BITTERSWEET INTROSPECTIVE OMFWTFNOOLIVIAINTHIS?
TITLE: BITTERSWEET INTROSPECTIVE
CHARACTERS: PETER BISHOP
RATING: T (FOR LANGUAGE)
A/N: I DO NOT OWN THE SHOW FRINGE OR ITS VARIOUS CHARACTERS. ALL CREDIT GOES TO J.J. ABRAMS, ALEX KURTZMAN, AND ROBERTO ORCI.
Summary: MEMORIES ARE MORE PAINFUL THAN YOU MIGHT THINK. SHORT ONE-SHOT.
I am walking down a dark alleyway, the walls slicked with sludge and gutters full of refuse of a city. I am walking down a dark corridor to a fate that does not belong to me and maybe never did. The smell of decomposition invades every sense until I can swear that I almost hear the slow rustling, crumpling, liquefying of the objects strewn across the fractured concrete. Soon I will become nothing more than those decaying things, lost in the waste bin of fuck-all insanity.
I will die in my search for the truth.
This thought is not new to me, I have come to accept it with silent dignity, or as much dignity as someone like me could have. You see, I’m not really here or there in this supposed linear equation that people like to call life. I was torn from another place, another time and thrown into this one because my father loved me.
Even this version. My father loved me so much that he stole me and although all of his screws are loose and scattered he still tries to remind me of this fact now that he’s out of St. Claire's. Running amok in the real world and keeping cows for pets. Adamancy and brilliance run in my family and I have often been told that like my batty father I have it in spades. I was torn away from Baghdad by a tenacious blond, roped into playing interpreter to a father I had tried to forget.
I know now that I have blamed him for everything that has gone wrong in my life. I was young and not privileged to know my father in those days-I was angry with Walter because he left my mother and me to fend for ourselves. Because I believed everything that the ingrates in school told me about him and I wrapped myself in a barrier of anger, resolved to never expect too much out of any one person ever again.
Family is something that I believe I have now. Built on a foundation of honesty, implicit trust, laughter, and the never-ending search for truth. I know that I am not a good person; I never was and will probably never be. I know that there won’t be a seat reserved for me beyond the pearly gates and that instead I will be sent to a region of Hell especially reserved for liars, cowards, and traitors. I am known as Peter Bishop to Olivia, Walter, and Astrid but to others I have had many names and most of them not suitable for the ears in any language.
I am walking in the valley, stalked by the shadow of death and I am not afraid. My name is Peter Bishop, son of Walter Bishop and I am going to help save the world. Or at least save one girl that has become an intrinsic part of mine.
The stirrings of a fear that has been sleeping for many years has awoken and now I find that I am no longer logical, I am no longer careless, I no longer operate as an emotionless machine.
I hate myself for it.
No longer was I the mover and the shaker but the sentry, the watchful if not disgruntled guardian of my father and the wayward blond FBI Agent. The sense of responsibility that suddenly fell on my shoulders was almost smothering but I adapted so quickly I hadn’t had time to notice. Until I sat back, until I took just a moment to catch my breath and look around at all that had changed around me.
I never thought that I would be capable of affection until all of them swarmed into my life, stormed and stomped in Olivia’s case.
Now that my family is threatened and breaking I never thought I would be the one to miss it, much less try to save it…or be hurt by its splintering.