Fic: Footnote (Fringe, PG-13)
Title: Footnote.
Author: Prochytes.
Fandom: Fringe.
Rating: PG-13. Violence.
Characters: Astrid Farnsworth, Olivia Dunham (a little Astrid/Olivia if you squint).
Disclaimer: Bad Robot owns the pretty. Not for profit
Summary: Even a last line sometimes need a footnote.
Word Count: 1462.
A/N: Small spoilers to 2x09 “Snakehead”.
Lessons in the bitchiness of physics (#108):
Astrid Farnsworth is an FBI Agent. Fidelity, bravery, integrity... the whole enchilada. But even soaking wet - even soaking wet with heavy water (*) - Astrid barely tips the scales as a flyweight. Olivia has broken a lot of the lab’s glass-wear (**), since this unequal brawl began. What she has not broken is a single bead of sweat. Everything Astrid has, to the last epsilon of her waning strength, can scarcely force her boss to tense a muscle. Righteousness is not, at present, an adequate substitute for body mass.
And this is with Olivia holding back. Some twinge of compunction still restrains her, softening and slowing down her strikes. Astrid knows that if Olivia had opened up with all her power and all her speed, they would already be done here: the fight, such as it is, over in seconds. Does Olivia’s all-but-hard-wired heroism explain this - the reluctance, even when deranged, to hit someone so much smaller and weaker than herself? Or is some of it a special regard for her opponent? Does it make Astrid a bad person (as well as a bruised and punchy one right now) to hope for that?
Whatever the truth, it is not enough. Inner Olivia is losing the battle not to win. The melody is too compelling, to which her reflexes would have her dance. Astrid sees the right cross coming a fraction of a second too late. It does not land squarely, but there is no need. Astrid’s vision swims with asterisms (Walter would be so pleased); her knees buckle beneath her. Not... not long now. Her legs are kaput. You can’t fight without your footwork, Great-Uncle Farnsworth always said (***).
Which is worse news than Olivia can know. If Astrid loses here, if she fails to keep Olivia contained, Agent Dunham will be dead within the hour. The Crazy Dust (****) currently frying Olivia’s higher brain functions seals the deal, after a short onset time, with cerebral haemorrhage. You had to hand it to Walter’s productions of the Eighties. They really were the last word in bio-degradability.
Both Bishops are competent to administer the antidote, but neither was there when Olivia was dosed with the Crazy. Walter had posited that she would retain a homing instinct for places where she thought that she belonged, so Peter rushed off to look after Rachel and Ella. No one expected her to head for the lab (*****).
Walter, the sole Bishop currently in range, is a good five minutes away. If Olivia bests Astrid and flees the building before that only too literal deadline... Well, do the math. Olivia runs like a gazelle. A rabid gazelle, at the moment, but still, a gazelle. Walter runs like an ageing mad scientist who only experiences speed when he ingests it (******). Astrid knows whom she would be backing in that particular round of the Wacky Races.
Olivia lunges again. Astrid dredges up the strength to block without retreating and swallows hard against the fear. It is not as though she is unfamiliar with how it tastes: Astrid buries her fears beneath prescient efficiency and occasional sass, just as Walter hides his beneath the confectionary counter, or Peter makes his dance across his knuckles and vanish up his sleeve. But Astrid has already been hurt more badly within these four walls than anywhere else in her adult life.
The memory of the Tong thugs brings with it an unexpected access of anger. Horror may enjoy visiting rights at Bishop Labs. But Astrid is damned if she will let it have custody.
Easier said than done, though. (She actually manages to land a punch, which Olivia ignores.) Astrid knows herself to be, by talent and inclination, a backroom girl. Like a good footnote, she informs and clarifies without getting in the way. She does not wage her wars, or win her battles, in the body of the text. And the physics of pugilism remains a bitch.
But physics, it occurs to Astrid, is also Walter’s bitch. And you couldn’t be the lab assistant to the Salvador Dali of the applied sciences without picking up a trick or two. Tranquilliser darts are out, which is unfortunate; Peter and Astrid had jointly decided to lock them away in case Walter went hunting for test subjects. But Astrid has another plan in mind.
She needs a few seconds’ respite for this to work. Scooping up a heavy water bomb, she throws it into Olivia’s face. The fact that Astrid half-expects an anguished cry of “I’m melting!” at this juncture proves to her satisfaction that she has taken quite enough in the way of head-shots for one day (*******).
Once Olivia can see again, her tormentor is stationed in front of the sensory deprivation tank. This is where things get tricky. Rope-a-dope was a perilous strategy for an Ali; it is a potentially fatal one for an Astrid. Particularly in the absence of any rope.
Olivia’s first punch lands, as was Astrid’s (reluctant) intention. Emboldened by her foe’s passivity, the second is wilder. When Astrid unexpectedly darts to one side, the blow connects with the metal outer skin of the tank instead. This is a sub-optimal way to discover that your opponent has just set up Quantum Hershey electrodes to run current through it. Olivia’s body stiffens and jerks like Oddjob’s in the grip of the voltage. When Astrid cuts the power, she collapses, and lies still.
Astrid crawls to Olivia’s side, the last shreds of strength in her legs having made their excuses to the hostess and left the party. She checks that the pulse in Olivia’s neck is strong, and sighs with relief to find her calculations confirmed. Then she nestles beside her boss to guard her until Walter arrives. (OK - there may be a touch of Toto in Astrid’s make-up. Little guy never gets the credit he deserves.) Perhaps Walter can be persuaded to bring ice or a beefsteak for their bruises. On second thoughts, scratch that. He would just eat one and drop the other into orangeade. If they were lucky, he would do it the right way round.
Olivia Dunham is, indeed, the last line of defence against the terrors of Fringe Division’s world. But even a last line sometimes needs a footnote. And you cannot find a footnote without an asterisk (********).
* Established by empirical observation, 11.12.2009, after a mishap with Walter’s deuterium oxide water bombs. Dr. Bishop got rather carried away in making these; Astrid still finds them every now and again in odd corners of the lab.
**Test-tubes (7); beakers (4); measuring cylinders (100 ml, 3); measuring cylinders (250 ml, 2); fractional distillation apparatus (1). Astrid is keeping a running inventory in her head. The fact that she can do this while having her ass handed to her in a fistfight probably speaks to something, but she would be hard pressed to say what it is.
*** Clarence Augustus Farnsworth (1932-2003), construction manager, proud owner of a ’69 Dodge Charger, amateur boxer (21-14-6-1), and enthusiast for Bond films, especially the Fort Knox sequence of Goldfinger, which he made Astrid watch 13 times. Remembered fondly whenever his great-niece smells turpentine, or sees the light loiter on wind-screens in Somerville of an evening.
**** The appellation “Crazy Dust” is the intellectual property of Peter Bishop, 2010. Originally synthesized by Dr. Bishop in the 1980s, seemingly (Walter’s recall on this point, as on so many others, being sketchy) as a sort of “Cortexiphan Kryptonite” (description, again, courtesy of his son). Walter’s own name for the stuff stretches a lot less meaning over a lot more syllables; Astrid is, in any event, almost sure that he gave three slightly different versions of it in the course of a single hurried ’phone call.
***** Astrid wonders if this means that Olivia thinks of herself as a creature of this place, a subject of Walter’s kingdom. The thought kills her a little inside. Astrid is there to see connexions which others do not. This does not mean she always has to like it.
****** Astrid confiscated Walter’s latest stash of amphetamines two days previously, after The Quantum Hershey Incident. The electrodes he used to bring it about still hang like poison ivy off a side table.
*******Olivia, in Astrid’s opinion, is definitely Dorothy, anyway. Astrid prefers not to extend the analogy to herself. None of the four candidates is all that flattering.
******** FINIS