Fic: The Unreliable Narrator
Feb. 3rd, 2012 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainer76FANDOM: Fringe.
RATING: Gen.
CHARACTERS: Lincoln Lee, Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, Astrid Farnsworth, Walter Bishop
NOTES: Written with the view Fringe will end as advertised, I wrote another one of these stories somewhere, which went along the lines Fringe wouldn't do the predictable, so, I guess this is called covering bases.
Once upon a time, a man stood on the very tip of the ocean. He said: “Olivia Dunham was my wife, she gave me a home, she taught me how to fight.” It was fifteen years into a future that no longer exists and Peter already knew he was lost; that at the centre of his heart, he was his father’s son. Doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
Trying, desperately, to keep Olivia Dunham alive.
Once upon a time, a girl who was precious to the people who loved her before she was ever special, came into her own power. Strong emotion was the trigger and Nina Sharp the marksman who wielded the weapon. The betrayal sets the house quaking: the world drew tight, dark and unhappy, her power incandescent. Olivia, alone, remembers. But the old timeline is a distant mirage to the rage of her current existence. (She dies). Olivia Dunham saves the world.
“Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy,” Elizabeth says. There are tears in her eyes, and her fingers shake as she cups her son’s face, blocking his passage to the machine. “Peter, Peter!” When he struggles in her grip. “Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy. Let her go, son. Please, please: let her go.” She whispers it like a lullaby, a lament: be a better man than your father.
The dual worlds expand as they begin to heal. The room starts to tremble as the bridge looses stability.
“She did a good thing: don't take that away from her.”
Lincoln squats, motionless, beside Olivia’s body. He cups one hand to her forehead as if to ease a migraine and feels himself turn still. From across the room, Lincoln watches as his double pulls the remaining Olivia close, his face ashen, faced with finality and no longer willing to wait. His grip is white-knuckled as he drags the redhead to the other side, as they vanish into their own reality. And the only thing left is Peter’s grief, Olivia’s body, and a mother who stands fierce.
“Come with me,” she pleads, backing away, outlined against the doorway. “You don’t belong here.”
Peter doesn’t answer; his face crumples like wet paper. There's a single spot of red on his shirt like an ink trail. Peter takes two steps out of her grip, further from the machine, deeper into the room. His breathing is laboured; body shaking. He meets Lincoln’s eyes without any shame for the tears in his own. “You’ll look after her?”
Of course, she’s his partner, and Lincoln thinks the answer is a given. He’s throat tightens. He nods once, curtly, and feels his hand slip from Olivia's forehead to her eyes, closing them gently.
Once upon a time, they all lived separate lives. In one iteration, Olivia Dunham loved Peter fiercely, in another; she held out her hand toward Lincoln and pulled him close, their affection budding between them, fragile, their kisses soft.
Peter doesn’t leave via the bridge.
He walks out the door, into New York’s labyrinth of interconnecting streets, its fairs, and its alleyways, it’s sea of yellow cars. He vanishes like a magic act before Olivia’s final gift is revealed.
It takes two weeks before Lincoln’s memories start to shift, before the immediacy of Olivia’s smile is replaced by the analytical, and solitary, work at Hartford. Lincoln wakes up with the sheets tangled around his legs, with his heartbeat banging in his ribcage. He stares up at the ceiling of his old room and shudders.
Lincoln pulls his clothes on haphazardly. He checks the time - 6:02 am - and drives like a madman to Estfield Avenue. He parks outside lot twenty-one, with its messy lawn and struggling trees, with its children’s toys strewn across the driveway carelessly. He keeps the engine of the car running, the heater blasting on his knuckles, and stares at the two widely spaced windows that face the street like a sentinel’s eyes.
He doesn’t recognise his reflection in the rear-view mirror.
Lincoln hasn’t shaved since Olivia died. His clothes seem looser on his frame, his hair no longer orderly and plastered down. He sees shades of his own double, tighter cheekbones, pared down frame, his body cutting back to the bare essentials. His eyes are sharp, flickering over the house for signs of movement.
Robert steps onto the patio at 8:45 am. He kisses Julie on the cheek, removes one clutching child from his thigh, and steps into his cheap car with its shitty upholstery. He bangs the car door closed before he accidently reverses over his son’s tonker-toy.
Lincoln laughs.
It takes him a moment before he realises the sound is strained, cracking at the edges. He laughs until he’s breathless, until his mobile phone vibrates in his pocket.
Astrid says desperately. “Lincoln, Broyles' already signed the transfer papers, again. They’ll be at the Hartford office by mid-morning. Come home, please, I need you at the lab.” It takes two weeks – from the time of Olivia’s death to now - before Walter is bombarded by four years of memories with his son, who lived every day by his side, caring for him, baiting him, making Walter live.
Once upon a time, a boy gave up everything in an effort to save a girl’s life. In return, when Olivia knew there was no hope for herself, she gave Peter his world back, with grace.
***
“How are you doing?”
“Not well.” Astrid’s eyes are red-rimmed, swollen. She plucks at the jumper in her hands, the movement uncharacteristic. “It’s like the worse-case of motion sickness. A ripple effect, Walter says. What did she do, Lincoln, because I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how I can have two sets of memories, the old timeline, I don’t understand how we forgot him. Lincoln, it’s tearing Walter apart, Olivia…" Her voice breaks. "Peter left before the changes even started.”
Astrid paces away, staring at the office that used to be a bedroom, and is now an office again.
Lincoln follows her line of sight and sees Walter crashed out on a couch, his body curled inward loosely, like Astrid, he's grieving the loss of two people. Walter doesn’t sleep much, not at night and rarely in the day. Lincoln suspects medication is at work. “I don’t even know how to find him,” Astrid continues.
Lincoln looks away, rubs a hand across the stubble on his jaw. With the transfer complete he's now senior agent, and he's inherited Fringe, a grief-struck junior agent with years more experience with the abnormal than himself, and a mad scientist. "You're my partner," he says immediately. "Tell Broyles to reassign Tim to us, too, because we'll need him for babysitting duties."
He's the same Lincoln Lee as before - whose first experience of Fringe was chasing a woman who wouldn't die - he's the same Lincoln Lee who saw Peter Bishop first. He remembers the easy way the man had welcomed him, then, and hopes, fervently, in a timeline that's fast losing relevance, he had returned the favour.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 06:40 am (UTC)I'm not sure I follow why Robert would now be alive, but I'll take it. I'm sure Lincoln feels the same way.
Maybe you could write a resolution for the Redverse folks? Am I being too greedy?
no subject
Date: 2012-02-07 03:21 am (UTC)Astrid would definitely get promoted *g*, as for Robert, if Olivia has to die in all realities, then this is a return to blue-verse after her death, where Lincoln (possibly) wasn't partnered with Robert to begin with.
Different universe to amber - so different events - not partnered with Lincoln, Robert never chased a shady man into a warehouse, never died, etc, etc.
I'm actually thinking about expanding this story - but I could do a red/verse resolution if you preferred.