Olivia Dunham (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flip_the_lights) wrote2012-11-25 12:21 am
flip_the_lights) wrote2012-11-25 12:21 am
[Manhatan, NY]
After getting a little bit of food and caffeine in her, Olivia feels much more prepared to tackle the weirdness -- and personal uneasiness -- of having a time-space anomaly show up right outside her apartment. She takes her time exploring the space, confirming the stability with a few other patrons, discreetly performing a few more checks to ensure any fluctuations are within acceptable ranges.
Finally, satisfied, she walks out the front door and back into her apartment. Her fingers hover over her ear cuff as she contemplates what to do next.
"He's right, you know," says a voice just to her left.
Olivia whirls to face it, one hand already dropping to her gun. Peter Bishop, the secretary's son -- a grown man now, not the child everyone remembers from the endless news articles twenty-five years past -- smiles at her, completely unconcerned by the weapon in her grip. It's not a gentle smile, either, or a kind one; nothing she can imagine him giving the other Olivia. There's a faintly mocking edge to it, as if to say, I know something you don't know.
"That Nick guy," Peter goes on. "He's right. You shouldn't call this one in."
She swallows. This isn't the first time she's seen him, but it's the first time he's spoken to her: the hallucinations that've been flickering at the edges of sight all through her most recent case are getting worse. "You're not real," she whispers.
"Does that matter?" He takes a step closer. Olivia doesn't move. "I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. If they find out about Milliways, they'll try to block it off completely. Not because it isn't safe -- because they know you can use it to get home."
She shakes her head. In a bare whisper: "I am home."
"No," says Peter, and he sounds almost sorrowful now. "You're not."
By now, he's within arm's reach of her. Olivia still can't bring herself to move as he reaches out, and god, for a hallucination his hand on her cheek feels so warm, so familiar. "You have to remember," he whispers. "You don't belong here, Olivia. You can't forget who you are, or where you come from."
She squeezes her eyes shut on a shuddering breath. When she opens them again, she's alone in her apartment, dust motes swirling through the sunlight where Peter stood.
Nothing improves as the days go by. The subconscious voice in her head, manifesting as a man she barely knows, waits for her at every opportunity: pointing out how a broken protocol saved her life not because she was reckless, but because she didn't even know the protocol existed; whispering in her ear that she had no reason to know about the security features installed on Fringe equipment a month ago; insisting that no amount of antipsychotics will help regain her equilibrium. Once, he kisses her lightly on the lips, and it feels just as real -- as familiar -- as that first touch.
I'm not a lingering symptom, he murmurs. You can't ignore me.
Those words chill her more than her worst fears. Her breakdown hasn't ended. She can't be losing her mind. She was getting better, goddammit, and if she can't trust her own brain anymore, let alone do her job --
She does her best to ignore Peter, plunging into her work with renewed fervor. In the past, she might have lamented to Frank how Fringe never gave her a break, but now it saves her from dwelling on the crumbling edges of her own thoughts. Secretary Bishop pulls her aside to provide another respite: her blonde counterpart, it turns out, has some special abilities unseen by anyone in this world before -- one of which is to cross the boundary between universes without harm.
And Bishop theorizes that because their DNA is identical, she may very well be able to do the same.
To activate the area of her brain thought to contain that ability, he proposes a two-step process: a sensory deprivation tank, where she'll be completely submerged in water with a diving regulator to provide air, and a course of psychotropic drugs to further open up her mind. Olivia agrees readily. After all, if she can do this, it'll mean easy access to the other universe. It'll mean a way to defend themselves.
(It'll mean a way home, Peter offers with a knowing smile. Olivia doesn't deign to respond.)
Lucky for her, the water's comfortably warm and the regulator easy to use. Once she confirms that she can hear Bishop through the speakers implanted inside, she feels a hot rush through her veins, and sucks in an abrupt breath as all her muscles go limp. It's...nice. Strange, but nice. Her eyelids droop closed as bright colors trace across her vision, long ribbons and curling shapes that expand and contract like heartbeats.
For a long time, that's all there is. Her red hair billows soundlessly around her, brushing her cheek like feathers, but Olivia sees and feels nothing else. Every so often, the warmth of more drugs pulses through her arm, and the colors explode anew.
The real changes begin with a humming in her ears. Until now, all she's heard is her heartbeat; this is too loud to be a hallucination, though. It's like somebody has plucked the water itself and sent it vibrating like a guitar string. Her whole body buzzes with the feeling.
And then her eyes slam open as her heartbeat skyrockets.
Very distantly, she can hear Secretary Bishop and his assistant shouting through the speaker, something about her going critical, some kind of imploring words to hang in there. Olivia can't make it out over the buzzing. She's become the vibration itself, stirring the water, stirring every particle in the atmosphere --
(allow the universe to pass right through you)
-- knocking a snow globe from a shelf as she stumbles, blinking, into another place entirely.
The vibration stops. She's dripping wet, hair hanging nearly to her waist with the weight of the water. Olivia's eyes dart back and forth as she takes in her surroundings: shelves and shelves of more snow globes, a wide window overlooking a city skyline, racks of postcards and magnets. Tinny, inoffensive music plinks in the background, like she's riding an elevator to the top floor of Fringe.
Her eyes land on a bespectacled kid who's gaping at her from a couple feet away. He can't be more than twelve; Olivia has a wry moment to wonder if -- in her medical gown that looks like she just walked out of a wet T-shirt contest -- he's staring for more reasons than a woman suddenly materializing out of nowhere. She starts to open her mouth to say something, maybe eyes up here, kiddo, when the uncomfortable, humming pressure returns.
Olivia's vision blurs like an oncoming migraine, the air shakes her apart, and she emerges gasping from the tank into the assistant's arms.
"I went somewhere," she wheezes to him and Secretary Bishop. "A gift shop." Another gulp of air. "There was a boy -- "
It worked, they all realize at once. She crossed over.
Over Bishop's shoulder, Peter offers an approving nod.
It's so strange to think about. Here, Olivia just got used to the idea of another universe existing, and now she has to get a handle on having superpowers, too. Like some comic book character. Like the other Olivia, apparently, which unsettles her most of all. They might share DNA, she might be teetering on the verge of landing back in a psych ward, but she still knows one incontrovertible fact: she and that woman are nothing alike.
Peter, of course, pounces on it. "Maybe you have more than just that in common," he says, all dogged relentlessness as she brushes her teeth, washes her face, lays down in her and Frank's bed to sleep. "Maybe you have everything in common. Maybe you're the same person, Olivia -- maybe you're her."
With Frank away on business, she feels more free to acknowledge him in the empty privacy of her room. She speaks the familiar words like a prayer: please, god, let this be true. "You're not real."
"But I know things," he says, and suddenly he's sitting on the bed, leaning close until his lips nearly touch her ear.
Olivia suppresses a shiver. "You're in my head," she says.
"Exactly." He smiles, and it seems far kinder this time, like she's finally beginning to understand -- even though Olivia keeps shaking her head in denial. "Which means you know things, too -- things about the Other Side. Things you couldn't possibly know unless you'd been there; unless you belonged there."
Her hands tighten into fists. "Like what?"
"On the other side, the Twin Towers have fallen and the White House still stands. On the other side, your sister is alive. She lives in Chicago -- "
Olivia chokes on a desperate laugh, overlapping him, overlapping the thoughts racing in her head: I have a sister named Rachel -- "See, now I know you're lying, because my sister hated Chicago -- "
"Her husband took a job there," he goes on, louder. "Their address is 1934 Sherman Way. Your beautiful niece, Ella, is alive -- "
I have a niece named Ella --
"She was born, and tomorrow is her birthday."
Her knuckles have gone chalk-white against the dark cloth of her quilt. Hoarsely: "There's no way to prove it."
This is not my life.
Even before Peter speaks, she knows what he's going to say. "Yes, there is."
The next morning, buoyed by the optimism generated by her last test, Bishop schedules another experiment. Olivia jumps back into the tank without hesitation, respirator hissing as bubbles stream from its sides. She closes her eyes, breathing through the swirl of drugs.
And she waits.
It happens quicker this time, the fizz like her whole head is filling with static, the trembling that races up and down her body. This time, she's expecting it when another snow globe falls with a crash, and she barely needs more than a few seconds to reorient herself.
Hugging her arms close, Olivia pads across the gift shop carpet, leaving damp footsteps behind. A rack of postcards catches her eye before she's walked too far. They're all the same, row after row depicting the World Trade Center; as she studies them, relief unknots itself to spread warm through her stomach. She almost smiles.
Then she reads the text overlaying the photo, and her prototype of a smile vanishes completely. Fingers trembling, Olivia lifts one of the cards from the rack.
9/11/2001, it reads. WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
Slowly, she lifts her eyes to the window just ahead, and takes in the flat hole in the skyline where two skyscrapers ought to stand.
She's not sure how long she stares at the view, but then, all at once, Olivia drops the postcard and dives for the phone at the unattended cash register. Her hand hovers over the keys, not knowing what to do -- until, just as suddenly, she does know, like her mother's address surfacing in her head all those weeks ago. Dialing the outside extension, she taps ten digits across the keypad and listens to the buzz of the ringtone.
One ring. Two.
Click. "Hello?"
Her throat slams closed. She isn't sure which would have been worse -- to hear Rachel, or hear an unfamiliar voice -- but this is one more unfamiliar yet: young, childlike, a girl not even out of elementary school. Olivia can feel tears prick her eyes; after a few beats, she realizes her face has begun to ache with the smile she wears.
She knows the voice so well. (She doesn't know it at all.)
"Hi," she manages to whisper.
Immediately, the girl's voice brightens further. "Aunt Liv!" she exclaims. "I knew you wouldn't forget my birthday!"
She never had the chance to become an aunt. (She thought she'd never stop smiling the first time she held her niece.)
Her vision has gone so blurred with tears that it takes a moment to realize it's started blurring for a whole different reason. Like film shaken violently, the outlines of the shelves and window panes slew from side of side, losing focus and cohesion. As tinnily as the music, she hears Ella say, "Aunt Liv?" --
and then she's gone, the respirator spat from her mouth, the water from the tank obscuring all her tears as Bishop peers down at her.
I'm not going crazy, she thinks. Weeks ago, that realization would have been such a relief.
"It didn't work," she tells them as she fights to regain her equilibrium. "Nothing happened. All I saw was black."
The Olivia they know, the one who fights to protect their universe -- she'd have no reason to lie. They let her go without question, telling her that maybe they'll try again next week. The whole ride back to her apartment, Olivia can't move her gaze from the shadows of the Twin Towers.
And for once, Peter, hovering just outside the corner of her eye, remains silent.
Finally, satisfied, she walks out the front door and back into her apartment. Her fingers hover over her ear cuff as she contemplates what to do next.
"He's right, you know," says a voice just to her left.
Olivia whirls to face it, one hand already dropping to her gun. Peter Bishop, the secretary's son -- a grown man now, not the child everyone remembers from the endless news articles twenty-five years past -- smiles at her, completely unconcerned by the weapon in her grip. It's not a gentle smile, either, or a kind one; nothing she can imagine him giving the other Olivia. There's a faintly mocking edge to it, as if to say, I know something you don't know.
"That Nick guy," Peter goes on. "He's right. You shouldn't call this one in."
She swallows. This isn't the first time she's seen him, but it's the first time he's spoken to her: the hallucinations that've been flickering at the edges of sight all through her most recent case are getting worse. "You're not real," she whispers.
"Does that matter?" He takes a step closer. Olivia doesn't move. "I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. If they find out about Milliways, they'll try to block it off completely. Not because it isn't safe -- because they know you can use it to get home."
She shakes her head. In a bare whisper: "I am home."
"No," says Peter, and he sounds almost sorrowful now. "You're not."
By now, he's within arm's reach of her. Olivia still can't bring herself to move as he reaches out, and god, for a hallucination his hand on her cheek feels so warm, so familiar. "You have to remember," he whispers. "You don't belong here, Olivia. You can't forget who you are, or where you come from."
She squeezes her eyes shut on a shuddering breath. When she opens them again, she's alone in her apartment, dust motes swirling through the sunlight where Peter stood.
Nothing improves as the days go by. The subconscious voice in her head, manifesting as a man she barely knows, waits for her at every opportunity: pointing out how a broken protocol saved her life not because she was reckless, but because she didn't even know the protocol existed; whispering in her ear that she had no reason to know about the security features installed on Fringe equipment a month ago; insisting that no amount of antipsychotics will help regain her equilibrium. Once, he kisses her lightly on the lips, and it feels just as real -- as familiar -- as that first touch.
I'm not a lingering symptom, he murmurs. You can't ignore me.
Those words chill her more than her worst fears. Her breakdown hasn't ended. She can't be losing her mind. She was getting better, goddammit, and if she can't trust her own brain anymore, let alone do her job --
She does her best to ignore Peter, plunging into her work with renewed fervor. In the past, she might have lamented to Frank how Fringe never gave her a break, but now it saves her from dwelling on the crumbling edges of her own thoughts. Secretary Bishop pulls her aside to provide another respite: her blonde counterpart, it turns out, has some special abilities unseen by anyone in this world before -- one of which is to cross the boundary between universes without harm.
And Bishop theorizes that because their DNA is identical, she may very well be able to do the same.
To activate the area of her brain thought to contain that ability, he proposes a two-step process: a sensory deprivation tank, where she'll be completely submerged in water with a diving regulator to provide air, and a course of psychotropic drugs to further open up her mind. Olivia agrees readily. After all, if she can do this, it'll mean easy access to the other universe. It'll mean a way to defend themselves.
(It'll mean a way home, Peter offers with a knowing smile. Olivia doesn't deign to respond.)
Lucky for her, the water's comfortably warm and the regulator easy to use. Once she confirms that she can hear Bishop through the speakers implanted inside, she feels a hot rush through her veins, and sucks in an abrupt breath as all her muscles go limp. It's...nice. Strange, but nice. Her eyelids droop closed as bright colors trace across her vision, long ribbons and curling shapes that expand and contract like heartbeats.
For a long time, that's all there is. Her red hair billows soundlessly around her, brushing her cheek like feathers, but Olivia sees and feels nothing else. Every so often, the warmth of more drugs pulses through her arm, and the colors explode anew.
The real changes begin with a humming in her ears. Until now, all she's heard is her heartbeat; this is too loud to be a hallucination, though. It's like somebody has plucked the water itself and sent it vibrating like a guitar string. Her whole body buzzes with the feeling.
And then her eyes slam open as her heartbeat skyrockets.
Very distantly, she can hear Secretary Bishop and his assistant shouting through the speaker, something about her going critical, some kind of imploring words to hang in there. Olivia can't make it out over the buzzing. She's become the vibration itself, stirring the water, stirring every particle in the atmosphere --
(allow the universe to pass right through you)
-- knocking a snow globe from a shelf as she stumbles, blinking, into another place entirely.
The vibration stops. She's dripping wet, hair hanging nearly to her waist with the weight of the water. Olivia's eyes dart back and forth as she takes in her surroundings: shelves and shelves of more snow globes, a wide window overlooking a city skyline, racks of postcards and magnets. Tinny, inoffensive music plinks in the background, like she's riding an elevator to the top floor of Fringe.
Her eyes land on a bespectacled kid who's gaping at her from a couple feet away. He can't be more than twelve; Olivia has a wry moment to wonder if -- in her medical gown that looks like she just walked out of a wet T-shirt contest -- he's staring for more reasons than a woman suddenly materializing out of nowhere. She starts to open her mouth to say something, maybe eyes up here, kiddo, when the uncomfortable, humming pressure returns.
Olivia's vision blurs like an oncoming migraine, the air shakes her apart, and she emerges gasping from the tank into the assistant's arms.
"I went somewhere," she wheezes to him and Secretary Bishop. "A gift shop." Another gulp of air. "There was a boy -- "
It worked, they all realize at once. She crossed over.
Over Bishop's shoulder, Peter offers an approving nod.
It's so strange to think about. Here, Olivia just got used to the idea of another universe existing, and now she has to get a handle on having superpowers, too. Like some comic book character. Like the other Olivia, apparently, which unsettles her most of all. They might share DNA, she might be teetering on the verge of landing back in a psych ward, but she still knows one incontrovertible fact: she and that woman are nothing alike.
Peter, of course, pounces on it. "Maybe you have more than just that in common," he says, all dogged relentlessness as she brushes her teeth, washes her face, lays down in her and Frank's bed to sleep. "Maybe you have everything in common. Maybe you're the same person, Olivia -- maybe you're her."
With Frank away on business, she feels more free to acknowledge him in the empty privacy of her room. She speaks the familiar words like a prayer: please, god, let this be true. "You're not real."
"But I know things," he says, and suddenly he's sitting on the bed, leaning close until his lips nearly touch her ear.
Olivia suppresses a shiver. "You're in my head," she says.
"Exactly." He smiles, and it seems far kinder this time, like she's finally beginning to understand -- even though Olivia keeps shaking her head in denial. "Which means you know things, too -- things about the Other Side. Things you couldn't possibly know unless you'd been there; unless you belonged there."
Her hands tighten into fists. "Like what?"
"On the other side, the Twin Towers have fallen and the White House still stands. On the other side, your sister is alive. She lives in Chicago -- "
Olivia chokes on a desperate laugh, overlapping him, overlapping the thoughts racing in her head: I have a sister named Rachel -- "See, now I know you're lying, because my sister hated Chicago -- "
"Her husband took a job there," he goes on, louder. "Their address is 1934 Sherman Way. Your beautiful niece, Ella, is alive -- "
I have a niece named Ella --
"She was born, and tomorrow is her birthday."
Her knuckles have gone chalk-white against the dark cloth of her quilt. Hoarsely: "There's no way to prove it."
This is not my life.
Even before Peter speaks, she knows what he's going to say. "Yes, there is."
The next morning, buoyed by the optimism generated by her last test, Bishop schedules another experiment. Olivia jumps back into the tank without hesitation, respirator hissing as bubbles stream from its sides. She closes her eyes, breathing through the swirl of drugs.
And she waits.
It happens quicker this time, the fizz like her whole head is filling with static, the trembling that races up and down her body. This time, she's expecting it when another snow globe falls with a crash, and she barely needs more than a few seconds to reorient herself.
Hugging her arms close, Olivia pads across the gift shop carpet, leaving damp footsteps behind. A rack of postcards catches her eye before she's walked too far. They're all the same, row after row depicting the World Trade Center; as she studies them, relief unknots itself to spread warm through her stomach. She almost smiles.
Then she reads the text overlaying the photo, and her prototype of a smile vanishes completely. Fingers trembling, Olivia lifts one of the cards from the rack.
9/11/2001, it reads. WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
Slowly, she lifts her eyes to the window just ahead, and takes in the flat hole in the skyline where two skyscrapers ought to stand.
She's not sure how long she stares at the view, but then, all at once, Olivia drops the postcard and dives for the phone at the unattended cash register. Her hand hovers over the keys, not knowing what to do -- until, just as suddenly, she does know, like her mother's address surfacing in her head all those weeks ago. Dialing the outside extension, she taps ten digits across the keypad and listens to the buzz of the ringtone.
One ring. Two.
Click. "Hello?"
Her throat slams closed. She isn't sure which would have been worse -- to hear Rachel, or hear an unfamiliar voice -- but this is one more unfamiliar yet: young, childlike, a girl not even out of elementary school. Olivia can feel tears prick her eyes; after a few beats, she realizes her face has begun to ache with the smile she wears.
She knows the voice so well. (She doesn't know it at all.)
"Hi," she manages to whisper.
Immediately, the girl's voice brightens further. "Aunt Liv!" she exclaims. "I knew you wouldn't forget my birthday!"
She never had the chance to become an aunt. (She thought she'd never stop smiling the first time she held her niece.)
Her vision has gone so blurred with tears that it takes a moment to realize it's started blurring for a whole different reason. Like film shaken violently, the outlines of the shelves and window panes slew from side of side, losing focus and cohesion. As tinnily as the music, she hears Ella say, "Aunt Liv?" --
and then she's gone, the respirator spat from her mouth, the water from the tank obscuring all her tears as Bishop peers down at her.
I'm not going crazy, she thinks. Weeks ago, that realization would have been such a relief.
"It didn't work," she tells them as she fights to regain her equilibrium. "Nothing happened. All I saw was black."
The Olivia they know, the one who fights to protect their universe -- she'd have no reason to lie. They let her go without question, telling her that maybe they'll try again next week. The whole ride back to her apartment, Olivia can't move her gaze from the shadows of the Twin Towers.
And for once, Peter, hovering just outside the corner of her eye, remains silent.