Never be unkind

Here’s part two of The Good Ones.  I’m working on the Astrid chapter now.

***

“You?”

His memories fade more and more every day.  He knows the people he loves, feels that connection, but cannot put his finger on every significant moment in these relationships.  He knows that Peter is his son, remembers the day he was born and the intense wave of love that he brought with him.  He remembers Peter dying, twice.  And yet, he knows the man that Peter has become, knows that he somehow got him back, that he resisted at first but ultimately came to accept the remarkable man who called him father.  He knows that they both love Olivia in very different ways.  That he couldn’t pick a better person for her than Peter.  And he’s proud that such an incredible woman chose his son to be the person whom she would allow to know her better than anyone else.

He has absolutely no memories of this young woman standing before him.  But then her eyes go big as if begging him to remember and her lips upturn in a sad smile and he remembers his granddaughter pleading for one more Redvine before bed, the way she mastered the look that turned him into putty.

“You?”

He knows memories fade, so he clutches on to the good ones.  Those are the ones that he wants to last.  He remembers Peter’s smile when Olivia told him that she was pregnant.  He remembers Peter’s high, euphoric expression and his voice much louder than needed when he exclaimed “She’s perfect!”

He remembers the look of fear and uncertainty barely a day later.  When the baby’s cries and Peter’s soothing but slightly panicked voice woke him up.  And he found Peter in the nursery, body tense and voice shaky as he tried to comfort his daughter.

“Hold her closer to your body, and relax, son.  She can sense your stress.”

Peter’s shoulders loosen a bit, he draws her closer into him, and rocks her gently, intently focused on the soothing phrases he’s whispering to her.  When she finally calms and Walter can see her little eyes droop closed, Peter carefully collapses into the plush rocking chair.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he heaves.

“No one expects you to know at this point.  You’ve only been a father for forty-seven hours.”

Peter doesn’t take his words into much consideration, “I can’t screw this up, Walter.  I can’t, she’s too important.”

“I know.  But the truth is that, as long as she knows you love her unconditionally, any mistakes will only make her a stronger person.”

Peter smiles, not genuinely, merely as an acknowledgment that he’s heard his father’s words before he turns his head to stare at his daughter in awe.

“I get it now,” he whispers.

“What, son?”

“I get why you took me, why you were willing to shatter two worlds,” Peter doesn’t look up as he says it, even though Walter has no memories of Peter ever saying something so profound to him.

“There’s nothing – nothing I won’t do for her.”

The room is silent, Peter seems to forget that Walter’s even there as he rocks her back and forth, back and forth.  He watches Peter’s smile widen as she turns and nestles into him.

“Olivia says she can feel her love for us,” he whispers, “She loves me.”

“She’s very lucky to have you,” Walter whispers.

If there is one memory he wants to hold, it is that one.

Memories fade, and in some ways he is grateful that they do.  He knows that it was a short while after Olivia announced she was carrying his grandchild and they stopped Bell from ending the world that they had to start working tirelessly to prevent the observers from taking it over.  He knows that things didn’t get really bad until a few weeks before the purge.  He distantly recalls warning signs that would even tip off a civilian that something drastic was about to happen.  But these memories are fading more and more with each day, as dark as he knows those last few months were, he doesn’t dwell on the dark parts.  Because, he remembers, for four years his life consisted of craft tables and jumbo sized puzzles.  For four years he would work tirelessly in the lab with Peter until Olivia walked through the door at the end of the day with their favorite person in the world balanced on her hip.  For four years that little girl would squeal for her daddy, run up to him for a hug, and then smile mischievously at him, her grandpa, before begging for a Red Vine.  For four years a perfect little girl running around the lab in her father’s pea coat and an oversized tin-foil hat could make him forget the events of the day, and the dark moments of his life that she wasn’t a part of.

He remembers her, and that is more than enough for him.

Here’s a fanfic I wrote a few weeks ago about Peter’s reaction to meeting Henrietta again.  I have a Walter chapter too that I’ll post in a few days.  I’m hoping to write one for all the main characters’ reaction to Etta.  Let me know what u think!

“I promise you, she will be safe.  Nina found a good family for her.  She’ll be with people who know how to help her hide her abilities but could never be connected to us.  They won’t touch her, they won’t notice her.  She’ll be safe.  She will.”

                “Will she be loved as much as she is with us?”

The last time he saw her, he could lift her up above his head, he’d run around their house making motor noise as she spread her arms out and squealed at the top of her lungs, “LOOK MOMMY! I’M AN AIRPLANE!”  The last time he’d held her in his arms, she had been so small.  He remembered how he held her against his chest, the Velcro on her ruby slippers (a pair of bright red toddler sneakers that she had smothered in glitter when he hadn’t been watching her closely enough at her craft table) had come loose and the shoes threatened to fall off her tiny feet as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.  Her hands had been so pudgy, fumbling to grab at his shirt collar and then her mommy’s hair.  The last time he saw her, she had looked just like him.  He remembered Olivia – Olivia – breathing, smiling, crouched over her when she was just a baby sucking contentedly on one of her toys, with that look of awe on her face as she pointed out his cheekbones and his ears and the crease between his eyebrows on a much younger, much more perfect face.

                Now, she looks exactly like her mother, right down to that centered part in her hair that never, ever moved.  He looks into his daughter’s eyes and he sees Olivia.  He touches his daughter’s cheek and feels Olivia’s skin, fair but rough, nowhere near as soft as when she was two and he would help her shave her bubble  beard that she always grew during baths.  He holds her against him and feels Olivia’s strength, her feet planted firmly on the ground.  But she leans into him, and her hands, her rough, slender hands, clutch at his back, not like when she was little and would wrap her arms around his neck when he held her.  She does still bury her face into his neck.

                Baby girl.

                His little baby girl, all grown up.  He can’t help wondering who took care of her, how loved she was growing up, how many people have hurt her.  And he fights to ward off the panic at what he wasn’t there to protect her from.  Without Olivia to calm down, he can’t ignore his own anxiety.  He remembers holding his love’s tear-streaked face, warding off his own agony, only allowing himself to focus on easing hers.

                “She’ll be okay, Livy.  She’ll grow up and be happy, fall in love, have babies.  Just not with us, not with us.”

                He’d thought he was wrong.  After Bell betrayed them, showed them a long abandoned subway tunnel out of the city, only to tip off the Observers that Olivia Dunham was planning her escape that night, when they realized that they were doomed, Peter just wanted to hold Olivia one last time.  He wanted to bury his face in her skin and commit the feeling of her body against his to memory before they were separated, and no doubt executed.  Olivia fought, though.  She knew it was beyond useless, she must have.  But she fought, even as they dragged her away.  They ignored Peter.  They didn’t even acknowledge him.  They just tore Olivia, thrashing and screaming, out of the tunnel, away from him.  His initial reaction had been to run after her, and he had almost caught up to them when he stopped, when he realized why Olivia hadn’t given up and held onto him when it was obvious they were doomed.  There was one thing Olivia would always fight for no matter how hopeless the situation.

                He ran back into the city, to Walter and Astrid, to see if they knew where he could find someone, anyone, who knew where Nina had sent his daughter, someone who the Observers wouldn’t have thought to read.  But when he got there Walter and Astrid were panicking, when they saw Peter show up alone their panic increased and before Peter could scream that he needed to find his baby, the amber had already hardened.

                Peter froze, knowing that if Bell told the Observers where he and Olivia were, there was very little doubt he had told them about Henrietta, and where she was. 

                But she is alive, and in his arms, and beautiful.  And in this moment, he will not let himself grieve for a childhood he missed, or  let his mind wander over what must have happened to Olivia (in the back of his mind, he knows exactly what happened to her, but he won’t let himself admit it, will cling to the notion that he’s been wrong before).  He will hold Olivia’s daughter, he will hold this person that he and Olivia created one night after a long boring day at work and a power outage and Olivia rolled onto his chest in bed and murmured that they should make a baby.

                (The world had seemed so, so much better then.  The bridge closed and the only threats were the odd crazed scientists who took their aspirations too far.  And having a baby finally seemed like something they had time for.  Olivia was going to take her full three months of maternity leave and not have to worry about the world ending.  Peter was too.  When they went in for that first sonogram and they heard the squishy sound of their baby’s heartbeat, the future seemed so full of promise.  He remembers the day she was born, skipping and running down the hallways of Massive Dynamic’s health centre because he was on such a high that simply walking was impossible to find Walter and Astrid and exclaim “She’s perfect!”  He remembers Olivia holding her, the dazed and euphoric look on her face as she used their special connection to let Henrietta feel just how much she loved her, and how the baby almost immediately calmed down.  The way she fussed when Peter took her out of her loving mother’s arms for the first time, but calmed when he started talking to her, turned her head in recognition of his voice.  He remembers tiny fingers and tiny toes, warm ivory skin, the way she looked at him with that goofy smile.

                She was only four the last time he saw her.  Small enough that he could lift her up and run around the house while she squealed in delight.  It’s impossible to comprehend that this beautiful young woman is the same little girl who he carried to his and Olivia’s bed after a bad dream so she could sleep between them and feel safe.  But he looks into her eyes and sees the same bright green orbs that looked up at him through tears as little arms clung to his legs and promised she’d be good, so good, if he and mommy didn’t go.

This is her, his little baby girl, not so little anymore.  And he will continue to do what he has always done.  Love her and protect her, make sure she is safe.  He just prays that he hasn’t failed already.

by emmitron

(also posted on ff.net under my other penname: averagemuggle)