fic: four times olivia took peter's hand (and the one time she didn't)
A/N: I have no idea where this came from, but I was in the shower this morning and idea after idea kept hitting me. I haven't felt this inspired in a long time, so I'm actually sort of proud of this one.
Many thanks to Emma (x_the_rising_x ) who served as my beta!
===
The first time Peter ever takes her hand, she’s the one who offers.
They’re in a field of white tulips and all he wants to do is go home, but when he takes her hand it somehow feels right.
And though he won’t remember this (at least not for many more decades), he’ll somehow always feel secure in this world that is not his simply because she is here.
So when they meet again, and she offers her hand, and he takes it, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s seen her before. And despite the hardness and cynicism he possesses, despite the weary outlook on the world that his eight year old self was only starting to develop, it will take him only two days to warm to her smile.
===
When Walter tells him to calm her down, he knows what to do like it’s instinct, like he’s been doing it all his life.
And he’s not sure where that feeling comes from or why he’s been having a lot of those types of feelings today. It seems like everything is just right outside of his grasp. Like a paper that he just can’t quite catch before it blows off into the wind.
But she needs him, needs him to calm her down. So he places his hand over the two of hers, wrapping his fingers around them. He doesn’t expect her to respond, not consciously, but he feels the slightest pressure on his fingers and she relaxes, and suddenly everything is alright.
As he watches her, he knows now that he would give anything to help her, or to make sure she was okay.
He doesn’t let go until after she’s awake, and she looks at him questionably, and then with a tinge of embarrassment.
And he wonders if there will ever be a day when she lets someone take care of her.
Or if that someone will be him.
===
She reaches out her hand, like it’s a promise, like it’s forever, and when he takes it, he knows in the pit of his stomach that this is it.
He’d never felt that before.
He’d never tasted forever.
They stumble quietly into his room, illuminated only by the moonlight pouring into his window. She smiles softly against his lips as he runs his hands down her sides, down her hips, reaching his fingertips underneath the hem of her shirt, and skimming the skin there.
They take it slow because they can, because they want to. He kisses her languidly, teasing his tongue in between her lips as she sighs against his mouth, and she pulls him to her tighter, trailing her fingers through his hair and down his neck.
He makes his way slowly down her skin, sucking harder and harder until he reaches the hollow of her collarbone. As she lets out a moan, he covers her mouth with his own. They are more passionate, more frantic now as he starts to make work on the buttons of her shirt.
He cups his hand on her breast, running his thumb over her hardening nipple, and he feels her breath hitch at their first sexual contact. He had never felt this intimate with her, and he didn’t just mean that physically. Her eyes were locked with his, green meeting blue, and it felt like the universes were spilling forth, bursting and colliding, rocking them to their very core. But maybe that’s what happens when you get everything you ever wanted. One world ends and another begins.
They fall onto the bed, shedding what’s left of their clothing on the way. She’s on top, placing long kisses down his chest, and stroking him slowly with one hand. He’s so hard, he’s almost in pain, and as he groans, he sees stars begin to form behind his eyes.
But he’s not ready to give in yet; he wants to make this last as long as possible. He flips her over, taking the time to brush the hair out of her eyes that now hangs in loose tresses around her shoulders. Mirroring her, he peppers kisses down her sternum, the swell of her breast. Down her pale stomach all the way to her navel. With his fingers, he enters her folds, already wet against his hand. Her abdomen begins to quiver, and he places a soothing hand against it to steady her.
Right before he enters her, he cups her cheek with his hand, kissing her softly, delicately, trying to pour every ounce of his feelings into it. Just how much she means to him and how glad he is to be here with her now. Not anyone else.
All he ever wanted was her.
She gasps slightly as they become one, and as he moves above her slowly, and she brings him to her, her hands flat against his back, he buries his nose in her hair, breathing in her smell. Trying to envelop himself completely in her. The headiness of the feeling almost drives him over the edge.
He thrusts deeper and harder, letting her guide him, trying to hold on until she comes. But with her fingers brushing lightly over his skin, her warm breath on his neck, and the soft whimper of his name in his ear, he’s finding it increasingly harder.
Finally, she releases. And just before he lets go, he almost says I love you. Because he means it, and he needs to. Because it’s every bit a part of him as the machine, or his DNA, or the fact that he is not from this world. He feels the words in the back of his throat like the beginnings of a moan, but he holds them back, scared that she isn’t ready to hear them. He doesn’t want to ruin this moment.
So he lets go.
Afterwards, she curls against his frame, her back against his chest, and his arm drapes lazily around her. They don’t say anything; he just lies there smiling (he can’t see it, but she’s smiling too), periodically placing kisses on her neck or cheek.
And when they fall asleep, their hands are clasped and their fingers are intertwined.
He thinks he finally has forever.
That is until he doesn’t.
===
At times, this feels like a test.
When Walter says he must be the one who leads them through her subconscious because he is the one who knows her best, he can’t help but feel it. That tinge of guilt. Because if he had known her best, he would have seen it, he would have known she was gone. And no matter how many times he goes over it in his head, no matter how many times he beats himself up over it, or tries to justify it in his mind, he knows that he had failed her.
He hopes he will know her better this time.
Everything is blurry here, heightened with a burning energy that he thinks must be from the drugs, but guesses just might be her. Her subconscious is at war with itself, and with Walter, and with him, and as he races to shut himself into a taxi cab as a mob threatens to swallow him whole, he wonders if this is how she really feels.
Is she so closed off that she doesn’t even want him here?
At some point, he and Walter are separated, but he’s not sure that it matters. He feels instinctually what he must do. He knows that Walter was right; that if he does find her, he will be the one to bring her back. She just has to let him.
He wanders through building after building, into door after door. He follows a man who he comes to find is her stepfather into a broken home. Olivia’s seven and she’s lying on the ground, a hand pressed to her eye, a tear falling from the other. He knows the story even though she never told it, as if it was something he knew all along, but he couldn’t tell you how, and that’s when a new door opens. Invisible, indistinguishable before. And he lets out a shaky breath and thinks,
She’s letting me inside.
And just when he believes he knows every inch of her, he’s surprised.
He’s in the federal building. It’s before he knows her. The floor is frantic, people are yelling, and he sees Charlie and John, eyes both on Olivia as she lets Broyles have a piece of her mind. He wishes he had known her then before her whole life went to hell. Before Charlie was a shapeshifter, before John was lying dead on a highway, before the world was falling apart.
But then he knows he would have never had her. They never would have met.
And maybe that’s why she keeps this here. In this back room in the corner of her mind. Because she misses them, and wants to hold on to them.
She just wants to go back to before.
And he wishes he shared the sentiment, wishes that he wanted to go back to his old life with the mafia where he was alone and carefree (besides the target on his head). But despite how fucked up everything was, he wouldn’t take it back.
And he hopes that these two men won’t see him, won’t feel his eyes upon them.
He turns away, guilty.
He wanders through relics of her childhood, memories of her mother and her sister, of Ella’s birth. He sees her with a man he doesn’t recognize with dark hair. She’s maybe 22 or 23, the same, but different. Her eyes light up just a tad more, there’s a rueful smile on her lips. And he aches because he recognizes it from their brief time together.
He’s surprised to find memories of him.
That time he touched her hand on that bench in the park. Them in a bar playing cards, laughing (he remembers it was the happiest he had ever seen her).
Their first time.
And then for a moment, he feels as if they have slipped into his own dream. Because he’s been here before.
A field of white tulips.
But he sees her face now, hears her say her name. Where in his dreams she was obscured and unrecognizable, a mirage that never took form, now she is as vibrant and real as any of his most recent memories.
He’s known her his whole life even if he hadn’t known it.
And that’s when the scene changes and the darkness swallows him whole.
The air smells stale and damp, and instead of the crisp grass beneath his feet, he can only feel concrete. He gropes around blindly for a light, until he stumbles on a body on the floor.
She’s dressed in a gray jumpsuit, pale and gaunt, small scratches on her face. He places a hand on her cheek, and is shocked at just how cold she is.
“You found me,” she says weakly. He feels her response more than he hears it; like a breath of air on his face.
“I had to.” And he knows it’s true, knows that if he never got her back, he wouldn’t have known what to do. Knows that he had failed her before, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
She places her hand over his on her cheek. “You’re not real,” she says. He watches a single tear trail down her nose. She looks delirious, almost deranged, like she’s just one small tumble from losing her mind.
“Real is just a matter of perception.” He says the words as if they were once his, but he knows that they aren’t. And for the first time in his life, he thinks he understands déjà vu.
“I’m here,” he breathes.
“But you weren’t before. How do I know that I can trust you?” He’s not sure he knows how to answer that, not after what he’s done, what he’s hid from her.
So he says the only thing he can, “Olivia, if you stay here, you’ll die. Can’t you just trust me on that?” He brushes her bangs away from her face with his other hand tenderly.
She closes her eyes briefly, and whispers, “Peter, I’m scared.” Her tears are almost uncontrollable now, flowing like rivers through his fingers.
“Don’t be.”
He stands up and offers his hand.
And despite everything. Despite her fear, her anger at him, all the times he failed her, she takes it.
===
She comes back and it’s not like before. He wonders if every obstacle they come across, every person that will get in there way, will slowly chip away at them until they are nothing. Fragile and broken and unable to pick up the pieces.
They were so strong once.
But she forgave him for Fauxlivia and for the shapeshifters, and though she shakes with nightmares at night, he still gets to hold her in his arms.
Every night, he thinks then they’ll make it.
Even nightmares and scars fade away.
But then the world ends.
They’re on a case, and he’s not sure how it is happening so fast, but the Earth is opening up like a chasm, and it’s too late. It’s just too late. She had told him once about the vortexes but he guesses there just weren’t words accurate enough to describe it.
He yells at her to run, reaches back for her to take his hand, but she never quite makes it. As the buildings collapse around them, a brick flies and strikes her in the head. She crumples to the ground, lifeless.
And as he cradles her in his arms, he whispers I love you against her lips, like it’s a prayer, like if he says it louder the whole world might crumble apart.
It does anyway.