Fic: Chain You Down (Peter, Olivia, Nick) (4/5)
Title: Chain You Down (4/5)
Fandom: Fringe
Author:
chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 4477
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to
crazylittleelf for betaing the entire thing.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3
Chain You Down
Chapter 4
There's crushed metal and blood and in that screaming silence a gaping chasm of loss sucking him into fathomless depths. Before Peter hits bottom-if there is a bottom; dread tells him this fall never ends-he wakes, panting, sweat-drenched sheets twisted around him.
"Olive?" Nick's worried voice comes clearly from the next room, despite the thickness of the walls in-between. "Olive, wake up. It's a nightmare, you're having a nightmare."
Not Peter's nightmare, Olivia's nightmare. He can feel it lingering in the air and raking his skin. He pushes to his feet, stumbles out his door and through hers. Olivia thrashes against Nick, gasping, trapped by whatever her mind's conjured up. Fragments lance through Peter, and he closes his eyes to stop them from sucking him back in.
Nick looks up, relief softening his worry. "Peter-"
"Got it."
Peter grabs her hand in both of his and focuses on calming her. Skin to skin edges him even further into her dreams, and he shudders as he's swamped by grief and terror. "Olivia, c'mon Olivia. Wake up. Nick, what the fuck is going on?"
"This happens, sometimes," Nick murmurs, rocking her. "When she's stressed, when things go wrong. She gets so lost."
Her eyes snap open and she bolts upright, shuddering. Even in the shadowed room he can tell her expression is raw, stripped of every layer of the defenses she usually thrusts between herself and the rest of the world. She hides in Nick's arms as she shakes.
This is more levels of not right than Peter could ever find words to express.
He rubs her back, closing his eyes and breathing deep as he sinks further below the surface and soothes the tangled mass of emotions spiking off her back into control. And she's not blocking him. Not at all. Nick's there too, a dimly felt presence across her mind as they work to a common purpose. Slowly her trembling eases and the terrors slip back into the dark recesses of her mind.
And then the walls snap back up, shoving him out as they envelop her, and he staggers back into himself.
"Get out of my head." Her head's down, hair straggling in front of her face to hide her expression, but her voice is feral.
"Olive..." Nick brushes her hair aside, and runs a thumb along her cheekbone. She looks up, eyes wild.
"Get out. Both of you." She tears herself from their arms, launches herself across the room before whirling back on them. "Five minutes. I want five minutes alone in my brain. Five minutes when I can feel something and not share with the rest of the crowd. It was bad enough when it was just Nick, but now if it's not one of you, it's the other."
Peter slips off the bed and approaches her cautiously. "Olivia-"
"Don't." She jerks away before his fingers do more than brush her arm. "Don't touch me. I'm going out."
She grabs shirt and pants from her closet, sandals from under the bed, and he barely has time to blink-or appreciate the unanticipated flash of skin-before she's changed and out the door.
"What the fuck?" Peter glances at Nick, then back out the door.
Nick blows out a breath and flops back on her bed. "Leave her."
"Will she be...?" Peter can't find the words. 'All right' doesn't cover it, because the glimmers he caught of the darkness behind those nightmares is the furthest thing from 'all right' he can think of.
"She gets like this, too." Nick sighs, covering his eyes with his forearm. "Usually after the nightmares."
Peter leans against the doorjamb and stares down the dark hall, listening to the retreating rumble of her car moving at speeds considerably faster than the posted limit. He wonders why he's so damned worried. She can take care of herself, has been for years. She and Nick have been doing this since long before Peter got forced back into the picture.
A memory of the despair that stalked through her nightmares flashes through his mind; he shakes away his renewed concern irritably and pours all the sarcasm he can muster into a defense against it. "So this is normal?"
"Is any of what we are normal?" Nick snarls, shooting upright. "It's a reaction. It's a crack. One of the few weaknesses she allows herself to have, and only because she hasn't figured out how to carve it out. If she had her way, she'd wall herself off from everything and be nothing more than the perfect shell."
Peter turns and stares at Nick, taken aback by the anger that laced the words, an echo of Olivia's anger before she left. If this is her weakness, it's Nick's as well. Peter pastes on a smirk, shakes his head and asks, "So, when will she be back?"
"When she's ready." Peter is silent, but Nick still answers the next question, grudgingly. "She'll go out, find someone normal, someone who'll buy whatever facade she wants to show. Lose herself for a few hours until she can force the demons back into hiding."
Peter pieces together these tidbits of information-and maybe a thousand other impressions he's collected in the past months-and wonders what Olivia's so scared of that, in her weakest moments, she'd rather be comforted by anonymous arms than the person who's been with her for years.
When he raises his eyes, Nick's watching him, expression too knowing. How much has Nick figured out? What else has he picked up when Peter's shields have been down? Peter shutters his mind and his expression, and Nick's eyes drop.
Peter has been here months, but how much does he really know about what Nick's capable of? Or Olivia? For all he knows, they know everything that's going on in his head.
No. If they really knew, he'd be dead.
Not important now. He fights down the unease and asks, as casually as he can, "Normal, huh?"
Nick shrugs a shoulder. "We all have our dreams." He shoves up from the bed and out of the room, not bothering to turn on the lights. Peter listens to him thump down the stairs, follows more slowly. Three weeks took care of the bruises, but the deeper damage is still healing. Now that adrenaline is wearing off his ribs ache. Nick's in the kitchen fiddling with the coffee maker by the time Peter reaches the first floor.
Peter raises his eyebrows. "Waiting up for her to come home? How sweet."
Nick jabs the 'on' button. "Don't want to share the experience of her fucking some guy. Mostly 'cause it'll piss her off and she'll come home and use me for target practice."
Peter blinks, not sure if he heard Nick right. "What's that?"
Nick smirks. "I sleep, I chance living through whatever she's doing, like I'm sharing her head. More likely when one of us is... hmm. Highly agitated. Strong emotions deepen the bond, y'know?"
"And if she's asleep and you're awake, can she...?"
"Yup."
"No wonder she's pissed." Peter has been trawling other people's heads for years, but never really considered what it felt like to be the one invaded. If he sticks around for much longer will he be condemned to this, too? His skin crawls at the thought of losing that much more privacy. Fates, the bitches, are having their little laugh at his expense. "And it doesn't bother you?"
"Which part?" Nick raises an eyebrow. "Being in her head all the time? We've been crawling around each other's brains for three quarters of our lives; bothers her more than me. And even if I was inclined to care, her fucking some guy-or girl-is her business, not mine. Besides, it's not like she loves 'em."
Nick isn't jealous, but there's something else underneath. Pleasure, maybe. Lust. Unable to resist, Peter edges into the outskirts of Nick's mind, narrowing his eyes as he sorts through the emotions, then smirks. Nick likes being in her head a little too much when she goes on these jaunts of hers.
Nick catches the expression-or maybe he picked up on Peter brushing through his mind-and his cheeks redden. "Shit. How the hell... ah, fuck. Don't tell Olive. She'll fucking eviscerate me. Keep me alive so she can do it again."
Peter leans against the counter, watches Nick grab mugs from the cabinet. "So you two can keep secrets from each other."
"All the fucking time."
And therefore maybe Peter has been keeping his secrets from both of them. Or maybe they've been leaking out, like Nick's just did. "How? You link with her pretty damned freely."
Nick shrugs. "It's been four months since you guys reconnected. Give it a couple years, and you'll figure out all the tricks to keep your own headspace. It's harder on her, actually. She has to learn to manage two sets of connections. Trying to tune into one of us but not the other's been fucking her up."
Peter looks out the windows into the shadowed back yard. Would he be here in a year's time? Not if he has his way. Distance worked before; going overseas might stretch the bond between them until it subsides back into wherever the hell it had been before he was dragged back.
He can only hope.
This is just further proof he should make his escape as soon as possible. Not only will he be better off without them, but they'll be better off without him. Benefits all around.
~***~
It's well into the afternoon before Olivia straggles home. Nick finally gave up and left the house hours ago; his disgruntled response to Peter's concern was that she was fine and could track him down if she wanted him. Peter stayed to stand sentinel, even if he wasn't quite sure why.
He watches through half-lidded eyes as she hesitates when she sees him, giving him a small nod before slipping up the stairs. The patter of the shower continues long enough to run the hot water past icy.
When she pads back downstairs, her hair's dripping; the oversized grey sweats she's wearing-Nick's, he's pretty sure-make her look like she's barely an adolescent. She stops in the living room doorway, shifting from one foot to another, then tilts her head. "I'm grabbing a sandwich. Want anything?"
He nods and rises. The soft words were offered like a peace offering, and if she's unbending enough for that he's meeting her half way.
She doesn't quite meet his eyes, just studies him with quick, sidelong glances.
He sits at the kitchen table and watches her rare domesticity. She only speaks to ask what he wants, and makes sandwiches with the same precision and focus with which she plans missions. When done, she slides his plate to him and settles across the table, staring at her sandwich rather than eating.
"I'm sorry," she says abruptly, looking up. "I shouldn't have-"
He cuts her off with a shake of his head. "I'll live. Are you all right?"
Her eyes stay on him but her head lowers, and she fiddles with her napkin. "What did Nick tell you?"
"That you have nightmares. That you like to go out for company afterwards. That you'd shoot him if he went to sleep while you were doing so."
"Nick talks too much," she mutters, her eyes dropping, but the corner of her mouth lifts slightly. "I wouldn't shoot him. Torture him for a bit, maybe."
"Does it help?"
She doesn't pretend she doesn't know what he's asking. "Sometimes." She leans elbows on the table, chin resting on her hands. "Not always."
"Not this time?"
She doesn't look at him. "No."
He starts to reach out, hesitates inches from her skin. She stares at his hand, eyes shadowed and unreadable. Reaches out and catches his hand as he starts to withdraw it. He studies her; she studies their interlocked fingers.
"You waited for me," she says. Her nervousness flutters against him, laced with curiosity.
No use denying it, not with them touching. "I was worried. Besides, it's not like I had anything better to do today."
"Thank you." She squeezes. Looks up at him, shy and uncertain.
This is Olivia. Not the soldier, but the woman who hides within. The one who lingers in the pathways she carved in his mind years before, who as a child he trusted with his life even if he can't remember why. Who he's still doesn't really know but is almost starting to like and maybe, just maybe, to understand.
He squeezes back.
~***~
The next few weeks she's restless, whiplashing between uncharacteristically outgoing and bitchy something like a hundred times a day, until Peter almost wishes she'd go back to giving him the cold shoulder. Almost, but not quite. Nick seems more amused than concerned, so Peter takes his cue from that. It would at least be nice if she had taken a summer class so she had a reason not to be lurking in the house at every second of every day. A mission that would give her an excuse to go out and work off the twitchy energy that's been building would be fucking wonderful.
She has no more nightmares. None that creep into his sleep to wake him, anyway.
When the cell phone finally rings-he's started calling it the Batphone, to Nick, although never to Olivia's face-she practically pounces on it, notes down details of their assignment with a neat hand. Peter peers over her shoulder, trying to get a look at her notes, but she moves to block him, folds the page and stuffs it in her pocket before he can get so much as a glance.
"I'll take this one," she says, her stance casual but excitement thrumming along her nerves.
Peter studies her. "Alone?"
"Yup."
He debates picking her pocket, but the slightest of tension in her shoulders suggests she expects it. It was easier before she'd interrogated him about exactly what he could do. This is one of the days he regrets being honest in that particular conversation. "That's what it says?"
"That's what I'm saying."
He stares at her and she stares back, not giving an inch. He glances at Nick, who's watching but not worried, then back at Olivia. He knows all about taking chances he knows better than to take, and bets she does too. He tries poking through her emotions to see where her head is, but she's not playing, veiling from him all but her eagerness to get out of the house and her stubborn instance that she's right. Finally he shrugs and backs down. Better to pick and choose his battles with her, and this one's not worth the effort. "Fine. Whatever. I'm sure you know better than I do."
Her eyes narrow and she studies him, but he doesn't give away any more than she. She nods, warily, looking like she's expecting more to the argument, but he doesn't give it to her.
Nick leans back and grins slowly, eyes cutting between Olivia and Peter. "Huh. So you two have finally figured out how to play nice."
Peter chokes down the urge to hit him upside the head as he walks by. Olivia doesn't stop herself, just punches him none too gently on the shoulder on her way upstairs.
~***~
Twelve hours after she left, Nick drops his controller and shoots to his feet. Head tilted and eyes distant, he circles the room, stopping in the southwest corner. "Something's wrong."
"How do you know?" Stupid question, but it slips out before Peter can stop it. Now that he's paying attention, he feels it, too. Ants crawling along his spine, a primal sense that something is off kilter.
Nick switches the TV to CNN, grabs his laptop and pulls up news sites. "Something this bad, there'll be fire. I can feel the fucking fire. Southwest. What the hell is southwest of here?"
"Where'd she go?"
"Did you really think she slowed down long enough for an explanation?"
"I figured she'd tell you."
Nick stops long enough to turn and stare in disbelief. "Yeah, right. She operates on 'need to know'. She was flying solo, so I didn't need to know."
It was one thing that she'd decided to go this one alone-she and Nick have been doing that since the moment Peter got here-but Peter always assumed they knew enough details to cover each other's asses if things went bad. "Fucking stupid."
Nick shrugs, not denying but not agreeing, either.
Peter stares out the window, fingers tapping restlessly against the sill. "So, what, we go after her?"
Nick leans back, eyes not seeing the cream walls or the crammed bookcases but whatever he's picking up from Olivia. "We wait," he says, finally, his tone layered in doubt. "She'll make her way back to us. She's dodging the authorities. If we go to extract her, could draw attention."
Peter would bet his life that those are Olivia's orders, not Nick's, but he can only trust that Nick would have countermanded them if he deemed the situation dire and he's not worried enough to do that. Not yet.
Nick's hands suddenly fist tight, then release, and Peter's stomach clenches as Nick mutters, "She's hurt. Fuck it, Olive, what the hell happened?" Nick refocuses on the laptop, scrolls down, then goes pale. "Fuck. Here. This is where she was."
Peter swings the computer around and glances through the article, a breaking news report on two buildings burning just outside St. Louis. One had collapsed; the other was engulfed but standing. Always playing up the sensationalism of any situation, the journalist gleefully reported that while the collapsed building was being renovated and was mostly deserted, the burning one was not. The exact death toll is unknown, but most likely well past the double digits. The authorities were quoted to be blaming a gas main explosion, but the person who dashed this story off sounds dubious, spreading hints of arson and terrorism throughout the brief article.
Nick keeps calling up articles, following the story by as many different avenues as he can, while Peter paces, unable to settle for any length of time. He can't get a good read on Olivia, as much as he tries. Part of it is distance-the farther away she is, the more tenuous the bond-but more of it is that she's actively blocking him, damn her stubborn ass, setting barriers against him more firmly the closer she gets until he can't say where she is, only that she exists.
She's white and hollow-eyed when she comes through the door hours later, one arm clutched against her stomach, the other trailing against the wall. Nick's at her side before the door closes shut, Peter two steps later.
"Olive? How bad?" Nick reaches a hand out to her, hisses when he sees blood.
Peter peers into her face. Her eyes are glassy, her brows drawn together. Fighting pain, at the minimum. She's not giving anything else away. "What the hell happened?"
Her eyes focus, flick to his. "Unexpected resistance," she says in a tone that says the conversation is over.
He ignores the unspoken order. "And the fire?"
"Collateral damage. That's all." The words are jagged. "Acceptable losses for a mission like this."
Peter catches her when her knees give, lowers her gently to the ground. He brushes the hair from her face, runs fingers along her chin as he tries get a read on how she really is, but she's a hollowed out shell filled only with the shadowed conviction of her words. Hidden so deep within herself there isn't an Olivia left to find.
She closes her eyes. If not for her weight in his arms, her warmth against his chest-and she's cold, too cold, so that warmth is negligible-he would think she isn't there at all.
He rests his chin on her head and stays wrapped around her while Nick pulls away clothing and makeshift bandages to ascertain the extent of her injuries. A wicked gash along her midsection, a crease where a bullet tore along her arm. Most of the blood isn't hers, but enough is. Too much.
"Wounds looks clean, but should be stitched," Nick says, anger at whoever hurt her lacing the words. "Get her on the couch while I get the medical kit."
She doesn't protest when Peter scoops her up, and that worries the fuck out of him. When he sets her down she latches on, a bruising grip around his wrist, and doesn't let go until he settles himself behind her and she's propped against his chest.
Nick stops and stares when he sees how they're arranged; Peter just shrugs and tilts his head towards Olivia. Nick raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment. He starts to prepare a syringe-anesthesia, Peter assumes-but she shakes her head.
"Olive?" Nick's question is carefully neutral, but Peter picks up the underlying dismay, no less intense than Peter's own.
"Just do it, no shots," she says flatly
Peter stares up at Nick, and considers. Between the two of them they could force the issue-probably-but they'd pay for it later, in more ways than one, and she'll use energy fighting them that she doesn't have to spare. Better to let her have her way, no matter what screwed up reasoning she has. Peter holds Nick's eyes and says, "Get her something to bite down on."
Nick doesn't protest, just nods, which means he reached the same conclusions.
Olivia rouses from her slump to glare up at both of them. "I don't-"
"At least that," Peter says, adamant. She's right, she probably doesn't, but it gives her something else to be pissed about, maybe enough to distract her mind from the pain.
She stares at him, then gives a shallow nod, slouching back and closing her eyes. She obediently bites down on the wadded cloth Nick provides, although her expression is sour.
Peter settles a forearm across her collarbone, traces calming patterns against the join of her neck and shoulder with the other hand. She stiffens as Nick probes the sluggishly bleeding cut on her stomach, muscles tense under Peter's hands. Bright pain surges through her, and Peter closes his eyes and submerges into it, riding it out alongside her. He feels every one of the thirteen sutures as in his own skin. The score on her arm is a cakewalk by comparison. He listens to her breathing steady and feels the pain ease to a dull throb as Nick finishes bandaging her wounds.
"Done." Nick rubs a hand up and down Olivia's arm. "You okay?"
She spits out the cloth and nods without opening her eyes, snaking an arm around his shoulders. Nick leans back against the couch, his head against her thigh.
Peter thinks she's fallen asleep when she shifts and sighs. "Whole mission went to hell."
Peter's brows drop as he studies the bandage wrapped around her middle. Just a little deeper and she wouldn't have made it back. "We got that."
Nick thwacks Peter's leg, then asks, softly, "What happened?"
"I was supposed to interrupt a clandestine meeting, kill everyone, and get the papers being passed on. Low numbers, light resistance. Simple job. Easy to keep quiet, just like they wanted." Her eyes flicker open, but they're focused on the past, not the present. "They were expecting me. Whole thing was a set up from the get-go."
Peter's hand stills against her shoulder. "By who?"
"Someone high up," Nick murmurs.
Olivia nods. "Has to be, to know our orders, but they didn't name any names." She clears her throat, continues even more softly, "They got me with a tranq when I walked through the door. Said I was a liability and a mistake, that the loose ends of the project had to be terminated. Their mistake was that they figured they had me subdued and outgunned so they kept talking, kept explaining why what they were doing was for the best."
"How'd you get away?" Peter still can't read her emotions, can't get a good feel for what's really going on in her head.
"I panicked." She fiddles with the edges of the tape across her chest, shame heating the edges of her words. "Like a raw recruit. I panicked and let my control slip and suddenly there was fire everywhere..." Her memories of terror, of eliminating the threat in an explosion of fire and ash, ghost through Peter's head then ebb away.
"Jones won't be happy," Nick says quietly. Peter feels Nick's understanding and reassurance, tainted with curls of fear, but has nothing to add, not a fucking thing.
"Jones will be pissed. Fucking up isn't permitted." Her voice is heavy with irony and cynicism. "I know better. I know what's at stake."
The snick as the pieces he's been looking for fall into place is practically audible. She fucked up, and he could do nothing to stop it.
He slips free of her mind-he didn't even realize he'd tangled himself so deep while trying to figure out how she really was until he started extricating himself-and tightly shuts himself off from her. Drops his chin to her head and wonders why the fuck he feels like he got punched in the gut.
Not bringing backup to help suss out the situation was a bad judgment call, one that cost the mission. Doesn't matter that they'd been betrayed; she shouldn't have gone in alone. She knew better. And then, on top of that, letting her powers get wildly out of control brought neon visibility to a quiet little retrieval mission. Fuck-ups that huge usually lead to bullets in the brain as a warning to everyone else that that sort of shit isn't tolerated.
Jones' words echo through his head: ...if you can bring me evidence that Miss Dunham's control is breaking down, and that your presence is doing nothing to halt the effect... Accidently blowing up her targets, which in turn led to one building blowing up and a second still burning, with the associated unintended deaths? Things didn't get much more out of control than that, and the organization they work for doesn't seem the sort to have sympathy for extenuating circumstances. Add in the nightmares, maybe throw in her reactions to them? This is his exit plan, if he spins the facts right, and he's a fucking master at spinning the situation to his ends.
This is what he wants. He's given up months of his life to crap he doesn't give a fuck about and it's well past time to find a reason to get away.
Even knowing what will happen to those he's leaving behind.
back to Chapter 3 / on to Chapter 5
Fandom: Fringe
Author:
chichuri
Characters: Peter, Olivia, Nick
Word Count: 4477
Rating: R
Summary: After five years on the run, Peter is caught by the ZFT and reintroduced to Olivia and Nick. AU.
Warnings: Swearing, violence
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe or its characters.
Author's Note: Very AU. Prequel to Slip Off the Choke Chain. Olivia's childhood goes a bit differently, which leads to a universe where Peter, Olivia, and Nick are soldiers for the ZFT. About a ton of thanks to
crazylittleelf for betaing the entire thing.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3
Chain You Down
Chapter 4
There's crushed metal and blood and in that screaming silence a gaping chasm of loss sucking him into fathomless depths. Before Peter hits bottom-if there is a bottom; dread tells him this fall never ends-he wakes, panting, sweat-drenched sheets twisted around him.
"Olive?" Nick's worried voice comes clearly from the next room, despite the thickness of the walls in-between. "Olive, wake up. It's a nightmare, you're having a nightmare."
Not Peter's nightmare, Olivia's nightmare. He can feel it lingering in the air and raking his skin. He pushes to his feet, stumbles out his door and through hers. Olivia thrashes against Nick, gasping, trapped by whatever her mind's conjured up. Fragments lance through Peter, and he closes his eyes to stop them from sucking him back in.
Nick looks up, relief softening his worry. "Peter-"
"Got it."
Peter grabs her hand in both of his and focuses on calming her. Skin to skin edges him even further into her dreams, and he shudders as he's swamped by grief and terror. "Olivia, c'mon Olivia. Wake up. Nick, what the fuck is going on?"
"This happens, sometimes," Nick murmurs, rocking her. "When she's stressed, when things go wrong. She gets so lost."
Her eyes snap open and she bolts upright, shuddering. Even in the shadowed room he can tell her expression is raw, stripped of every layer of the defenses she usually thrusts between herself and the rest of the world. She hides in Nick's arms as she shakes.
This is more levels of not right than Peter could ever find words to express.
He rubs her back, closing his eyes and breathing deep as he sinks further below the surface and soothes the tangled mass of emotions spiking off her back into control. And she's not blocking him. Not at all. Nick's there too, a dimly felt presence across her mind as they work to a common purpose. Slowly her trembling eases and the terrors slip back into the dark recesses of her mind.
And then the walls snap back up, shoving him out as they envelop her, and he staggers back into himself.
"Get out of my head." Her head's down, hair straggling in front of her face to hide her expression, but her voice is feral.
"Olive..." Nick brushes her hair aside, and runs a thumb along her cheekbone. She looks up, eyes wild.
"Get out. Both of you." She tears herself from their arms, launches herself across the room before whirling back on them. "Five minutes. I want five minutes alone in my brain. Five minutes when I can feel something and not share with the rest of the crowd. It was bad enough when it was just Nick, but now if it's not one of you, it's the other."
Peter slips off the bed and approaches her cautiously. "Olivia-"
"Don't." She jerks away before his fingers do more than brush her arm. "Don't touch me. I'm going out."
She grabs shirt and pants from her closet, sandals from under the bed, and he barely has time to blink-or appreciate the unanticipated flash of skin-before she's changed and out the door.
"What the fuck?" Peter glances at Nick, then back out the door.
Nick blows out a breath and flops back on her bed. "Leave her."
"Will she be...?" Peter can't find the words. 'All right' doesn't cover it, because the glimmers he caught of the darkness behind those nightmares is the furthest thing from 'all right' he can think of.
"She gets like this, too." Nick sighs, covering his eyes with his forearm. "Usually after the nightmares."
Peter leans against the doorjamb and stares down the dark hall, listening to the retreating rumble of her car moving at speeds considerably faster than the posted limit. He wonders why he's so damned worried. She can take care of herself, has been for years. She and Nick have been doing this since long before Peter got forced back into the picture.
A memory of the despair that stalked through her nightmares flashes through his mind; he shakes away his renewed concern irritably and pours all the sarcasm he can muster into a defense against it. "So this is normal?"
"Is any of what we are normal?" Nick snarls, shooting upright. "It's a reaction. It's a crack. One of the few weaknesses she allows herself to have, and only because she hasn't figured out how to carve it out. If she had her way, she'd wall herself off from everything and be nothing more than the perfect shell."
Peter turns and stares at Nick, taken aback by the anger that laced the words, an echo of Olivia's anger before she left. If this is her weakness, it's Nick's as well. Peter pastes on a smirk, shakes his head and asks, "So, when will she be back?"
"When she's ready." Peter is silent, but Nick still answers the next question, grudgingly. "She'll go out, find someone normal, someone who'll buy whatever facade she wants to show. Lose herself for a few hours until she can force the demons back into hiding."
Peter pieces together these tidbits of information-and maybe a thousand other impressions he's collected in the past months-and wonders what Olivia's so scared of that, in her weakest moments, she'd rather be comforted by anonymous arms than the person who's been with her for years.
When he raises his eyes, Nick's watching him, expression too knowing. How much has Nick figured out? What else has he picked up when Peter's shields have been down? Peter shutters his mind and his expression, and Nick's eyes drop.
Peter has been here months, but how much does he really know about what Nick's capable of? Or Olivia? For all he knows, they know everything that's going on in his head.
No. If they really knew, he'd be dead.
Not important now. He fights down the unease and asks, as casually as he can, "Normal, huh?"
Nick shrugs a shoulder. "We all have our dreams." He shoves up from the bed and out of the room, not bothering to turn on the lights. Peter listens to him thump down the stairs, follows more slowly. Three weeks took care of the bruises, but the deeper damage is still healing. Now that adrenaline is wearing off his ribs ache. Nick's in the kitchen fiddling with the coffee maker by the time Peter reaches the first floor.
Peter raises his eyebrows. "Waiting up for her to come home? How sweet."
Nick jabs the 'on' button. "Don't want to share the experience of her fucking some guy. Mostly 'cause it'll piss her off and she'll come home and use me for target practice."
Peter blinks, not sure if he heard Nick right. "What's that?"
Nick smirks. "I sleep, I chance living through whatever she's doing, like I'm sharing her head. More likely when one of us is... hmm. Highly agitated. Strong emotions deepen the bond, y'know?"
"And if she's asleep and you're awake, can she...?"
"Yup."
"No wonder she's pissed." Peter has been trawling other people's heads for years, but never really considered what it felt like to be the one invaded. If he sticks around for much longer will he be condemned to this, too? His skin crawls at the thought of losing that much more privacy. Fates, the bitches, are having their little laugh at his expense. "And it doesn't bother you?"
"Which part?" Nick raises an eyebrow. "Being in her head all the time? We've been crawling around each other's brains for three quarters of our lives; bothers her more than me. And even if I was inclined to care, her fucking some guy-or girl-is her business, not mine. Besides, it's not like she loves 'em."
Nick isn't jealous, but there's something else underneath. Pleasure, maybe. Lust. Unable to resist, Peter edges into the outskirts of Nick's mind, narrowing his eyes as he sorts through the emotions, then smirks. Nick likes being in her head a little too much when she goes on these jaunts of hers.
Nick catches the expression-or maybe he picked up on Peter brushing through his mind-and his cheeks redden. "Shit. How the hell... ah, fuck. Don't tell Olive. She'll fucking eviscerate me. Keep me alive so she can do it again."
Peter leans against the counter, watches Nick grab mugs from the cabinet. "So you two can keep secrets from each other."
"All the fucking time."
And therefore maybe Peter has been keeping his secrets from both of them. Or maybe they've been leaking out, like Nick's just did. "How? You link with her pretty damned freely."
Nick shrugs. "It's been four months since you guys reconnected. Give it a couple years, and you'll figure out all the tricks to keep your own headspace. It's harder on her, actually. She has to learn to manage two sets of connections. Trying to tune into one of us but not the other's been fucking her up."
Peter looks out the windows into the shadowed back yard. Would he be here in a year's time? Not if he has his way. Distance worked before; going overseas might stretch the bond between them until it subsides back into wherever the hell it had been before he was dragged back.
He can only hope.
This is just further proof he should make his escape as soon as possible. Not only will he be better off without them, but they'll be better off without him. Benefits all around.
~***~
It's well into the afternoon before Olivia straggles home. Nick finally gave up and left the house hours ago; his disgruntled response to Peter's concern was that she was fine and could track him down if she wanted him. Peter stayed to stand sentinel, even if he wasn't quite sure why.
He watches through half-lidded eyes as she hesitates when she sees him, giving him a small nod before slipping up the stairs. The patter of the shower continues long enough to run the hot water past icy.
When she pads back downstairs, her hair's dripping; the oversized grey sweats she's wearing-Nick's, he's pretty sure-make her look like she's barely an adolescent. She stops in the living room doorway, shifting from one foot to another, then tilts her head. "I'm grabbing a sandwich. Want anything?"
He nods and rises. The soft words were offered like a peace offering, and if she's unbending enough for that he's meeting her half way.
She doesn't quite meet his eyes, just studies him with quick, sidelong glances.
He sits at the kitchen table and watches her rare domesticity. She only speaks to ask what he wants, and makes sandwiches with the same precision and focus with which she plans missions. When done, she slides his plate to him and settles across the table, staring at her sandwich rather than eating.
"I'm sorry," she says abruptly, looking up. "I shouldn't have-"
He cuts her off with a shake of his head. "I'll live. Are you all right?"
Her eyes stay on him but her head lowers, and she fiddles with her napkin. "What did Nick tell you?"
"That you have nightmares. That you like to go out for company afterwards. That you'd shoot him if he went to sleep while you were doing so."
"Nick talks too much," she mutters, her eyes dropping, but the corner of her mouth lifts slightly. "I wouldn't shoot him. Torture him for a bit, maybe."
"Does it help?"
She doesn't pretend she doesn't know what he's asking. "Sometimes." She leans elbows on the table, chin resting on her hands. "Not always."
"Not this time?"
She doesn't look at him. "No."
He starts to reach out, hesitates inches from her skin. She stares at his hand, eyes shadowed and unreadable. Reaches out and catches his hand as he starts to withdraw it. He studies her; she studies their interlocked fingers.
"You waited for me," she says. Her nervousness flutters against him, laced with curiosity.
No use denying it, not with them touching. "I was worried. Besides, it's not like I had anything better to do today."
"Thank you." She squeezes. Looks up at him, shy and uncertain.
This is Olivia. Not the soldier, but the woman who hides within. The one who lingers in the pathways she carved in his mind years before, who as a child he trusted with his life even if he can't remember why. Who he's still doesn't really know but is almost starting to like and maybe, just maybe, to understand.
He squeezes back.
~***~
The next few weeks she's restless, whiplashing between uncharacteristically outgoing and bitchy something like a hundred times a day, until Peter almost wishes she'd go back to giving him the cold shoulder. Almost, but not quite. Nick seems more amused than concerned, so Peter takes his cue from that. It would at least be nice if she had taken a summer class so she had a reason not to be lurking in the house at every second of every day. A mission that would give her an excuse to go out and work off the twitchy energy that's been building would be fucking wonderful.
She has no more nightmares. None that creep into his sleep to wake him, anyway.
When the cell phone finally rings-he's started calling it the Batphone, to Nick, although never to Olivia's face-she practically pounces on it, notes down details of their assignment with a neat hand. Peter peers over her shoulder, trying to get a look at her notes, but she moves to block him, folds the page and stuffs it in her pocket before he can get so much as a glance.
"I'll take this one," she says, her stance casual but excitement thrumming along her nerves.
Peter studies her. "Alone?"
"Yup."
He debates picking her pocket, but the slightest of tension in her shoulders suggests she expects it. It was easier before she'd interrogated him about exactly what he could do. This is one of the days he regrets being honest in that particular conversation. "That's what it says?"
"That's what I'm saying."
He stares at her and she stares back, not giving an inch. He glances at Nick, who's watching but not worried, then back at Olivia. He knows all about taking chances he knows better than to take, and bets she does too. He tries poking through her emotions to see where her head is, but she's not playing, veiling from him all but her eagerness to get out of the house and her stubborn instance that she's right. Finally he shrugs and backs down. Better to pick and choose his battles with her, and this one's not worth the effort. "Fine. Whatever. I'm sure you know better than I do."
Her eyes narrow and she studies him, but he doesn't give away any more than she. She nods, warily, looking like she's expecting more to the argument, but he doesn't give it to her.
Nick leans back and grins slowly, eyes cutting between Olivia and Peter. "Huh. So you two have finally figured out how to play nice."
Peter chokes down the urge to hit him upside the head as he walks by. Olivia doesn't stop herself, just punches him none too gently on the shoulder on her way upstairs.
~***~
Twelve hours after she left, Nick drops his controller and shoots to his feet. Head tilted and eyes distant, he circles the room, stopping in the southwest corner. "Something's wrong."
"How do you know?" Stupid question, but it slips out before Peter can stop it. Now that he's paying attention, he feels it, too. Ants crawling along his spine, a primal sense that something is off kilter.
Nick switches the TV to CNN, grabs his laptop and pulls up news sites. "Something this bad, there'll be fire. I can feel the fucking fire. Southwest. What the hell is southwest of here?"
"Where'd she go?"
"Did you really think she slowed down long enough for an explanation?"
"I figured she'd tell you."
Nick stops long enough to turn and stare in disbelief. "Yeah, right. She operates on 'need to know'. She was flying solo, so I didn't need to know."
It was one thing that she'd decided to go this one alone-she and Nick have been doing that since the moment Peter got here-but Peter always assumed they knew enough details to cover each other's asses if things went bad. "Fucking stupid."
Nick shrugs, not denying but not agreeing, either.
Peter stares out the window, fingers tapping restlessly against the sill. "So, what, we go after her?"
Nick leans back, eyes not seeing the cream walls or the crammed bookcases but whatever he's picking up from Olivia. "We wait," he says, finally, his tone layered in doubt. "She'll make her way back to us. She's dodging the authorities. If we go to extract her, could draw attention."
Peter would bet his life that those are Olivia's orders, not Nick's, but he can only trust that Nick would have countermanded them if he deemed the situation dire and he's not worried enough to do that. Not yet.
Nick's hands suddenly fist tight, then release, and Peter's stomach clenches as Nick mutters, "She's hurt. Fuck it, Olive, what the hell happened?" Nick refocuses on the laptop, scrolls down, then goes pale. "Fuck. Here. This is where she was."
Peter swings the computer around and glances through the article, a breaking news report on two buildings burning just outside St. Louis. One had collapsed; the other was engulfed but standing. Always playing up the sensationalism of any situation, the journalist gleefully reported that while the collapsed building was being renovated and was mostly deserted, the burning one was not. The exact death toll is unknown, but most likely well past the double digits. The authorities were quoted to be blaming a gas main explosion, but the person who dashed this story off sounds dubious, spreading hints of arson and terrorism throughout the brief article.
Nick keeps calling up articles, following the story by as many different avenues as he can, while Peter paces, unable to settle for any length of time. He can't get a good read on Olivia, as much as he tries. Part of it is distance-the farther away she is, the more tenuous the bond-but more of it is that she's actively blocking him, damn her stubborn ass, setting barriers against him more firmly the closer she gets until he can't say where she is, only that she exists.
She's white and hollow-eyed when she comes through the door hours later, one arm clutched against her stomach, the other trailing against the wall. Nick's at her side before the door closes shut, Peter two steps later.
"Olive? How bad?" Nick reaches a hand out to her, hisses when he sees blood.
Peter peers into her face. Her eyes are glassy, her brows drawn together. Fighting pain, at the minimum. She's not giving anything else away. "What the hell happened?"
Her eyes focus, flick to his. "Unexpected resistance," she says in a tone that says the conversation is over.
He ignores the unspoken order. "And the fire?"
"Collateral damage. That's all." The words are jagged. "Acceptable losses for a mission like this."
Peter catches her when her knees give, lowers her gently to the ground. He brushes the hair from her face, runs fingers along her chin as he tries get a read on how she really is, but she's a hollowed out shell filled only with the shadowed conviction of her words. Hidden so deep within herself there isn't an Olivia left to find.
She closes her eyes. If not for her weight in his arms, her warmth against his chest-and she's cold, too cold, so that warmth is negligible-he would think she isn't there at all.
He rests his chin on her head and stays wrapped around her while Nick pulls away clothing and makeshift bandages to ascertain the extent of her injuries. A wicked gash along her midsection, a crease where a bullet tore along her arm. Most of the blood isn't hers, but enough is. Too much.
"Wounds looks clean, but should be stitched," Nick says, anger at whoever hurt her lacing the words. "Get her on the couch while I get the medical kit."
She doesn't protest when Peter scoops her up, and that worries the fuck out of him. When he sets her down she latches on, a bruising grip around his wrist, and doesn't let go until he settles himself behind her and she's propped against his chest.
Nick stops and stares when he sees how they're arranged; Peter just shrugs and tilts his head towards Olivia. Nick raises an eyebrow but doesn't comment. He starts to prepare a syringe-anesthesia, Peter assumes-but she shakes her head.
"Olive?" Nick's question is carefully neutral, but Peter picks up the underlying dismay, no less intense than Peter's own.
"Just do it, no shots," she says flatly
Peter stares up at Nick, and considers. Between the two of them they could force the issue-probably-but they'd pay for it later, in more ways than one, and she'll use energy fighting them that she doesn't have to spare. Better to let her have her way, no matter what screwed up reasoning she has. Peter holds Nick's eyes and says, "Get her something to bite down on."
Nick doesn't protest, just nods, which means he reached the same conclusions.
Olivia rouses from her slump to glare up at both of them. "I don't-"
"At least that," Peter says, adamant. She's right, she probably doesn't, but it gives her something else to be pissed about, maybe enough to distract her mind from the pain.
She stares at him, then gives a shallow nod, slouching back and closing her eyes. She obediently bites down on the wadded cloth Nick provides, although her expression is sour.
Peter settles a forearm across her collarbone, traces calming patterns against the join of her neck and shoulder with the other hand. She stiffens as Nick probes the sluggishly bleeding cut on her stomach, muscles tense under Peter's hands. Bright pain surges through her, and Peter closes his eyes and submerges into it, riding it out alongside her. He feels every one of the thirteen sutures as in his own skin. The score on her arm is a cakewalk by comparison. He listens to her breathing steady and feels the pain ease to a dull throb as Nick finishes bandaging her wounds.
"Done." Nick rubs a hand up and down Olivia's arm. "You okay?"
She spits out the cloth and nods without opening her eyes, snaking an arm around his shoulders. Nick leans back against the couch, his head against her thigh.
Peter thinks she's fallen asleep when she shifts and sighs. "Whole mission went to hell."
Peter's brows drop as he studies the bandage wrapped around her middle. Just a little deeper and she wouldn't have made it back. "We got that."
Nick thwacks Peter's leg, then asks, softly, "What happened?"
"I was supposed to interrupt a clandestine meeting, kill everyone, and get the papers being passed on. Low numbers, light resistance. Simple job. Easy to keep quiet, just like they wanted." Her eyes flicker open, but they're focused on the past, not the present. "They were expecting me. Whole thing was a set up from the get-go."
Peter's hand stills against her shoulder. "By who?"
"Someone high up," Nick murmurs.
Olivia nods. "Has to be, to know our orders, but they didn't name any names." She clears her throat, continues even more softly, "They got me with a tranq when I walked through the door. Said I was a liability and a mistake, that the loose ends of the project had to be terminated. Their mistake was that they figured they had me subdued and outgunned so they kept talking, kept explaining why what they were doing was for the best."
"How'd you get away?" Peter still can't read her emotions, can't get a good feel for what's really going on in her head.
"I panicked." She fiddles with the edges of the tape across her chest, shame heating the edges of her words. "Like a raw recruit. I panicked and let my control slip and suddenly there was fire everywhere..." Her memories of terror, of eliminating the threat in an explosion of fire and ash, ghost through Peter's head then ebb away.
"Jones won't be happy," Nick says quietly. Peter feels Nick's understanding and reassurance, tainted with curls of fear, but has nothing to add, not a fucking thing.
"Jones will be pissed. Fucking up isn't permitted." Her voice is heavy with irony and cynicism. "I know better. I know what's at stake."
The snick as the pieces he's been looking for fall into place is practically audible. She fucked up, and he could do nothing to stop it.
He slips free of her mind-he didn't even realize he'd tangled himself so deep while trying to figure out how she really was until he started extricating himself-and tightly shuts himself off from her. Drops his chin to her head and wonders why the fuck he feels like he got punched in the gut.
Not bringing backup to help suss out the situation was a bad judgment call, one that cost the mission. Doesn't matter that they'd been betrayed; she shouldn't have gone in alone. She knew better. And then, on top of that, letting her powers get wildly out of control brought neon visibility to a quiet little retrieval mission. Fuck-ups that huge usually lead to bullets in the brain as a warning to everyone else that that sort of shit isn't tolerated.
Jones' words echo through his head: ...if you can bring me evidence that Miss Dunham's control is breaking down, and that your presence is doing nothing to halt the effect... Accidently blowing up her targets, which in turn led to one building blowing up and a second still burning, with the associated unintended deaths? Things didn't get much more out of control than that, and the organization they work for doesn't seem the sort to have sympathy for extenuating circumstances. Add in the nightmares, maybe throw in her reactions to them? This is his exit plan, if he spins the facts right, and he's a fucking master at spinning the situation to his ends.
This is what he wants. He's given up months of his life to crap he doesn't give a fuck about and it's well past time to find a reason to get away.
Even knowing what will happen to those he's leaving behind.
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