Chapter Text
Peter knew this would happen.
He stands behind the door, his head hanging between hunched shoulders, his hands splayed wide against the wall, droplets of water – gone - cold dripping from his still-wet hair into the dark walnut of his floor, splashing imperceptibly against the cold skin of his feet, making fragmented patterns that he doesn’t bother to try and decipher. Codes and conspiracies, conjectures and theories, they hold no interest for him anymore outside of work and necessity, and the small smile his skepticism might steal from her mouth.
He feels disjointed, left behind, a discordant note in an otherwise perfectly composed symphony. He’d pushed the world forward with his last herculean breath, once, but the world it seems, had forgotten to bring him along. Nothing makes sense anymore, in this prison he’s made for himself, the muscle he calls heart encased in iron bars deep inside his chest, it’s beating soundless though it roars in his ears. He feels it, its thumping firm, relentless, his blood running white – hot in his veins, and yet he wonders. He wonders because the world is still there, both of them, their colors and textures intact. He wonders why he feels like he dies. Only a little, only sometimes, but he dies.
Nothing makes sense, except the one person breathing on the other side of the threshold. But he can’t let her pass, not now. Not like this.
He’s not stupid, though fact and repetition might indicate otherwise. He knows why she’s here, using up hours of her day off that she should be spending on sleeping before the universes threaten to fall apart (yet again) by standing outside his tiny studio apartment. She’s been looking for him, chasing him with words that her mouth refuses to say, clear as day on her face, throwing searching glances in his direction that he forbids himself from returning, the pain and regret in the bottomless depths of her gaze reminding him of the weight of his mistakes, each a link that holds him down and binds him at her feet with unbreakable chains.
He is reminded of Prometheus, and Loki, and Maui inside the whale, their punishments cruel, inhumane even to gods that where anything but, Hell too peaceful a place for their sins. He looks back at them and applauds, congratulates.
He envies them.
They know nothing of the ache of seeing her every day, of being so close he can breathe the air from her lungs, retrace her steps with his own, smell everything that makes her scent from the hollow of her throat, remember the smoothness of her skin under his fingertips, yet be forced to step back and watch from a distance, an unwitting prisoner of his own devising.
But she’s nothing if not stubborn, perhaps even more so than him, and she won’t relent until she has the answers she needs. So Peter knew this would happen. Eventually.
His only hope was that he’d have enough time to prepare himself, to straighten the chaos in his mind so that actual words might come out of his mouth once she asks the inevitable. But he’s deluding himself.
Time, though malleable under his hands, mercurial under his will, has a knack for coming back to bite him in the ass.
“Peter,” she says, her voice annoyed yet somehow pleading, and he can picture her perfectly in his mind, her posture expectant as she waits for him to let her through, the hand she knocked with still pressed against the door, her form attentive, listening, “I know you’re there, just…open the door”
The soft tone of her voice makes him raise his head, look through the peephole. She’s there sure enough, her hair down, messier than usual, the ever present suit nowhere to be found, replaced instead by slightly frayed jeans and a dark hoodie he doesn’t remember her wearing before. She looks like she dragged herself out of bed. Knowing her, that’s exactly what she’d done.
“What’s in it for me?” he asks, risks, hiding behind the well worn mask of sarcasm and cynicism though he knows she can see right through it, right through him. She always has, and this time’s no different. He knows he’s fighting a lost battle, knew it the moment he heard her knock on the door, saw her wide green stare outside his door; it’s only a matter of time before he caves, he’s aware of that, but the ticking has not yet come to a stop.
“Well, you get the pleasure of my company for one,” she says, her voice nonchalant though her soft, puzzled expression and curious gaze, head slightly tilted to the side, says she’s anything but. He pities the pocket in her jeans, knowing she’s got the hand not on his door shoved as deep as humanely possible inside it, threatening to rip the seams apart with the tension in her hand, unnoticed to the untrained eye.
If only pleasure were all he wants, he thinks, sighing, whishing her statement didn’t sound so wrong considering their current predicament, knowing she only meant it to be teasing, probably believing that seeing her is the last he wants. If only she knew. He wants so much more, so much more than she can imagine…but he has no right to ask, no right to her. He’s never had it, divergent timelines or not. (He had just been lucky to be on the receiving end of her smoldering sun, once.)
“Peter,” she repeats, and he loves the way her lips move as they form the syllables of his name. He hears her sigh behind the door, the sound muffled, sees her close her eyes, take a breath, “Peter…please” she whispers, as if talking to herself, somehow wishing him into action with the soft velvet of her voice.
Peter shivers, half-remembered conversations in the moonlight running through his mind, words whispered in the quiet of the night while cuddling on the couch, some bad sci-fi movie playing in the background, coming forward from the pit of memory, latching themselves onto his conscious mind. Conversations that never were, conversations that might be. He clings to the ‘might’ in his wording, hopes.
With that thought and her smile (always her smile) he gives in, surrenders, cracks the door open just enough to lean against it, his cheek barely rubbing the smooth wooden planes, the contact light.
“See,” he says, his voice quiet, serious and yet anything but cold. If anything, she feels as if the very breath he exhales scorches her skin, and all she can think of is that she wants more of his warmth, more of him, “You just needed to ask me nicely.”
She snorts, a smirk on her face as she shakes her head minutely, the movement short, precise, “May I please come in, or would you rather stand here the rest of the night, good sir?”
He smiles, the grin lighting up his face, the crows feet on the corner of his eyes standing out with the different stretch on his facial muscles. The action looks natural on him, like he does it often, the gesture looking at home on his lips. It suits him, she thinks. She wishes he’d do it more often, like this, his smile open, unreserved, true.
“I knew you were a fast learner.” He opens the door wide, steps aside, helpless.
He lets her in because he misses her smile, misses the way her nose scrunches up, her eyes squinting adorably when he makes her laugh at a particularly witty joke, misses the way her freckles give substance to her skin, misses her mind, the way she thinks, analyzes, misses the intensity with which she lives, feels, misses the way she looks at him in the night, when she thinks he sleeps, her always-cold digits tracing his face, the shell of his ear, before swimming in his hair in a caress that serves to reassure her. Most of all, he misses her.
She walks past him, swallowing reflexively as tension gradually leaves her body, hands in pockets as she takes a proper look at his modest living arrangements (she hopes he can’t feel the waves of relief that must surely be oozing from her, she wasn’t sure he’d let her in). It’s the first time she’s been inside, the second…no, third time she’s ever stood outside his door. The first time she does so with out it being case related.
The small loft is neat, clean, its spaces perfectly distributed to achieve maximum efficiency in so little space: a well worn yet comfortable looking couch in front of a decently sized television, a clean yet definitely used kitchenette, the full – to – bursting book case set against one wall beside the window, opposite the bed and the little space that passes for his closet, the small drawing table sitting inert beside the book case, the lamp above it shinning down on a clutter of files and papers and blueprints that conform the only chaos in this calm. It says a lot about him, the way he thinks, the way he lives.
She’s a little surprised that he’s managed to settle in so well in such a short span (She’s lived in her apartment for years now, and she’s sure she still hasn’t unpacked all the boxes), he’s only had the apartment in lease from the FBI for a couple of weeks, a month at most, after they’d found him a place more suitable than his deserted hotel room and yet it seems like he’s been here all his life. He’s very good at it, she thinks, like he’s used to move from place to place all the time, almost nomadic.
The thought rings a bell softly in the back of her mind, the concept somehow familiar in association with this man, yet nothing concrete manages to come forth in her usually flawless memory, and so she pays it no mind.
“Have you eaten?” he asks, interrupting her introspection, moving to the sink to finish rinsing some glasses and a plate, apparently what he’d been doing before she knocked.
“Sure.” She answers noncommittally, distracted.
“Right,” he says, turning towards her fully, his bodyweight resting on his hands, palms flat against the chilled metal of the countertop. “And that, in Olivia Dunham lexicon, means you haven’t had a bite ever since that half-munched cucumber sandwich Walter shoved your way this afternoon while you poured over case files.”
Olivia startles a bit, looking back at him with half – veiled weariness at his apparent knowledge of her eating habits (or lack thereof in this particular case), more than a little uncomfortable with the fact that he seems to read her like an open book, know her like the palm of his hand while she’s left grasping at straws on anything that regards him.
She shrugs, conceding the point. She’s hungry anyway.
She trusts him, perhaps against her better judgment. She knows it’s irrational having in mind that her knowledge of him accounts to little else besides his name and whatever he’s let slip about his life before she met him in this timeline, what knowledge she’s gained of him amid the sheets, their bodies tangled in rocking motion, inconsequential under the shroud of mystery that surrounds him. But her gut tells her he’s reliable, steadfast, and he hasn’t shown signs that might deny that. She’s always trusted her gut; it’s never failed her. She hopes that doesn’t change.
And it’s not that he denies her answers, she reasons, it’s that she’s never known what the right questions are, and that baffles her.
“Why does that not surprise me?” he mutters to himself, shaking his head, “how do pizza left overs sound to you? I’m afraid I don’t really keep a guest menu around.”
“Pizza it is then,” she says, trying to keep her voice neutral, musing on the fact that he can put her at ease with seemingly no effort on his part. She should be annoyed, if not a little scared, she’s curious instead.
It doesn’t really surprise her; her survival instinct has always been a little deficient like that. She has no fear for herself, and that’s a scientifically proven fact.
She looks back at him, following his rustling in what passes for a kitchen as he brings out the cardboard box with half a pizza still inside, sticking two pieces in the oven, heating them up. Olivia likes this side of him, relishes in the spark of mischief that has made a home beneath the swirling blue of his irises, though she’d never tell him so, its sightings rare yet somehow ever present in the way he treats her. She likes the glimpses at the true humor behind his biting remarks, his cynic meditations on the nature of their work, likes that he’s layered, the surface barely scratching at the what ifs and could bes of what lies beneath the thick shell of his skin. She guesses she just likes him.
“Is wine alright or are you feeling the need for something stronger?” he asks, not bothering to turn around to look at her as he opens and closes cabinets, the fridge, moving around with a certainty and grace that speaks to her of someone used to being watched. She’s sure he knows she hasn’t stopped staring at him since she came in. If he’s uncomfortable at all then he must have an iron control, perhaps the perfect poker face, because she has seen no indication of it.
“Wine’s fine, thanks.” Anything stronger has always led to one inevitable conclusion on the few nights they have kept each other company, and that is not what she came for tonight.
Peter nods, his shoulders loosening minutely, relaxing, and she wonders if he’d been thinking the same. Which would in turn mean, judging by the action she catalogues as stemming from relief, that he disliked the idea in the first place. She doesn’t know if she should feel hurt about it or elated that he wants her company for more than sex (if he wants her company at all. She hadn’t given him much choice by showing up), but considering recent revelations she wouldn’t judge him if he was disgusted with the way she’s treated him the past 3 months. She certainly is.
The thought makes her heart pound faster in anxiety as she’s forced to remember why exactly she’d made herself come here, to seek him out and corner him in a way that would leave him no choice but to answer her questions. Any other time, any other place and she’s sure he would’ve just continued to avoid her. But she’s here, and he’s here and there is no going anywhere; not until she gets the answers she so desperately needs. Not until she has the chance to apologize.
Making the words pass through the tennis ball lodged in her throat is going to be another mater altogether.
***
Olivia is used to many things in life.
She’s used to loneliness, it is a companion that creeps under her sheets at night, spoons behind her in a cold embrace, follows her steps everywhere she walks. She’s used to anger, knows how to use it, is comfortable with the way it makes everything crystal clear in her mind’s eye, the world in perfect definition as it unravels. She’s used to pain. It has never failed to make its presence known, physically or otherwise.
These define the cycle of her life, the vicious spiraling fall that comprises her existence, and she can’t help but wonder what she’d done and when, to make the world hate her so. She must deserve it, if she is to believe that any form of justice is possible, true.
But fear has never had a part in it.
Still, sitting on the floor of his living room, her head thrown back against the worn leather of the couch, the remains of half a pizza lying on the table between them as he rambles on about some experiment of Walter’s, she can’t help but feel her throat close up slightly, and her hands, always moderately colder to the touch, grow clammy with something as akin to anxiety as she has ever felt, perhaps apprehension in its mildest way. She knows she needs to do this, and she knows she needs to do it now.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she interrupts, non sequitur, her eyes half lidded yet not at all less intense. If anything, he thinks, the shadows help give her her the air of a tiger ready to pounce, her limbs graceful at rest, her pray in sight.
“I’m sorry, what?” he says, stops in his tracks, the moment he’s been dreading the most since she walked through the door like a kick in the gut in it’s suddenness. He’d somehow fooled himself (yet again) into the belief that escaping that particular conversation was a possibility for tonight; had let her lure him into a sense of comfort and security before springing the question on him. He’s never liked surprises much, it’s no wonder he never liked jack – in – the – boxes. He likes interrogations even less, when he’s on the wrong side of the table.
“Why didn’t you tell me we were married, before?” she repeats, her voice quiet but clear as she enunciates every syllable with perfect precision.
He sighs, brushes his face with his hand, drains the wine glass in a gulp. He closes the cardboard box on the table, picks the plates up and carries them to the kitchen, all the while aware of her stare piercing his back.
“We weren’t,” he says, standing once more beside her, shooing her to the side slightly so he can sit adjacent to her, mimicking her position, his head thrown back against the couch, his hands palms up on the ground, “not this version of us anyway.”
She looks at him funny, not understanding. He’s quick to explain.
“The previous timeline, the one I’m from,” he looks towards her to make sure she follows, “it was trapped in a loop, like a closed circuit where everything happened the same way every time it was completed. We have been married at least four times I think, but this last iteration, this last loop, was broken before we got to that point. I never existed in this timeline before you found me, so you didn’t know me, but it had only been a couple of days since I’d last seen you.”
She nods in understanding, though she can feel a headache coming on. She can see the truth behind his words; can understand why she would come to love him, even though she can’t say she feels the same. There’s goodness in him, righteousness, and an unhealthy devotion that intimidates her every time she catches a glimpse of it behind his eyes.
“Besides,” he adds, once he’s sure she’s understood him, “what was I supposed to say? Hello, I’m Peter Bishop and I’m your husband from another timeline?” he snorts, “I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have believed me. You still have no reason to.”
“Bishop.” She states more than asks, her tone low, dangerous. It helps that he can’t see the way she looks at him from his position; he doesn’t think he’d be able to hold her stare for long. He figures if he’s going to come clean, his actual name might be a good place to start.
“Yeah…” he says, “it’s kind of a long story.”
“I’ve got time” she replies, turning her head towards him, fixing her eyes on him, evaluating, “Do you have anywhere else you need to be?” he turns to look at her then.
“I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
He tells her, of course. He tells her everything.
***
Olivia listens intently throughout his tale, only interrupting a couple of times to ask for elaboration on things that catch her interest. She asks a lot about Ella for instance, and he’s rewarded with the teary, heartbroken smile that graces her face when he tells her how beautifully she’d grown up. She doesn’t ask a lot about the switch, noticing how uncomfortable it makes him, but he can feel her stiffen momentarily at his admissions.
She also asks a lot about their marriage, and how he knows of it he didn’t live it, is rendered into silence when he explains, tells her he’d been the one to break the cycle, bring about the timeline she lives in at the cost of his existence in the lives of the people he’d given everything for.
“Do you ever think about going back?” she asks when he’s done, her voice small in the gray light of early morning before dawn as it slips in through the window, her heart clenching against her will at the very real possibility that he’d rather be in a world where she’s dead than have her not remember him, not love him.
“No,” he answers, looking straight ahead, “ there was nothing for me there anymore.”
“You had your life.” She whispers.
He shakes his head, a small sad smile on his face, “no,” he says, “you’re here.”
She has nothing to say to that, her eyes closing of their own accord as she presses a hand against her mouth. She feels his pain, somewhere in the cavity of her chest, intense enough to be her own.
“Peter,” she murmurs after a while, when the silence in the room has impregnated every surface, “I’m sorry. For everything.” She says simply, sincerity dripping from her voice, she doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t need to. He knows everything the words carry, everything they hide behind them.
He feels her smaller hand fit itself into his open one between them, her fingers moving to weave themselves with his, her motions tentative, slow, unsure. He lets the sensation of the simple touch invade him; fill him to the brim as it spreads through crevices dark and forgotten in his chest.
“I know” he says, brings her hand up with his to press a kiss on its back, a simple brush of lips, a caress. A promise. They’ll be okay; someday they’ll be okay.
Having her here is painful and bittersweet, but it makes the darkness of his world recede, makes him remember the many reasons he loves her, the many reasons he has to remain, to wait, and to him, that is enough. He was never one for sugarcoated tales anyway. Lucky him.
She’s still here, and hope is a certainty she carries with her.
It is enough.