nightcathedral | Put one foot wrong and I'm gonna fall...

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Put one foot wrong and I'm gonna fall...

It's nearly three in the morning when Olivia slips out of her room and heads down to the lab where Tony Stark had a sensory deprivation tank set up for her. She moves quickly and quietly, and doesn't bother switching on the lights when she enters the lab, leaving the blue glow of the monitors around the room to light her way - she's hoping that the less she does, the less JARVIS will take notice of her, and maybe he won't wake anyone to tell them what she's doing before it's too late. There are letters on her bed to Steve, to Jane, to Tony and Bruce, and between that and her absence, and whatever security cameras she's sure are monitoring this room, that'll have to do to explain where she's gone.

She eases the door quietly shut behind her, and crosses the room to the bright steel table where the syringes full of Cortexiphan Dr. Banner managed to synthesize are already laid out. Olivia picks one up, grimaces a little, and slides the needle into the big veins just below her wrist. Maybe this is what went wrong the last time. Maybe she needs a dose of the drug to get her to the right place. She's praying that's what it is, because otherwise, she's running out of ideas or other plans.

The empty syringe makes a soft ringing sound as she tosses it back into the tray. Olivia's already all but running up the stairs to access the tank. There's a breathing apparatus dangling over the top, just like in Walternate's lab. She grabs it, fits it into her mouth and takes a breath, and slides into the water with hardly a ripple.

For a minute, nothing happens. Olivia floats in the tank, eyes closed, just breathing and thinking of letting the universe pass through her, just like Walter told her the first time. Thinking of home.

Between one breath and the next, she vanishes, with only a swirling disturbance in the water of the tank to mark that she was there at all. The room stays silent, the tank empty, for another minute or two.

Then the tank explodes in a roar of heat and light, a ring of fire spreading outward and taking hold anywhere it can, blackening what it can't. Olivia tumbles out of the tank along with the water and lands with a crunch in the shattered glass from the tank, choking and gasping while the fire that wasn't put out by the flood dances up the walls.

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Olivia has to brace herself a little, drawing a slow, hissing breath between her teeth, as he pulls himself up. Even with the painkillers, she's pretty sure putting a lot of pressure on her hands isn't a good idea, the way they've been sliced up, but it's only for a moment, and then the pain goes back to a dull throb she can shove to the back of her mind.

She tries for a moment to find a way to argue with him, and finds she can't. Finally, she just smiles faintly and nods. "Well, if I figure it out, I promise I'll let you know." Olivia kind of thinks the lesson might be 'figure out how to not set the room on fire before attempting any other Cortexiphan-fueled stunts', but she's not sure how well she's going to manage that.

She blinks, and looks up to meet his eyes. She'd squeeze his hand if she weren't conscious of how much that would hurt. "Maybe I do. Next time I will. I promise."

He feels a little pinch of relief and sadness, and is immediately distracted by the bandages on her palms. "You are hurt."

Steve turns her hand over in his, worry clear. "Actually hurt, not just scraped up. I wonder..."

He looks at the floor. Steve knows full well how much it would hurt to try and put weight on his feet right now. They'll be well on their way to healed by morning, if he just keeps still, but... "If we can track Thor down, he might have these... There are these stones, I guess, that can heal people. I don't know that Odin let him take any when he left Asgard. We can ask at least."

"It's not as bad as it looks," she protests, though she's getting the feeling by now that she's not going to be winning any arguments here, at least not tonight. She still feels like she has to try. He can barely sit up and he's worried about her.

"And that's... going to have to wait, at least for a little while. They locked us in when they left - I assume that's more about me than you."

He startles at that, and then scowls. "If they really thought you could hurt anything, they wouldn't have left you here with me. If they really didn't trust you."

Or they knew how badly he'd react to finding out they actually locked her up. That thought is extremely discomfiting.

It's about then that he realizes he's still holding her hand and he lets go like it suddenly caught fire itself. "Sorry."

"It's fine."

It's difficult to tell if she means the hand holding or the fact that they're locked in. She pulls her hand back and folds both arms around herself - carefully, to avoid pulling on the bandages on her hands and arms - and glances to the door before she says anything more.

"I can't blame them. In their situation, I'd lock the door too." That's the least she'd do - far less than what they did with every case of someone with abilities they couldn't control. How is she any different, any less dangerous than Nick or James or Sally or any of the others?

"You're my guest," he says. "And it was an accident. Agent Dunham-" He hesitates. "Olivia. You think anyone on the Avengers Initiative would have done differently, in your situation? Hey."

Steve reaches out to touch her arm gently, both because he wants to and because she looks like she needs comforting. He's not sure how much he's allowed to give. "They'll calm down. And when they do, they'll see you were just trying to do what you thought was the right thing."

The touch takes her off guard, and she looks up at him with a flicker of momentary surprise that leaves her expression unguarded, all her careful neutrality vanishing for just an instant. The defenses all go back up a moment later, but not entirely, and she doesn't pull away from the contact.

"Maybe. You'd know better than I would. I'm just not sure that..." She stops, and glances away again, lips pressed together while she wrestles with how to say this - or whether to say it at all. He did save her life, and she knows he's ready to defend her to the others - specifically Stark - as soon as he gets a chance. He probably deserves a little honesty right now.

"The others from the Cortexiphan trial," she says finally. "We only found them because their abilities were... out of their control. No one had ever explained to them what happened, or why these things were happening to them, and... They killed people. All of them, horribly, and mostly by accident. The last time I saw them..."

Olivia pauses and grimaces a little. Before they died. Because she asked them to risk their lives for her, and for the man who'd ruined all their lives in the first place. She sighs and pushes on.

"They'd learned to control it. I never could. I've tried, but it's all tied into feeling and emotion, and I'm..."

Her throat closes for a second, choking off whatever she'd been about to say. She swallows hard, staring at the floor. If she looks at Steve now, he's going to see how scared she is of herself, of what she could do, that she might never go back...

Olivia shakes her head and repeats simply, "I can't control it. And it was one thing when I was just seeing things, or crossing over, because at least then I couldn't hurt anyone but myself. But this..."

He shifts around very slowly, so he's sitting with his feet dangling just off the floor and can take her elbows very gently in his hands as she hugs herself, if only so she knows he's not afraid of her.

"You can," he says. "If they could, you can. I don't doubt it for a second."

More hesitation. Steve finally lets go, his tone gently amused. "Besides, even if you couldn't - which you will - everyone here has been through a much worse than a little fire. We hold up pretty well."

Edited 2011-10-19 21:43 (UTC)

Olivia feels like she might have had this talk before. Peter, Walter, Bell, even Jones... They had faith in her, like Steve does now. She only wishes she could share it.

That last comment gets a soft laugh out of her, though, and she glances up again with a slow smile. "Are you always this optimistic, or is it just for my benefit?"

He has to think about that one. Is he optimistic? If she's mentioning it, he must be. "I don't... give up. I'm not sure I even know how any more."

Steve shrugs, flashing that crooked little grin. "So I guess always."

Olivia takes a deep breath and manages to release some of the tension knotted up in her neck and shoulders, unfolding her arms from around herself as she takes a step back to perch on the edge of her own bed.

"Well, I hope you realize you're making it difficult for me to be the cynic here." She looks slightly bemused by it, but she doesn't seem to actually mind all that much.

"I'd apologize, but I don't think I'm sorry." He grins, shifting to inspect a small burn on his arm. "And I mean it when I say I'll be all right. I heal quickly. It's part of... everything."

Steve lays back down on his side, very carefully, his expression briefly straining at each pang. "Sorry," he says. "I'm not trying to be rude. Even if I do heal fast, it still hurts - and painkillers don't work for long. It's also why I can't get drunk. And why... Why I didn't... Why I was still alive when they found me."

Edited 2011-10-20 02:44 (UTC)

"You don't have to apologize," Olivia answers gently, with a little shake of her head and a smile. "It's late, and no matter how fast you heal, you'll probably do it faster if you get some rest. If you can manage it."

"I've had worse," he says again, the smile coming back. He can't help it. Telling her things, having her not poke him or prod him or give him sad looks or even act like it's strange - it's like being able to breathe after having his head forced under water for a very long time. "I wish we could have known each other some other way."

Olivia pauses for a second or two, and then shifts around on the bed until she's lying on her side too, facing Steve. She's been fighting exhaustion basically since she tried crossing over; for a while adrenaline and worry and guilt helped keep that at bay, but now that those are starting to fade, she can feel that she's about to crash pretty hard. Might as well be lying down when she does.

"So do I," she says quietly. "But if I had to come here... I'm glad it was you I ran into. I'm glad that I met you at all."

He half-ducks his head at that, going from Captain America to a super-sized order of French fried awkward. It's clear though that he's happy to hear it. "Me too."

Steve clears his throat, searching for something else to say, but all he comes up with is, "JARVIS, can you get the lights?"

The room goes dark, eventually Steve falls into a kind of doze once he's sure Olivia is asleep and sure he's in a position where sudden movement won't be too excruciating, and when he stirs it's with the dawning realization that something in the air has changed. The smell. The feel. He jerks awake, everything stinging but vastly improved, and finds himself on the floor in what looks like a basement lab in an old industrial area. "Olivia? Olivia!"

Olivia wakes with a start at the sound of Steve's voice, rolling to her feet the instant she realizes she's not where she fell asleep. But even just having woken up, with the room dark except for the light filtering in from the streetlights outside, she knows exactly where she is. The cold concrete under her bare feet, the reflections and silhouettes of lab equipment, the smell of chemicals and hay and cow, the soft sound of Gene breathing over in her corner...

"Steve?" she says quietly, without turning to look at him. "I don't know what I did or how, but... I'm sorry."

Because that's not alarming or anything.

He simultaneously calms and tenses at her words, reassured by her presence and suddenly a lot more concerned about where they are than he was even a moment ago.

"I don't understand," he says. But he does. That's the part that's making him feel sick. That's the part making some strange and distant piece of himself scream in building panic not again, not again, please not again.

"This is the lab at Harvard. This is where I was trying to go."

But she wasn't doing anything.

She takes a few cautious steps toward the stairs, listening carefully for any sign that there's someone here. Maybe Walter and the others were trying to pull her back too, but the lab's empty. Olivia has a feeling none of this is going to start making sense any time soon.

"Hello?" she calls softly, her voice echoing off the ceiling. The cow answers, but somehow that's not helping anything.

He's trying to remember how to breathe when a door to an office swings open and a young man - unkempt, unshaven, looking like he hasn't been sleeping well if at all - steps into the lab proper and freezes. His eyes are first on Steve, his expression feral with hostility, but the second he sees Olivia the rest of the room might as well be empty.

Steve falters, instinct on one hand demanding he stop the other man before he reaches Olivia, on the other knowing that expression well enough to see he should get out of the way.

The latter wins.

Peter stops a fraction from Olivia, feeling suddenly like he's not sure what he should be doing. He wants to just wrap both arms around her and hang on until she makes him let go, but...

-but she's hurt. "What h-" Too big a question. "Are you all right?"

"Peter," she breathes in relief, a smile breaking over her face the moment he steps out where she can see him. She closes that last little distance between them without hesitation, wrapping her arms around him with no regard for her injured hands and arms.

For just a moment, she forgets about Steve entirely. Peter's solid and real, she's finally back in the universe where she belongs, and the rest is a problem for another time.

"I'm fine. There was an accident, earlier, and I don't know how I got here, but I'm fine. Are you?"

Peter buries his face against her neck, taking in the smell of her; puts his arms around her and holds her close and can tell without a doubt that it's Olivia, and just now that's the only thing that matters. "Better. I'm much better."

For one awful moment Steve almost hates them both, and then it's replaced by a sledgehammer of guilt and shame. He can't begrudge Olivia this reunion - he just doesn't need to be witness to it. So he rounds the corner of the big tank in the middle of the room and slips out the door to the hall, standing there and trying not to think.

Olivia got to his world, and from that one to this. There's a way to get himself home - he just needs to find it.

Home. It's strange to think of the mansion and New York of the twenty-first century that way, but every so often he catches himself doing it. And really, what choice does he have.

Olivia laughs almost breathlessly, and rests her forehead against his shoulder, just letting herself enjoy this for a moment. She'd really started to think she wouldn't get back, that she'd never see him again, and whatever it is that brought her here, she's grateful for it. "I'm sorry it took me so long," she murmurs against his chest, grinning brightly. "I missed you. So much."

Finally, reluctantly, she loosens her grip and takes a step back. She should probably introduce Steve and Peter to each other. They need to call Walter in from wherever he is, figure out what happened, figure out how to send Steve back...

Except when she turns back to face him, he's gone. Olivia freezes.

"...Steve?" He can't have gone far, and even with how he must be feeling now, she can't see him taking off without a word. Frowning, Olivia holds up a hand to Peter in a 'wait here' gesture and walks quickly to the door to the hall to check out there. "Steve?"

Steve forces himself to focus, focus on shoving what he's feeling as far down and out of the way as he can before she steps into the hall, so when he turns around he looks as calm and collected as possible. Given the situation he thinks he's doing rather well.

"Sorry, I didn't want to intrude."

Peter steps out behind Olivia, both unwilling to leave her, period, and unwilling to leave her alone with a stranger. Even if it is a stranger she knows. He slips one hand into hers just so he can hang on to her and at least temper the feeling that she's going to disappear as soon as he looks away. "New friend?"

Olivia twines her fingers through Peter's and squeezes a little - she appreciates the contact, a steadying reassurance that she's not going to flicker out of the universe again any moment... and that he's not a hallucination, like she was having before. She wouldn't admit it, but she needs that reassurance right now.

"Yeah. This is Steve Rogers. He's..." She should wait to give the full explanation until Walter and Astrid and probably Broyles get here. She has a feeling she's going to be repeating it a lot. "He's been helping me while I tried to get home. Steve, this is my colleague, Peter Bishop."

...colleague seems like a safe thing to call him, never mind that meeting in the lab, or that they're standing here holding hands. They haven't exactly had time to talk about... anything, figure out what they are. Olivia's just going to go with 'colleague' for now.

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