Fic: Maybe Tomorrow
Title: Maybe Tomorrow
Fandom: Fringe
Author:
Characters: Olivia
Word count: 683
Rating: PG for language and Evil Stepdad being his loathsome self.
Summary: Olivia imagines the impossibilities.
Spoilers: An epilogue to episode 3.15, “Subject 13.”
Disclaimer: Thanks for letting me play in your multiverse, show. I own nothing.
All her snow is gone, but the air is still chilly and damp. Olivia hangs back, scanning the parking lot hopefully, but there’s no sign of Peter, or the lady she’d assumed was his mother.
Still, she’s seen him twice now, two days in a row. Maybe he’s enrolling in her school. She thinks Peter is her same age; even if or especially if Dr. Walter is his father, maybe Peter will be in her group. That would make it uneven, for the buddies…and she loves Nick but maybe sometimes they could trade. Peter could be her buddy, or even Nick’s, while he got used to them, and-
“Olivia!” Her stepfather is already in his seat, leaning out of the driver’s door to stare at her. “What the hell? Get in the car!” Face hot, Olivia scrambles to comply, sliding into the back seat and clicking her seat belt locked.
Her stepfather puts the key in the ignition, but he doesn’t turn the engine on. They sit in silence until Olivia drags her eyes up to his in the rearview mirror.
“You enjoyed that,” he says tightly. “Didn’t you?”
“I-” Olivia doesn’t know what he means.
“Did you think that was funny?” In the mirror, his eyes are like bits of gravel: dark, sharp. “Seeing that. Seeing your ol’ stepdad called on the carpet by your teacher, Professor Hot Shit? Oh, sorry-Doctor Hot Shit. Calling me out like that. Threatening me. What did you say?” He rounds on her abruptly, his arm hooking over the seat back so that Olivia flinches.
“Nothing,” she manages, but he’s talking over her.
“What’d you tell them, huh? What-that there was trouble at home? That your mean old stepdad was being mean, to poor little princess Olive? What did you say?” His voice rises from a sneer to a shout, tinny in the cold hollow of the car. Olivia holds her thumb against the seat-belt button, the raised plastic letters spelling PUSH against her skin. If she pressed it, she could run. She could swing open the door and run back to the building, and maybe she could run fast enough that her stepfather wouldn’t catch her. Maybe. Maybe Miss Ashley would let her in. The parking lot stretches long and dark behind them, and her stepfather is still yelling.
“What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t!” she cries back. “I didn’t say anything!” She makes herself look him in the eye, her throat tight. It’s too far to run.
“Good,” her stepfather says abruptly, and he faces front and starts the car, backs up jerky and fast so that Olivia’s stomach lurches. “You’d damn well better not. Little smartmouth liar,” he adds, pulling around with the fan belt squealing. “Think you’re so special, don’t you. You and professor tweed-jacket big shot both.” He sounds almost friendly now, talking over his shoulder as they bounce and rattle down the road. “I keep telling Marilyn, we ought to pull you out of that nuthouse. They’re turning you into a spoiled little-quit sniveling. Do you want something to cry about?”
Olivia gulps, her sinuses stinging like the chlorine burn from jumping into a pool. She doesn’t know what happened, really. She’d run down the hall and into Dr. Walter’s office, the words tangling and tumbling out, ready to show him the drawings. She’d cried, to her shame-like a baby. And then…and then Dr. Walter had been in the doorway, calling out to her puzzled and concerned. “Olive! What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” he’d said, over and over. And she’d been so confused, and so, so tired. She couldn’t find her sketchbook. She couldn’t make the words come out, again.
Olivia scoots over to rest her head against the cold window. Her right eye throbs hotly in contrast to the chill of the glass. Maybe it will be all right, she thinks. Tomorrow they’ll try another way. Maybe Peter will come back, and be her buddy, and even her friend. They’ll stand together in the circle, his hand in hers again. Maybe tomorrow.
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Notes: I always worried that, at the end of "Subject 13," Olivia's stepfather would be so mortified that he'd hardly be able to restrain himself from smacking her around in the parking lot. Poor little thing, she looks at Walter like he's her savior...but we know it only gets worse for her from there.
Initially, I gave her stepfather a name, in early drafts...but screw it, he doesn't deserve one.