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Butterfly	By : pip Category: 1 through F > Fringe Views: 2189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe. I do not make any money from this work of fanfiction.

Chapter List
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Author's Note: Just a heads up on warnings for this chapter. Some mentions of mental illness and very slight suicidal intent.
Chapter Two
Someone in the lab was acting strangely, and for once it wasn't himself. It was getting late in the day now, probably still a little too early for any real work, but it took time for most things to filter through the sieve in his mind and come to his attention. And, now he came to think about it, Walter couldn't be sure that Astrid had been herself for a while. After ignoring her for hours, quite suddenly he watched her carefully as she breezed past him with a tray full of sparking lab equipment. She made more noise than usual as she put it on the shelves. Walter frowned, stared, then jumped when a beaker smashed on the floor. He jumped again when his usually calm and reliable lab assistant swore under her breath.
Yes, there was something bothering her, and with the realisation came another dilemma: should he ask her what was wrong? He looked down at the strawberry laces in his hand as if they might know. How should he ask? Would his enquiry be welcome, or not? He resumed watching her, slightly worried, his frown growing deeper by the second.
“Is there something wrong, Walter?” she asked, her voice rather more insistent than usual. To have the question he'd been struggling with thrown at him instead short-circuited something in his brain, and he lost his place for a moment.
“Um, no. No, I don't think so. Unless! There was something... I was just thinking about it...” He shrugged awkwardly.
“You're staring,” she said, tilting her head as if that would allow her to see inside his brain. That brought a particularly striking and graphic mental image, and he shook it away impatiently. The accusation in her tone made him attempt to look at her at the same time as looking away, and if he was being honest, it didn't go all that well.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said directly, with what he hoped was a disarming smile. “What I mean to say is,” he continued quickly when she raised a single cool eyebrow at him, “you seem a little preoccupied, my dear. Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine, Walter.” There it was, the reassuring little smile he had come to depend on all too often. He let himself be reassured for a moment, and then –
“But you,” he protested, gesturing. “I mean, you don't usually...” Astrid didn't break things as a rule. Something occurred to him about her manner. “Are you humouring me?”
Astrid sighed. “My job is to humour you,” she said, completely deadpan. Walter played along happily.
“Is it really?” he asked, with what he hoped was a fair amount of unspoken innuendo, most of it innocent, some of it safe.
“No. Not really.” There it was again. She was being very laconic, more than usual. She definitely wasn't as playful. Walter frowned again. “Look, it's been a long day. I'm going on home. Will you be all right?”
“Mmm,” he grunted, not wanting to give her an excuse to escape but uncertain how to stop her. People were impossible equations. When she turned away to pick up her bag, he stood and moved to block her way out, avoiding eye contact.
“What. Walter.”
“I don't think you should go until you tell me what is bothering you,” he said, waggling an authoritative finger, trying very hard to be stern. It was for her own good, and to his surprise, it worked.
Something in her posture softened and yielded, and she sighed as she explained. “I've just been dreaming a lot. It's really nothing.”
“I see,” he replied, with much more insight than people usually gave him credit for. He knew all too well how awful dreams could be. Most people didn't understand that. Well, then! She was lucky she was with him in the lab. It meant there was help at hand. “Well, let's take a look!” He turned away, excited, happy to have a solution. “I can hook up the dream machine and then we can decide on a course of–”
“No!” Astrid almost shouted, and Walter jumped as if he had been shot. Before he could turn around again, he registered her hand on his arm, so warm and she squeezed him a little. “I mean, that's okay,” she said, much calmer. “I don't need any advice. Just some decent sleep.”
“All right, if you're sure.” It was disappointing; Walter had often wondered what Astrid dreamed about. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't do anything for her. “Well, in that case,” he said with relish, going to his desk and pulling out all the drawers while Astrid waited patiently behind him. “Just let me,” he continued to babble as he searched. “I know I have some somewhere.” In desperation, he looked in the candy drawer, and there they were. Not safe for children, the lab. “Ah! There you are!” He produced a little pill bottle triumphantly and pressed it into her hand. “Take one of these before you go to sleep,” he said, nodding happily, then thought to give a warning. “Only one.”
They were stood close together, and they caught each others' eye, her small hand still pressed between both of his. The moment stretched out until Astrid pulled away from him and broke the eye contact. It was like losing something precious.
“Are they safe?” she asked, her voice dubious. What reason did she have to doubt him? Walter was quite affronted.
“You'll wake up again,” he observed dryly. She should trust him. “Will you take one?”
“I'll think about it,” she said, and Walter gave a short snort of a sigh.
“But they're very good,” he said, protesting, determined that she should have confidence in his abilities. “I made them up myself.”
“I've said I'll think about it, Walter.” She said it before he could go into detail about the ingredients. That was that. End of discussion. “Goodnight,” she said, and then was off out of the door before he could say anything else.
Slowly, Walter turned away from the closed door where he had pursued her, and pushed shut the drawers of his desk. Something sparkled in the corner of his eye, and he regarded the smashed glass beaker with an odd start. Somehow, she'd forgotten it.
As he got the dustpan and brush, he felt much more lucid and serious. He was alone, and the lab was his again. All the secrets of the universe and some of the next one were his to discover, but they didn't pull at him now. Neither did the current case. The body was still here, of course. Instead he found himself thinking about her, about the warmth of her hand on his arm, the feel of her fingers in his, and, incongruously, Saint Claire's.
It was a game you didn't admit to playing. Like an hallucination you didn't admit to seeing. Walter sat down heavily on the floor, a piece of glass in his hand. It was so sharp, so fragile. Damaging, yes, but it couldn't begin to do the damage that had been done to their victim. Even after everything he still knew the game, he was sure, but did she? “Proximity,” he murmured to himself, staring at the piece of glass in his hand as if it tempted him in some way, but he knew it wasn't the right answer. His mind was not dulled as it was at Saint Claire's. Drugged, certainly, the way he liked it, but sharper, like the glass. Don't play the game, don't admit it. Damage. He'd done more than enough.
When Peter turned up to give him a lift home several minutes later, the glass was cleared away, but Walter was still troubled. He hoped Astrid made use of the pills he gave her. The team needed her, he needed her. The lab needed her here every day. On the very rare occasions that she wasn't here, everything was in the wrong place all the time, even when it was in the same place. Everything was in the way of everything else without Astrid to help. Without Astrid, all of them were just a collection of troubled and tortured souls, and it pained him to imagine her becoming a part of that.
“Well,” Peter announced. “Are you going to ask me?”
Walter picked up the few things he was taking back home with him, still thinking. “Ask you about what?” he said mechanically.
“The crime scene, Walter,” Peter reminded him patiently, ignoring his rudeness as always. Walter perked up, remembering that he and Olivia had been back to look for traces of anything that might lead to a solution for the bloodless stabbing.
“Oh. Well?” Walter asked, his thoughts of Astrid banished for a while in his sudden interest, because Peter had that look, which usually meant good news.
“Traces of blood under UV,” Peter confirmed, almost bouncing on the spot. Walter smiled.
“And?” he demanded, feeling a little bouncy himself.
Peter’s eyes twinkled. “We got some,” he said, producing a tube with a pinkish cotton bud inside. Instantly, Walter’s mind began to whirr. If his theory was correct, the blood was left when the weapon had gone through the body into the floor, and there might be some clue as to what it was. The applications for such a substance were unimaginable, particularly in medicine. Why, in surgery alone, a knife like the murder weapon would revolutionise…
“Walter…?” Peter said, breaking into his thoughts, and Walter started. Only then did he realise he hadn’t been speaking aloud. Well, he wasn't going to bother going through it all again.
“I must test it,” he said in excitement, grasping for the tube, but Peter held it out of his reach.
“Tomorrow,” Peter said, accepting no argument. “Olivia’s orders.”
Author's Note: Just a reminder – if you enjoyed this, please let me know. I've never taken the kind of recreational drugs that Walter likes, however, I believe that reviews/constructive criticism have the same effect on me.
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Butterfly