Shipper Manifesto: Olivia Dunham/Peter Bishop (Fringe)

[paladin24.livejournal.com]

I'm a dude.  This means I usually dig things like cordless reciprocating saws, cars with 400 horsepower engines, and movies with big, dramatic explosions.  It's fair to say that when I watch a TV show, I'm looking more for plot, action, and suspense and don't particularly care about the characters' personal lives.  Indeed, I often view delving into the latter as an annoying, unnecessary distraction, and lament how fanfic generally obsesses with pairing character X with character Y to damn near the exclusion of anything else.

But every now and then a show comes along where the ship is written in such a way as to not seem forced or obtrusive, not as a desperate play for ratings by screwing with the audience members' heads, but involves characters that you genuinely care about, and manages to weave the ship into the context of the broader story in such a way that it becomes truly compelling.

Fringe is one of those shows, and Peter/Olivia is one of the very few ships I've been genuinely sold on. 

I'll try to keep things short, but here's a very small blurb on the characters and links to more at the conclusion:

Olivia Dunham:



Olivia:  "I understand that I acted too emotionally.  And putting aside the fact that men always say that about women they work with, I'll get straight to the point.  I am emotional.  I do bring it into my work.  It's what motivates me.  It helps me to get into the headspace of our victims...see what they've seen.  Even if I don't want to, even if it horrifies me.  And I think it makes me a better agent.  If you have a problem with that, sorry.  You can fire me.  But I hope you don't."

AltLivia:  "What's she like?"
Peter:  "Who?"
AltLivia:  "Me."
Peter:  "She's a lot like you.  Darker around the eyes, maybe.  Like she's always trying to make up for something.  Right some imaginary wrong.  Maybe she's nothing like you at all."

Olivia is a Federal agent and probably one of the most awesome examples around of a strong female TV character.  Just how badass is Olivia?  When she was 9 years old, she shot her abusive stepfather after he broke her mother's nose.  Subject to the effects of medical experimentation as a young girl, she gained numerous interesting abilities like telepathy, a photographic memory, and the ability to travel between universes without any ill effects or using any kind of hardware.  Don't think though that she is defined by her superpower cortexi- abilities - when it comes to saving the world and kicking bad guy ass, Olivia is far more likely to rely on her considerable skills with her trusty Glock 23 or her proficiency in hand-to-hand combat.  Not only is she skilled, but she's also incredibly smart, passionate,  brave, and determined. 

Peter Bishop:



Peter:  "Olivia, I need to ask you something."
Olivia:  "Sure."
Peter:  "Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy. You said that to me just after you woke up. Do you remember it?"
Olivia:  No.  Latin?
Peter:  "Greek.  My mother used to say that to me every night before I went to bed. "
Olivia:  "There really isn't a point where things can't just get weirder, is there?  What does it mean?"
Peter:  "It means "be a better man than your father."  Walter was already gone.  It was like a code between my mother and me.  It meant keep your people close.  Take care of the people you care about."
Olivia:  "Well you're good at that."

Peter:  "What I want to know is what they wanted from you."
Olivia:  "Well who cares about me? I wanna know who's next."
Peter:  "*I* care about you."

Peter is a civilian consultant to the Fringe Division and adopted son of the brilliant, eccentric Dr. Walter Bishop - except when I say "adopted" I mean "kidnapped from a parallel universe."  Being from another reality is pretty high on the list of things that would make one badass, but Peter also has a recorded IQ of 190.  Not only that, but he has the rare characteristic of being able to combine both book smarts with practical knowhow and common sense, and he's a hardcore jack-of-all-trades whose knowledge base spans everything from quantum physics to jazz to lockpicking.  Though not a gun-toting agent like Olivia, he's still pretty good at fucking your shit up if you're a bad guy.  To provide one example in the third season Peter decides he needs to take up a pastime, except for Peter said pastime meant hacking into the alternate Olivia's computer and then using the info he found there to hunt down and eliminate several enemy human-mechanical infiltrator hybrids known in the Fringe-verse as shapeshifters, and then he retrieved and eventually decrypted their internal memory storage disks. 

Despite his shady past and a dark side which manifests itself from time to time, Peter is a good man, and can be extremely protective of those he cares about.

To say that it's a complicated show is kind of like saying water is wet, or politics and religion don't make for ideal dinner conversation, and trying to explain the evolution of Peter and Olivia's relationship to someone who hasn't watched the show would probably require explaining Fringe's mythology, and then this manifesto would probably be longer than most of the fics recced below. 

To give you an idea of the epic that the ship entails, Peter and Olivia's relationship involves currently 3 1/3 seasons, at least two entirely distinct universes, trans-dimensional warfare, time travel, a love triangle featuring two completely distinct versions of the same person, prophecies from strange-talking dudes with no eyebrows who move through space-time, and the end of the world, among other things. 

More detail (and recs!) on Peter and Olivia can be found on this very comm:

Peter Bishop manifesto (by me):http://het-reccers.livejournal.com/355007.html
Olivia Dunham manifesto by sugangel7   http://het-reccers.livejournal.com/460426.html

If you're intrigued and want to check out the show, it's well worth your time IMHO.  Also, Josh Jackson and Anna Torv are hella awesome actors and really bring these characters to life. 

Anyway, onto some fics!

Fic Rec #1:  A Still In the Street
Author:  Ziparumpazoo
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6839134/1/A_Still_in_the_Street
Rating:  T
Why This Must Be Read:  This is a beautiful short piece that fits into the space following the S3 episode "LSD" and addresses the implications of all those people traipsing around in Olivia's consciousness over the past 3 years.  It illustrates how Peter worries about Olivia's often reckless behavior and willingness to put herself in serious danger without regard for the consequences. 
Excerpt:

Some days he wishes he could have known her before all this began, before John and Nick, and that other version of herself.  Before Bell invited himself in without knocking, hung curtains, and poured himself some tea.  There isn't a damn thing he can do to help her that doesn't potentially involve hypnotics or psychotropics and a heavy dose of Walter, but at least he'd have a baseline for when things went sideways.

He has no idea how she even sorts all these people all out.

She's starting to feel heavier in his arms and he thinks she might have fallen asleep right where they're standing.  But then her breath is warm as it tickles his neck.  "You know," she says so softly that he almost writes it off as his imagination and those quiet sounds she makes when she sleeps.  "I wish they'd ask first.  Just once."  He stiffens, and then adds 'mind-reading' to the list of talents she underplays.  But that's really all about perception, isn't it?  Vibrating on the same wavelength is a question of shared experience.  It's a trail of thought he turns his back on for tonight.

He pulls back slightly as she says, "It's important.  I'd probably say yes."  Her arms tighten around him.  "Just, some kind of warning would be nice."  She sounds so lost in the dark.

And this, he thinks, is a good reminder as any of how much she needs him.  Or maybe not him, precisely, but an advocate of sorts.  Somebody to put the brakes on and call for a sanity check before they all plunge head-long over that metaphorical cliff.  Because if Olivia sees nothing wrong with inviting multiple beings to invade her consciousness, treats it like it's her duty to allow them to use her body in the service to the greater good...

Fic Rec #2:  Masks of Prometheus
Author:  wikiaddicted723
Link:  http://archiveofourown.org/works/329601
Rating:  M
Why This Must Be Read:  There's a lot of post "6B" fics out there (aka The Ep Where They Finally Have Sex, to those of you who don't watch) but I think this is my favorite.  There was so much that had happened between them up to that point that had caused a huge amount of pain to both of them, and this fic probably does justice to that better than any of them.  In addition, it possesses one of the rarest commodities in fanfic:  well-written smut.
Excerpt:

She didn't lie, when she said she was not afraid anymore; that doesn't mean she's not nervous too.  But she sees the wonder in his eyes, feels the reverence of his touch on her skin, the delicate yet intense press of his lips against her own as his fingers make a trail toward her neck, and she can't keep the warm glow of affection from settling on her chest because she knows that he's choosing her.  That perhaps it was never a choice, just a momentary, involuntary deviation on the road that has pitched them together in parallel orbits through probability and chance.  She feels for him things that she has never imagined herself capable of, knows the depths of her affection for him, the intensity that she wants him with, his safe presence rooted deep in everything that defines her, realizes that it can be called many names, this thing she feels for shady, sarcastic, arrogant, sweet, tender, flawed and broken Peter Bishop, but only love is adequate.  She only wishes she were brave enough to say it out loud.  But that would come, in time; she has never been a coward for too long.

Fic Rec #3:  Standby
Author:  Ciderapples
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5721121/1/Standby
Rating:  M
Why This Must Be Read:  As far as I know this is the most epic of Fringe fics written to date, a post "Jacksonville" AU currently at over 128K words and still not yet finished.  Despite the massive size, there is not even a small part of this story that is anything less than amazingly written.  The characters are absolutely dead-on in all their lovably flawed, intelligent, eccentric glory, and the dialogue is some of the best I've seen in the fandom. 
Excerpt:

"Liv," he said.  It was rare that he shortened her first name by anything but the lading 'o', but the stillness in his bedroom was so encompassing that he didn't feel right with any more sounds than were absolutely necessary. 

She wormed her hand out of his despite his best efforts.  She flipped some hair away from the back of her neck and let it spread over the rest of her pillow.  He watched her with the comfort that it was just her way to be distant.  It was who she was, and he could wait forever and it wouldn't change.

"What does it look like?"  he whispered.

There was a long silence from her side of the bed.  He didn't know if she was going to answer, and that meant she didn't know if she was going to answer.  He wasn't holding his breath.  Her hand came back to him under the covers; he rubbed his thumb along her palm.  He kept quiet; sometimes she would answer in thought when she didn't want to confront her answers out loud, which was perhaps the only cowardice of which he could ever accuse her. 

She turned back on her side.  Her cool feet pushed under his warm calves.  Eyes open but body relaxed. 

"It's beautiful," she said.  Her sincerity was like another light on the ceiling, making its short arc before disappearing.  He'd never get her to repeat it, not in a million years, but she smiled wide as her eyes closed and he had no doubt she meant it.

"Yeah?" he pushed, grinning sleepily in the dark, but she was already pretending to have just fallen asleep.

Fic Rec #4:  A Hundred Reasons
Author:  sugangel7
Link:  http://archiveofourown.org/works/282683
Rating:  T
Why This Must Be Read:  The title is a reference to a line of dialogue from Olivia to Peter in the Season 2 finale - "I have thought of a hundred reasons..why you should come back.  To-fight the shape-shifters, to take care of Walter, to- to save the world.  But in the end...you have to come back.  Because you belong with me."  This is a very well-written fic focusing on Olivia's thoughts about Peter and the rapid;y evolving awareness of her feelings for him during the time between "Northwest Passage" and when she traveled to the alt-verse to find him in the finale. 
Excerpt:

Unwittingly her mind jumps back to that place, to the only memories she does have of it.  She'd stepped on the grass and tried to recall flashes of a blond, little girl running through that field.  She'd examined the chipping of the red paint on the playground equipment and couldn't remember ever gripping those bars.  Finally, she'd sat on that swing but it felt like any other swing she might have sat on as a child. 

Then Peter had found her, had sat beside her, and suddenly she wasn't the only lost child there anymore. 

At the time, neither of them had known that Walter had stolen him. But she'd already know that he had gaps in his memories too, that he couldn't remember his childhood very well except for being haunted by nightmares. 

She can't help but want him there beside her again, can't help but think that he's the only one that she trusts to help her, that he's the only one that can keep her own nightmares at bay. 

Fic Rec #5:  Shades of Truth
Author:  Chichuri
Link:  http://archiveofourown.org/works/18432
Rating:  G
Why This Must Be Read:  Set sometime in the future with Peter and Olivia in an established relationship looking back on one of my favorite scenes between them - the rooftop bomb scene in the season 1 episode "Ability."
Excerpt:

She cradles his memory of her framed against the night, so impossibly brave it still makes his heart ache, and offers up hers, of the relief of his warm and steady presence at her back, focusing and grounding her until she'd moved beyond rationality and into the place where all things were possible.   And she knows, because he knows, that he may have twisted the truth when he'd told her why he hadn't left but he'd never lied.  The bomb was the least of the reasons he'd had no chance at getting away clean that night.  He'd been caught by the underpinnings of love not yet realized, and leaving her would have meant cutting off a part of him he'd assumed lost long ago.

Even if he'd gotten out alive, he'd have been as good as dead.  Not in body, but in soul.

Fic Rec #6:  Normal Asymptote
Author:  EllieL
Link:  http://archiveofourown.org/works/18432
Rating:  M
Why This Must Be Read:  This is an AU speculating on what might have happened earlier in the future depicted in "The Day We Died."  It touches on several things shown in the ep, like their eventual marriage and Olivia's comment in the episode about how she learned to control her telekenetic abilities.  But the thing I like about it best, aside from the characterization, is how well EllieL captured the bittersweet tone present in the episode, where whatever happiness Peter and Olivia were able to find was tainted by the knowledge that the universe around them was falling apart rapidly. 
Excerpt:

When Peter was acquitted, he came home with her, not saying much, but holding on to her tightly in the small hours of the night.  When Walter went on trial, she'd gone with him and let him hold her hand in the courtroom, squeezing so tightly as the verdict was read that she was sure he'd bruised bones.  They heard the sentence, watched Walter be led off and then sat, starting at the empty doorway where he'd vanished from their lives, long after the coutroom had emptied. 

She took him home, in silence.  But there on the couch after two mournful glasses of Macallan, he'd broken down, crying for the only time she'd ever seen.  He'd buried his head at her breast, weeping and cursing the universes.  She let him cry, held him tight, understood.  He'd looked up at her eventually, tears spent and eyes red and puffy and so so blue, and told her she was all he had left.  She'd kissed him and curled up in bed that night, holding him for once.

Two days later, she'd asked him to marry her.  It was the the first time in months that she'd seen him smile, so wide that those wrinkles around his eyes - when had he gotten those? - grew deeper, and he simply said yes.

He'd insisted on a honeymoon.  She'd thought it was needless frivolity in an imploding world, and protested that they had so much to do if they wanted to try and stop it.  A long weekend, he'd said, just a few days alone, together.  The look in his eyes broke her heart as she realized it might be their only chance for twenty-four hours of happiness. 

So now they sat, curled in an old porch swing, creaking softly in the Nantucket twilight.  A cool breeze blew up off the Atlantic and she shivered, snuggling closer to him, pulling the ratty old quilt tighter around them.

Fic Rec #7:  Finding Eurydice
Author:  Elialys
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7590338/1/Finding_Eurydice
Rating/Warning:  M
Why This Must Be Read:  A speculative story set in season 4 portraying a hypothetical reuninon of Peter and Olivia in the Blueverse.  The thought that Peter will physically return to the original timeline represents one of the many theories about the current season.  This is just beautifully intense.
Excerpt:

"You can call him soon, I promise," he tells her softly, then.  But his voice is lower already, causing another shiver to course through her, and she sighs beautifully, his body humming against hers.  "But we both know that once we do that, he's not going to let me out of his sight for who knows how long.  And I understand why, I really do but...right now, I just need you.  I need you for myself."

There is so much he is not telling her, so much he means by these few simple words.  He wants to tell her all about what he saw, what he felt, about that image that will forever haunt his worst nightmares, about that dark, bloody spot in the middle of a pale face, and how crushed he had felt when it had hit him, realizing that he would never get to hold her agian.

He wants to tell her how relieved he had felt, that day in the hospital, when he had seen her in the doorway, alive, only to realize seconds later that she had no recollection of him.

He wants to tell her about the pain, the excruciating longing for everything he had lost, about the people he loved the most standing right there next to him, with nothing but suspicion in their eyes.

This is why he needs to keep her here with him, for a little longer, just a little longer.  To feel the rise and fall of her chest under his, to feel her skin against his, and the faint pounding of her heart in her ribcage, matching his. 

He needs this, the look of recognition and understanding in her eyes, that look that makes him feel truly alive for the first time in weeks. 

Fic Rec #8:  A Death So Full and a Man So Small
Author:  Ziparumpazoo
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7361863/1/A_Death_So_Full_and_Man_So_Small
Rating:  T
Why this Must Be Read:  I'm biased, I admit, because this one was written as a prompt fill for yours truly.  It was written before the S4 premiere and is a look from Peter's perspective on what happened after he literally vanished into thin air at the end of S3.  In this fic he's traveling through space/time trying to get back home.
Excerpt:

He thinks he can control it now, to a degree.  It's more of a feeling than an exact science; a sensory memory looking for context.  A snippet of music that was popular when he was twelve, bringing with it the memory of hot sand on his feet and the smell of coconut oil in the air that made his mouth water.  Or the tang of apple pie and cinnamon on his tongue, mixed with the pungent scent of Gene's hay and damp basement, that brings Astrid's worried eyes to mind.  Peter knows what Olivia feels like now.  He knows the way she vibrates, how she makes his ears hum and his brain flood with adrenaline so that his heart races when he gets near to her, but he doesn't know which timeline, which possibility is hers.

Which one of these Olivias is his Olivia. 

When he first stepped into the machine, all he saw was her.  Every moment since he'd first met her, every memory and conversation, stacked together and shuffled in front of his eyes like a cartoon flip book of his life.  It was tangible, and it grounded him.  It brought him forward to a future with her.

Peter tries to focus on that again.  He closes his eyes and tries to picture the last morning with her, before it all started to fall apart.  He's experienced an entire decade of marriage to her, more milestones and events than he could ever have hoped for, but this one image of Olivia in the soft pink dawn light is the one he reaches for.  He remembers how she smelled of linen and sleep, and how that shirt of his that she'd been wearing seemed to both swallow her up while it suggested so much more was hidden beneath.  He remembers the warmth and the stirring in his gut as she'd moved against him that made him want to pull her closer and slip his hands under the shirt, touch the bare skin that was beneath.  He remembers how, for a few minutes, while the sun edged its way over the rooftops and slanted through the dormer windown, she'd seemed free and unburdened.

Fic Rec #9:  Know Me
Author:  thefishoutofwater
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6496111/1/Know_me
Rating:  K+
Why This Must Be Read:  I usually don't go for stories written in first person unless they really stand out, and this one definitely does.  This beautiful fic is from Olivia's POV and covers the time between mid-S2 and early S3.
Excerpt:

"I moved mountains to make it happen"  I've heard enough people on the TV say.  Big deal.  I jumped universes.  Prodded on by blind, desperate hope.  The need to see you and a belief that if we could lock eyes that you'd know.

You figured it out.  Of course you did.  Those thousands of delicate threads that bind us may have been stretched badly damaged even but they aren't broken.  Pain can't eradicate a history.  Apologies, confessions, words.  They seemed both necessary and surplus.  With your gaze on me - our eyes connected.  I am known again.

It's been months.  Days are months in our world and I've missed them all.  You didn't realize.  Didn't know.  Didn't know me.

Your eyes skirt me, flicker, refuse to hold.  The fog thickens and solidifies around us until we could drown, never escape from it and the dream of a future seems a distant memory. 

It's crunch time.  Stay.  Run.  Sob.  Laugh at the injustice of it all.  A moment tense with the need for decision, for action, for debate.  Words aren't us.  They can't fix this.  I cup your face, a move I've seen and felt from you so many times, and force your eyes to mine.  Will you to stay with me.  Steeling myself as you flinch from my touch.

Fic Rec #10:  All That's Best of Dark and Bright
Author:  thornbug
Link:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6812936/1/All_Thats_Best_of_Dark_and_Bright
Rating:  K+
Why This Must Be Read:  With all the intensity and sturm und drang on my list, I'm gonna end it with something on a lighter note.  After all, Fringe is a show that doesn't take itself too seriously.  I'm not usually one for the Fluff Side of the Force, but it's not fair to say that something lighthearted can't be well-written, in-character, and not overly cheesy in the slightest.
Excerpt:

Peter looks at her wryly.  "Olivia, you worry about everyone.  It's one of the reasons I love you."  He doesn't mean to say it.  It just sort of happens.  And now it's out there, floating between them in the tiny kitchen. 

He's never been a believer in the significance of words, not when he's spent most of his life using them to lie and manipulate.  But he knows that certain words need to be said, or rather heard and she needs to know, he owes her that at least.  He wishes he could be certain that it was reciprocal, he wants to believe it is, and those moments when she's under him, moving with him, gasping with him, gasping his name he can't imagine how it can't be, but he also can't forget her face on that cold night in Barrett's garden and words, her words.  I don't want to be with you.  Other things have been said since then, sweeter things, things that tasted like whiskey and apology, things that tasted of lust.

He watches the almost imperceptible changes in her face.  The slow shift from surprise to something more obscure.  The slow tug  on her mouth as she smiles and looks down almost...shy,  Of all the reactions, he didn't expect this one. 

When she looks up at him again, her eyes are lighter, her smile wider.  And Peter finds himself grinning like an idiot, holding her gaze until the pungent smell of burning batter forces her attention back to the pan she's quick to flip it out before turning back to him. 

"Peter?"

"Yeah?"  He doesn't mean to sound as hopeful as he does.

"The-uh, maple syrup's over there."  She points to the cupboard behind him.  It takes a second to respond.  Okay.  He tells her he loves her and she tells him to get maple syrup.  Olivia is nothing if not unpredictable.  So, he turns around and gets the maple syrup.  If and when she was ready, she'd tell him.  It wasn't even about the words, right?  Right.