :)
Mod, please delete the anon comment? Thanks!
Re: Snow and Lights
Date: 2011-12-20 09:53 pm (UTC)I love the banter between them, Peter's well-crafted plan and his initial concern. Thank you for a lovely fic!
<3
Re: Class Twelve (Alt!Olivia/Alt!Lincoln; Over There in the Amber!verse; future post-"Wallflower")
Date: 2011-12-20 10:07 pm (UTC)Re: Snow and Lights
Date: 2011-12-21 02:05 am (UTC)Re: Set Us Spinning 2/2
Date: 2011-12-21 02:20 am (UTC)Re: The One Where Olivia is Bored
Date: 2011-12-21 04:40 am (UTC)Olivia's POV here is amazing - it's mostly Red!Olivia, but we can see all the bits of Blue!Olivia slipping through with her vision of Peter and her feelings toward her mom and her teammates.
Alt!Team is just so much fun together! I love the way they tease and gang up on each other, with caring right underneath the surface, like how Olivia wants to make sure that Charlie gets to have kids if he wants them.
Also, the fact that danger and potential death gives Olivia a kick because it means threesome sexy-times later - pure genius. Because really, who could blame her?
Turn My Heresy into Gospel
Date: 2011-12-21 07:26 am (UTC)written with invisible ink (http://invisibleink.dreamwidth.org/1511.html)
A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 1/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-21 07:10 pm (UTC)A/N: Picks up at the end of Novation and goes AU from there.
I blame this on marathoning entirely too much Farscape (is there even such a thing?)
One moment Olivia’s standing next to her desk in the FBI building, watching Lincoln’s back as he slouches his way to the elevators and trying to ignore the flicker of a shadow in the holding room’s door window, and the next she’s in Lincoln’s bed.
Or more accurately, in her bed. With Lincoln.
It’s definitely her bed with the rumpled white sheets and the comforter spilling onto the floor. The sounds filtering through the half-open window are so familiar it’s hard to pick them apart - the muted hum of early morning traffic from three stories down, the sharp bark of the Schnauzer in 2A protesting its owner’s geriatric pace on their morning stroll, the low wheeze of a bus’ brakes as it gears down to the bus stop at the end of the street - all too routine to be out of place. And the man below her, beneath her, between her knees and under the palms she has splayed across his chest, staring back up at her half-lidded and with just a touch of confusion wrinkling his brow, is definitely one Lincoln Lee.
She pushes back sharply and feels every point of contact with his skin; the crests of his hips where they dig into the backs of her thighs and the brush of his legs against the instep of her foot. The tug of him inside her when she moves is so unexpected it sends shivers up her back and makes her breath catch.
This is all too vivid to be her imagination.
He slips his hand from her waist and runs it down her thigh. His fingers dig into her muscle, slightly; enough to bring her attention back down to him. “Olivia? Are you alri—“
Olivia blinks and she’s back at the office again, sheaf of reports still in her hand. There’s a soft ding as the elevator doors slide open down the hall.
She leans back against the desk, closes her eyes, and rubs the bridge of her nose. When she opens them again, she’s still in the office with the quiet hum of the building’s air circulation system in her ears. She looks around, but there’s nobody close enough to notice the heat she feels on her cheeks.
She writes it off to fatigue, an intermittent state of being these last couple of years, because she will not allow herself to be added to the ever growing list of Fringe events. She grabs her keys and her coat, and takes the stairs so she doesn’t pass by the holding room on the way out.
::
It’s been weeks since Olivia’s dreamed of him.
Of Peter.
Not since before her trip to New York and his supposed Reiden Lake renaissance, that is. She was relieved that Walter was too wrapped up in his own existential crises to ask what exactly she’d been dreaming about at the time because she’s not sure how she could have self-edited enough to be relevant to the case. How could she explain that some nights she’d dreamt of coffee with this stranger on easy sunny mornings, and others she’d startle awake to find herself breathless, her heart pounding, with her sheets fisted between her thighs, woken by the rush of endorphins from her crest and her fall? She doesn’t have the clinical vocabulary for the ghost of his lips and the heat of his breath on her throat. And what did any of that have to do Walter’s visions, anyhow?
No, since Peter’s appearance she’s slept evenly, if not exactly peacefully. They maintain a comfortably professional distance; she checks her words, bites her tongue when she can see he’s feeling lost and her comments will sting him, and he doesn’t push her to be the woman he remembers. That’s why it’s a shock when she dreams of him like that again. In broad daylight.
Like before, at the office - one moment she’s here at the crime scene, crouched over a mess of human remains. Astrid’s arguing with Walter by proxy in one ear. Lincoln and Peter are tossing theories back and forth in her other. Police radio traffic fills the spaces in between.
And the next she’s in a vintage station wagon with the back seat folded flat and the drumming ting-ting-ting of rain on the metal roof. Peter’s hands are under her shirt, her leg’s wrapped around his thigh, and they’re making out like a pair of randy teenagers trying to beat curfew ‘round the infield to home base. She rolls her head to the side because Peter’s doing something with his mouth on her nipple that’s making her nerves hum somewhere in the high end of the FM radio frequency range, and she registers, very briefly, that it’s dark outside. The car windows are fogged completely up--
--and then she’s back, pulse pounding, blinking stupidly at Lincoln and his question that she didn’t hear. Beside him, Peter’s watching her with that eerily penetrating stare.
Olivia brushes the grit off the knee of her pants and makes some excuse that sounds feeble even to her about questioning the security guard again, just so she can grab a moment to collect herself. She can feel them both watching her as she picks her way around the crime scene tape and heads to the car where they’re holding the witness.
She does not fantasize about co-workers. She doesn’t. Not like this.
Sure, she’d had an impure thought or twelve when she was seeing John, especially back in the beginning when illicit was part of the thrill, but those late-night bubble-bath fabrications have nothing on this… this, whatever this is. She can still smell the metal tang of rusting old car and musty seat fabric in her hair and on the collar of her coat. She can feel the burn of Peter’s fingers along her ribs.
Olivia’s always had a good imagination, but even she knows that fantasies don’t smell.
And they don’t linger.
::
Maybe it’s Astrid’s less-than-subtle hints that she should think about speaking to somebody about the stuff they see on their cases that finally brings it to the fore. Or maybe it’s that she’s still getting snapshots of them together. Nothing so intense as the first two; flash-bulb quick images - of Peter backing her into the corner of her shower grinning like she’s just challenged him to a dare - in the middle of presenting a search warrant to building security. Or finding herself sitting on her kitchen counter, blouse unbuttoned and falling from her shoulders while Lincoln stands between her knees, tenderly kissing his way across the curve of her collarbone as he pins her hands to her thighs and keeps himself just out of her reach, when she should be sorting through decades old archives in the back room of the lab. Either way, Olivia finally admits that she needs to speak to somebody about this. These flashes are distracting enough that she worries she’ll compromise the safety of her team.
So she goes to see the best person she can think of.
“Walter, do you think it’s possible that we could still be experiencing time slips?” Olivia steeples her hands in front of her and chews on her bottom lip. Walter doesn’t answer, so she elaborates, “Even with Kate Green’s time chamber shut down?”
By some fluke or scheduling coincidence (and a bit of careful planning), they’re alone in the lab. Even Agent Tim’s on lunch break, shoved out the door by Olivia’s promise that she wouldn’t leave until he got back.
Walter’s up to his elbows in Louise’s tank, rearranging rocks and plastic sea-ferns into some pre-dictated pattern while the octopus hangs suctioned to the wall, way around the far side and well out of her intruder’s reach. “I suppose it’s possible,” he finally answers as he pushes up his lab coat sleeves. It’s a futile act though; his sleeves are already soaked, the water having been wicked up by his cardigan and dripped down from his bent elbows into a slowly spreading puddle on the concrete floor. Olivia checks, but there are no live extension cords trailing anywhere nearby, at least not this time.
“How so?” she asks.
“Hmm?”
Olivia rests her elbows on the side of the tank. “How can we prove the time slips are still happening?”
“Are they?” He glances up at her briefly then moves a couple of large shells into the arrangement. Louise moves along the tank wall towards them with what Olivia imagines to be curiosity.
The thing is, Olivia isn’t entirely sure the time slips are latent fallout from the Green’s experiment. She’s cross-referenced police reports and 911 call logs, expanded her search parameters to include an extrapolated geographical area that would fit with Lincoln and Peter’s map of time distortion events, and still she’s can’t come up with anything to support her theory. Not even a single reported case of déjà-vu.
She doesn’t want to admit that she isn’t sure that aren’t happening at all; the headaches she’s been experiencing lately are bad enough without the implication that she’s lessened her grip on the rest of her faculties. She shrugs. “Theoretically, then.”
“Theoretically?” Walter shakes the water off his hands and stops to look at her. Olivia gets the feeling that he’s really finally noticing her here in the lab Not just considering her question, but studying her nuances and body language. He’s doing what he does best when handed a problem to solve – he observes and assesses, catalogs and classifies signs and symptoms like the tightness she feels in her shoulders, or the way she’s got her fingers pressed into the glass wall of the tank to keep them steady. She tries not to flinch or look away.
He clears his throat. “Theoretically,” he says again in the authoritative voice he probably once used to lecture his students “one would need to collect enough sample data so that a proper analysis could be done to either prove or disprove the theory.” He goes back to fiddling with the rocks. His right sleeve slips into the water again, but Walter doesn’t seem to notice.
“What if there isn’t enough data?”
He glances back up at her. “Then one would have to design an experiment. Replicate the conditions under which the events occurred. Repeatedly, if possible.”
Walter looks down back down into the tank. “Oh look at that,” he points into the water, full of delight. “She likes you.”
Olivia follows where he’s pointing. Louise has edged her way back around the tank and has pressed herself against Olivia’s palm, tentacles splayed exactly along her fingers, only the thick pane of glass between the two of them. It isn’t the strangest thing she’s experienced in this lab, not by far, but Olivia no longer doubts Walter’s claim to the creature’s intelligence. She wonders what he’d say if she asked about its sense of empathy.
::
Olivia’s no stranger to the experimental processes, neither since joining Fringe Division, nor prior. Forensic and investigative procedures are but variations of the scientific method, after all.
The first thing she discovers is that she can’t force the flashes to happen, no matter how hard she tries, because as unsettling as this whole thing is, her interest has been piqued.
She waits until she’s alone with Lincoln, watching him perched on a stool at one of the lab benches, head bent over a pile of file folders. She wonders if the lean lines of his neck muscles would feel as smooth as she remembers. She wonders if Peter’s stare would burn quite so much if she were to lie beside him in the early morning light.
She concentrates and tries to imagine what it would be like to run her fingers down Lincoln’s spine, to feel each ripple and flex of his shoulders as she digs in the heels of her hands, but nothing happens. She tries to picture herself lying in bed next to Peter, watching him sleep. Tries to see herself running a thumb along the frown line that doesn’t quite soften, even when he’s relaxed.
All that happens is that her phone rings. She hardly has to will that.
Waiting has never been her strong suite. When a week passes with nothing, not even a flickering change of the light, she starts to consider Walter’s offer of chemical assistance.
And then one morning, the pieces fall together.
Olivia’s going over reports with Astrid when she hears them. Not hears them, as in she’s right there in the room having a conversation with them, but hears them. She looks up suddenly, but aside from Gene, who doesn’t have much to add to the case they’re presently working, she and Astrid are alone in the lab. Lincoln’s out chasing down a paper trail at City Hall, and Peter… well, she isn’t sure where Peter is; that’s up to his escort to keep track of him.
Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-21 07:21 pm (UTC)From the back room, Jefferson Airplane is asking Walter if he wants somebody to love at top volume, but for Olivia, that just blends into the background noise, the heartbeat of the lab, no different than the whirr of the centrifuge, or the grinding whine of the old dot-matrix printer as it spews out line after line of readings from whatever probe it’s hooked up to this week.
What doesn’t belong is the tight shriek of metal springs stretching and recoiling that makes her think first of the archaic trampoline they’d had in her elementary school gym class with its worn canvas and rusted steel frame that had doled out more than a compound fracture or two in its time. That, or almost every bed in almost every cut-rate motel she’d ever stayed in. Whichever it might be, the sound doesn’t belong to the lab.
“What is it?” Astrid asks.
Olivia almost asks her if she hears it too, but hesitates because in between the squeaks of the bedsprings (and she’s sure it’s bedsprings now), she hears breathing, heavy and hard, as if somebody's sprinting through the final straightaway of the four hundred meter dash. The temperature in the room goes up a few degrees when she realizes that it's not just breathing she's hearing, but that high gasp of air rushing past vocal chords stretched tight in pleasure. And then the throaty moan of a second voice adds itself to the mix.
She jumps at Astrid's hand on her arm. "Olivia? Are you okay?"
Just before her cell phone rings, she hears a third voice call out, higher pitched and sounding just slightly off from her own. Like the way it sounds when she’s listening to her voicemail greeting.
Except she doesn’t curse like that on her recorded message.
She waves a hand at Astrid, who doesn't look entirely convinced, and answers her phone without looking at the display. "Dunham." She smiles and hopes it translates so she doesn’t sound as flustered as she feels. She mouths ‘Don’t worry about it,’ at Astrid and turns to take the call.
"Hey," Lincoln's says. "I ran into Peter downtown. We're bringing lunch back. Got any requests?"
“You’re with Peter?”
“Uh yeah,” Lincoln answers. “Problem?”
“No, no problem,” she brushes a stray hair off her forehead. The voices are still there, quieter now, or maybe less intrusive as her brain tries to sort and prioritize all the stimuli. She hears words, but they’re lost under Lincoln’s as he asks her again about lunch. She strains to pick out the words, the tiny auditory details, hoping they’ll be some clue as to where they’re coming from or how she can control it, but there’s too much going on at the moment. It’s like trying to pick out two conversations in a crowd of thousands, and it’s making her head hurt.
Olivia understands now why Walter never said anything when he thought he was being haunted.
“…so Peter suggested Indian and said he knows a place you might like,” Lincoln is saying. She closes her eyes pulls her focus back to this conversation.
“Is he right beside you?” she interrupts.
“Liv?”
“Is Peter right beside you?”
Lincoln pauses. “He’s just down the hall. Why?”
But Olivia is on to something. She doesn’t have time to explain. “How far?”
“Maybe twenty feet?”
“Get closer.”
To his credit, he doesn’t ask why; he just does what she asks. Olivia can tell when he moves; the sounds get louder again, as if somebody’s slowly turning up a rheostat in her brain. They get clearer too. And then, just when she can start to make out the shapes of words, she trips over some threshold and in her mind’s eye she can see it too—
She’s lying on her stomach, fingers resting lightly on Lincoln’s chest, and she feels loose-limbed and sated. She props herself up on her elbows and leans over to lazily kiss him on the mouth, but when she looks up, Peter’s watching them both from his side of the bed. She follows his eyes as they sweep down Lincoln’s long, lean torso, then back up to the metal spindles of the old headboard. Peter’s mouth curves with suggestion and he doesn’t even ask because he can see exactly what’s going through her mind. She kisses Lincoln again, tugs at his bottom lip with her teeth in promise, then rolls over and to look for the jacket she’d shed earlier. When she holds up her FBI issue handcuffs, Lincoln moans his approval. Or possibly it’s his approval at Peter’s hands on his--
“Liv?” Lincoln’s voice, the one in her ear snaps her back. “Olivia? Are you still there?”
She pushes out a breath, aware that Astrid is still watching her. “Now go outside.”
“What?”
“Just get away from Peter. Go outside. I don’t care where, just move away from him right now.”
He does and the vision fades, followed by the sounds, until finally she hears only the nice, normal, familiar sounds of the lab again.
There is something about the three of them in concert, some link or bond that triggers these flashes, and she figures it has to do with proximity, with distance and yearning.
There is only one logical conclusion. She must replicate the experiment.
::
The first flash blinds her like an explosion just minutes after Olivia texts Lincoln and asks him to meet her at Peter’s place. She’s just pulled onto the surface road when she catches a glimpse of the three of them – Lincoln, Peter, and herself – in the kitchen.
It’s night outside, but inside, the room feels comfortable like a warm sweater and a familiar routine. Peter’s hair is tousled, a mess of cow-licks and flattened spots. He’s leaning casually against the counter; bare feet crossed at the ankle, a steaming mug of something half hiding that self-satisfied Bishop smirk. Lincoln’s propped on his elbows at the kitchen island beside her, shoulder pressed comfortably against hers as he points to Special Number Four on the stained and dog-eared Chinese take-out menu she’s holding…
Olivia flips on her hazard lights and pulls over for a minute to let the vision play out. At least it’s early and the traffic is almost non-existent in this neighborhood during the day. When the intensity eases and she thinks it’s safe, Olivia edges down the street slowly. She isn’t at all surprised when she rubs her finger against the pad of her thumb that she can still feel the greasy paper between them.
She grabs the first parking spot she can find, nearly two blocks from the house—
- and finds herself looking up at the plank-wood ceiling, watching the late afternoon light fall softly through the dormer window as Lincolns slips a drowsy arm across her hip and sighs against the nape of her neck—
She locks the SUV’s door with hands that are almost steady as she stabs at the key fob and notices that Lincoln’s car is already parked down the street. It just confirms her suspicion. She turns to look behind her and –
-her foot’s tangled in the sheet. She’s got a fistful of Peter’s hair and she’s trying to drag him back up so she can reach his lips with her mouth. She wants to draw the buildup out as long as she can… but she can’t quite because Lincoln’s behind her, one arm under her, the other skimming down her belly, and then she feels like something’s about to short-circuit as he presses his fingers between her—
Olivia stops just short of the porch steps to steady herself. She doesn’t want to burst in there, cheeks flushed, stumbling over her words in a rush, everything over before it’s even begun. She is a grown woman, and capable of a little bit of self-control, even if her grip does feel tenuous at the moment.
-and then she’s in the living room, undoing Lincoln’s shirt, button by button, while Peter brushes her hair back from her shoulder with one lazy finger. She can hear birds arguing in the tree outside the front window, their discussion dulled and flattened through the glass, and almost overwhelmed by the quiet in the room. Peter’s mouth on her neck is softer than she expects, his stubble long enough not to feel like bristles at all, but they send shivers down her spine just the same. Her fingers clench in Lincoln’s shirt. She pulls him nearer, until she could crush her lips to his, but she doesn’t. Instead, she kisses him slowly, gently, so she can savor him… see if he tastes like she remembers him to—
Her hand is on the front door knob when a car alarm goes off somewhere down the street. It startles a pair of Magpies who were dozing in the tree beside the front porch into a shrieking match. The feeling of overlapping duality practically crushes the air from her lungs.
-she enters the room and crosses the worn hardwoods towards them. The floor creaks as Peter puts his drink aside and rises to meet her. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise her, him being the first; she’s always has the feeling that he’s been biding his time… waiting for her to come—
They’re both sitting there in the living room, waiting. Lincoln has his tie loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up, Peter is slouched in the easy chair, foot propped on the coffee table. There’s a bottle of bourbon on the table between them. A third glass sits, still empty.
They’ve been anticipating her.
“Gentlemen,” Olivia greets them. Her voice is steady, and maybe a little cocky with the heady rush of excitement.
The floor creaks as she crosses the worn living room hardwoods towards them. Peter puts his drink aside.
She meets them halfway.
Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-21 08:47 pm (UTC)Re: Class Twelve (Alt!Olivia/Alt!Lincoln; Over There in the Amber!verse; future post-"Wallflower")
Date: 2011-12-21 09:42 pm (UTC)Now and Then - or how the Woolley Mammoth was Completely Wrong. Gen. Astrid, Walter
Date: 2011-12-21 09:55 pm (UTC)****
On her person Astrid carries a combination earpiece and camera Dr. Bishop married together, a gun, an FBI radio and a pair of runners she keeps in the well of her car seat at all times. She knows better than to wear nice clothing or even her most favourite shoes. At Walter’s behest, Astrid’s crawled through air ducts, along sewers, over bodies, and on one memorable occasion *up* a California redwood, balanced precariously between the trunk and a branch that was thick as a small tree.
Her breath had come in sharp bursts, almost asthmatic with fear; bark beneath her nails and nothing but a rocky precipice below, a forest stretched before her like the blurred strokes of an impressionist painting, a blotting of jade and olive green.
“It’s breathtaking,” Walter whispered in her ear and Astrid had stared, stunned by the vista of nature: by the sharp cry of a peregrine as it pin-wheeled in the dawning hush. It took a moment before Astrid comprehended what he said then she hollered, furious with Walter for making her climb the tree for no other purpose.
She had scampered down like a twelve year old, dropping from branch to branch, feet skidding along the ancient trunk until her toes touched the earth.
Astrid carries with her a notepad, a pen, and the unspoken knowledge Walter sees the world, its collection of oddball inhabitants, its frenetic beauty, while perched on her shoulder.
He sings sometimes, glam-rock melting into German nursery rhymes, his voice acerbic in her ear. Walter’s regard should pull Astrid off balance, tip her over the edge with a rush of vertigo, but she has yet to fall from the heights he entices her to scale.
__________________
2008:
__________________
“It’s not over. Reanimation of the corpse will give Agent Dunham some answers at least. We could attempt another joining of minds - “
“Walter,” Astrid says.
“Find out who else was responsible for the Flight 627,” Walter says frantically. “Seven hours at least before decay of the synapses becomes irreversible –“
“Dr. Bishop,” Astrid tries again.
“It can be done! You can’t send me back yet!” He’s circled the table twice, maintaining exact distance. There’s a wet spot near Walter’s crotch that Astrid doesn’t comment on. His reactions aren’t his own yet, mind and body divorced from each other after two decades of prescribed and experimental medication. “I didn’t fail,” he insists.
He looks terrified. The etched lines of Walter’s face speak of the contingencies of his release, none of which were met. Save John Scott’s life.
It was a chance to impress Olivia with his intellect and the final result was a cooling body on a slab. John never even awoke from his coma.
“I didn’t have enough time. Please don’t send me back.”
He’s balanced on tenterhooks, face grey as he twitches from her approach.
There’s something small, selfish, inside Astrid that wishes Olivia were here to deal with Walter, to assuage his terror, to look him in the eye and say *Sorry, but it was a good try, no guarantee there will be a next.*
“Walter, the decision isn’t up to me,” Astrid reminds carefully. “And Richard Steig is in custody.”
They have the culprit, just not a breakdown of chemicals used to infect the passengers of Flight 627. That too will come, through reverse engineering and patience, only too late to save their co-worker. Astrid’s uncertain what Agent Dunham will do – the state of her grief, the nature of her relationship with John at question - but if Walter breaks apart now, if he shivers and shakes, fails to produce *any* type of result, the end game is pre-written.
“If you want to stay out of Saint Claire’s, find a cure so this won’t happen again. Let Olivia have some measure of peace.” Don’t let her go back in the tank, Astrid encourages silently. She leans over the cadaver, curling her hands around Walter’s forearm and agrees. “It’s not over unless you want it to be. Give Olivia a reason to look at you twice, Walter.”
It should feel like an imposition, to reach out when there were other, more important people who slipped through Astrid’s fingers.
Walter says searchingly. “Who was it?”
Astrid startles, her fingers turn loose, opening like a petal. Walter doesn’t wait for an answer. Seemingly, he lost interest before the question left his mouth.
“I’ll need to perform a thorough autopsy. No further dalliances in the tank for Agent Dunham I’m afraid. Would you be kind enough to assist me?” He makes eye contact briefly before his gaze skitters away.
Where Walter was high-strung with fear, now he’s nervous with inactivity, vibrating with the need to prove himself, to make his presence indispensible. Astrid feels her stomach roll over. She has it on good authority a background in linguistics and computer science doesn’t qualify her for a human autopsy, the largest thing she’s dissected is a frog.
Her mouth opens and closes almost haplessly. “What’s my name?”
“Astrid,” he proclaims immediately.
He says it with a hard A and soft D, all the letters in between rushing forward in ambush. Walter reaches over John Scott’s body with his hand extended, the motion awkward; oblivious to the blood on his gloves. He says her name like he can ill afford to forget it. “It’s Astrid, and I’m pleased to meet you, miss.”
Astrid looks at the corpse briefly and blanches.
“Good to meet you too, Walter.”
His request is deeply inappropriate. Walter doesn’t consider the possibility they might have known one another (which in fairness, they don’t), but it should feel wrong to partake in a fellow agents autopsy. Astrid should look down and have an immediate sense of her own mortality, of the perils the job entails. Instead, she looks at the disease that has wasted John Scott’s body into a Halloween costume, (translucent skin, ivory bone, teeth visible), and thinks gross/squishy/I don’t think I want to touch that and finally, it’s freakishly brilliant. Suzy would have loved it.
They hull John’s body until it resembles a macabre canoe; organs removed, his rib-cage spread wide. Astrid weighs her pound of muscled flesh, jots down altering notes on his brain and heart function. Unconsciously, she starts to drift closer.
She has the sense Walter’s watching her, his eyes assessing.
“Relatively, they’re only separated by thirty centimetres,” he says imperiously, fingers gentle on Scott’s brain stem. “Thirty centimetres between the brain and the heart, such an inconsequential distance, yet sometimes it feels as if they’re miles apart.”
“I suppose. But then you’re a scientist, keeping heart and mind separated ought to be second nature.”
He stares at her, eyes half lidded, his lower face pulling into a patented sneer.
She can find no discernible pattern in the manner of Walter’s work. It appears he approaches a problem from above, below, side-on, and when none of that works, he’ll spin it on its ear and start over again. He works with a frantic undercurrent as if tripping on ideas.
“I’m not your common scientist.” Later he’ll add: “Keeping heart and mind separated was ever my failing.”
It takes Walter fourteen hours to find a cure for Disease 627, for the tension in his shoulders to abate. He looks at her giddily. “Can we tell Agent Dunham?”
Sixteen hours too late for John.
Astrid hesitates as she disinfects her hands, taking in Walter’s smile, how he seems to have lost years in the space of a scientific discovery. She can see him suddenly as a young man.
“Olivia’s at the bureau, Walter.” His smile dims, feet shuffling backward. “You’re welcome to come with me?”
In fact, Astrid hasn’t forgiven him for their first meeting.
There’s a darkening bruise on her lower jaw, her right wrist still aches from where she hit the pavement. She remembers the car; the way the snow had crunched under her gloved fingers, how the cold seeped into her kneecaps and how the breath left her body in a violent whoosh.
Dr. Bishop pales. “No. I’ll wait in the lab if you don’t mind.”
She grabs her coat and car-keys silently, makes her way to the door.
It might be easier to call Agent Dunham with the news of a cure rather than going in person; but Astrid wants to check with the older agent, touch base and find out what’s going to happen next. Is this a one-off or the beginnings of a division? Is she expected to work with Dr. Bishop every day? Churlish and brilliant, mad or a visionary? Astrid doesn’t think she can handle Walter alone.
She doesn’t think any one person could.
“Astrid,” he calls gently, before she vanishes out the door. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m not accustomed to the outdoors anymore.”
The thing is: Astrid forgets the curious case of madness that begets Walter Bishop is not anything she has experience with. His flights of fancy, unexpected rage are as sudden as a snowstorm, turning the winding roads slick, unpredictable. His moods out-of-control-fast as a speeding vehicle.
“I know, Walter.”
She finds Olivia at Agent Scott’s desk at the bureau office, hands flat on his table. Olivia’s packing away his belongings methodically, her eyes veiled as she regards Astrid’s approach.
“Walter’s found a cure,” Astrid states forthrightly then feels the weight of the sentence penetrate her subconscious because he *actually found a cure*. “Steig…?”
“Isn’t talking.”
Whatever their relationship, Olivia shouldn’t have to pack away John’s belongings alone, not the day after he died.
Astrid bites the edge of her lip and motions at the desk. “I could do this for you, if you want. I think Walter could use some reassurance that you’re not about to send him straight back to Saint Claire’s.” She smiles uncertainly, probing for information, more for Dr. Bishop’s sake than her own.
Olivia looks down at the half-open drawer. “There’s not much to pack away to be honest. I was going to take the non-essentials to John’s mother.”
“Oh.” The two of them fall into an awkward silence, the desk spanning the distance between them. She waits a beat before changing the subject to what (Astrid hopes) is a safer topic. “And Walter?”
Olivia’s expression turns flat, uncompromising. “My guardian seems to think we should hang onto Dr. Bishop for a while.” Astrid stares, nonplussed, before Olivia elaborates. “Ms. Sharp’s clearance level is higher than yours or even mine. She recommended Walter to begin with.”
It doesn’t match the script in Astrid’s head. She thought it was Olivia who found Dr. Bishop, searching through forgotten articles to discover an edge, her every act driven with purpose.
“This isn’t a one-off investigation?”
“No. It’s not.”
There’s something brittle in Olivia’s expression before it’s locked down. Too complex to read, woven tight as a tapestry. The overall picture’s coloured with annoyance, rich with resolution, beneath it, runs a weave of betrayal.
Olivia’s thorough. Astrid’s known it after a mere twenty-four hours in her presence, but she thought Agent Dunham would have been more curious about Walter.
Astrid shifts her feet and stares at the shoebox containing John’s belongings. “Were you close?”
Olivia closes the lid on Agent Scott and rises to her feet stoically. “We were partners. He hinted, but well…I wasn’t interested.”
That’s the problem right there, Astrid thinks unbidden. You’re not interested in much of anything.
“So I can tell Dr. Bishop to relax and not pack up the lab?” The anger sharpens her tongue. Astrid’s feeling the corners of her tapestry; trying to see the whole picture through the knots and tangles, through the broken weave; to shake it out into a recognisable pattern. Olivia’s done her best to avoid Walter so far. Bitterly, Astrid’s come to the conclusion it reflects Agent Dunham’s attitude toward mental illness.
Olivia blinks, as if the idea of Walter’s distress hadn’t occurred to her, she says slowly. “Of course.”
“He’ll be glad to know that.”
She thinks about the wet spot on Walter’s pants, how his nervous tics, his twitches all accelerated the moment John Scott died. How one kind word from Agent Dunham might have offset the trickle of urine.
Just a squirt, he had said, face closed to any sense of embarrassment.
Olivia regards her. One hand fists around the medal of valour awarded to John: he kept it in his desk drawer for luck.
“Astrid, you should be careful with Dr. Bishop. The type of science he practices, his code of morality, it’s fluid, not stable.”
He hasn’t practiced in twenty years.
Astrid stills. She sees a loose thread, tantalisingly close, something she could let her fingers catch on. “Maybe you should get to know him,” she suggests mildly, thinking about Walter’s cure, how Suzy’s mouth tasted like mint julep, almond eyes lazy under the hammock, her bare toes scraping across the shorn summer grass. Astrid understands prejudice. She recognises brilliance just as readily.
Olivia’s teeth show. “Maybe I should.”
The older agent brushes past her, John’s shoebox tucked under one arm, her spine straight.
There are two schools of thought regarding first impressions: one, the instant sizing up done in less than two minutes, without any factual background, is always, instinctively correct. Two: a first impression, while important, counts for absolutely nothing in the long run. Embarrassingly, it takes Astrid almost two weeks before she realises Walter and Olivia know one another.
Two months later they head out for drinks, and while Astrid’s speech becomes slurred, she remembers the edge of bewilderment in Olivia’s tone. “Nina had no right to foist Walter on me like that. She knew Astrid….she *knew* what he did to us. ”
Olivia and Walter were an estranged child and parent - connected with remembered history; their emotions a hodge-podge of suspicion versus protectiveness. Astrid says, tipsy with alcohol. “But you’re relearning him.”
Because Walter’s different; because Olivia’s resentment isn’t directed at him entirely: Olivia’s confession feels like a lance at a festering wound, at an unknown hurt not even considered by the perpetrator. Something Olivia doesn’t examine until she’s loose with alcohol.
“Nina should have asked me first.”
Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-21 10:00 pm (UTC)Re: Now and Then - or how the Woolley Mammoth was Completely Wrong 2/3. Gen. Astrid, Walter
Date: 2011-12-21 10:04 pm (UTC)Astrid sees the staff psychologist after her fourth case. She spends the interview rubbing her nape, feeling out the tiny prick of a needle-mark. She can hear Olivia’s voice in her inner mind, telling her not to trust Walter’s brand of science. She remembers the moment of startled terror, when his forearm snaked around her throat, body jerked against his torso before the needle slid home.
The staff psychologist isn’t located in the FBI building but situated half an hour away.
The agents may pretend to mind their own business but at heart they’re investigators. No one wants to walk down the long corridor to psych in full view of his or her work colleagues. No agent wants to suffer the flicker of second-guessing - is he or she okay? Can I trust them at my back? Can they handle this? – too human in its uncertainty. Astrid knows how the field agents work. She knows Olivia would be infuriated if her judgement were ever questioned. If Olivia were called to a psych evaluation, she would fear the mark on her permanent file.
Same as Astrid, personally, doesn’t care, happy to use the available resources if it means her *sense of judgement is never compromised, or questioned internally*. It’s an odd realisation to make – to see how differently they approach the same problem- unlike Olivia Astrid’s never cared about fitting in, unlike Olivia, it wasn’t written into her genetic code to blend in.
Chagrined, Astrid thinks none of this is easy. Its hard, blurred, like standing too close to a picture, she can’t see the overall tapestry through the weave. Their little unit of three doesn’t gel – Walter, Olivia, Astrid – are separate threads of opposing colour. She’s surprisingly hurt, considering how little she knew about Walter, and she’s angry, the emotion sharp on her tongue, like Olivia, Astrid’s now doing her best to avoid him. Walter used rohypnol to knock her out (available to him for his depression), and Astrid can’t grabble with the disgust/anger his actions warranted.
She’s aware enough to know this isn’t good for Walter, ignoring him makes her guilty as Olivia, but she wants the anger to burn true, until all the oxygen runs out.
Astrid only knows one other woman who was drugged against her will.
In a nondescript building half an hour away from the FBI office, Astrid doesn’t stretch out upon the couch, although the psychologist has one perpendicular to his desk, the leather buttery soft, inviting. She sits in the chair opposite, making eye contact
“I can’t look after Walter by myself. Olivia has issues with him that run a mile deep.”
“You’re not *supposed* to look after Dr. Bishop by yourself,” he says, while Astrid gives him the stink-eye. “Have you approached Colonel Broyles?”
“This is my first assignment,” Astrid says apropos of nothing, her fingers curl inward, resting against the worn denim of her jeans.
“Trying to make a good impression. There’s no shame in asking for aid. Broyles may even appreciate your candour.”
Astrid frowns, she lets her eyes drift over the diplomas, books, the bland paintings and mahogany desk. Olivia might be willing to clash horns with Broyles but Astrid finds him intimidating, not to mention her superior.
He senses her discomfit. “You could start smaller. Have you spoken to Walter about the incident?”
Which one? Astrid wants to say. It’s been four cases and the number of incidents has begun piling up like a car crash.
“You could address the issue directly, ask for an apology.”
“Walter always apologies.” He assumes responsibility at the drop of a hat. I’m sorry, forgive me, spilling from his mouth, eyes and hands imploring. She doesn’t doubt Walter’s remorse. It’s the realisation it won’t stop him from doing it again that gives her pause.
“He doesn’t think about the consequences.” Astrid says, tiredly.
Unlike herself, Walter’s comfortable standing where he is - frozen in place, so close his nose is pressed against the tapestry - obsessed by the small details, completely disinterested in the larger picture.
“Why should he, when he has you? Your endless patience for him,” he says, smiling gently.
Irked, Astrid can’t tell if he’s mocking her or not.
“It’s like everyone assumes I have experience with mental illness.” She can see the humour in his eyes, the rebuttal even Astrid can see, given her current location in his place of business.
“As if I own some magical rulebook with how to deal with Walter’s psychosis, and I don’t.”
It’s not fair, she bites back, because she’s struggling too, trying to keep up with science, human anatomy, Walter’s anger, the FBI reports, Olivia’s demands, and their moments of thoughtlessness.
“You don’t have experience with mental illness?” He actually does look surprised. “Not a family member or a friend?”
“No.” She thinks about Suzy, digging up bones in Afghanistan, patiently brushing the dirt away from each new tomb of horror, choosing solitude and the dead. “I understand prejudice.”
He blinks at her, mouth parted. He doesn’t take notes while she’s speaking, Astrid has observed, and wonders if he’s recording her instead. “Why does Olivia assume you have experience ‘in this type of thing’?”
“It makes it easier on herself,” Astrid decides slowly. “To believe I can handle Walter better means she doesn’t have to deal with him.” He tilts his head, his fingers beating a tattoo against the mahogany grain, expression unreadable. “What?” Astrid says.
“Why wouldn’t she want to deal with him?”
She returns to Harvard in the late afternoon, the sun streaming through the clouds and scores of students sprawled across the available grass. Inside the lab, Walter and Olivia are sitting together. Astrid almost trips down the stairs.
They don’t look particularly comfortable. Walter’s anxious, while Olivia seems utterly relieved when Astrid enters the room. “Hey,” Olivia calls, a little desperately.
“Hey,” Astrid returns, her eyes darting from one to the other. “Am I interrupting?”
“Walter was telling me about gastronomical worms in South America.” Olivia says in a rush, sounding pained.
“They can grow up to twenty feet long and are coaxed out of their human hosts by starvation. Eventually they’ll depart by climbing the gullet and exiting via the mouth. They’re quite slim, allowing the host to continue breathing while they’re extracted from the body,” Walter perks up brightly. “The two of us were having a conversation!”
“And a charming one at that.” Astrid can feel a smile turn the corners of her mouth. Olivia watches her pensively. “Coffee?”
“Thank you,” Walter accepts readily.
She leaves them alone, walking to the kitchenette, and listens to the cadence of Walter’s voice. Eventually Olivia joins her, washing a mug by the sink. She wonders if the three of them are orbiting one another, moving position, at equal distance and continually apart; if Olivia’s only talking to Walter because Astrid’s still angry.
“It was good to see,” Astrid offers, to break the silence. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you talk to Walter rather than *at* him.”
Olivia’s fingers tighten on the mug, long and delicate. Their interaction thus far has been limited to science and demanding answers. Astrid puts three sugars in Walter’s cup and takes the mug from Agent Dunham’s hand.
“You handle him well.”
Astrid straightens. She’s waiting to see if Olivia will add to the sentence, if there will be a qualifier, an addendum, when none’s forthcoming Astrid states honestly. “It’s a process.”
Olivia meets her eyes.
Junior Agents Tim McEvan and Allister Roberts start the next day. Walter tolerates Tim, hates Allister on sight, and drugs the unsuspecting agent only twice.
Ironically, Dr. Bishop yelps when he finds out about her trip to the psychologist. He susses it out after her follow-up session. “You’re seeing a shrink? Are you *mad*, you can’t trust them! They’re just looking for an excuse to lock people away!”
He instructs her on techniques to mask her emotions - to hide from a psychiatrist’s probing and impervious gaze (she doesn’t correct him, for Walter it’s always been psychiatrists).
He sits by her side anxiously before Astrid finally reaches out, runs her hand down his shivering forearm (he’s tactile, always has been, quick to hug or hip-bump her out of the way in the lab) and says gently. “It’s okay, Walter. You don’t need to worry about me.”
She knows the broad strokes of his history, she knows Walter lost a son; it’s the details she lacks. Walter doesn’t speak of his fallen child. The memory jealousy guarded.
Walter segregates his mind, boxes things away, buries them so deep the memory of it melts away in the darkness. Astrid doesn’t want to live like that. She wants to tell Walter to open up and breathe, to remind him immortality is only achieved through the telling of tales. She wants to say seeing a psychologist is a pressure valve, a relief, to let everything unspool messily, to have someone listening who doesn’t work in the lab. To not care how she sounds or censure her emotions. To Astrid, talking to a psychologist is like jumping from a treetop.
A rush of absolute freedom.
“You can talk to me,” he implores. “I’m a good listener.”
I don’t trust them, he means.
He’s absolutely the worst listener Astrid’s ever encountered.
She feels a smile tug at her mouth. The warmth unfurling in her chest is unexpected after the anger, making her lungs expand, the ache reminiscent of a diver breaking surface after being oxygen deprived. She cups one hand to his cheek, mouth tilting helplessly. “Thank you.”
Ironically, when Olivia finds out (some years later) she displays none of the prejudices common amongst field agents. She doesn’t question Astrid’s sanity, doubt her ability to perform her job, or make a single snide remark. Olivia’s attitude is questing, as if running a searchlight over her own mental landscape. Suzy, Astrid imagines, would have told her to read Roald Dahl instead.
________________
Re: Now and Then - or how the Woolley Mammoth was Completely Wrong 3/3. Gen. Astrid, Walter
Date: 2011-12-21 10:14 pm (UTC)______________
Astrid enters the scene with Ziggy Stardust crooning in her ear.
Walter’s in a good mood, seventies glam means he’s feeling feisty, he reserves the turntable, the glorious strands of an orchestra, for when he’s set on science.
Olivia turns with a small two-fingered wave, a brief acknowledgment of her head.
She’s engaged with a knot of men, their hard-hats marking them as either construction workers or members of the municipal council. Astrid turns her eyes from the small group and follows her nose, striding down the incline to where the mouth of a storm drain maws open – wet and dank - the air degrees cooler than the plains of South Dakota, from the morning heat rising from the pavement.
“Agent Dunham said you should wait.” One of the worker’s calls out, sliding down the loose gravel as he hurries to catch up. He has a flashlight in one hand, face shadowed by his hat.
“There weren’t no DJ that was a hazy cosmic jive,” Walter mutters in her ear.
Astrid croons in perfect harmony. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come meet us, but he thinks he’ll blow our minds.”
The construction worker, Astrid reads, isn’t a Ziggy Stardust fan. He holds up his flashlight and flicks it on, eyes darting over Astrid’s form dubiously.
“The object is a fair distance down the rabbit-hole, miss. We left it untouched as per the FBI’s instructions, but there’s a fair amount of damage done to the structural integrity of the tunnel.”
“Safe for entry?”
“At the moment. The storm drain backs into a sewer line at the halfway mark. I hope you brought your gumboots.”
Of course, Astrid thinks, a little sourly and resigns herself to rolling up her trouser legs.
There’s a smattering of freckles on his face, ginger lashes so pale they appear non-existent. His nose is crooked from an old break, teeth white and pointed, crowded together in his mouth like a rat. “John Burkner,” he introduces.
“He’s not right for you,” Walter says instantly.
Astrid smiles as she turns away, letting the camera drop from the man’s line of sight. “You say that about everyone.”
“I’m sorry?” Burkner says blankly.
Astrid taps her ear in explanation, her shoulder rising in a shrug. “Talking to the monkey on my back.”
“That’s impolite!” Walter admonishes.
Burkner spits, a bloody pulp of tobacco that stains the ground red as he shrugs.
At the entry to the drain the air smells like decaying fruit, a veil of skin that a finger could push through. The hairs on Astrid’s arms stand on end. She watches patiently as Olivia leaves the group of men and skids down the embankment, leading foot extended, her rear foot turned at an angle to slow her descent. She hits the bottom with a little skip and strolls forward, her gait the curious mixture of rolling hips and purpose.
“We should stop by the Hot Springs on the way back,” Walter says absently. “I always meant to go.”
“I’m not going to the Hot Springs with a video camera, Walter.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a good chance I’ll be arrested.”
“It’s not that type of Hot Spring,” Walter corrects, sounding dismayed. “And this generation is far too prudish.”
Olivia brushes Astrid’s spine in greeting, low in the s-curve, before she focuses her attention on Burkner. “I understand you’re escorting us to the location?”
There’s the sound of crashing in the lab, of bottles being overturned. Astrid, accustomed to multi-tasking, to listening to three separate conversations while stirring the custard and prodding at body parts, divides her attention between Olivia, Walter, and the equipment in her hands.
Burkner, she notes, seems a little flustered. “Right this way.”
Olivia follows him into the tunnel, her voice tight with exhaustion. “It’s the last set of co-ordinates for the machine.”
She shines a penlight onto Astrid’s monitor, illuminating the screen in the growing darkness. Her face looks pinched in the dim light; her cheekbones cut high, a glacial slope of honeyed skin. Olivia’s been obsessed since her return from the other side, scrambling to catch up to Walternate’s plans. She changes the frequency of her radio to coincide with Walter’s and hovers close to Astrid’s side.
“It’s the oldest, too.”
South Dakota was the last of the twenty-two co-ordinates Astrid unscrambled from the number station code, (the First People Code, Walter sometimes calls it, or Watson’s Wonder when he’s feeling indulgent). It’s the last in numerical order, the oldest. The first piece of machinery to be buried beneath the topsoil - lost over ten thousand years ago in the Pleistocene era.
“The Dakota Hot Springs are a Woolley Mammoth site,” Walter prattles in the background, nearly inaudible. “The springs are the resting site of a fossilised herd. Did you know when the first skeletal remains of the Woolley Mammoth were uncovered in Siberia it was thought the giant beasts lived underground? That they only came to the surface of the earth to die, poisoned by a sky they couldn’t breathe; imagine, an animal that size living like a mole rat? The locals thought the Mammoth herds were responsible for the earthquakes and the shaking of the trees, that the soil only trembled when they were running underground.” Walter sounds delighted, *young*, his voice tipping into full on lecture mode before he concludes softly. “Myth, first impressions, they were utterly wrong. The first Woolley Mammoth emerged from the ground fully formed after the permafrost retreated. I think he would have wanted to see them.”
Astrid double-checks the equipment.
There’s a low vibration, emitting at two megahertz then again at five, repeating at random intervals. Unlike any other segment they’ve collected so far, it’s as if the last piece of machinery *wants* to be found. Seismic activity caved parts of the tunnel in a week ago. Watching the needle as it fluctuates, Astrid wonders if maybe it wasn’t something else that collapsed the tunnel - that tore up the floor and exploded from underground.
“He wanted to be a brontosaurus when he was a boy, but that may have been the medication speaking…he always had a deplorable lack of tolerance for it.”
It’s Olivia who answers. Astrid can hear the smile in her voice, the low warmth as she teases. “It sounds like he took after his mother.”
“In all the right ways.”
Walter doesn’t speak about his son often and only ever to Olivia. Astrid’s heard Peter mentioned by name twice in three years and saw a photograph once. She doesn’t interrupt as he reminisces. Since Olivia’s return from the other side, the dirt’s been shaken loose from Peter’s skeleton, pushing to the surface of Walter’s waking thoughts.
It’s good for him, to let the memory breathe, to let him live again.
The first time Astrid met Walter Bishop; he was holding onto Olivia’s forearm with both hands, walking from the institution side by side. His eyes were squeezed shut, trusting Olivia to guide him past the unruly snowdrifts, the treacherous ice.
His shoulders were hunched protectively, the wind dropping the temperature to perilous cold. To Astrid’s eye he looked more than frail. He looked ancient.
Astrid was in the car with the heater on full blast. She noted their off-kilter stride, walking as if tied together in a three-legged race and mistook Walter for visually impaired. She stepped onto the road, door wide open, to assist.
He flailed the very second Astrid touched him.
Startled, his eyes snapped open, mouth twisting in a snarl. In hindsight, it wasn’t an attack but an uncoordinated strike of limbs and surprise. She remembers being pushed, the sickening recollection of a car hurtling down the street.
She landed on her derriere in the middle of the road, teeth clacking together, the seat of her pants cold through. She remembers Olivia’s drawn in breath, the way her body had coiled for action; the way Walter’s eyes widened, then Astrid *scrambled*. Rolling onto her knees she dove forward, hitting the curb as the vehicle screamed by in a rush of red metal, close enough she could have kissed it.
It was her first meeting with Walter Bishop and she thought; heart galloping fast in her chest, as first impressions went it wasn’t an auspicious start. It was the first time; the last time, Walter Bishop stepped outside.
Astrid keeps an eye on the vibration and tries to figure out the quickest route to the Hot Springs from their current location. Once they confirm it’s a piece of ancient machinery in the tunnel and *after* they make arrangements to have it transported out, they might have available time to see it.
She wants to bring South Dakota’s horizon to Walter’s dark monitor, to his basement lab, squirreled underground like the legends of the Woolly Mammoths. She wants him to understand some things shouldn’t be given up or turned away. Some things (sunshine, light, air, second chances) should never be shunned.
Astrid had zero experience with mental illness when she began work at Fringe, she had no understanding of the complex relationship, the experiments, Walter once performed and Olivia was subjected to. But she understood blame. She understood life was a series of mistakes, wondrous detours.
Astrid took a chance on a friend who was grievously injured, who didn’t trust men. Her memories of Suzy are infused with confessions, with soft touches, whispered hurts, with intimacy and laughter and finding something infinitely precious. She remembers the way Suzy used to regard her and Astrid thought….misconstrued…
It had been five years since the rape and Suzy had yet to date a single boy. She’d sleep in Astrid’s hammock, her summer dress hitched high, the two of them curling toward one another, cradled close.
Astrid took a chance and found out she was entirely wrong.
She has that in common with Walter, with the entire human race, but there’s a bravery in the effort; in the reckless abandon, even if what they’re reaching for is nothing but gossamer dreams.
“You tried to take advantage of me,” Suzy accused, voice edged with truth.
Horrified, Astrid said. “I wanted to take a risk *with* you.” She felt sick, hollowed out, and her words, intentions, were as equally true. It was an innocent kiss, under the oak tree in the hammock: it was the death of her oldest friendship. Getting it utterly wrong is the first point of commonality in the human experience, navigating the consequences is where the stories lay.
She hears Olivia’s low laugh, genuine and unaffected, the easy camaraderie between Walter and the senior agent evident.
All those years ago, when she saw Olivia and Walter, when she tried to imagine the complex tapestry they made together, Astrid forgot to include her own strands amongst the complex pattern they wove. Coiled, looped, bolstering each other up. Three years later with enough distance between now and then, the overall picture is beautiful, spilling down Olivia’s castle walls, keeping the drafts out and changing the landscape from hospital grey to mellow gold.
Re: Turn My Heresy into Gospel
Date: 2011-12-21 10:58 pm (UTC)Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-22 12:41 am (UTC)<3
Re: Set Us Spinning 2/2
Date: 2011-12-22 03:35 am (UTC)Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-22 03:41 am (UTC)Re: The One Where Olivia is Bored
Date: 2011-12-22 03:53 am (UTC)Re: Snow and Lights
Date: 2011-12-22 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-22 04:21 am (UTC)On the plus side, Peter reflected, it wasn’t winter and he wasn’t freezing to death below a ceiling of ice.
It took him a couple of seconds orientate himself – it wasn’t like he came here for fun – before he headed for the far shore.
Why was it he always seemed to go under as far away as possible from any civilization?
It wasn’t until he was nearing the shore that he realized that he was also naked.
“Perfect,” Peter muttered as he felt his feet touch bottom.
Not only did he have no idea which universe he was in, but he had no idea when it was, both in terms of the date and the hour.
From the forest he heard the sound of running feet and he froze. He was literally as naked as the day he was born and had no way to defend himself. Resigned to getting hauled in for indecent exposure, Peter waited where he was, cool water lapping softly just under his sternum, to find out what his fate would be.
This time he wasn’t saying a word until he figured out where he was.
Two military-looking types broke through the trees and skidded to a stop. While they weren’t wearing fatigues, they were dressed entirely in black; black ball caps, black t-shirts, black BDU pants, and black army boots. More worrying was the fact that they both had guns strapped to their right thighs. The one on the left smirked at him and crossed his arms; the one on the right kept her eyes fixed squarely on Peter’s.
“Can I ask what you’re doing here, sir?” the woman asked in a no-nonsense voice.
“I’m not exactly sure.” Peter crossed his arms and felt foolish, but there was no helping the fact that he was buck naked and had no idea how he’d gotten here. Though at an educated guess, Peter figured ‘here’ was Reiden Lake.
“Can I asked what happened to your clothes?” asked her counterpart. Peter could hear the amusement in his voice as he leaned a shoulder against a tree trunk.
“I’m not exactly sure about that either.” Peter grinned sheepishly. Experience had taught him that the less threatening he looked, the better the outcome of any particular situation.
“If you wait where you are, sir,” said the woman, “I’ll get you a blanket from the shack.”
“Thanks.” Peter smiled gratefully at her.
“Want to tell me how you got here?” asked the man as his partner disappeared back into the trees.
“I wasn’t trying to be evasive before; I have no idea how I got here. I have no idea what I’m doing here. And, no, I have no idea where my clothes are.”
Though he was trying, Peter couldn’t make out any distinguishing markings or patches to give him the smallest clues as to which universe he’d found himself in. He couldn’t even tell if the guards were private or military. If he had to venture a guess, Peter would put money on them both being ex-military now employed by the private sector. However, he couldn’t even begin to speculate as to why they were out here.
“Do you know where you are?” the man asked in the deceptively relaxed manner of those trained in a very specialized, very deadly, form of combat interrogation.
“Reiden Lake.” Peter tried not to let it sound like too much of a question.
“Where did you come from?” The tone stayed mild, but Peter could see the man’s eyes assessing everything, despite the smirk and relaxed stance.
“Look, I’m naked, getting colder by the second, and feel like I haven’t eaten in a week. I don’t have any answers for you. Not because I’m hiding anything, but because I really have no idea how I ended up here.”
Which wasn’t exactly true, but Peter wasn’t going to start explaining his hypotheses about alternate universes, diverging timelines, mistakes in the slipstreams of the world, and Observers who somehow seemed to get involved far more than their name suggested.
Before the guy could ask him any more questions, the woman came back with a standard issue grey wool blanket folded over her left arm.
“I’ve radioed back to HQ and they’re sending a jeep,” she addressed them both, again looking him directly in the eyes. “I’m going to turn my back.”
“Thanks,” Peter said.
“Don’t be too grateful,” the man said sardonically, “I’m not going to turn around.”
“Usually, I get my date to buy me a drink and fries before I let them see me naked.” Peter said, smiling wryly.
“Think of me as love at first sight type of date,” the man shot back.
“Can I at least know your name?” Peter inquired.
“Bill Black,” the man told him. “My partner, Jill Green.”
“For real?” Peter stared at him incredulously.
“If I was going to make up names, don’t you think I would have done better?”
“Fair enough.”
“If you two are done flirting, do you think that Mr. Bishop would like to get out of the water so we can get back to monitoring the lake?” Jill asked, addressing her partner before turning her back.
“How do you know my name?” Every muscle in Peter’s body tightened when she said his name. And though he knew it was hopeless, he tried to figure out a way to escape.
“Since you disappeared the second time, the lake has been cordoned off and we’ve set up twenty-four hour surveillance,” Bill informed him as Peter made his way out of the water.
Shocked, cold, and more than a little worried, Peter wrapped the blanket around himself.
“How long was I gone?”
“Seventeen months,” Jill informed him when he and Bill walked up to stand next to her. “There are a lot of people who are going to be very interested in your return. Welcome home, Mr. Bishop.”
Home could mean just about anywhere and anytime. Numbly, Peter followed them into the woods, automatically skirting the twigs and small rocks in the path as his mind whirled at the possibilities.
# # #
This time, he kept his mouth firmly shut, pleading ignorance to pretty much every question anyone asked him. It was too late to pretend he didn’t know his own name, but experience was one hell of a teacher and he refused to say anything else until he talked to someone he knew and he could take his cues from them.
“Peter?”
The voice was familiar, as was the blond hair, but Peter had no idea which version of Olivia had just slipped silently into the room while he was staring out the window. Peter had been so caught up in figuring out a strategy for surviving this world that someone – Olivia – had managed to enter the room without him being aware.
“So it would seem.” He steeled himself against the flood of emotions that washed over him; happiness and worry, joy and sorrow, friendship and desire. The love he felt, would always feel, was both incredible joy and gut-ripping pain.
“Where were you?” Olivia asked as she walked up right into his personal space, her eyes searching his for answers he couldn’t give.
“I don’t know.” It took a physical effort not to reach out and touch her, but he’d been fooled by clever doubles before. And his last memory was stepping aside when he realized that the woman who was so like his Olivia wasn’t quite right and would never be his lover.
“Peter?” Olivia cocked her head and worry filled her eyes. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re Olivia Dunham.” That, he figured, he could answer without revealing too much. Not that he really had all that much to reveal besides confusion and hopes barely surviving the repeated bludgeonings of fate.
There were just too many variables for him to know if this Olivia is his Olivia.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Studying blueprints.” It was another safe answer that also had the happy coincidence of happening to be true. If it turned out he was back with Olivia 2.0, he didn’t want to say anything that could cause her to want to lock him up.
The fact he once again found himself in a world so similar to his that he couldn’t currently tell them apart hurt. That he couldn’t just pull Olivia into his arms and hold her until his world made at least the smallest bit of sense was tearing him apart.
Not that any of that was anything Peter was willing to talk about right now. That he might almost be home, but not quite, might almost be with her, but not quite, hurt too much to bring up if once again it turned out he was in the wrong time, wrong place.
“You have been gone for nearly a year and a half. Your…” Tears gathered in her eyes as she trailed off. “Your body was found on the shores of Reiden Lake eight months ago.” Olivia took a huge step back from him and crossed her arms. “The body showed no signs of decomposition.”
Shock Peter didn’t think he was capable of feeling rocked him back a full step. Dead. They thought he was dead in this universe. Again. Or maybe just for the first time as he really didn’t know where he was.
“You buried me?” The pain on Olivia’s face was plain to see and Peter couldn’t help but stepping forward, trying to offer her whatever comfort he could.
“Where have you been?” she whispered, voice achingly filled with loss that nearly brought him to his knees.
“I don’t know.” At this point, he would gladly tell her if he knew, just to try and ease some of the agony that he could feel coming off of her in waves. If this wasn’t his Olivia, then she was one that was just as in love with him as his was.
They stood in silence for countless minutes just studying the other, weighing the person in front of them, trying to determine what to say. Out of the four Olivias he’d had contact with, two of them had loved him. Or maybe it was the same one, just at different times. And one fooled him into believing that she loved him as much as he loved her.
“Stegosaurus?” Olivia finally whispered.
“Olivia?” Peter asked, hardly daring to believe that the woman standing in front of him was his Olivia.
“Stegosaurus,” she repeated, staring at him with tears in her eyes.
“Pale Blue Eyes,” he responded.
Unable to hold back any longer, Peter was next to her in two strides, wrapping his arms around her. From the way her arms banded around him and her shuddering breaths, Peter couldn’t help but accept that while he might be out of time, he was most definitely back where he belonged.
Part of the fallout from FauxLivia was a secret code between them, one that she had to say without any prompting from him, to confirm her identity if there was ever any question. As far as they could tell, there was just one Peter Bishop, but it didn’t hurt to be careful, so he had an answering phrase.
“Where have you been?” she asked again, her face buried in his neck.
“Honest to god, Olivia, I have no idea.” When he started to pull back, her arms tightened around him. Freeing his arm from around her back, Peter ran a soothing hand down the sleek fall of her ponytail over and over again.
“No burrowing,” she mumbled, her breath still hitching against his throat.
“Promise,” he said, even as his other hand rubbed a couple of circles over the small of her back.
She pulled back from him, searching his face. “Jerk.”
Whatever else she wanted to say, he cut off with his lips on hers. It felt like it had been years since he’d last held her, months since he’d last kissed her. And from the desperate way she was returning his kiss, it must have been the same for her.
“I love you,” she whispered when they broke apart.
“I love you too,” he answered, wondering exactly how long she’d waited to hear him return her sentiment. From the fleeting smile and the joy in her eyes, too long.
And then he didn’t care, because her lips were on his again, and her tongue was seeking entrance into his mouth. She tasted like home and safety, like a thousand private moments and a million hopeful dreams.
Peter wasn’t sure where he’d been or why he’d been. He carried with him memories of two different times, two different Olivias since he’d last seen his and he didn’t give a damn.
All he wanted was never again to be far away from the woman in his arms. He held on to her as tightly as he dared, terrified that she would disappear if he didn’t.
Shudders shook his body – relief and joy – and seemed to engulf Olivia. Together they broke the kiss, but didn’t pull too far apart and he rested his forehead against hers.
“I want to go home,” he said, hoping she knew he meant he wanted to go back with her, wherever she was going.
“Soon,” she promised, pulling back to look at him. It seemed as if she couldn’t get enough of just looking at him. “I just want to stay here for a little while longer.”
“Okay,” he murmured, wrapping one arm around her waist as he stroked the tears away. Just once, he would like to not have caused her so much pain that she cried because of him. That the pain was mixed with a bittersweet joy at his return didn’t erase the initial cause.
“I missed you,” Olivia said, cupping his face with her hands, then slowly traced his eyebrows, the rise of his cheeks, the line of his jaw.
“I missed you, too,” Peter told her, leaning in to her touch. Wanting more of the soft caresses, wanting never to long for them knowing he had no right to them, knowing that though the woman before him looked exactly like his Olivia that she wasn’t the one he loved.
“I thought you said you didn’t know where you were.”
“For seventeen months, no, I have no idea where I was.” He kissed her softly, then pulled back to look her in the eye. “But for nearly a month I was somewhere that was like home, only not quite. You were there, but you didn’t know me. Didn’t know what we were to each other.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Olivia nodded her acceptance, then just went back to tracing his features.
Outside of the room, Peter could hear some sort of commotion, but no one was calling either of their names and he didn’t think that anyone cared right now what they were doing. So there they stood in each other’s embrace, exchanging slow kisses and long looks because frankly, even if he got to stay here, even if this was his home – and he was really starting to think that it was, that the woman in his arms, returning kiss for kiss, touch for touch, was his Olivia – Peter wasn’t sure what was going to come next and right then was just about perfect.
With a sigh, he gathered her close and just savored the feel of her mouth under his, the way her body fit against his, the way that part he couldn’t explain with science was finally at peace.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-22 05:16 am (UTC)Re: A Slip in Time Saves Nine - 2/2 - (Olivia/Lincoln/Peter, Amber!verse)
Date: 2011-12-22 05:18 am (UTC)Thank you, dear anon, this was exactly what I wanted. Oh man, I'm having a hard time finding words. ><
I loooove the small details you put in each flash of sex scene, the way you tease Olivia as well as the reader with what's coming, or what could be coming.
Man, I got to the end and was thinking "aaah, where's the sex?!" And I realized it was behind me! I'd already read it and it was AMAZING. So, so very much like the show. it's beautiful.
As someone else posted already, you've really captured Olivia's inquisitiveness and her curiosity, her willingness to believe and look closer into the heart of a mystery. But I also think that you've really captured the mannerisms of both boys very well. I was struck by Lincoln asking Olivia what's wrong during her very first flash, and how much like a reaction from him would be. I also loved how willing they were to take direction from her and to do as she asked without asking their own questions.
This is just... really lovely. Thank you, mystery writer! This is the best!!! <3
PS, booo, all my fringe icons are on LJ D: