nightcathedral | Hydrogen in our veins, it cannot hold itself, our blood is boiling...

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Hydrogen in our veins, it cannot hold itself, our blood is boiling...

It's a long drive from New York to Boston, and by all rights, she should be tired when she gets in. She's not. She can't stop running over every argument for why they shouldn't even begin to trust the other side, and trying to come up with one she hasn't already presented to Broyles. She can't stop glancing at the boxes of files on her passenger seat, wondering just how familiar the cases in there are going to be.

She takes the turn for the lab without even thinking, and when she realizes it, she sighs faintly, giving up on any idea of not working tonight. After a moment of thought, she reaches over to hit the button to call Steve when she hits the next stoplight.

"I hope I didn't wake you up," she says when he picks up, though she knows by now he sleeps less than she does. "Do you have any plans tonight?"

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He finishes injecting the blood, turns back to face Steve for a moment, and nods calmly, not a trace of fear or doubt in his expression. "I'll take that risk."

Turning to adjust the bags of fluid hooked up to their IVs, he shrugs with a thin smile. "Would you believe it's from history? Not a history that's popular or particularly encouraged, but even so..."

Olivia gives Steve a sideways look that's half alarmed, half silent question if he's wondering about this guy's sanity as much as she suddenly is.

...because kidnapping them and dosing them with blood and Cortexiphan in the first place is such a great mark of sanity.

Oh, he's questioning it. He catches her look, raises an eyebrow, and tries to settle against the chair again. If the restraints are strong enough to keep him pinned, maybe what they're connected to isn't. He's not going to start hammering on that side of things, not yet, but it's worth trying.

"I'm not part of this universe's history." Words he never dreamed of saying. "What happens now? You wait and see if we shrivel up like raisins?"

"Not yet," he says, calm and assured. Olivia is still watching him intently, trying to decide if he's for real or just insane. Either is entirely possible in Fringe Division, and she doesn't exactly feel safe settling firmly on either conclusion right now.

He moves behind them again, and returns quickly with a wooden box, which he sets on a table in front of and between the two of them, and opens to reveal a lightbox.

"Now you turn on the lights," he says, walking calmly back behind their chairs, "and you're free to go."

Olivia stares at the lightbox dubiously. She knows what this is. Walter never tried this specific test on her, but he did a hundred other things like it, pointless, frustrating tests that stopped producing results long before she ran away. "You can't be serious. Injecting him with Cortexiphan isn't going to suddenly give him abilities you're supposed to have from childhood, and I haven't been able to do anything like this sin- ahhh!"

The only warning she has is a steadying hand on her shoulder, and then there's something sharp in the back of her neck, stabbing into her spine. She tenses at the initial shock of pain, and then slumps forward, gasping softly to get her breath back. "What..."

He's moving to the back of Steve's chair to insert a probe at the base of his skull as well. "Just a little something to help you reach the necessary level of emotional response."

"Wh- Olivia!"

He has just enough time to see the probe and the wires sticking out of her neck before stabbing pain makes his vision go gray and he finds himself imitating her slump, blinking to center himself in the room again.

"When our people see what happened in that house, they're going to come looking for us. They'll find us. This..." He closes his eyes again, feeling a giddy flutter in his stomach. Not unpleasant. Quite the opposite. But his focus is straying. Steve grits his teeth. What was he saying? "This is what they do. They find madmen and shut them down."

He sags back in the chair. He's starting to feel weak again, though in a very different way. Painkillers were always too expensive when he was younger, and after Project Rebirth nothing worked on him anyway - so this? This is new. A whole different kind of fatigue, and he has no idea what to make of it. "What are you doing?"

Edited 2012-09-17 06:13 (UTC)

"We're not here to hurt you. Either of you."

His voice is calm, and oddly soothing under the influence of whatever's dripping from the IV into their veins. Olivia starts to turn to glare, but the movement of her head hurts too much with the probe in her neck, and she sags forward again, clenching her hands tight around the arms of the chair.

"We're making you better. Ready for what's coming."

"It's just the drugs, Steve." She's been here too many times to be alarmed, just tired and angry. "And the probes are... They were..."

There's an odd sort of fog closing in, making the edges of the room blur and darken. Her own voice sounds too loud in her own ears, while everything else seems to fade. She grits her teeth and lifts her head and turns to face the man for just a second despite the pain. "Do you have any tricks you didn't steal from Walter Bishop?"

If he replies, it's lost as the room wobbles and fades entirely - and suddenly she's alone in the dark, and her own voice sounds soft and small and much too young as she calls out, fear creeping in despite herself, "Hello? Is there anyone... Steve?"

He lasts a little longer, clings to consciousness for a breath more, tries to speak, to wake Olivia up, something, but then he's adrift in blackness with Olivia's voice as the only anchor. He knows it's her, even though she sounds wrong, and somehow he finds his footing even though there's nowhere he can see to stand.

"I'm here." It sounds wrong. He looks down at his hands - and they're there, but small, stubby-fingered, a child's hands. He's standing in the middle of an empty street he recognizes, with shops he knew in another life, their displays brilliant with color and vacant of anyone, anything.

He steps back. This is Hell's Kitchen, his Hell's Kitchen, when he lived there with his mother. "Olivia?"

Steve tries to keep a tremor out of the call. This is wrong, he knows it's wrong, that it's not real. He wants to know where the people are - or wants it all to go away. He's not sure which.

Olive starts running when she hears his voice - she's still in the darkness, but she can hear him, knows it's him even though it doesn't sound like the Steve she knows, and she takes off toward the sound, because if she can just find him... If she can find him, it'll be okay.

She bursts out of an alley and skids to a startled halt, momentarily blinded by the sudden shift from darkness to light. This... This is nothing familiar, nowhere she knows.

"Steve?"

Relief. He starts to run toward her, but has to stop half-way. He's small, frail, and can feel the shortness of breath coming that means he's pushed too hard.

Steve grabs on to the nearest car to stay upright while he breathes. Even when things were bad, he was never quite this quick to tire. "I'm here. It's me."

He tries for a smile, walking the remaining distance so he can take her hand. It's forward, maybe, but it's reassuring. They're together. They'll figure this out. "What's going on?"

Edited 2012-09-17 07:03 (UTC)

Olivia reaches out to take his hand without hesitation, twining her fingers through his: whatever happens, they're staying together. She does have to take a moment to stare at him, though - to stare down at him - and deal with the fact that she's taller than he is. It's not like she's ever been small for her age, but he's Steve, and this is... somehow stranger than the eerie empty streets or the fact that she's a child again.

She shakes her head a little and glances around, frowning.

"I think we're... Walter used to do this at the daycare center in Jacksonville. When he needed to..." She swallows hard, her fingers tightening unconsciously on his. "To scare us, so we'd use our abilities. And the probes... I think those were so we'd end up in the same place."

Olive pauses, staring down the street uncertainly. "It's not as scary as I remember it."

"Yeah."

Steve's not sure what he's agreeing with. He shifts fractionally closer to her, feeling protective and seeking comfort both at once. That someone would do this to a child makes him feel sick. It's too much like Zola, the Nazis' experimentation, and it only serves to drive home the fact that the world hasn't changed nearly so much as it claims.

Music. He hears music, reedy as an old recording, piping through the empty streets. It's a jazzy sound, somehow familiar, even though he can't pick out the song.

They all died waiting for you... It's crooned to the tune of the music, in a voice like Billie Holiday's.

Steve presses shoulder-to-shoulder with Olivia. "What happened the times that you went through this? How did you get out?"

Olivia leans in toward him just a little more, the pressure of his shoulder on hers some small reassurance.

"Mostly you just... wait until the drugs wear off. Until they can tell it's not working. They want us to be scared, so... don't be." She sets her jaw - a normal expression on the grown Olivia, but entirely out of place on the child she is now, no matter how familiar it is to her even at this age. "It's not real. It can't hurt us."

She meant it to come out steady and reassuring; instead, it just sounds like a child trying to reassure herself and not quite managing.

"We should find out where that sound is coming from."

He wraps his other hand around hers, so he's holding it between both of his. Steve looks off down the familiar street. "They want us to be scared," he says, determined to sound solid. "I think I know where it's coming from."

Steve doesn't lead the way, exactly. He sticks close to Olivia's side, shivering a little despite the fact that it isn't cold. He doesn't want to admit how much it's getting to him - the emptiness, block after block. A couple of times he has to stop to catch his breath. He tries to hide his difficulty, mask it with looking at shops or street signs. The music goes on and on, winding between the buildings, louder and softer in turns.

They reach gray apartments rammed between two nearly-identical buildings, clothes strung out on lines from fire escape to fire escape. Fluttering, flapping quietly.

It's so easy to give in to the farce of childhood. To forget he's twenty-seven and a veteran. His voice sounds even smaller in the silence. "This is where I lived."

Edited 2012-09-18 01:18 (UTC)

Somehow, Olivia isn't surprised. When she was younger, these nightmares were all scary monsters and voices in the dark - now it's the ghosts of their lives before, dredged up and throw in their faces, and what else would it ever be?

She cranes her neck back to look up at the building, and then nods a little. Whatever this is, for the moment, it's not her nightmare. "Do you want me to go in first? So if there's anything..."

She's already gently disentangling her hand from his, starting for the door. Whatever's in there can't hurt her.

"Wait." He catches up, twines his fingers through hers again. "I'm all right. We'll go together."

He's not all right. He's afraid. He's afraid of what's waiting in there, afraid of what isn't. The fear makes him angry, and the anger makes him defiant - but still, he can't shake the childish feeling that they're stepping to the edge of Pandora's box. Putting their hands on the lid.

The front door of the building is broken. It always was. When the door moans inward, Steve moves with it, too quick to let nerves make him hesitate. It's dingy. The whole place yellowing like a photograph, wallpaper peeling and wood paneling splintered.

Steve slips his hand out of Olivia's, moving deeper into the building, toward the stairwell, with the pride of resisted shame.

Olivia moves more slowly, staring too long at the shadows until she can be sure there's nothing about to come out of them, but she does her best to follow closely, making herself a tangible presence at Steve's back as he progresses into the building. They're together. They're together, and they're going to make it out of this together, and...

There's a sound in the hallway behind her. It's quiet, just a faint scuff and the slow creak of a door opening, but she gasps softly and swings to face it, old instincts screaming an alarm. There's nothing moving, nothing she can see, but she still stares back down the stairs for a long moment before shaking herself and moving after Steve once more, with slow deliberate steps in an effort to not run. Run and they know you're scared.

Run and the monsters get you.

Steve has trouble stopping himself from running for very different reasons.

Third floor, apartment C. Steve wraps one hand around the knob.

The music stops. It feels like the building is holding its breath, watching with dozens of invisible eyes. Steve looks back.

Nothing. Just Olive - Olivia, looking as haunted as he feels. He holds out his free hand. "We're okay."

"Yeah," she whispers, and she sounds so young and small it even startles her. This isn't who she is, not anymore, but it's so hard to remember that in the middle of all this, when it feels so real no matter what she tells herself.

She takes his hand and steps forward, standing so close the front of her shoulder touches the back of his, and let's out a slow breath. They're okay, even if the silence is making her skin crawl and she's almost certain something's watching them. They're okay.

He opens the door.

Everything inside looks how he remembers it. Exactly how he remembers it, down to the picture of his father on the dresser. It's a closet of a space, a bedroom folding into a kitchen with a toilet in the corner. The air tastes stale. Like a hospital. Like a sick room.

"Mother?" Faint. Timid. He knows even if she's here it's not her, but...

But.

He smudges at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I thought... I don't know." He moves inside, not letting go of Olivia. There are little lead soldiers scattered across the floor. Steve picks one up, turns it over in his fingers, feels every edge and point. "This isn't real. It's not."

He covers his eyes with his wrist, sounding and feeling entirely like the boy he looks. "I want to go home."

Olivia's fingers tighten around Steve's as she swallows convulsively, looking around the unfamiliar space and trying to imagine how it must look to him. She'd never felt any connection to a particular place, not since her father died - never stayed in one place long enough, never trusted things not to change without warning, but for Steve...

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "We'll get out of here and go home, I promise, we just-"

Something thumps in the hall outside, and Olivia goes stiff immediately, holding her breath and staring intently at the door like a rabbit spotting a hound, wanting to run but with nowhere to go. Another thump and a crash, and a door down the hall slams open.

Don't be scared don't be scared don't be scared this isn't real it's okay it can't hurt you-

"We need to get out of here," she whispers.

He blinks away tears, looking from Olivia to the door and back. He moves between them automatically. Emotions filed away, or at least put into second place.

"What's the matter? What is it?"

Steve's hand wraps tight around the little metal soldier and he squares off facing the door. He's not letting anything get to her. He's not letting anything through. "There's a fire escape. It's the window next to the bed."

"It's nothing. It's..."

Another door slams open, closer than the last, followed by the distinctive thump of a fist hitting a wall.

She tugs on his hand, pulling him toward the window. "I'm faster than you are, you need to go first."

"Olivia! Where are you hiding?"

Olive jerks at the sound of her name, and grabs Steve's shoulder to shove him toward the fire escape. "Steve, go!"

He stumbles, catches himself on the bedside to keep from falling, and is about to answer when it feels like an invisible hand closes around his throat. He can't talk, can't move, and from the corner of his eye he can see that his hand on the bed has disappeared.

Olivia's alone, for all she knows, and he can't speak to assure her it's not true.

His heart rate picks up enough to make breathing hard, not just with adrenaline. Fear. There's no struggle to make. It's like he's eyes suspended in nothingness, even if he tries to thrash against whatever holds him still and invisible. He can't protect her. He can't even try.

Edited 2012-12-27 07:44 (UTC)

"...Steve?"

He's not moving, and she can hear her stepfather's footsteps coming closer and oh god, they need to move, they need to...

He's gone. He's gone he's gone he's gone she's alone and he's coming to get her and she needs to go, but if Steve's still here--

The door bursts open, a monster in the doorway. She can see her stepfather in it, if she looks hard, but when she looks at it, all she sees is the monster, burning eyes and massive hands and hulking muscles, so huge it has to duck to make it through the door, and Olivia gasps, backing up until she hits the wall. There's a window somewhere. There's a fire escape, Steve said, and if she can just get out...

"Haven't I told you not to run from me, sweetheart?"

Olivia goes totally still, breath caught in her throat. She's better than this, she's older and she knows better and... and she's a scared little girl all over again, and even when everything in her screams to run, all she can do is stand there, wide-eyed and terrified.

Olive!

He still can't move. He feels himself dissolving, being pressed into the wallpaper, watching as that monster stares Olivia down. Powerless. He can't breathe. He can't-

A very different scene. Olivia, a little older, talking to people he doesn't recognize. Olivia, an adult, acting as a representative of the Fringe Division. The team, their team, going through the motions of an average day as he watches - and then another day, and another, their hairstyles changing and their eyes tiring, wrinkles showing and hair graying, and still he can't move or speak.

No! Terror. That's what this is. Absolute fear. Watching another world spin on without him, seeing this time as the people he's come to care about live and die and grieve while he stands by in frozen silence.

Not again. Not again.

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Hydrogen in our veins, it cannot hold itself, our blood is boiling...

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