Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/456919.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Fringe
  Relationship:
      Peter_Bishop/Olivia_Dunham, Olivia_Dunham/Nick_Lane
  Character:
      Peter_Bishop, Olivia_Dunham, Nick_Lane
  Additional Tags:
      Hurt/Comfort
  Series:
      Part 3 of Children_of_Sin
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-07-11 Words: 5013
****** The Faults In Our Foundation ******
by Wikiaddicted723
Summary
     It’s gotta be some form of metaphor, she thinks, some overcomplicated
     universal message or whatever, saying “hey, this is exactly how
     fucking disgusting you are! Here, have a taste.” (Pre-AGT)
Notes
     This is for Chi, who wanted to see Nick and Peter curled around
     Olivia. The Bucketful of Angst is all my fault.
     [for reference: Peter (15), Nick and Olivia (14)]
(1993)
Funny how your own vomit can taste so foul.
It’s gotta be some form of metaphor, she thinks, some overcomplicated universal
message or whatever, saying “hey, this is exactly how fucking disgusting you
are! Here, have a taste.” Olivia coughs, staring at the little puddle on the
sidewalk with detachment, shivering in seventy-degree weather under the small
radius of illuminated space created by the lamp post a couple of feet away.
Seduce the man, use his vices against him, trick him into thinking you’re just
one more docile whore. Above all, and no matter the cost, get the info. Get the
info. That had been the mission. Her target: a middle aged man, caucasian,
relatively short. More importantly, a member of INtREPUS’ board of directors,
head of their R&R department and privy to developments that had Massive
Dynamic's interest piqued the same way a dog’s appetite whets at the sight of a
treat, reported to be respectable and well educated, with a criminal record
clean as snow. Also, a textbook pedophile.
It was supposed to be simple, she’s been trained and retrained for this since
she was ten, after all. A cakewalk.
Well, it fucking wasn’t.
(She’s going into shock, rational thought whispers. She barely hears it over
the sound of her mind screaming).
******
By the time Olivia drags herself through the door, Peter has pulled most of his
hair out of his head (he thinks) and cut his left palm open on the shards of a
glass he crushed against the white, white walls, running on the anger that
creeps around the room, expanding and retracting like a living, breathing,
growing thing he can’t control. There’s a Gordian knot in his gut and all he
wants is flesh to beat until there’s blood on his hands and death at his feet.
Like the goddamned animal he is.
He knows it isn’t all his own, he’s seen Nick’s face go from pale to worse, the
line of his jaw so tight it must hurt to speak, his bony hands in white-
knuckled fists. Nick’s a reverse empath, his emotions virulent when
overwhelmed, and Peter may not be many things other than a fucked-up circus
freak but he’s always been more than just good at math. The very air around him
shimmers, vibrates, and Peter wonders if he’s about to die a fire-y death
(except that’s all Olivia and not at all Nick, but sometimes they’re so alike
it takes a while to be reminded of that fact) or spill his guts on their living
room’s floor — Nina would probably castrate him with the robo-arm just for
that.
The sound of her key turning the lock on the door and the clamoring of her mind
breaks their feedback loop with an almost audible snap, and the sheer whiplash
makes him stumble on his feet, falter mid-step where he’s been pacing for the
last hour and a half. They both freeze in place, Nick and him, and they wait.
Her face is shuttered, her posture rigid yet wobbly all at once as she steps
out of her shoes, by the door, and she won’t meet their eyes. Her head’s a mess
of knotted hair, her skin sweaty, clothes, most of them in colorful tones he’s
never seen her wearing before, thrown on in a rush. Her hand slaps something on
the table beside her, and the crystal rings. A flash-drive by the looks of it.
She completed the mission, at least (not that he cares one way or the other as
long as she’s still breathing by the end of it — her being alright has long
been out of the question), which means repercussions from higher up are one
less thing to worry about.
Peter watches her move to the kitchen, her steps silent as ever, her limbs
wooden, awkward, her eyes sightless yet leading. There’s a void where her mind
should be, at the very back of his own, like part of his brain has been
anesthetized and removed, leaving behind a crumbling palace of echoes, like
something swept her out of the way, left him bereft and clean of her. This has
never happened before and, whatever it is, it scares the shit out of him. He
sees Nick twitch out the corner of his eye, his head following her motion, gaze
glued to her back. His face is contorted, almost grotesque, and Peter can read
every fucking thing going through his head like the words on a book. Nick’s
never had much of a poker face, feels too much to ever manage to school his
features enough to show the world no more than whatever he wants. Instead, he’s
transparent. And the things he’s showing right now make Peter want to both
drive his fist through the wall and weep like he’s still eight and the sight of
needles is scary as hell.
He knows how Nick feels, overwhelmed with impotence himself, having the will to
do something but lacking the means to accomplish it. There’s nothing they can
do, here and now, not a thing except stand by and hover like wide-eyed acolytes
of a broken Oracle who’s drowned herself in her riddles, gone to war with fate
and tied the noose of tragedy tight around her neck. Oh, and please, don’t
forget to kick the chair when you leave, for fuck’s sake.
Cabinets open, cabinets close, and it’s all too silent to not be announcing a
storm. They both approach, their steps clear, audible thumps on the dark wooden
boards of the floor, announcing their presence in bold and bright strokes. She
doesn’t turn, pours the bourbon they’re not supposed to know is stashed at the
back of the third, topmost cabinet on the right into a blue-tinted glass, in
generous measure, and drinks. And drinks.
Olivia sets the glass back down with a clink, pushing it away, and she
shudders.
The sight breaks his resolve, jump-starts all his instincts. Peter approaches,
ignoring Nick’s silent warning at his side, and places a light hand on the
small of her back. A friendly gesture, made to offer comfort, to tell her “I’m
here,” and, “you’re not alone,” through one simple touch. He’s done it before,
plenty of times, and it’s worked, so far. She’s never objected to having his
hands on her skin. Not until now.
She flinches, tenses and turns, her jaw set, “Don’t touch me,” she says, voice
so low, so damaged and rough it’s almost a growl, and it’s a plea and a command
and a wish all in one, and it’s angry. Peter steps back, blue eyes open wide,
spelling helpless, bewildered, and watches her retreat with Jack Daniel’s in
hand.
******
“Don’t, man,” Nick warns, his voice breaking, grabbing Peter’s arm to pull him
back from following Olivia into her room and making an even bigger mess out of
this, “leave her alone for a little.”
It hurts him to say it, hurts him to recognize the fact that she’s wishing
fervently to be left the fuck alone in her head, to be independent of them. He
knows Peter wants only to help, to make her feel better, to see her smile and
laugh like any girl should at her age, and though he does think it would help,
in the long run, what he wants to avoid is to make her self conscious. At the
heart of the matter lies the fact that Olivia believes, and has always
believed, that she is to blame for every single catastrophe that litters the
road they’ve all followed. To blame for the fires, for the deaths and the
experiments, and the pain and what she considers to be her ruining of both
their lives, Peter’s and his. At the heart of the matter lies the fact that
Olivia believes she’s done something wrong, today, and she blames herself. It’s
that and the anger and the nausea and the nothingness around it, and Nick knows
she’s gone into some sort of shock, and he doesn’t want to imagine what follows
from this.
Peter looks back at him, forlorn and frustrated, and Nick feels, through the
contact of his hand on his arm, everything Peter has tried so hard to keep
quiet, contained and out of sight. They both love Olivia, this Nick has always
be sure of. They love her in different ways, ways suited to the people they
are, to the ways she’ll let them, always simply and quietly. But this, this
thing he’s feeling Peter hold back so hard it’ll break him, this is something
else entirely. And fuck, but Nick’s not sure he’s capable of that amount of
devotion. Blind faith, yes, any day (he’d follow her down every level of hell),
but not that.
Nick’s eyes widen, and Peter gives him back a fractured smile, because Peter’s
a genius and is routinely given too little credit and of course he knows that
Nick knows, and of course he’s been reading every single thing on his face for
fuck knows how long.
Neither of them knows what actually happened, though, to make her feel like
this. Especially knowing that she’s here, alive, and the mission was apparently
successful. Nick’s got ideas, a suspicion so fucking infuriating he’s sure he’s
been leaking everywhere, and he hopes it’s just that because if it’s fact then
someone’s in for a painful exit out of this theatre showing the movie of life.
******
Everything about her is a weapon. A well oiled pistol, a knife sharpened, and
sharpened, and sharpened, stroked repeatedly against the whetstone, back and
forth and up and down, up and down, up and down till the edge is but a whisper,
a regime-toppling lie. She’s meant to end lives, perhaps even worlds. She’s
been crafted by expert hands, arrogant hands, cruel hands.
Where there’s an ending there are beginnings but Olivia’s lost track of hers,
left them abandoned sometime, someplace. She doesn’t remember anything else,
can’t be sure there ever was anything other than this.
Here’s the catch: Olivia never forgets, can’t forget.
Remembers every experiment, every failure and death. Every bit of stolen
pleasure, and pain and the blood on her hands, dripping down the drain like
waste, like her life. It’s all etched in the back of her skull, engraved on her
bones like they’re stone, meant to last eons, meant to be all that remains when
she’s little more than ashes and a memory lost to the wind, a name without
records. And it’s divine justice — whatever that is — or the universe making a
joke, could very fucking well be both.
And Jack’s supposed to make her forget, to take the screaming away, to make her
hands steady again and keep the urge to vomit her guts well restrained (and
isn’t that all kinds of ridiculous?), but Jack’s already half gone with a blaze
down her throat and her tongue has gone numb from the burn, and all she can
feel are alien hands, groping and bruising and holding her down (and the
shackles that bind her and make her defenseless she’s put on on her own).
She thought the shower would help, that scalding her flesh would drive the
itching away, that the pain of scrubbing skin raw might stop her from feeling
like she’s stuck in a suit two sizes too small, two sizes too tight. There’s a
tennis ball lodged in the back of her throat, covered in shit and maybe some
blood, with a cherry on top. She was wrong.
Everything about her is a weapon. She’s been taught how to use it, how to
distill all the weakness and gather her strengths, like making vodka from
grain. She’s been taught to find profit, to better herself, to make her skin
armor that’ll bend but not break.
All her lessons she’s learned, all the rules she’s taken to heart, so, what did
she do so wrong and why the fuck does it hurt like she’s been gutted and
skinned alive both?
Why does she feel so small?
******
They’ve been sitting here for hours.
Peter knows this from the loud, constant tick-tock of the kitchen clock, the
only sound in the house since the shower shut off. He knows this because at
some point Nick slid over to his side —on the floor, by the closed red oak door
— and he pretended not to shake so he could offer some measure of comfort. He
knows this because his ass is numb and his toes tingle and Nick’s teeth started
chattering some time ago, in time with the chill running laps up and down his
spine, in time with the feeling of nightmarish dread creeping into the back of
their minds, coming from behind the door they so guard. Here they are, shoulder
to shoulder in the most literal sense, and Peter is usually all for letting her
be and doing things on her terms, but he’s seen her broken tonight, seen her
shaking and miserable without knowing the cause, and he’s had enough.
“Just don’t light me on fire, woman,” he mutters under his breath, and he
stands, ignoring the stiffness of his calves and the soft ‘pop’ of his back as
he straightens to his full height. The door knob is silent in turning, but the
door does creak slightly as he steps through the threshold, and Peter thinks as
he cringes that he needs to remember to oil the hinges sometime. Waking her up
just now is not part of his plans. Nick follows behind, silent.
She’s burrowed into the mattress, under the red-dotted quilt, her hair, still
damp and leaving wet trails, spread on her pillow like a Jackson Pollock mess.
She’s curled on her side, her limbs held together so tight he fears something
might snap, and she shudders. And she looks so young, so fragile and scared
that it’s hard to remember that this girl right there can kick his ass twenty
ways without breaking a sweat.
Nick steps forward, climbs on the bed facing her, and Olivia startles awake,
breathing harsh.
“Shh, it’s alright,” Nick whispers, a hand on her arm, no doubt working his
particular charm on her mind, “Olive, it’s alright, just us, see? It’s Peter
and Nick, it’s just us.”
It seems like it works, whatever Nick’s done, because he feels more than sees
her shoulders go slack and her sudden panic recede. She’s awake. More awake,
more herself than she’s been since she walked through the door, what he
estimates was four hours ago.
“Nick,” she sighs, just a breath, and her voice is hoarse and much too weak for
Peter to like, “Nick, I-I couldn’t stop it, I should have stopped it but I
couldn’t, I couldn’t fail — I couldn’t ruin it, I needed that info. Nick, I
couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop it,” and then she’s crying, sobbing outright,
her shoulders shaking inside Nick’s arms. Nick hugs her tight and shoots him a
look that’s screamingDo Something!Because he has no fucking clue how to react
to the strongest person they know falling apart quite like that, and Peter
shakes himself from his trance.
“Take your socks off,” he orders, getting rid of his own, discarding the long
sleeved sweatshirt on him like it’s made of ants and sliding beneath the quilts
to mold himself to her back.
“What?”
“Take. Your socks. Off,” he repeats, “rub her calves, her feet. Trust me, it
helps.” Anything helps. The more skin they manage to press against hers the
stronger the bond, the easier it is for her to get lost somewhere that’s not
the level of hell currently residing in the space of her head that belongs to
no one but her. He used to do this, he always used to do this, when they were
no more than four feet tall and couldn’t spell “narcosis” quite right. Nick
would be taken away for long periods of time, back when he had a mother and a
dog and a home, and Olivia would be left alone through the night to dread the
dark and the missing spot on the back of her mind that said Lane in permanent
black. That’s how he learned to pick locks and break in through windows and
fire escapes, at the ripe old age of nine going on ten.
He gets his left arm under her neck, his hand cradling the top of her head
under the pillow, his chest tight to her back, chin digging into the skin left
bare by her dark gray tank, in the little space of her trapezius. Olivia tenses
against him, resists like she hasn’t before, and Peter sucks in a breath that’s
equal parts anguish and despair. He doesn’t relent. He simply stays still, with
his other hand warm on the curve of her hip, ring and pinky fingers splayed on
the small strip of flesh that’s left bare between her shirt and the waist of
her sweats.
“ ‘Livia, you’re home, you hear me?” he whispers and can’t recognize his own
voice, “you’re home, and no one is going to hurt you. I’m not gonna do anything
you don’t want me to, so…tell me what to do?”
She relaxes, a little. As much as she can while she exhausts herself through
her tears, and Peter’s allowed to breathe easy. Nick’s moved to give him some
space, weaving his legs with her own, her soles on the tops of his feet, his
toes brushing Peter’s calves, their foreheads pressed together, his left hand
clasping hers tight in the space left from their mirrored position. Peter
inhales, then exhales, all in regular patterns, his diaphragm pushing against
her back as he mentally counts every little puff of air on her neck, working to
lull her into following the even rhythm he plays against her spine, and steady
her breath. After a while, she slides her hand onto his, presses her slim
fingers in the spaces between his own and curls them down on his palm, and even
if Peter weren’t a genius and couldn’t hear the broken, intermittent buzz of
her thoughts on his own, painting fragments of surrealist pictures and leaving
sensations behind, even then he’d still know the meaning of that.
Please, please don’t let go.
******
Sometimes, Nick envies them this.
Sure, he can see inside her head the same way he can hear himself think, and he
always knows where she is, and can feel whatever she feels down to the littlest
nuance (except, when you really look at it, that’s not always good). There’s no
one closer to her than him, by all human standards and scientific parameters
scribbled on charts, and yet… and yet.
It’s not that he’s jealous. Jealousy has no place in their little, self-
contained world. It’s just that he wishes that he could also offer her this
measure of relief as instinctually as Peter seems to be able to do, wishes that
he didn’t need to rely on a drug-inflicted ability to suss out what is what for
every eight of ten different moods. It’s not that he’s jealous. It’s that in
moments like this it hits him just how truly insignificant he is, how useless.
How easily replaceable, even if he knows — reasonably, logically — that he’s as
much a vital part of them as they are of him.
He shakes the thought away. This is not about him, not today (if ever). And
there is one thing he can do that no one else would.
Nick closes his eyes, concentrates on his breathing. He hasn’t done this in a
very long time, not since before the fire, before all the terror and the chaos
began. Not since before Peter entered the fray. It used to be child’s play.
Used to be like all secrets and codes children share and create as a way for
distinction, independence and that tribal inclination that comes as natural as
breathing to man. Anything she wouldn’t dare say out loud she’d share this way.
Nothing ever went unsaid between them, those days, and though he respects that
she has boundaries now, he fears this is something he can’t let her keep
bottled up to fester and rot her inside. He presses his forehead tight against
hers (because in the end, the contact does help), and he sees.
All memory relies on emotion. We remember events because we associate them with
sensations that are always, always unique, all experiences translated into
sensory input and stored in our main data base, the brain. Well, emotion is to
him like light to a prism, he can dissect it, pick it apart piece by piece,
read it and interpret it and rebuild. It’s no different from watching the cut
scenes from a film he’s never seen without first knowing the plot, it’s a
little confusing and conjecture is a lot time consuming, but it can be done.
What he’s seeing now is something like this: he only gets bits and pieces, the
parts she’s let herself show, to spare him or herself he’ll never know. There
is a room. A well lit space, with floor to ceiling windows and a city-wide
view. A tall building. The room smells of fear and sweat and high priced
cologne, and there is only one exit and it’s just been cut off by a shut door.
There are hands. Too-soft hands with short fingers, short, manicured nails.
They go around her wrists, grope at her breasts, spread her legs, and they
hurt. The ceiling isn’t all the same white, she can see the brush strokes after
she stares for a while, on her back. She won’t close her eyes. The taste of
blood on her mouth, like iron, like rust where she’s just bit her own tongue,
pain meant to distract because she will not scream. Disgust. Faking it when the
mark comes, at last, and regulating her breath to not puke right there on the
bed. Anger, and nausea, and frustration. Impotence. She will not cry.
I couldn’t stop it, I let it go too far, I couldn’t stop it, Nick, I needed
that info, I could’ve killed him right then but that wasn’t the mission, I
couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop it.
There’s something wet on his face, Nick thinks as he comes back to himself. He
can’t say he’s surprised to find that he’s crying. He’s burning, and
everything’s burning and he finally understands just how it must be for her to
set things on fire. He’s shaking, but he’s not the only one shaking. He looks
ahead, through the tears and the heartbreak and the anger, and sees the mark’s
life ending in all the most painful ways, etched on Peter’s contorted, tear
streaked face.
Peter and him, they don’t forget. She completed the mission, she’s safe.
In life, accidents happen. People go missing every day, poor people, white
people, black people. Important people, too. The Hudson’s familiar enough with
the concept that he’s sure it won’t mind another corpse in it’s murder
collection.
******
******
Killing someone isn’t all that hard. The human body, for all it’s advantages
and strengths is, unsurprisingly, inherently weak. Cutting, shooting, piercing,
smothering, even a strong enough punch, they’re all lethal if done right…or
wrong. It’s not all that hard, no, and you really need no previous experience
unless you’d like to avoid the mess that comes in the two-for-one pack.
Pain, now, pain is something else entirely. Pain is a sport of precision, and
it takes practice. It’s about making it last, pushing boundaries farther than
is advisable every time, but not far enough that the body will shut down in
advance of the predetermined finale. Self control is a requirement.
Good thing Peter’s got reams of that.
“Please, don’t do this, please, I have insurance for this sort of thing, I can
double whatever they paid you, I-I - I can triple it, even.” The blindfolded
mark coughs out through two, maybe three cracked ribs, as he hangs by the
wrists from a beam in the basement’s ceiling, his toes stretching down in an
effort to get some support from the rough concrete floor. He’s a regular middle
aged man, his hair thinning at the crown of his head, clean shaven, plump but
healthy and smartly dressed (before they ripped his clothes off, that is). For
all onlookers the cardboard cut-out of the New York executive.
Peter laughs, and hears Nick echoing him from the hallway as he makes his
rounds, checking for unwanted guests and possible surprises. Getting a location
secure and isolated enough that no one would hear the man scream had been a bit
of an issue, but they’d managed rather well, all things considered. Knowing
people in dark places has it’s benefits when you deal in deception and death.
His knuckles are raw, his phalanges ache, and he’s already started to sweat,
but he’s barely feeling anything other than what he’s been feeling for hours.
Pure, blistering rage.
They’ve been taking turns. Nick will go in, make the man live his worst
nightmares while awake, make the panic rise to the edge of what his heart can
take before easing him back down, over and over again without a flinch. Peter
will take charge in a more physical fashion. It’s been about three, maybe four
hours. They left the house before the sun came up, Olivia sleeping as soundly
as she was ever going to sleep, with Nick’s help. Peter called in a couple of
favors, had the man brought here with zero fuss, burrowed some tools, made some
arrangements.
It’s about time to spice things up.
“He looks a little tired of hanging there, don’t you think?” Peter asks, his
voice loud for the marks benefit.
“Hmm, a little, yeah,” Nick says, in the room with him once more, “Want me to
drop him?”
“Sure, why not. We can let him sit for a bit.”
Nick unknots the rope with a yank, and the man falls with a yell and a thud on
the ground before they both pick him up by the shoulders and shove him roughly
into the janitor’s rickety chair (the janitor, an elderly man, had agreed to
have an extra day off after an impromptu bonus payment that would allow him to
drink himself into a stupor for a couple of months).
“Thank you, thank you,” he blabbers, and Peter grabs a fistful of hair and
smashes his face against the desk. Something crunches, and breaks. His nose,
most likely. Just as well, he won’t be needing it much longer anyway.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he says, and yanks back, grabbing the cleaning cloth from
the bucket at his feet and pushing it inside the man’s mouth before taping it
shut. He looks at Nick, and nods, feels the man go still as rock, paralyzed in
blinding panic, his breathing as harsh as an overexerted horse’s might sound.
Peter goes around the table, pulling his hands to the desk’s edge one by one.
He picks the nail gun from the floor.
“You see,” he continues, “the thing is, Doctor Larson, that we’re not doing
this for money. We’re doing it for the sheer fucking pleasure of it. You seem
to know a thing or two about that.”
With that, he nails the man’s hands to the table, as far apart as they’ll go.
It takes a while for the screams to stop echoing in the room. They’ve only just
started.
******
******
Olivia’s still in bed when they make it back to the flat. It’s already mid-
morning, she’s been awake for a while, and her head pounds, but that’s the
least of her afflictions. She’s always been able to shut out physical pain with
efficiency, but she can’t ever manage to keep herself from thinking. It’s a
good thing she exhausted her tears, a bad thing that she cried at all. It’s a
weakness she can’t afford.
The boys ignore her, for a little, and Olivia feels (faintly, always faintly)
Peter retreat on his own to the apartment he’s supposed to be sharing with
Bell, — his guardian and godfather both — right above theirs, hears the shower
come on in the room beside hers. It’s a little strange, but she can’t find it
in herself to care. She can be damaged enough without help.
After a while, they show on her door, Nick leading and Peter behind, like they
always do.
“Hey,” Nick speaks first, sitting at the edge of the bed, putting his hand on
her quilt-covered knee. He knows not to ask how she feels, knowing firsthand
that it’s neither pleasant nor pretty. He looks tired, they both do, water
still trailing down the short-cropped ends of Nick’s combed hair, and
plastering Peter’s unrulier curls to the base of his neck.
She responds by moving over, relaxing sore muscles back into the pillows and
patting the spot where he’d been lying before. Nick immediately complies, and
mirrors her shape on the bed. Olivia looks over her shoulder, fixes Peter with
a stare that says nothing and speaks, “Do me a favor and stop pretending you’re
not gonna get into bed.”
Her voice has no inflection, no emotion or intention. Peter raises an eyebrow,
pushes off from the jamb and approaches. His chest is familiar against her
spine, and she knows the pattern of his breathing on the back of her neck, the
steady rhythm of his heart behind hers. She pretends not to flinch, does her
best not to tense, takes a small breath to avoid freezing up at the feel of his
body so tightly wound around her own.
“There’s something we want you to see,” he says, pushing a worn kraft envelope
into her hands.
The envelope’s not heavy, a little thick perhaps. She opens it up, finds it
filled with polaroid pictures lying face down in her hands. Olivia turns them
around, and she smiles.
It’s the last time in a long time that she’ll let herself feel a thing.
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