Fringe fanfiction
Peter and the World he belongs to
AU, Peter, Peter&AltLivia, PG-13, 2026 worlds
Peter Bishop grows up in a world full of holes.
Figuratively and literally.
--
When he turns on the tv it isn’t to watch cartoons, or action show. His father is on the screen, talking about the natural decay of the planet. There are more people around him, other scientist, politicians and even some activists, but doctor Bishop stands out among them, talking about solution, salvation and safe breathing areas. Peter knows better, their world is dying and all they can do is patch it up with amber colored band aids.
He’s brilliant. In all the best school, top scores, a promising young talent. He’s also troubled, moody and rebellious. He’s a teenager after all.
Play for me? his mother asks, looking at the piano placed next to the big Victorian window. The curtains are still open and the night lights of New York shine through.
He excuses himself, I’m tired, it’s been a long day. He kisses his mother goodnight, goes upstairs, closes his bedroom door and sneaks out the window. By now, he knows enough about this house security to simply walk through it. There’s a whole city out there waiting for him. This is a dying world, man. They say, you should make the most of it. Peter doesn’t fool himself into believe the people he hangs around with are his friends, but they’re not so bad. They know all the best places and all the best stuff that it’s out there. The girls always have a smile for him when he shows them some new card tricks, and no one knows who he really is. But mostly, they are right: He should make the most of it.
--
There’s a hole in his family.
His parents’ marriage is falling apart around him. He can see it in his mother’s desperation and in his father’s absence. He wants to run, and he does. But there’s only so far you can go when your father is the Secretary of Defense.
This is his third attempt. He drops the cigarette in the gutter and looks up at the two black suited agents standing in front of him. They take in his bloody, swollen face before dragging him into a SUV parked close by.
He made it 4 states away this time, only to be drooped back at his mother’s doorstep.
Since running doesn’t work, he tries the best next thing, College.
He has all the credits he needs. He’s too young to go to college alone. His parents may have said. But his father is too busy mending the worlds and his mother is too lost to her slumber of antidepressants and alcohol.
--
Again, academically, he’s brilliant. Other than that, he drinks, gambles and fucks his college life away. He’s handsome, intelligent, (one way or the other) he always has money and the word around is, he really knows how to treat a woman.
Mostly, he has fun. He takes the right classes, writes big, compelling essays and works with successful research project. That makes his father proud and keeps him bailing him out of jails. He takes a few girls home to meet his mother. Girls he’s been dating for a few weeks and will make his mother smile.
They all pretend.
Once he thinks himself done with college, he leaves. Clearly staying in the same place for too long doesn’t suit him, and neither do mafia threats.
--
Europe is his first destination. He makes due of his education. His last name opens a lot of doors, but he makes sure it’s his work that keeps him in those rooms.
There are holes all over the world and he knows a lot about them. All the companies and Universities he works for tried to keep him, but too soon something else comes along and he’s gone.
For more than three years Peter stays in Turkey. Between the Caspian and the Black Sea there’s a region of particularly interest, the mountains of Ararat. Since the world started to deteriorate, the area in between those two seas has showed high potential for scientific research. The fabric of the universe is softer there, and it provides for better reading and more accurate results. However, what’s more remarkable is how all the anomalies never compromise the area, there has never been a need for a quarantine. So he joins dozens of other top scientist and affiliates with high prestige Universities, using their labs and accessing their previous researches. He loses count of his trips from Turkey to Armenia.
What he learns, is that not only scientist came to this place for answers, and that religion has hope for them all. Humanity has been lost before, so far gone in its own wickedness. Back then the world was drowned, this time God has chosen a different approach.
But Peter never believed in God. Most of this days, he doesn’t believe in man either.
He likes Japan. Tokyo is awake 24 hours a day, there’s so much light in the hectic parts of the city that it’s almost like he’s never alone. There’s a pretty girl with bright black eyes in front of him and a lot of troubles right behind her. He convinces himself he’s doing this because he wants to help her, because she’s young and beautiful and he likes her. Deep down he knows he just can’t keep himself out of troublers. It attracts him more than her beauty.
Two months later he has to run from Japan.
In the Middle East, he stands in front of an amber giant that now covers half of what once was Baghdad. There are more than 2 million people trapped inside. He breathes from an oxygen bottle and watches the faces of those who had been so close to salvation. Their desperate expression, bodies pressing forward and arms outstretched. He knew some of those people, now imprisoned in amber, they’re dead. Baghdad was a catastrophe, a scientific failure of enormous proportion. He claims part of the fault.
After that his brilliancy blurs into madness, and for weeks he’s lost. The weight of it all crushes him, a dying world and his lost soul. Then he’s back to pretending he’s ok.
He’s a phone call away from accepting a new job on Sydney when he gets a message from his father. After reading it four times he’s still sure that it almost sounds like his father is asking for his help. Almost. There is nothing too personal about it, it’s short and it says little more than there’s a project I believe you would be interested in… The Fringe Division could beneficiate from your knowledge and experience… for some of ours most recent technology… but somehow Peter can still read in a call for help.
The next week he flies back to the USA. It’s been 8 years.
--
Elizabeth Bishop couldn’t be happier to have his son back home. Even if it isn’t for long, even if he’s just were to complete a DOD project for the Fringe Division. Even if he’s not sure he will be around for Christmas again. Peter sits with his mother and drinks tea. She looks much healthier than he remembered. She no longer resorts to medications abuse and alcohol to battle her depression and the peaceful house by the lake is her life now. Everything around her tells him she’s doing ok, but her apparent denial about her son’s nomadic life concerns him. But mothers know better, the next day Peter meets Olivia Dunham.
He was in his father office in the Department of Defense headquarters, going over numbers with plants and maps spread all over a big glass table. Everything was top secret and unconceivable. His father talks and he doesn’t want to believe it, but already his mind is running wild calculations, designing possible scenarios, accounting variables and accepting his father’s conclusions as correct.
Before he can get up and leave that room, get out of this place and find somewhere he can breathe, his father stops him.
There’s someone I think you will like to see, an old friend. You will be working together. He’s already calling someone in.
Peter wouldn’t call Lincoln Lee a friend, but then again, at this point in his life Peter wouldn’t call anyone a friend. Their encounters had mostly occurred at parties, or conferences where both have been dragged to by their parents, who worked in the same area of interest and were now related to politics. Since they were almost the same age it was only normal they would end up relating to each other. They had met countless times in the past, but Peter had some difficulty relating the Agent that marched into the office to the boy he once knew.
Agent Lee is accompanied by his own team. Agent Charlie Francis and agent Olivia Dunham stand at each side of him, hands crossed behind their backs in a very military like posture. They exchange some pleasantries, and a promise to have a drink soon to catch up. After that is out of the way, Walter guides them back to the big glass table. From the corner of his eyes Peter sees Agent Francis avert his eyes from the pile of papers and whisper something to his partner, her right eyebrow raises and she smirks. When Lincoln looks back it’s only Agent Francis that gets a disapproving look, she drops her head a little to hide an even bigger smile, waves of red hair dance across her face. Then she takes a steep closer to the table and points to one of the map.
There’s been a large increase of wormholes activity in the southern area of Massachusetts. We’ve been expecting an event to occur for the last 42 hours. The reports show that… She keeps talking and he’s impressed.
--
It’s impossible to work with (for) Walter. He's half way through his packing when she comes knocking on his door. She heard about his fight with his father. Actually she tells him half the building hear the fight. She looks at him from under her fringes and with a mischievous smirk she declares she's taking him out tonight.
That night he learns that Olivia Dunham doesn’t drink, she does however, dance. He doesn’t leave after that.
--
She makes fun of his MIT shirt, and he picks up a framed picture of her holding a gun with more than half her size. Her mockery turns into a laugh. Now all he can do is ask if she likes jazz because, her laugh makes him think of music and he’s pretty sure he could compose a symphony right about now.
--
He traps her wrists in his hand, above her head, and watched the lights from the nightstand lamps reflecting from the diamonds on her ring. She kisses his jaw, demanding his attention, and he responds by using his body to press her down into their bed. Still she looks at him expectantly, her green eyes almost challenging him. With her everything is a battle for control, and he loves it. She will give up everything, but she will make him work for it. So he thrusts his hips into hers, she throws her head back, and he hears his name leaving her smiling lips as he leans forward to kiss the perfect neck she exposed to him.
She’s purring, and his other hand squeezes her bended leg before slowly making its way up. Palm pressed against her thigh, caressing her hip bone and then a little more above. He settles for using his thumb to draw small invisible circles around her navel. In six month he will met their child.
--
Peter Bishop lived around holes all his life, so he learned to step around and not to fall into them.
All his life he has been told the world around him is dying. He has studied it and he works to save it. And it’s all worth it, because he found his own hope, in his wife’s eyes and his son smile. There’s still a future for this universe.
