Memory Palace

Summary: It's a room full of memories in a house that speaks of a lost life. Peter just wants to go home. Drabble.

Warning: Two posts today because the series is far beyond this episode now. And because I've finally managed to be up-to-date with season four. And – wow! Wasn't "Welcome to Westfield" amazing?

Set: post-episode 0406 – And those we've left behind.

Disclaimer: No copyright inFringement intended.

The room is dark and dusty.

Dusty and stale. Little wonder, has it not been used for more than twenty years. Peter never has been here before and yet he has and the implications – the whole thing, really – are slowly getting too much for him. He belongs here but he has no place here, he loves these people but they fear him. He searches for a place he has lost and they have nothing to offer. Not to him, not now. Not ever.

Sheets of dust dance in the little light of the sun that filters through the closed curtains. Did they always look that old? There is the table he used when he worked, but the dark rings of his glass of water he used to keep close are gone. There is the TV but it is old and out-of-date and he doubts he can receive any decent program with it anymore. There is the bookshelf but the books on it are old and as lost as he feels right now.

And there's a toy plane on a sofa.

These are memories, memories of a house full of laughter and happiness and a life he never had and never missed until now. Perhaps remembering such a life would blot out the other memories that sneak up on him, the ones that make him want to scream and rage and smash his fist into the wall. But nothing is quite strong enough, so he sees two lives and two versions of two and the same people, two worlds and two women who are a world. Two boys lived here, both sickly and pale but one grown and haunted and one young and happy. Because for some reason he knows this Peter Bishop – and no man should get to know so many different versions of himself, he thinks bitterly – had a happy life. The few pictures on the wall only reinforce this first guess. A younger Elizabeth, a younger Walter and a Peter who never grew up to become the man that wasn't supposed to be.

It's a room full of memories in a house that speaks of a lost life.

Whose life was lost, Peter wonders. His? He is in the wrong place (or the wrong time?) and does not see a way to correct this. Walter's? Walter buries himself in his lab, living in the past as much as in ignorance. Elizabeth's? Elizabeth killed herself in desperation. Or Olivia's, perhaps? Olivia, who looked at him with a stranger's eyes and asked the question that made his world shatter. Three and fifteen years he has loved her. How many times has he lost her now? How many people return home to find their house has been usurped by strangers with their face but entirely different lives? His father doesn't want to look at him, Olivia looks at him but does so with the distant gaze that tells him she does not know him. Even worse, she looks suspicious. And it hurts more than he ever would have thought it would. He catches himself wishing she'd love him – and then wonders idly what his Olivia would say at that. You've become quite skilled at replacing, Peter. Or is she his Olivia? Is it time and space that are messed up, or is it him? He might as well be an anomaly, the boy who wasn't supposed to live, the man that wasn't supposed to exist. But he does, now, and he has no idea how to continue on. He sinks down on a dusty sofa and feels the cushions shape around his weary figure like they used to do. Or is it only a memory of another house, another life?

What is real, and who is he, and what does he do here and were is Olivia?

If she's out there, he is sure, she is looking for him. He just cannot shake off the feeling that she isn't, and that he should be looking for her in return. The way she was smiling the day they died – and again, the day she died – flashes before his eyes. The way she smiled at Lincoln Lee. The way she smiled at him, later – forced, tight, nothing compared to the radiant smile she gave him when she came to the other side to bring him back. What is it with time, space and fate that always tears them apart when they have just found each other?

The old house breathes. Wood creaks and sunlight peeks through the curtains and dust dances and Peter watches the particles and hears echoes of laughter, feels the ghost of a love he once had. Lost, everything is lost now, and he is utterly devoid of any kinds of ideas that might help him. He's here and yet isn't. It was bad enough being in the wrong universe – at least he had a home there. Now he's in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, he is all wrong himself. His hand ghosts over the armrest of the sofa. He feels the little hole Walter once burnt into the sofa because he was playing with a candle – perhaps the boy Peter caused it in this timeline, or it always was there. The clock he remembers ticking so vividly (it counted down the good hours of his life: pancakes with Walter, whine with Olivia, evenings with Olivia, breakfast with Olivia… Olivia, Olivia, Olivia) and for a second he wonders whether the clock stopped when his presence was erased. Because his life has stopped, as well, just like that on the day when he saw the woman he had lived half of his live with in that horrid cell and she asked him who he was. He had always thought those scenes in TV and books to be horrible – but it was even worse. Romantic fools would pine that they were fine as long as their love was fine, but Peter isn't that kind of person. Selfish or not, he wants her not to be fine without him. He wants to be with her, wants her to remember him. Wants her to miss him and want him and fight for him, like his Olivia always would do, and he doesn't care whether she has just forgotten him or whether he is in the wrong universe. But that is the catch, isn't it? Because as much as he wants her, he wants his Olivia, and it doesn't seem like he is where she is. He is alone.

Alone with the memories of a lifetime, perhaps even more. And he just wishes he was with her. At home.

(He doesn't even care anymore where that might be.)