Fringe fic: One Hundred Reasons (PG, 1/1)
TITLE: One Hundred Reasons
AUTHOR: Shane Vansen
CATEGORY: Olivia/Peter UST, mild angst, introspection/drama
SPOILERS: Momentum Deferred; TMFTOS through Over There II
RATING: PG
LENGTH: ~2200 words
SUMMARY: As she searches for Peter, Olivia compiles a list of reasons why he should come home. Written for the 2010 op_ficathon.
DISCLAIMER: it's probably best that they're not mine; I'd screw it up. And hey, FOX, think of it as free advertising.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: For midgetnazgul, who requested, "an evolution of Olivia's thought process/reactions from the moment she realizes Peter's departure to their reunion. Include reference to her "100 reasons" Peter should come home." I hope you like it!
This fic is, without a doubt, a team effort. First and foremost, thanks go to irony_rocks for her mad beta skillz; in addition to the usual beta stuff, there's at least half a page in this story that wouldn't exist without her (literally - she wrote part of a scene for me), plus she supplied a couple of the 'reasons' in the story. She's practically earned co-author status on this one. december21st, borg_princess, and anuna_81 all contributed 'reasons' and/or offered support and suggestions to make this better. Thank you, folks. You're awesome!
Any errors or weirdness remain entirely my own.
**
Visiting hours start at nine, but that doesn't stop Olivia from showing up at the hospital in the pre-dawn hours. It's not as if she were sleeping anyway, and besides, given what happened the night before she knows without a doubt that she needs to speak to Peter - and sooner rather than later.
She isn't quite sure what she's going to say yet: Apologize for keeping the secret? Beg him to forgive Walter? But the insistent, niggling feeling in her gut tells her that, whatever it is, it has to be now.
When she finds his room empty, Olivia has the fleeting fear that maybe something happened to him. She even gives a thought to demanding access to the security footage. But even then she knows, deep down, that her worst fears about this whole mess have come to pass: Peter knows the truth, and whatever has kept him here the past year and a half isn't enough to override Walter's past sins. He's gone, and voluntarily.
She swings by the lab just to make sure, but it's more the agent in her doing due diligence than anything else; she doubts he's even still in Boston. By the time she reaches the Bishops' place - just Walter's home now, she supposes - Olivia's already forming a plan to track Peter down.
Quietly, she also starts making a list of arguments so that, when she finds him, she can convince him to come home.
**
When Olivia walks through the lab door, she finds Astrid trying to calm Walter down from his latest hysterics. “Where did you last leave it, Walter? I’m sure it’s around here somewh-”
“It isn’t!” he cries out. “I’ve searched everywhere! It was silver, with a dragon etched on the side, and, and-”
“What’s going on?” Olivia asks.
Astrid turns to her. “Walter lost his lighter. He isn’t-”
A crash nearby cuts her off, and Olivia turns to find Walter throwing half his instruments to the floor in a tantrum fit for a two-year-old. He mutters to himself in half-sentences and mumbled expletives, and Olivia knows the source of his frustration is based on something far more intangible than a simple lighter. She suspects, in fact, that the item probably belonged to Peter. Things have a habit of being lost in this lab, often misplaced by Walter’s absentmindedness, but lately it’s all of Peter’s things that send Walter into a fit of rage.
As much as she's struggling with Peter's absence, it's quickly become evident that Walter is completely falling apart. His attention span, somewhere due south of poor to start with, is completely shot, and his emotions are closer to the surface than ever - it takes very little to set off Walter's temper or to send him into tears. Even Astrid has had little luck calming Walter down and getting him to focus.
Odd as it seems to her now, Olivia had forgotten the reason why she wanted Peter to join Fringe Division in the first place: he keeps Walter grounded. As far as he's come in recent months, with his son gone, Walter either isn't able or isn't willing to keep working. Olivia's carefully assembled team is falling to pieces around her, and she feels helpless to do anything to stop it. A little over a year ago, she wouldn't have imagined that so much of her life could depend on the presence of just one person.
Reason #1: To look after Walter.
**
Olivia doesn't give up hope. (Not during the daylight hours, at least; if, in the early hours of the morning and with a few glasses of whiskey behind her, she sometimes starts wondering how she'll keep fighting this war without him by her side - well, no one needs to know that.) But, even using the tricks that Peter himself taught her to find people who don't want to be found, she soon runs low on ideas.
It's ironic, she thinks, as she stops by the lab to rescue Ella from Walter after yet another lead fails to pan out, that Peter has contacts who could probably help her track him down within a day or two. In their absence, though, she'll keep doing what she can, exhausting every lead there is. There isn't any other choice - giving up is not an option.
Reason #8: Peter's weird contacts.
**
"Anything to eat today, hon?"
Olivia glances up at the waitress who's refilling her coffee mug and tries to smile. She suspects she fails miserably. "No thanks. I'll just stick with coffee." She turns back to the list of guests at a hotel in Chicago, hoping one of the names will jump out at her as a possible alias.
"Where's your boyfriend these days?"
Olivia sucks in a quick breath against the pulse of surprise, even as her head snaps up to the waitress. "I'm sorry?" The increasingly familiar dull ache in her chest becomes just a little heavier as she tries to wrap her head around the woman's question.
"That nice young man with the lovely blue eyes and the charming smile? I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks."
Olivia blinks and forces herself to answer. "He had… a family emergency. He had to leave town for a while." Strangely, she fails to correct the waitress regarding her assumption. She could justify it to herself with some line about it being too much trouble, too insignificant a detail to correct - but there’s another part of her that remembers a missed opportunity in a darkened computer lab, an almost-kiss that could have changed everything. The dull ache in her chest flares into a painful throb.
The waitress clucks her tongue. "Oh dear. I do hope everything's okay."
"I hope so too." She's surprised her voice doesn't crack.
It's been like this ever since Peter left. The people who know the whole story - Astrid, Broyles, Nina - ask every so often how she's doing and if there are any leads. His absence has made it through the work grapevine as well, and she gets an occasional question about where he's gone and when he'll be back; more than a few agents and other FBI employees tell her to have Peter give them a call when he returns so they can go out for drinks. Olivia wonders if Peter had any idea how many people he befriended during his time in Boston. She also can't help wondering if it would make any difference.
The waitress moves on to another customer and Olivia highlights a possible name on the printout in front of her, bringing the total to ninety-three. When she gets back to the office, she'll hand over the names to another agent to run down while she checks out a possible sighting at a New York-Québec border crossing. She doesn't really expect to get any hits this time around, but at least it gives her something to focus on.
Reason #33: Everyone Peter's ever known is here.
**
It's not very late, especially considering her usual hours, but Olivia's hit a low point so she packs it in for the day. Not ready to face her empty apartment just yet, she ends up sitting at a bar, swirling a glass of whiskey and watching the light play off the amber liquid.
A sound catches her attention and she looks up, her gaze wandering among the patrons in the restaurant. A couple in the back draws her eye and Olivia finds herself watching them, though she couldn't say why. Maybe it's the woman's brightly coloured dress, or the way they're framed in the window against the backdrop of the sunset's reflected rays, or the way they're looking at each other.
Or maybe it's that the man's smile reminds her of Peter.
Watching them, Olivia is suddenly reminded of a bet she and Peter made last week, just a few days before he'd taken off. Walter was experimenting with flavoured coffee, and she and Peter wagered on what would be next. She'd won just four hours later when Walter tried to get them to taste his banana-flavoured concoction. "It tastes just like the medicine Peter used to take as a child!" he told them earnestly. Peter had made a face, though Olivia still isn't sure if it was the thought of the coffee or because he lost the bet.
He still owes her dinner, she remembers now. The shapeshifters had come through before she could collect her winnings, and then Peter had figured out that he wasn't from here, and-
Olivia abruptly swivels back around to face the bar, downing her drink in one go and signalling to the bartender for another.
Reason #47: To honour his debts.
**
Trying to find Peter turns out to include crossing paths with other people who also wouldn't mind finding him, though she's fairly certain that her reasons are much more benign than theirs. She knew before she ever laid eyes on Peter Bishop that he never stayed long in one place, but it's another one of those details that has slipped her mind over the last year. The man she knows now doesn't quite mesh with the image she had of him during their first meeting in Baghdad. Massive pain in the ass, she seems to recall saying to Charlie during a briefing, and her lips twitch in a half-smile at the memory.
One thing that hasn't changed, it seems, is Peter's tendency to disappear when things get rough. She just never thought she'd be on the receiving end of it.
Reason #60: Time to stop running.
**
She's missed the last few episodes of Lost.
It's silly, but it's something she, Peter, and Walter watch together. Not too long after the Bishops moved into their own place, Walter had talked her into staying to watch an episode, declaring that "this J.J. Abrams is a creative genius!" and she just had to watch, and somehow it became tradition. With Peter gone, neither she nor Walter has kept up their weekly viewing.
It passes through her mind that there's still time to find him before the series finale.
Reason #76: To watch the final episodes of Lost.
**
"Broyles."
"Sir, it's me. I just wanted to inform you that I'm on my way to meet an informant down by the docks."
There's a beat of silence before Broyles responds, sounding somewhere between surprised and resigned. "Dunham, it's nearly three in the morning. Shouldn't you be at home, asleep?"
Olivia checks her review mirror before making a left. "I could say the same thing about you, sir."
"Fair enough, Agent." This time, she can hear the smile before he turns serious again. "Do you have backup?"
She hesitates, considers lying, but decides on the truth. "No, sir. I don't expect any trouble."
Broyles snorts. "It's the trouble you're not expecting that generally ends up being the problem."
Olivia smiles a bit at that, but doesn't answer. If she had a partner she would have brought him along to watch her back, but following up on a flimsy lead seems like a waste of agent time. She's never worked solo before, and she finds she misses having someone she can rely on without question.
On the other end of the line, Broyles sighs. "Very well, Agent Dunham. Contact me in half an hour or I'm sending the cavalry after you. Is that understood?"
"Understood." More quietly, she adds, "And thank you."
Disconnecting, she pulls onto a side street, kills the headlights, and turns off the car. With a quick check of her weapon, Olivia heads for her rendezvous point.
Reason #84: To watch his partner's back.
**
To Olivia, it feels as though she's spending half her life these days in the car or on planes. It gives her too much time to think.
One trip, while trying to distract herself from things she doesn't want to think about, Olivia starts to list every case Fringe Division has investigated. It's too easy to get bogged down by all the people she's failed to save (she studiously avoids thinking about Charlie; some days, the pain of that loss is still enough to nearly bring her to her knees), so she thinks about the people they've helped. From the individuals who have been treated in the lab to the more nebulous numbers of Boston residents who remain completely unaware of the danger they would have faced if the shapeshifters had ever managed to open a doorway to the other side, Olivia's surprised at the tangible good they've done. Most days, all she can see is where they've failed.
Slightly buoyed by the realization that maybe they do have a chance, Olivia keeps driving.
Reason #91: His unique outlook and abilities save lives.
**
The list she's been compiling is front and center in her mind as Charlie drives them to Peter's apartment, the reasons tumbling over themselves faster and faster as they ride the elevator to the penthouse floor. But then Charlie knocks on the door, and Peter answers, looking happy - if a bit surprised - to see them, and the swirling mess in Olivia's mind settles into one calm, irrefutable reason.
She'll convince him to come home. She has to.
Reason #100: He belongs with me.
--end--
AUTHOR: Shane Vansen
CATEGORY: Olivia/Peter UST, mild angst, introspection/drama
SPOILERS: Momentum Deferred; TMFTOS through Over There II
RATING: PG
LENGTH: ~2200 words
SUMMARY: As she searches for Peter, Olivia compiles a list of reasons why he should come home. Written for the 2010 op_ficathon.
DISCLAIMER: it's probably best that they're not mine; I'd screw it up. And hey, FOX, think of it as free advertising.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: For midgetnazgul, who requested, "an evolution of Olivia's thought process/reactions from the moment she realizes Peter's departure to their reunion. Include reference to her "100 reasons" Peter should come home." I hope you like it!
This fic is, without a doubt, a team effort. First and foremost, thanks go to irony_rocks for her mad beta skillz; in addition to the usual beta stuff, there's at least half a page in this story that wouldn't exist without her (literally - she wrote part of a scene for me), plus she supplied a couple of the 'reasons' in the story. She's practically earned co-author status on this one. december21st, borg_princess, and anuna_81 all contributed 'reasons' and/or offered support and suggestions to make this better. Thank you, folks. You're awesome!
Any errors or weirdness remain entirely my own.
**
Visiting hours start at nine, but that doesn't stop Olivia from showing up at the hospital in the pre-dawn hours. It's not as if she were sleeping anyway, and besides, given what happened the night before she knows without a doubt that she needs to speak to Peter - and sooner rather than later.
She isn't quite sure what she's going to say yet: Apologize for keeping the secret? Beg him to forgive Walter? But the insistent, niggling feeling in her gut tells her that, whatever it is, it has to be now.
When she finds his room empty, Olivia has the fleeting fear that maybe something happened to him. She even gives a thought to demanding access to the security footage. But even then she knows, deep down, that her worst fears about this whole mess have come to pass: Peter knows the truth, and whatever has kept him here the past year and a half isn't enough to override Walter's past sins. He's gone, and voluntarily.
She swings by the lab just to make sure, but it's more the agent in her doing due diligence than anything else; she doubts he's even still in Boston. By the time she reaches the Bishops' place - just Walter's home now, she supposes - Olivia's already forming a plan to track Peter down.
Quietly, she also starts making a list of arguments so that, when she finds him, she can convince him to come home.
**
When Olivia walks through the lab door, she finds Astrid trying to calm Walter down from his latest hysterics. “Where did you last leave it, Walter? I’m sure it’s around here somewh-”
“It isn’t!” he cries out. “I’ve searched everywhere! It was silver, with a dragon etched on the side, and, and-”
“What’s going on?” Olivia asks.
Astrid turns to her. “Walter lost his lighter. He isn’t-”
A crash nearby cuts her off, and Olivia turns to find Walter throwing half his instruments to the floor in a tantrum fit for a two-year-old. He mutters to himself in half-sentences and mumbled expletives, and Olivia knows the source of his frustration is based on something far more intangible than a simple lighter. She suspects, in fact, that the item probably belonged to Peter. Things have a habit of being lost in this lab, often misplaced by Walter’s absentmindedness, but lately it’s all of Peter’s things that send Walter into a fit of rage.
As much as she's struggling with Peter's absence, it's quickly become evident that Walter is completely falling apart. His attention span, somewhere due south of poor to start with, is completely shot, and his emotions are closer to the surface than ever - it takes very little to set off Walter's temper or to send him into tears. Even Astrid has had little luck calming Walter down and getting him to focus.
Odd as it seems to her now, Olivia had forgotten the reason why she wanted Peter to join Fringe Division in the first place: he keeps Walter grounded. As far as he's come in recent months, with his son gone, Walter either isn't able or isn't willing to keep working. Olivia's carefully assembled team is falling to pieces around her, and she feels helpless to do anything to stop it. A little over a year ago, she wouldn't have imagined that so much of her life could depend on the presence of just one person.
Reason #1: To look after Walter.
**
Olivia doesn't give up hope. (Not during the daylight hours, at least; if, in the early hours of the morning and with a few glasses of whiskey behind her, she sometimes starts wondering how she'll keep fighting this war without him by her side - well, no one needs to know that.) But, even using the tricks that Peter himself taught her to find people who don't want to be found, she soon runs low on ideas.
It's ironic, she thinks, as she stops by the lab to rescue Ella from Walter after yet another lead fails to pan out, that Peter has contacts who could probably help her track him down within a day or two. In their absence, though, she'll keep doing what she can, exhausting every lead there is. There isn't any other choice - giving up is not an option.
Reason #8: Peter's weird contacts.
**
"Anything to eat today, hon?"
Olivia glances up at the waitress who's refilling her coffee mug and tries to smile. She suspects she fails miserably. "No thanks. I'll just stick with coffee." She turns back to the list of guests at a hotel in Chicago, hoping one of the names will jump out at her as a possible alias.
"Where's your boyfriend these days?"
Olivia sucks in a quick breath against the pulse of surprise, even as her head snaps up to the waitress. "I'm sorry?" The increasingly familiar dull ache in her chest becomes just a little heavier as she tries to wrap her head around the woman's question.
"That nice young man with the lovely blue eyes and the charming smile? I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks."
Olivia blinks and forces herself to answer. "He had… a family emergency. He had to leave town for a while." Strangely, she fails to correct the waitress regarding her assumption. She could justify it to herself with some line about it being too much trouble, too insignificant a detail to correct - but there’s another part of her that remembers a missed opportunity in a darkened computer lab, an almost-kiss that could have changed everything. The dull ache in her chest flares into a painful throb.
The waitress clucks her tongue. "Oh dear. I do hope everything's okay."
"I hope so too." She's surprised her voice doesn't crack.
It's been like this ever since Peter left. The people who know the whole story - Astrid, Broyles, Nina - ask every so often how she's doing and if there are any leads. His absence has made it through the work grapevine as well, and she gets an occasional question about where he's gone and when he'll be back; more than a few agents and other FBI employees tell her to have Peter give them a call when he returns so they can go out for drinks. Olivia wonders if Peter had any idea how many people he befriended during his time in Boston. She also can't help wondering if it would make any difference.
The waitress moves on to another customer and Olivia highlights a possible name on the printout in front of her, bringing the total to ninety-three. When she gets back to the office, she'll hand over the names to another agent to run down while she checks out a possible sighting at a New York-Québec border crossing. She doesn't really expect to get any hits this time around, but at least it gives her something to focus on.
Reason #33: Everyone Peter's ever known is here.
**
It's not very late, especially considering her usual hours, but Olivia's hit a low point so she packs it in for the day. Not ready to face her empty apartment just yet, she ends up sitting at a bar, swirling a glass of whiskey and watching the light play off the amber liquid.
A sound catches her attention and she looks up, her gaze wandering among the patrons in the restaurant. A couple in the back draws her eye and Olivia finds herself watching them, though she couldn't say why. Maybe it's the woman's brightly coloured dress, or the way they're framed in the window against the backdrop of the sunset's reflected rays, or the way they're looking at each other.
Or maybe it's that the man's smile reminds her of Peter.
Watching them, Olivia is suddenly reminded of a bet she and Peter made last week, just a few days before he'd taken off. Walter was experimenting with flavoured coffee, and she and Peter wagered on what would be next. She'd won just four hours later when Walter tried to get them to taste his banana-flavoured concoction. "It tastes just like the medicine Peter used to take as a child!" he told them earnestly. Peter had made a face, though Olivia still isn't sure if it was the thought of the coffee or because he lost the bet.
He still owes her dinner, she remembers now. The shapeshifters had come through before she could collect her winnings, and then Peter had figured out that he wasn't from here, and-
Olivia abruptly swivels back around to face the bar, downing her drink in one go and signalling to the bartender for another.
Reason #47: To honour his debts.
**
Trying to find Peter turns out to include crossing paths with other people who also wouldn't mind finding him, though she's fairly certain that her reasons are much more benign than theirs. She knew before she ever laid eyes on Peter Bishop that he never stayed long in one place, but it's another one of those details that has slipped her mind over the last year. The man she knows now doesn't quite mesh with the image she had of him during their first meeting in Baghdad. Massive pain in the ass, she seems to recall saying to Charlie during a briefing, and her lips twitch in a half-smile at the memory.
One thing that hasn't changed, it seems, is Peter's tendency to disappear when things get rough. She just never thought she'd be on the receiving end of it.
Reason #60: Time to stop running.
**
She's missed the last few episodes of Lost.
It's silly, but it's something she, Peter, and Walter watch together. Not too long after the Bishops moved into their own place, Walter had talked her into staying to watch an episode, declaring that "this J.J. Abrams is a creative genius!" and she just had to watch, and somehow it became tradition. With Peter gone, neither she nor Walter has kept up their weekly viewing.
It passes through her mind that there's still time to find him before the series finale.
Reason #76: To watch the final episodes of Lost.
**
"Broyles."
"Sir, it's me. I just wanted to inform you that I'm on my way to meet an informant down by the docks."
There's a beat of silence before Broyles responds, sounding somewhere between surprised and resigned. "Dunham, it's nearly three in the morning. Shouldn't you be at home, asleep?"
Olivia checks her review mirror before making a left. "I could say the same thing about you, sir."
"Fair enough, Agent." This time, she can hear the smile before he turns serious again. "Do you have backup?"
She hesitates, considers lying, but decides on the truth. "No, sir. I don't expect any trouble."
Broyles snorts. "It's the trouble you're not expecting that generally ends up being the problem."
Olivia smiles a bit at that, but doesn't answer. If she had a partner she would have brought him along to watch her back, but following up on a flimsy lead seems like a waste of agent time. She's never worked solo before, and she finds she misses having someone she can rely on without question.
On the other end of the line, Broyles sighs. "Very well, Agent Dunham. Contact me in half an hour or I'm sending the cavalry after you. Is that understood?"
"Understood." More quietly, she adds, "And thank you."
Disconnecting, she pulls onto a side street, kills the headlights, and turns off the car. With a quick check of her weapon, Olivia heads for her rendezvous point.
Reason #84: To watch his partner's back.
**
To Olivia, it feels as though she's spending half her life these days in the car or on planes. It gives her too much time to think.
One trip, while trying to distract herself from things she doesn't want to think about, Olivia starts to list every case Fringe Division has investigated. It's too easy to get bogged down by all the people she's failed to save (she studiously avoids thinking about Charlie; some days, the pain of that loss is still enough to nearly bring her to her knees), so she thinks about the people they've helped. From the individuals who have been treated in the lab to the more nebulous numbers of Boston residents who remain completely unaware of the danger they would have faced if the shapeshifters had ever managed to open a doorway to the other side, Olivia's surprised at the tangible good they've done. Most days, all she can see is where they've failed.
Slightly buoyed by the realization that maybe they do have a chance, Olivia keeps driving.
Reason #91: His unique outlook and abilities save lives.
**
The list she's been compiling is front and center in her mind as Charlie drives them to Peter's apartment, the reasons tumbling over themselves faster and faster as they ride the elevator to the penthouse floor. But then Charlie knocks on the door, and Peter answers, looking happy - if a bit surprised - to see them, and the swirling mess in Olivia's mind settles into one calm, irrefutable reason.
She'll convince him to come home. She has to.
Reason #100: He belongs with me.
--end--