count your days like pocket change, by angeldylan628

[irony-rocks.livejournal.com]

Fandom Category: Fringe
Pairing: Peter/Olivia, Olivia/Charlie, Peter/Astrid
Fic Title: count your days like pocket change
Author: angeldylan628
Link: http://community.livejournal.com/soapboxblues/12428.html
Rating/Warning(s): pg-13
Genre: future fic
WIP?: no

Why This Must Be Read: Wow. This was stunning. Every section was like a little bit of art, and the turn of phrases and the quiet narration moves the entire plot forward with a deft hand. Ten years. That's how long it takes to get the universes to align again, and for Peter and Olivia to meet again. But to quote the fic, Of the beginning and the end, it's always the middle that counts most. From Charlie/Olivia, to Astrid/Peter, to the overall flavor of Peter/Olivia. I mean, wow, way to multiship within a story without shortchanging any of them! And I say that as a person that normally OTPs for Peter/Olivia. But all the characters and dynamics are all real and worthy, and the end, oh, you really can't have it any other way and yet the author gives you glimpse of hope that rights it all.

Very masterfully done. Bravo.

---

It takes 43 days for Walter Bishop to die.

This is on the other side.

There is a chain of events, some William Bell's making and some Elizabeth Bishop's. Maybe, in hindsight, it's more a culmination than a chain.

Here, Walter did not have a son to love, just vengeance to seek. Here, Walter's greatest sin is pride. It's the stone that all others fall upon.

Charlie Francis stares at the blood soaked desk. His feet were pounding up the stairs, arrest warrant clutched close when that shot rang out. He wonders, idly, if Livy would have been a step faster.

Walter Bishop leaves a trail. Embezzlement. Fraud. That is what the public sees. Secret experiments and secret prisons - few can know about those.

Charlie Francis follows the trail to a dark hole in the ground. Rows of decayed corpses locked in the abyss with only their minds to keep them company after they had been sucked dry of any information they had.

It's a grim sight.

Charlie cannot understand how no one saw it before. How a man as evil as Walter Bishop hid in plain sight.

They open door after door, revealing skeletons and cold bodies, each one a more vivid depiction of the anguish they all suffered, until they get to the last one and Charlie's fingers clench on the handle, afraid of what will be there. He turns the knob slowly, and beyond the noise of flashing cameras, cellphone calls and mumbled directives of an especially somber clean-up crew, Charlie hears it. The catch of breath behind door number twenty-six.

He throws it open.

The body curled in the corner takes its time unwrapping itself, shies away from the sudden light of Charlie's flashlight. He lowers it and a head peaks out from under a curtain of matted hair.

"Charlie." Her smile is weak, only a flash and then it falls away as quick as it came.

He does not call her Livy, though the name perches on the tip of his tongue on instinct. It only takes a few seconds for him to realize who she really is.

---

Olivia tells him the truth and then she dies.

This is 43 days later. the irony goes unseen

Peter stares at his blood-soaked shoes and wonders how he didn't see it before. He knew all of her tells - missed them all. A month and a half of flirty smiles and small gestures that were empty. He wonders if his Olivia was this good of a liar too.

"Did you know?" he asks Astrid as they lean over a table filled with the imposter’s things.

She doesn't answer. His question doesn't justify one. Her hand hovers over his, but never touches. Instead she sets it down beside his, pinky grazing the side of his hand. It's a heavy gesture between them.

"We'll find her," she promises quietly.

He looks over at her, but she won't look up.

---