Shadow Chapter 2
Title: Shadow
Rating: PG
Summary: Peter is getting to grips with his life...or else.. (first in series)
Pairing:Olivia/Peter
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including Marionette
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even close.
Chapter 2
Walter had been restless since he had got home and curiously unsettled. Often he had suffered with insomnia and had came up with several methods to cure it with recitation of formulae, drugs and his son singing. But he felt unsettled tonight and was consoling himself with some sweets that he had had a craving for lately.
He looked over at Peter and frowned. His son was sleeping on his back. While most parents didn’t usually note their offspring’s sleeping positions and Walter made sure that he never told Peter this as he was sure it would join the long list of things that Walter was sure that peter would feel uncomfortable about and that was the last thing Walter wanted to do.
His son was the most important thing in his life. It had been a fact of life for Walter since Peter (the other Peter he murmured to himself) had been born and it had always been so. Nothing was more important than family. But Walter felt it more keenly these days. His son had left him and returned. A veritable Prodigal son who had came back to his true father and rejoiced.
Well Peter had not rejoiced. And that was proper and good and Walter was just happy that Peter had come back to him whole and intact and back to him. But he sometimes wondered if Peter would rather be with his (real) father.
Sometimes he wondered if he should be left alone again. After all he had done to Peter-he deserved it…
Unconsciously he moved from Peter’s bedroom to a window in another bedroom which Peter had mistakenly thought was going to be Walter’s bedroom. However it had lacked several criteria for being a real contender in Walter’s mind for a relaxing resting place for himself. The room felt stuffy and he unthinkingly pulled the curtain aside to pull the handle of the window open when he glanced outside and was jolted back into the immediate present.
The observer was outside.
It could have been any man in a suit and fedora hat but Walter could feel it in the instinctual mind that any caveman had that it was him.
The figure stared serenely at him and gave no indication it was anything but a statue but Walter could sense its stare. He backed away from the window. He felt a sudden attack of vertigo.
The observer beckoned.
* * *
Nina Sharp had had a good night.
Various projects that had been nothing but frustrations and troubles had been lately yielding results in a very profitable area that she was positive that she could show Walter without any questions being asked. Well, no questions that was idiotic. Not that she was saying ill of Belly.
But sometimes he had been trying (even more than Walter and that was saying something about the sanity of Belly’s mind after all these years) and some of the researches Massive Dynamic were doing now had to be done. They were in a war. She gritted her teeth.
Nina had been amazed at what she had read in the files that she had with subtle sleight of hand (or information trafficking rather) and indeed what she had managed to learn from Broyles. The situation called for an escalation in work in vital projects and she still felt not enough work was being done. William Bell had been keeping a lot from her, treating her like she wasn’t his second in command and like an infant. He had left her in the dark and consequently she had to now work twice as hard.
But Nina (and her team) had worked hard and tonight was a night of celebration. Whereas ten years ago that had meant a night on the town and a bottle of burgundy, Nina celebrated by having a glass of that burgundy and going to bed. It had been a long week…
An insistent ringing noise woke her up.
Sleepily, Nina reached toward the phone and checked who was waking her. It was Walter at.... 4:15 am. She hoped this was just one of Walters’s bouts of insomnia.
“Hello, this is Walter bishop.” He gave a gasp as if he had been running and in the next second her heart fell as Nina realised he was crying.
“Walter”, He sniffled as she tried to hurriedly think of what to say. “Walter- “
“I’m downstairs!” Walter whispered loudly. “Please let me up.”
“Why, Walter?” She said, tiredly sitting up in bed, inwardly cursing him. “Walter, has something happened?”
There was a pause with only heavy breathing on the phone. “The observers visited me tonight.” There was an abrupt silence. “About Peter.”
Nina felt her blood run cold. “Come inside and come up at once.”
She dialled down to the welcome desk at her building, quickly and efficiently. ”Let Walter bishop up at once.”
Nina shut her eyes and collected herself and got up with a minimum of fuss.
She had a feeling she would need all her wits about her today.
William had not neglected to tell her some necessary things.