He is Peter Bishop, and therefore, at the moment when his daughter is murdered, when she is taken from him forever, something inside him snaps. And as he holds her fragile body in his arms, desperately clinging to her in an attempt to somehow stave off the inevitable, he rages against the Observers, against the universe for stealing away his child, even against Olivia and Walter, for pulling him away from her, for refusing to let him die with her.
By the time they make it out of the warehouse, the shock has set in, and he stares blankly at the world, unable to process what has just happened. And he watches the warehouse vanish with the same vacant look, lost in the cacophony of the voices inside his head.
No, no, no, no... She's dead... I failed. She's gone. Please let me die too. How do I go on with a piece of my soul ripped out? They killed her... He murdered her, ripped away her life, stole my daughter from me forever! Gone forever... I couldn't save her. I was too late... again. Always too late, always too weak, how many times do I have to watch them die? Why is it always them, and never me? Why am I condemned to live while the people I love are taken from me? Haven't I seen enough, given enough?
Each of their deaths is indelibly etched in his mind, engraved in his memory forever, and none is more painful than this last, because this time there isn't a machine to alter the timeline, there's no Cortexiphan to work a miracle, there's nothing he can do. She's dead. And there isn't even a body left to bury.
It's almost as if she never existed at all, except for the gaping hole she has left in his heart.
And it's a hole that he knows will never heal, because you can't patch up a broken soul. The only thing he can do is try to make her death mean something, to succeed at the very thing she gave her life for, to wipe her killers from existence. He will honor her memory by obliterating them, even if it costs him his life. Because without her, without Etta, he doesn't care what happens to him.
He doesn't need the posters with her face to remind him of what he must do. All he has to do is close his eyes, and he sees her, sees her blood soaking her shirt, covering his hands. He will never forget, and will never stop, not until they are all dead, until he has done to them what they did to her.
"Before you go on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
He's going to need a lot more than two before he's finished.
*****
She is Olivia Dunham, and so, at the moment when she hears a solitary gunshot reverberate throughout the old warehouse, she knows instantly that this is it. This is the moment she has been dreading since she first discovered she was pregnant, the instant when her most terrifying fears have now become reality. And she breathes out Etta's name, offering up a silent prayer to the universe.
Please don't take her... please let me be wrong, just this once...
But as she glimpses her daughter slumped limply against the wall, as she takes in the amount of blood that she has already lost, she knows this is the end, and she can't do anything to stop Etta from slipping away. These will be her last moments with her daughter, her final instants as a mother.
And now, kneeling there in front of her only child, she feels the weight of all the missed opportunities, all the times she shrank back from fully loving her the way a mother should. She had reasons, so many of them, good reasons for loving with only half her heart. After all, the universe had made a habit of periodically stripping away from her everything and everyone that she cared about, so wouldn't it be safer for all involved if she kept her distance? But in this instant, as she stares into her daughter's eyes, she finally finds the courage to do what she was never able to do before.
Maybe it is because the future is no longer uncertain, or because she knows this is her last chance to get it right. Or maybe it is the look of fear in her daughter's eyes, the need for reassurance that she sees there that finally frees her from the walls she had so carefully maintained. She herself is not sure exactly what happens inside her at that moment, but whatever the cause, she is able to reach deep inside herself and speak the words she needs to say, the words her daughter needs to hear.
"Etta... I love you so much."
Such simple words, and yet for her, they are some of the hardest words in the world to say. And as she gazes down at her daughter, as she hears her soft answer, she chokes back tears, because in that answer she hears forgiveness, and understanding, and love.
"I know."
And implied, but not spoken,
I've always known.
It is strange that she should finally find peace in being a mother at the feet of her dying daughter, but even the pain of her heart breaking cannot cause her to pull back, not anymore. She doesn't cling to her daughter as he does, doesn't try to hold on to her for just one more instant - that has never been her. But she loves her all the same, infinitely, finally, forever.
*****
His daughter was always the center of his world, and even in death, she remains there. Everything he does now is because of her, and for her. For her, he will willingly risk everything in a bloody quest for vengeance, toying with destructive technology he doesn't understand, leaving Olivia behind because he knows she isn't ready to follow where he needs to go. For her, he will become whoever he needs to be, letting loose his rage against one of
them, coldly dealing out death and destruction as a monument to her memory.
But it isn't enough, he isn't enough, and that fact is painfully clear to him when their best conceived plan of attack stops the Observers for mere seconds.
He doesn't have any sort of a plan in mind when he returns to the captured Observer; he simply can't go back to the lab after having failed so miserably. The rage seething inside of him needs to be released, and while hurting the Observer may not accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things, they hurt his daughter, and so hurting them feels good.
And then, in the midst of shoving his spite in the Observer's face, he realizes the answer. He throws it at him as an insult at first, but as soon as he utters the words, he knows them for truth.
"I would be ten times what you are if I had that tech in my head!"
His words ring in the air as he suddenly stops, struck by a revelation.
That's it. That's the answer. That's how we win.
Up til now, he has always been too slow, too weak, too late. But no longer. And he doesn't hesitate, doesn't stop to think through the possible consequences, because nothing matters except destroying them, every last one of the cold-blooded monsters who murdered his daughter. Consequences be damned. He
will have his vengeance.
*****
She watches from a distance as he continues to pull away from her, repeating his self-destructive pattern of twenty years ago. This time, though, she doesn't stand back and simply let events run their course. Instead, she strives to pull him back, to remind him of what matters, to maintain their connection and grieve their daughter together.
But she can tell that even her best efforts are not enough, that she is losing him again, but to what, she isn't sure.
At first, it seems to be a simple desire to strike back at the Observers, to make Etta's life and death mean something, and while she fears the consequences of an all-consuming quest for vengeance, at least he is talking to her, and not shutting himself off entirely. And then, after their best laid plans fail, she starts to notice changes in him, little things that no one else would ever detect, but which scream to her that there is something terribly wrong.
The curiously blank look on his face whenever he is not actively engaging another person. A coldness in his eyes that she has never seen before, and that seems completely at odds with the volatility and emotion that were there only a day or two ago. New (and odd) mannerisms, a stiffness to his movements that is the exact opposite of his normal casual grace.
While she marks these down to emotional overload, to his response to having their daughter violently ripped away just when they had started to become a family again, she knows that no matter what the cause, he is changing into someone she no longer knows. And though she pleads with him to put aside whatever he is doing and simply come home, though she tries to make it clear to him worried she is for him, and for them, it seems to make no difference.
So when she follows him to Etta's apartment for the second time, it is because she refuses to lose him to his grief like she lost him twenty years ago. She goes prepared to confront him about his keeping secrets, his pulling away from her, but what she discovers is so much worse than she could ever have imagined.
*****
He makes his plans in her apartment, plots their demise in rooms where his dead daughter once lived and laughed and loved. Not too long ago, this place was a constant reminder to him of what he lost, and nurtured his grief and rage as the sights and smells triggered his memories. Now, though, it is simply an expedient location for him to utilize as he works towards their destruction. The grief and rage are suppressed by the tech that continues to change him, tech that gives him almost-supernatural powers in return for his humanity.
Love, grief, anger, pain - the tech eliminates these along with every other emotion.
But revenge is not an emotion.
It is simply a series of actions to achieve a specific outcome.
She should not have died. This is firmly established as fact in his mind. Never mind that it has no logical backing, is entirely based on past emotions - he views it as a fundamental fact, and this allows him to continue with his objective.
The Observers are responsible for her death. This is an indisputable fact.
Therefore, they must be eliminated. This conclusion is close enough to logical for him to hold on to it as his goal, even though the emotions that provided the original impetus are no longer the force that drives him.
And with every moment that passes, those initial feelings become less relevant to who he is now. In fact, he sees now that abstracts such as 'love' and 'anger' and 'guilt' are the very things that would have made it impossible for him to avenge her, that these are weaknesses that the Observers do not share with humankind, and so he must not either.
He doesn't even try to fight against the tech as it changes him into someone or something else.
Instead, he lets go of who he was in order to become who he needs to be.
At the core, his new self is really no different from the person he was before Baghdad: an isolated individual using every means at his disposal to manipulate the world around him to achieve a goal. Emotions, attachments, even love - these had no place in a con man's life, would have gotten him killed. And today, in a world where he needs every weapon he can use, where one moment of distraction could be the end, this is even more true. He had distanced himself from the rest of humankind for almost two decades before; now, for the sake of his mission, he does it again.
In the end, he comes back to the beginning.
And when she comes to the apartment, as he knew she would, he does his best to show her that this is the way things have to be, that everything is better like this, that this is who he needs to be. She doesn't listen, can't see, because she is still blinded by emotions, but that doesn't really matter, because he doesn't need her anymore. He will avenge Etta, with or without her. So when she quietly slips out of the apartment, he knows she is afraid for him, afraid of him, but that is really of no consequence to him. The man he used to be would have cared, but the man he has become, the man he has returned to - he is unencumbered by such trivial things as feelings.
"I think you got the wrong guy... Let me save you the time - I'd rather stay here in Iraq... I can't help you."
Nothing matters now except Windmark. And he will make him pay.
*****
She hasn't felt this alone in years, not since the day John Scott died from the after-effects of the chemical blast, or the day he lived long enough to betray her before dying in her arms. Tonight, she feels that same helplessness and fear, because once again the man she loves is slipping away, being slowly but inexorably destroyed by the product of a science that she doesn't understand. And she can't fight what she doesn't understand, so instead of trying, she slips out the door of Etta's apartment to find the one person who is able to comprehend what is happening inside his brain.
She needs Walter now, even more desperately than she did that first time, because she can't lose Peter again - he is the piece of her that was missing for so many years, and she has lost him too many times already. So she needs Walter to make sense of this, to tell her what she has to do to save him, what must happen in order for her to bring him back.
But when Walter comes through, when he figures out the complex process that the tech ignites in a human brain, her world drops out from under her for a moment.
"His brain is being altered, and soon it will be irreversible." What if it is already? What if I waited too long to confront him? Have I lost him forever? I can't lose him. I just can't. Maybe he was never mine to have in the first place... No! That's not how it is. This time I'm not letting go that easily. It's not too late. We belong together and nothing can change that.
For the entirety of her drive to New York, she clings to that belief, to the fact that the universe has tried to separate them before and failed, time after time, to the fact that their love has always proven itself stronger than every obstacle that has stood in their way.
She will not lose him this time, simply because she will not let him go. Even if too much time has passed, even if the man she loves has vanished behind that empty facade, she will not give up this time. Their love has worked miracles before, flown in the face of science, and she has to believe it will again, because the alternative is unthinkable.
*****
Somehow, somewhere, buried deep underneath the flow of logic and reason, his capacity for love survives. And when she comes to him, appeals to a power beyond rational explanation, that piece of him resonates with what she's saying, understands what it is she is trying to do, what it is that he needs to do. Logic tries to drown it out, tries to convince him that the tech is the only path to victory, that Windmark will live if he turns from his path, that all the sacrifices that have been made to this point will be useless if he lets her sway him.
Maybe, if Windmark had not shown him his daughter's last thoughts, logic would have won, but he feels something as he thinks of Etta's dying moments, feels anger and grief, feels the love he had for his beautiful, perfect, precious daughter. The tech may have damped those emotions, but a love that is as deep and as powerful as his was is not easily done away with, not easily set aside.
So when she pleads with him to remember who he is, to hold on to Etta and the love they shared, when those feelings push their way through the barrier of cold reason, it is as if a dam inside his mind bursts. And he is suddenly flooded with memories of the most precious moments of his life, and he doesn't just recall the events themselves, but the emotions that filled him then, that defined who he was, and really still define who he is, even if he'd forgotten that.
In that instant, as he remembers how glorious and painful and wonderful love is, he knows that he can't live without this, that without the ability to love he is nothing. But he also knows that he has only a few moments before the tech overrides his emotions again, causing him to forget the value of the most priceless thing in the world, so he makes his choice quickly, following his heart rather than his head.
He chooses Etta, chooses Olivia, chooses his humanity over the chance for vengeance. And as he pulls the tech from his neck and collapses against her, there is no doubt in his mind that this is right. This is who he really is, and where he was meant to be.
*****
She rests in his arms that night for the first time since Etta's loss tore them apart, curled up against him on the cold stone of the balcony. And though the world around them is still crumbling under the rule of the Observers, she sleeps soundly, secure in the belief that they can win this battle, so long as they hold on to love and to hope.
The growing brightness of the early morning light wakes her, and she shifts instinctively, burying her face in his chest to catch one more minute of quiet peace before returning to the battle that lies ahead of them. As she does, she hears him murmur her name, and she looks up, surprised to find him awake this early.
When she sees his face in the morning light, she realizes fully the toll that removing the tech must have taken on his body, because although he wears a peaceful expression, there are dark circles under his eyes that weren't there last night, and he looks utterly worn out. Gently placing her hand along his jawline, she feels the prickle of his stubble under her fingers, and looks up at him with eyes full of concern.
"You look awful, Peter. Did you sleep at all last night?"
He smiles down at her, running his fingers through her hair.
"I'm okay; I just have a bit of a headache. I wouldn't recommend self-inflicted brain surgery on the whole, but I'll be alright. Don't worry, Liv."
Giving him a suspicious look, she starts to question him again to make sure he's not passing off serious side effects as nothing, but he seems to sense where she's going, and quickly forestalls any more detailed line of questioning.
"I'm okay, really."
With a small sigh, she decides to trust him and drops that conversation for the moment. Instead, she gazes past his shoulder towards the ever-lightening sky, taking in the thin gray clouds that obscure what would otherwise be a beautiful sunrise. She can't help but be reminded of the damage that has been done to the atmosphere by the banks of machines around the planet, and she wonders if she'll live to see the day when the sun breaks through again.
But even that train of thought brings her hope, as she remembers her words to her alternate years ago in the face of a similar situation. Maybe sunrises and rainbows really are gone for good, but on this morning of all mornings, she is filled with hope instead of doubt, and she quietly whispers those words to herself, as both a reminder and a reassurance.
"Keep looking up..."
And at that moment, she catches sight of the briefest flash of light through the clouds, as a single ray of sunlight breaks through for an instant before being swallowed up again.
A thrill rushes through her at the sight, and that momentary ray of light, so short that she would have missed it had she blinked, seems to offer a promise of better days to come, bolstering her hopes for a brighter future.
"This is my favorite time of day... sunrise, when the world is full of promise." Maybe this time we can hold on to what we've found together. Maybe this is our new beginning.
For the first time in years, she feels real hope again, and is able to truly believe that this dawn marks a turning point for them.
After all, their love has just defeated the best science and logic and reason to bring them back together. And together, they can face whatever the universe sends their way.
*****
That day in the warehouse, something irreplaceable is lost forever.
And for the rest of their lives, the world will never quite be complete.
But this time, they have each other, and at this moment, that is everything they need.
