Story complete! Thanks to everyone who stuck it out with me, I'm happy to have finished this just before the new eps start up again. To those who were such faithful reviewers, SPECIAL thanks, and hope this ending is satisfying. Looking forward to everyone's else's take on the eternal questions - what happened to peter as a child, will charlie ever admit his undying love for olivia, will olivia and peter... anything?
All characters courtesy of fringe, not mine.
Chapter 7
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Laying on a table in a white white space, unable to move. Blue-white light with indistinct shapes in the periphery of his vision. And still the cold. Brittle, numb, implacable, eternal, hopeless cold. Cold that ever so gradually seized up through his limbs, body, stole over his heart, and then seeped into brain where he knew, just knew, if it ever completely swallowed his mind that he would never wake up.
The all-pervasive ice bath was truly excruciating. Where was Walter with his ubiquitous homemade pharmacologia when one needed him? He found himself drifting, from the drugs or the ice he didn't know. He vaguely heard a voice, soft, female, reciting numbers. 90.2 88.3 84.6… It was almost funny, didn't they know, people just die when they get that cold? Hell, he almost died as a kid, trapped in the icy lake in the overturned car. 81.7 78.4 It occurred to him that he couldn't bear the cold one second longer, but then, he'd long since lost the ability to move his limbs, it seemed, and so it really wasn't up to him.
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Astrid mechanically read off Peter's temperature from the lurid red LED display, even though both Olivia and Walter could easily see the display themselves. She felt she owed it to the man in the tank, somehow, like by reading them aloud, she was reminding everyone that there was a real person in the ice.
"70 degrees," she announced to no one. Walter had brought over a canister containing, presumably, the ice worms, and was sitting next to her, face blank, watching the readings. Different screens showed brain activity, heart rate, blood oxygen. And temperature, which inexorably dropped, minute by minute.
"64.9" The blonde agent hovered indecisively between the row of monitors and the GenoWave tank. She searched Walter's face, looking for confidence, or confusion, but found neither.
"Sixty degrees." Astrid turned anxiously to Walter Bishop. "Sixty degrees, Professor."
Walter shook himself as if from a trance. Opening the canister on his lap, he stared down into the jumble of dry ice and blue worms.
In front of them, the consoles sprung to barking, warning life.
"Dr Bishop!" Astrid called. "EEG, heart rate, everything is changing."
The older man focused on the monitors sharply, and then relaxed.
"Reasonable deviations from normal. He's obviously reacting to the borer's magnetic field presence but not at a dangerous level. The ice bath is helping."
Olivia was hunched over the side of the tank, both hands gripping the edge, monitoring the icy form below for any movement. Her hair fell in her face.
She growled, "The ice bath is also killing him, Walter. Let's get this over with."
Walter collected his worms and his dignity and moved hesitantly to the side of the tank. Within, his son was now inhumanly pale, with purple fingertips and lips. Light frost dusted his eyelashes, though the pillow of ice beneath where his head lay meant his face was just clear of the icy water. It was the face of a corpse. Perfect, unchanging, and very, very dead.
With a shaky hand, Walter extracted several worms from the canister, and dropped them in the water.
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The gauzy crystal wall that had encapsulated Peter's brain in chilled silence splintered along one ragged line, roughly, like a fine flaw erupting in a sheet of glass. Disoriented, Peter felt the seductively numbness of hypothermia crack open, allowing sensation in again, in this case, an echo of the horrible keening pressure in his head that had been the hallmark of the ice worm's presence. He felt panic well up in his throat but couldn't make a sound. His mistake, he berated himself internally, was in not having some way to signal them, that this was a bad idea. Why would his father think this was ok? No, stupid question, but why would Olivia? All of a sudden, he thought of fifty objections to his father's plan, from sending a transceiver alone to sending, for god's sake, a hamster, and why would Walter not have thought this through or maybe he DID and..
The gauzy crystal wall abruptly shattered completely, a myriad fine cracks exploding at once in all directions. Simultaneously, he felt a stabbing, wrenching pain – where? In his chest, below a rib, atop a collarbone. Where there had once been cold, all he could feel now was the blaze of his flesh being torn and the molten heat from the wounds pouring through his veins, into his skull, where all thought but for the awful void of eternity was lost.
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Olivia drew back in horror as the ice borers quickly and eagerly sought out the living body within the miniature glacial bay and bloodlessly dove in. Peter's body convulsed as the blue worms attached to him, one at his throat, another in his chest, and the last one in his side. She reflexively thrust a hand into the ice to steady him, pressing her palm onto his sternum. At that moment, his eyes flickered to her, sightlessly. Glacial blue. She choked back a sob and held her hand tightly against him, despite the bone-chilling ache of the water.
Behind her, Astrid was frantic. "Dr. Bishop! The readings are all over the place! I don't know how to interpret any of this!"
Walter spoke quickly, "Astrid! Engage the magnetic drive." At the same time, he moved to Olivia and grasped her firmly by both shoulders, forcing her away from the tank and toward the monitoring station.
"My dear, we must get back, it is not safe here."
Olivia looked at him wildly, wanting to rail against the incongruity of that statement, but at that moment, a high-pitched whine initiated from the terminal, growing rapidly in frequency and volume.
"We're in transport mode," Walter said with preternatural calmness. "T minus 60 seconds for retrieval mode."
Both women strained to see what was happening in the tank, but the entire center of the room was engulfed in what looked like a tiny, intense aurora borealis, completely obscuring the equipment.
The scales on all the life signals monitors abruptly went to zero readings.
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Peter opened his eyes, to find himself standing in a pleasantly lit circular waiting area. There were low couches and tables along the walls, tasteful, anonymous art, and a few doors. He started to take a step, and then stopped suddenly, wrapping his arms around himself and looking down in disbelief. Rather than being laid out a frozen, dripping, nearly naked cadaver, he was dry, even comfortably warm. He patted the familiar grey t-shirt and jeans from earlier in the day – they felt solid and substantial. In fact, he felt great – he lifted his shirt experimentally to check on the nasty little gash he'd gotten on his belly when he'd struggled to get himself out of the terminal pedestal – but the skin was clear. He raised his hand to his forehead, but felt none of the bruises and cuts from the previous night's encounters. No headache, no tiredness…
Or else he was dead.
He impulsively checked his arm for the implanted transceiver – the insertion wound was gone, but he felt the comforting little bump of the device still under the skin. Surely, if he were in heaven, he wouldn't have bits of metal still stuck in him.
Peter Bishop, he thought wryly, what makes you think it would be heaven for you?
He had no watch, but figured it had been at least sixty seconds. So, if Walter was right, and that was a big if, he should be back to harsh Boston reality any second. But as long as he was here, no sense staying out in the open where someone could walk in on him – could you get shot in heaven?
He padded across the deep pile carpet to one of the side doors. Looking down bemusedly, he saw he was in bare feet, just as he had been that afternoon. He felt the reassuringly heavy t-shirt material between two fingers a second time. Somehow, what you got transported as was some sort of best-case projection of yourself, or, last vision of yourself – not the sodden reality. He wished idly that he'd projected the idea of "shoes" before transporting, and rubbed unthinkingly at the ice borer wound in his side that wasn't there as he ducked into the corridor beyond.
The hallway presented various large windows into what looked like laboratory bays. Within some of them, he saw people clustered around benches or gathered in animated conversation, but no one paid him any particular attention. He once heard voices in the hall, and dodged into utility closet to avoid them – it was one thing to have the employees notice an anonymous figure go past a side window, quite another to encounter a group of people head on. Wearing no shoes, he was probably suspicious looking.
At the far end of the hallway, he turned and surveyed irritably for a clock of some sort. Easily, more than several minutes now. Could he really freeze to death in Boston during this time if he were really here – in Canada? Somewhere? Taking a factory tour of Non-Descript Manufacturing, Inc.?
He heard voices again behind him, close, and whirled quickly to find a convenient place to hide. A lux looking glass corridor to one side led to a polished wooden door. If anywhere he might find answers, it would be in the boss' office, no doubt.
He sprinted through the glass ante-door and then holding his ear to the wooden inner door, and hearing no sounds, he quickly let himself in. With his back against the door, holding the knob, he scanned the room. A floor to ceiling window looked out on a semi-urban cityscape he didn't recognize. The office was dominated by a sleek but imposing mahogany desk. The chair swiveled to face him.
He breathed out.
"Nina Sharp. You bitch."
The red-haired woman smiled.
"Good to see you too, Peter."
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"25 seconds!" Astrid's voice had moved beyond panic to almost hysteria. The wail of the terminal in the center of the room and bright intensity of the aurora around it made conversing and even thinking difficult.
"Professor! I don't think the magnetic booster thing is reversing. Look at these readings – shouldn't they be slowing and then reversing? It looks like the readings are still accelerating!"
Walter Bishop was a study in calculation. He scribbled madly at a pad of paper in front of him while gazing intently from monitor to monitor. "Still another 10 seconds before field reversal," he said.
Olivia stared fixedly at the life signs monitors, as staring into the aurora was not possible. All monitors still showed zero readings, and the temperature probes now showed 32 Fahrenheit – the temperature of the ice, not a human being.
She wrestled with throwing herself into the aurora to drag Peter Bishop out and throwing herself at Walter Bishop to have him make it all stop. Neither option seemed viable but doing nothing was imminently going to be unthinkable.
"35 seconds," Astrid called out again. "Readings still accelerating!"
Olivia was terrified to see a heavy trail of perspiration starting down the elder Bishop's temple, as he tried to make sense of the readings.
"Walter!" she cried, "What's happening to Peter?"
He looked up at her unseeingly, still plotting angles in his head. "I think," he said, "I think we must add more power to the circuit, force the field to destabilize and collapse."
"50 seconds! No loopback!"
Walter pushed past Astrid and started to frantically throw heavy knife-switches that were connected to thick cables leading into the aurora-shrouded terminal. The whine of the machine grew so insistent that Olivia covered her ears with her hands, and somewhere, there was the attenuated sound of a window breaking.
"Dr Bishop – we're overloading the circuits!"
Olivia and Astrid looked at him mutely.
He stared deep into the heart of the miniature sun. "Peter," he whispered.
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"Come in, my dear boy." Nina Sharp favored him with an oily, predatory look.
Peter involuntarily clenched the door handle, as if to bolt, but realized it would be futile. He drew himself up, set his jaw, and managed a credible saunter across the carpet toward the desk.
"And, aren't you just adorable, standing there in bare feet like a schoolboy." She oozed to the side of the desk and hitched one hip on top, resting her hands in her lap. "Come here, darling, and sit down."
Sixty seconds. For the love of God, could this just have been the day his father'd been right. At this rate, he'd pray that the chip was actually working and that at least the Mounties or whomever would be there soon.
Peter casually propped himself on the edge of a chair, out of reach of the desk and its owner.
"So, you're not surprised?" he opened.
She smiled. "Surprised? Well, if anyone was going to turn up unexpected, it would have to be you or your father. Or your delightful little friend Agent Dunham."
Peter tensed at that, and Nina noticed.
"Anyone else and I'd have to have them removed. Permanently. You're lucky I like you. Don't tell me you're developing a soft spot for people, after all this time."
Cat and mouse was a game Peter wasn't unfamiliar with, as was poker, and in this game, he did have an ace.
"Cut the Elvira-Mistress-of-the-Dark-Corporation act. You know why I'm here, you know I'll be tracked."
The woman pursed her lips and drew back. "Of course. And you don't seem too surprised, either, to find me here, by the way."
She rose regally and began to slide some papers into an expensive satchel.
"Sorry, Nina. Massive Dynamic's fingers were all over this one. You're going to have to pay more money to your shell-company lawyers, so they make it a challenge, at least."
"Don't flatter yourself, Peter," she said, coldly. "GenoWave was a mistake – sloppy. Methods, personnel, everything. We're in the process of cleaning that up. Your showing up here only accelerates things."
She laid the briefcase flat on the desk and regarded him dispassionately, speaking with calculated sincerity. "We're a huge conglomerate, with corresponding responsibility to the public. We have high standards for ourselves, and when lapses occur, we move quickly to correct the situation."
Peter smiled sardonically. "So you, mean, the police won't find anything linking you, by the time they get here."
The woman frowned, momentarily irritated, and then leaned in almost suggestively.
"If I were a true bad guy, it would stand to reason that you, my dear child, were the only loose end in this matter."
The resemblance to a lioness was almost too overwhelming to ignore, and Peter fought the urge to fling himself out of the chair toward the door.
Instead, he stood up leisurely. "But I'm lucky, since you like me."
After a tense moment, Nina sat back and laughed lightly. "So I do."
She picked up her satchel and started toward a back door of the office. "Everyone else will be gone soon, I suggest you take your leave as well."
"You can take that same glass hallway back the other way, and reach the transit lounge again more quickly."
As she opened the door, through which a helicopter deck could be seen, she turned and looked back at Peter, consideringly.
"Best of luck. Hypothermia is a nasty thing."
The door closed behind her.
A bolt of lightning cracked through Peter's skull, and he fell to his knees, gasping, and grasping his head in both hands. The room all of a sudden seemed tens of degrees colder, and a hideous ache raced through his bones. Putting his hand to his chest, he felt it come away sticky with blood. Breathing became impossible, and his heart was either racing or stopped, he couldn't tell. He put one hand to the floor to help himself stagger to his feet. Squinting painfully, he stumbled to the door and out into the glass hallway.
Another few minutes, and he flung open the door to what Nina had called the transit lounge. It appeared the same as before. Panting, he crumpled onto one of the lounges, noticing without emotion that new blood had welled up from a rib and his collarbone, and the tips of his fingers had turned purplish-blue. Shivering uncontrollably, now, he prayed again that his father would be right. Today.
Sixty seconds.
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With a horrible metallic screech, the giant electromagnets in the terminal failed, collapsing pole onto pole. The silence was almost as deafening as the previous howling protest of the machine, and for a moment, Olivia thought she might BE deaf. Smoke filled the room where the aurora had been. The timer froze in place at the time the machine had stopped: 68.3 seconds.
Astrid and Walter Bishop sat, stunned. No one moved.
And then the red LED blinked. 55 degrees. The heart rate monitor still showed zero.
"Peter!" yelled Olivia. Without thinking, she plunged into the smoke and ankle-deep icy water, feeling blindly for the holding tank.
Walter barked, "Astrid! Get the heating blankets! We have to warm his tissues to something sustainable, so I can restart his heart!"
Astrid pushed her way through the smoke, waving one of the blankets to disperse the cloud more quickly. Walter approached from the other side, with what looked like a defibrillator. In the middle of the carnage, Olivia had dropped the walls of the tank to produce a flat platform, and was holding an icy white Peter Bishop to her chest like a child, rocking him gently. He didn't move.
Walter softly tugged at her arms and guided the body of his son back down, while Astrid quickly began to wrap him mummy-like in the electric blankets.
"Clear his chest please," Walter said, lifting the two paddles high. Astrid pulled back the blankets and watched as the elder Bishop applied the charge. Peter's body convulsed, but the heart rate monitor was still flatlined.
"Turn up the heat, but slowly, slowly. The preservatives we put in the water should have prevented frostbite for the short time he was in the water, but we don't want to burn him, either."
Olivia had moved to hold Peter's head against her body, willing the warmth in her arms and chest to penetrate through his frozen scalp. His wet hair slowly soaked through the cotton of her blouse.
Walter watched the temperature monitor keenly.
"85 degrees. Step away, please, dear, and clear for another charge."
Peter's body convulsed again as the paddles were applied, and for a long moment, there was no sound in the room but the dripping water from the sides of the terminal. Then the heart rate monitor sprang to life, purring solidly.
Olivia already had Peter's head back cradled in her arms, and she stroked the sides of his face and whispered soothing, meaningless sounds. Walter lifted a syringe to the light, expelling air bubbles, then reached over to inject whatever it was into Peter's vein. Peter abruptly took a deep, rasping breath, but otherwise was still.
In the background, Astrid was off the phone. She held her palm to the receiver and called, tentatively, "Um, Agent Dunham?"
Olivia met her eyes, but didn't change position. Astrid took this as attention. "They found the place, ma'am. Outside Calgary, up in Alberta. They're rounding up Richard Maven as we speak."
"Peter did it, Olivia," Astrid said, comfortingly.
Olivia's smile didn't reach her eyes, but she nodded. The LED temperature monitor read 94 degrees.
"Olivia, help me get him somewhere more comfortable, shall we? Better he doesn't stay in this damp." Walter touched the side of her wrist.
Nodding again, she wrapped her arms tightly around Peter's blanketed arms, while Walter awkwardly took his legs. Together, they maneuvered him away from the wreckage of the lab area and over to the familiar, ratty couch.
Olivia laid back against the cushions of the couch, and reaching out her arms, took Peter down to rest against her. His head lay in the crook of her shoulder. Walter sat timidly on the far edge of the couch.
"The stimulant will help his system get back in order, and later we can clean out the worm remains, you know, and…."
Olivia rested her chin on the top of Peter's damp head, and did not respond.
"Well, body warmth is best, in any case," the elder man said, with a wan smile. "You just take care of him."
He stood up, surveying the room. "The custodians will be very cross."
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Sometime later, Olivia heard her name called in a dream. Embarrassed for having dropped off, she shook her head slightly and bumped into Peter's, his hair mussed but dry now, pressed against her cheek. She looked down into his face, and saw an ever so slight amount of green beneath the eyelashes. His cheeks were flushed with heat, and she immediately started to open the blankets around him, to give him some air.
"Mmm, no, don't," he murmured. He snuggled back into the blankets and her arms without opening his eyes.
She tipped her head against his forehead again and stroked his hair with one hand, staring off into the room. Absent-mindedly, she planted a small kiss on his temple.
There was a mumble from inside the blankets.
"You missed."
Helplessly, Olivia found herself smiling broadly. "I'm glad I didn't have to kill you, Peter," she whispered with mock strictness.
Peter lifted his face, eyes still drowsy, but fixed on her face, her smile, her lips.
"Yet."
He kissed her, full on the mouth. While her eyes widened and she lifted her hand to his jaw to join him in earnest, his head slipped backward to her shoulder. Green eyes closed, lips parted softly in sleep.
"Peter," she said sternly, to his now sleeping form, "we have to get you your own place."