Olivia Dunham (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flip_the_lights) wrote2012-11-06 06:27 pm
flip_the_lights) wrote2012-11-06 06:27 pm
[Manhatan, NY]
When she exits the bathroom, Olivia makes it all of two steps before an unfamiliar voice says, "Hey, Liv."
The mass of burn scars and the patchy hair turn him into a grotesque gargoyle, but she recognizes his face anyway: Lincoln Lee, the man they claimed was her partner. He insists the same, quiet and full of compassion and understanding. As far as he knows, the party line that she suffered a psychotic break is completely accurate; he gestures to his own scars, talking about how painful his nanite therapy has been after that pyrokinetic burned off his face, commiserating over how the cure feels worse than the disease.
Her chest tugs at that. Oh, Lee, she hears herself think.
But she is so sick of compassion, and so goddamn sick of being called Liv.
Getting his gun doesn't provide as much of a tactical advantage as she hoped, especially when more Fringe Division cars come tearing around the corner. Henry doesn't need telling twice before he peels out of the lot, not even bothering to take the pump nozzle out of his car; right ahead of them, she can see Charlie waving his arms and yelling for her to stop.
She leans out the window to aim her gun. Breathes. Focuses, seeing the world narrow to a point just to the left, right on the valve of the propane tank behind him. Her brain whirs with calculations she hardly realizes she's making. Walk in the park, she thinks. I've made harder shots.
Olivia listens for the space between heartbeats, fires, and sends the tank up in flames.
The world snaps back to manic speed. "Shit," Henry gasps as she tumbles back into the cab. "You're a hell of a shot."
Her hands clench and unclench, like she's trying to work feeling back into her fingers. All she sees is the photo of herself with red hair and a gun, beaming, an Olympic medal slung around her chest.
"Not that good," she says at last.
When they reach Chelsea, there's nothing there. Martin Luther King-Eldrige Cleaver Memorial Park, reads the sign where a giant skyscraper ought to stand -- where her one pathway home ought to be. Olivia walks across the grass as if in a trance. Around her, the citizens of Manhatan flow about their daily business; above her, another zeppelin trundles through the sky with a steady whumph whumph whumph. The wide open river may as well be a brick wall.
No opera house. No Massive Dynamic. No door to Milliways.
She's stuck here.
"Hey," says Henry, quietly. He followed her out of his cab -- since the firefight, he's seemed much more willing to believe Olivia's not the insane conspiracy nut he thought -- and stands a respectful distance away, watching her in concern. "You okay?"
For some reason, the sympathy is much easier to stomach coming from him. Probably because he's the only one who isn't trying to convince her she's lost her mind. Olivia tears her eyes away from the zeppelin, focusing back on him as she opens her mouth. What she means to say is, I'm fine, or even the truth: I'm not okay, I'm stranded here, I'm alone.
What comes out instead is, "Shadowgrove Circle."
Henry blinks. "What?"
"302 Shadowgrove Circle." The memory pulses bright as light at the forefront of her mind. "It's in Tarrytown. I-it's a -- it's a safe house. Walter must have told me about it. I don't know why I forgot."
Tarrytown's about forty minutes away. When they pull into Shadowgrove Circle, Henry wryly remarks that this kind of fare usually nets him three hundred bucks. He doesn't push her to pay, though. "I can wait for you, if you like," he says.
Olivia shakes her head. Softly, "No. You go home to your family."
For some reason, family sticks in her mind as she climbs the steps, ringing the doorbell without thinking. If it's a safe house, nobody's going to answer her. Of course they're not. Everything's locked up, though, which seems even more odd; it doesn't leave her much choice but to pry open a window and shimmy through. Like hell is she staying out in the open after coming this far.
Family. Family. There are nothing but family pictures on the fireplace mantle, and Olivia herself stands in every one. Her hair's bright red, streaming to the side as it's caught in the breeze, brushing against the face of her mother. She remembers how windy it was that day, how hard her cheeks stung afterward, how it barely mattered at all because she'd spent so much of the day laughing. She remembers --
"Olive?"
She turns around, and her heart leaps into her throat.
"...Mom?" she croaks in disbelief.
Marilyn Dunham never had the chance for her hair to go this silver. Olivia never saw her with so many lines in her face, all of them now creased up tight with worry. She sees her dead mother's lips shape the word, Sweetheart, but the dull ringing in her ears -- like she's back at the blast site of the Orpheum, head pounding from the concussive blast -- obscures anything else. She can't even react when Marilyn closes the gap between them and pulls her into a fierce embrace.
Mom, she tries to repeat. Her eyes sting. Of their own accord, her arms fold around her mother's shoulders -- and then they tighten, desperate, as she buries her face against her shirt (god, she remembers this shirt, she knows its smell) and her eyes begin to well up. Mommy.
All she wants to do is stay here. But -- no. No.
"I am not your daughter," she whispers in her mother's ear, then pushes herself back and stumbles away from the mantle. It starts out low, but as the words rush out, Olivia can hear her voice climbing higher and higher, matching her rising panic beat for beat. "My mother died when I was fourteen years old. This is all wrong, you're not supposed to be here -- "
"Sweetheart -- "
"Don't you call me that, I am not your daughter!" she screams, voice cracking. The whole room is a blur. Her head won't stop spinning, and it hurts, everything hurts, from her head to the track marks on her arm to her throat as emotion spills up and scrapes it raw. My mother died when I was fourteen, I have a sister named Rachel, I have a niece named Ella --
"Yes, you are!" shouts Marilyn. "You're just confused -- "
"This was going to be my way home!"
Charlie Francis was murdered, I have been held against my will, I know a man named Peter Bishop, Peter and I --
"You are home!"
"No! I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, I was, I was brought up on an Army base -- " She clenches her fingers in her hair, then yanks them back out as if forcibly trying to draw the memories back to the surface. "I've never been here before!"
"If you've never been here, then how did you know to come here?!"
Olivia stops. In the abrupt silence, her mother's words fall heavy, crushing her frantic scrabble of thought. Somewhere, a bird twitters; slowly, Olivia's eyes track to the walls of the living room.
She can smell the acetone, sharp and stinging, and hear the plastic sheeting crinkle as they drape it over the chair. Her hands bear streaks of yellow; there's one to match on her mother's face. They laugh about it as they drag rollers through buckets of paint and layer it onto the living room walls: the same living room they stand in now, paint a little faded with age but still so bright. So happy.
"I helped you paint, didn't I?" Her voice sounds very small, hesitant, like a student trying to hedge the right answer. (One and one is two. Two plus two is four.)
It is the right one: Marilyn lets out a shaky, teary gasp of relief. "Yes," she says. "You picked the colors. I wanted blue, but you convinced me to use -- "
" -- yellow," Olivia finishes. Her own laugh trembles just as much. She blinks, hard, in an effort to clear the tears. "Because it was more cheerful."
Marilyn nods, matching her daughter's smile, the lines fading from around her face. "Sweetheart," she repeats, softer, "this is your home. This is your safe house."
She draws Olivia into another hug, and this time, she goes unresisting to her mother's arms. Around them, light shimmers across the yellow paint. The birds keep singing as Marilyn gently rocks her daughter back and forth, back and forth.
It's okay. It's all okay.
She's finally made it home.
The mass of burn scars and the patchy hair turn him into a grotesque gargoyle, but she recognizes his face anyway: Lincoln Lee, the man they claimed was her partner. He insists the same, quiet and full of compassion and understanding. As far as he knows, the party line that she suffered a psychotic break is completely accurate; he gestures to his own scars, talking about how painful his nanite therapy has been after that pyrokinetic burned off his face, commiserating over how the cure feels worse than the disease.
Her chest tugs at that. Oh, Lee, she hears herself think.
But she is so sick of compassion, and so goddamn sick of being called Liv.
Getting his gun doesn't provide as much of a tactical advantage as she hoped, especially when more Fringe Division cars come tearing around the corner. Henry doesn't need telling twice before he peels out of the lot, not even bothering to take the pump nozzle out of his car; right ahead of them, she can see Charlie waving his arms and yelling for her to stop.
She leans out the window to aim her gun. Breathes. Focuses, seeing the world narrow to a point just to the left, right on the valve of the propane tank behind him. Her brain whirs with calculations she hardly realizes she's making. Walk in the park, she thinks. I've made harder shots.
Olivia listens for the space between heartbeats, fires, and sends the tank up in flames.
The world snaps back to manic speed. "Shit," Henry gasps as she tumbles back into the cab. "You're a hell of a shot."
Her hands clench and unclench, like she's trying to work feeling back into her fingers. All she sees is the photo of herself with red hair and a gun, beaming, an Olympic medal slung around her chest.
"Not that good," she says at last.
When they reach Chelsea, there's nothing there. Martin Luther King-Eldrige Cleaver Memorial Park, reads the sign where a giant skyscraper ought to stand -- where her one pathway home ought to be. Olivia walks across the grass as if in a trance. Around her, the citizens of Manhatan flow about their daily business; above her, another zeppelin trundles through the sky with a steady whumph whumph whumph. The wide open river may as well be a brick wall.
No opera house. No Massive Dynamic. No door to Milliways.
She's stuck here.
"Hey," says Henry, quietly. He followed her out of his cab -- since the firefight, he's seemed much more willing to believe Olivia's not the insane conspiracy nut he thought -- and stands a respectful distance away, watching her in concern. "You okay?"
For some reason, the sympathy is much easier to stomach coming from him. Probably because he's the only one who isn't trying to convince her she's lost her mind. Olivia tears her eyes away from the zeppelin, focusing back on him as she opens her mouth. What she means to say is, I'm fine, or even the truth: I'm not okay, I'm stranded here, I'm alone.
What comes out instead is, "Shadowgrove Circle."
Henry blinks. "What?"
"302 Shadowgrove Circle." The memory pulses bright as light at the forefront of her mind. "It's in Tarrytown. I-it's a -- it's a safe house. Walter must have told me about it. I don't know why I forgot."
Tarrytown's about forty minutes away. When they pull into Shadowgrove Circle, Henry wryly remarks that this kind of fare usually nets him three hundred bucks. He doesn't push her to pay, though. "I can wait for you, if you like," he says.
Olivia shakes her head. Softly, "No. You go home to your family."
For some reason, family sticks in her mind as she climbs the steps, ringing the doorbell without thinking. If it's a safe house, nobody's going to answer her. Of course they're not. Everything's locked up, though, which seems even more odd; it doesn't leave her much choice but to pry open a window and shimmy through. Like hell is she staying out in the open after coming this far.
Family. Family. There are nothing but family pictures on the fireplace mantle, and Olivia herself stands in every one. Her hair's bright red, streaming to the side as it's caught in the breeze, brushing against the face of her mother. She remembers how windy it was that day, how hard her cheeks stung afterward, how it barely mattered at all because she'd spent so much of the day laughing. She remembers --
"Olive?"
She turns around, and her heart leaps into her throat.
"...Mom?" she croaks in disbelief.
Marilyn Dunham never had the chance for her hair to go this silver. Olivia never saw her with so many lines in her face, all of them now creased up tight with worry. She sees her dead mother's lips shape the word, Sweetheart, but the dull ringing in her ears -- like she's back at the blast site of the Orpheum, head pounding from the concussive blast -- obscures anything else. She can't even react when Marilyn closes the gap between them and pulls her into a fierce embrace.
Mom, she tries to repeat. Her eyes sting. Of their own accord, her arms fold around her mother's shoulders -- and then they tighten, desperate, as she buries her face against her shirt (god, she remembers this shirt, she knows its smell) and her eyes begin to well up. Mommy.
All she wants to do is stay here. But -- no. No.
"I am not your daughter," she whispers in her mother's ear, then pushes herself back and stumbles away from the mantle. It starts out low, but as the words rush out, Olivia can hear her voice climbing higher and higher, matching her rising panic beat for beat. "My mother died when I was fourteen years old. This is all wrong, you're not supposed to be here -- "
"Sweetheart -- "
"Don't you call me that, I am not your daughter!" she screams, voice cracking. The whole room is a blur. Her head won't stop spinning, and it hurts, everything hurts, from her head to the track marks on her arm to her throat as emotion spills up and scrapes it raw. My mother died when I was fourteen, I have a sister named Rachel, I have a niece named Ella --
"Yes, you are!" shouts Marilyn. "You're just confused -- "
"This was going to be my way home!"
Charlie Francis was murdered, I have been held against my will, I know a man named Peter Bishop, Peter and I --
"You are home!"
"No! I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, I was, I was brought up on an Army base -- " She clenches her fingers in her hair, then yanks them back out as if forcibly trying to draw the memories back to the surface. "I've never been here before!"
"If you've never been here, then how did you know to come here?!"
Olivia stops. In the abrupt silence, her mother's words fall heavy, crushing her frantic scrabble of thought. Somewhere, a bird twitters; slowly, Olivia's eyes track to the walls of the living room.
She can smell the acetone, sharp and stinging, and hear the plastic sheeting crinkle as they drape it over the chair. Her hands bear streaks of yellow; there's one to match on her mother's face. They laugh about it as they drag rollers through buckets of paint and layer it onto the living room walls: the same living room they stand in now, paint a little faded with age but still so bright. So happy.
"I helped you paint, didn't I?" Her voice sounds very small, hesitant, like a student trying to hedge the right answer. (One and one is two. Two plus two is four.)
It is the right one: Marilyn lets out a shaky, teary gasp of relief. "Yes," she says. "You picked the colors. I wanted blue, but you convinced me to use -- "
" -- yellow," Olivia finishes. Her own laugh trembles just as much. She blinks, hard, in an effort to clear the tears. "Because it was more cheerful."
Marilyn nods, matching her daughter's smile, the lines fading from around her face. "Sweetheart," she repeats, softer, "this is your home. This is your safe house."
She draws Olivia into another hug, and this time, she goes unresisting to her mother's arms. Around them, light shimmers across the yellow paint. The birds keep singing as Marilyn gently rocks her daughter back and forth, back and forth.
It's okay. It's all okay.
She's finally made it home.