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Butterfly	By : pip Category: 1 through F > Fringe Views: 2188 -:- 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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Authors Note: Ok, so the first part of this was written some time ago, and while I only have a faint idea where I was going, I've decided to pick it up and continue it. With some success, because chapter two is finished, and I've outlined a lot further ahead.
This is going to build extremely slowly, but, I am hoping it will be worth it. The first sex scene will probably be around chapter five. I love Walter and Astrid. Expect anything, but definitely expect age-gap heterosexual romance with a dash of lsd inspired mad scientist.
Reviews/constructive criticism will be cherished until my dying day.
Also, John Noble... well, I so would.
Chapter One
“So, why us? Why is this a Fringe Division case?”
As Olivia and Broyles cut a purposeful swathe through the general hubbub of police cars and police personnel doing whatever it was they did, one thing was immediately clear: it was their case. Everyone around them had that look. Whatever they had seen, they were going to work hard over the next couple of months forgetting all about it while they worried about their sanity.
Saying nothing, Broyles led the way into the house, a sizeable mansion on the outskirts. In the kitchen they found the body, very dead with no obvious cause. Could have been a heart attack – should have been – but for the fact that the dead man’s arm was on the floor, detached. Not cut off, not bleeding, just detached. There was a covering of skin over the stump of the limb and the body. Olivia let the covering sheet fall just as Walter drifted in and caught it excitedly, peering at the corpse with an jolly eagerness that was beginning to seem more and more normal.
“Who called it in?” Olivia asked. Broyles looked back at her steadily.
“His wife. This is his house. He must have come down during the night for a drink of water,” Broyles said, and they both eyed the smashed glass and slowly dripping water from the table. “She found him this morning. His name is James Staples, age fifty-six, works as a train operator.”
All perfectly mundane. Except… “And did she say –”
“Last night he didn’t need to carry his left arm around,” Broyles confirmed without a trace of humour, cutting in. Olivia nodded.
“How interesting! I’ll have to get the body back to my lab,” Walter said happily, breezing away to oversee the police orderlies, and it was all decided. It was a Fringe Division case.
~~~~~~
“Always so giddy,” Astrid remarked casually as Walter capered around the lab gathering tools. “Who knew dissecting could be so much fun?” She smiled slightly, following, helpful, showing him when he forgot where things were, when he forgot where he was, when he forgot what he wanted.
For a moment Walter looked affronted, like a child whose toy had just been snatched away. “But we did check externally for all normal causes of death,” he reminded her as if pleading to be right, subtle as a giant duvet but just as gentle. As one they walked over to stand next to the corpse. They looked down at it, then at each other. The look loitered like a teenager, as if things weren’t about to get messy enough.
“Better get on with it then,” Astrid said, breaking the eye contact as she handed Walter the first of many surgical tools. Their fingers brushed, and it was absolutely impossible for electricity to arch through the layers of rubber surgical gloves they were wearing. They avoided eye contact for the rest of the autopsy, and since that took a good deal of time, and gave a great many revelations, when it was over neither of them even remembered.
~~~~~~
“Ah! Olivia!” Walter exclaimed as she entered the lab with Peter in tow. “I know how our man died,” he announced. Olivia gave the trademark appearance of impressed surprise and nodded.
“We need to find out how a train driver owns a house in that neighbourhood,” Olivia said in an aside to Peter. He tilted his head slightly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Not to mention why he went downstairs for water when they had an en-suite.”
“What happened to him?” she asked Walter, a hint of curiosity in her tone as her gaze went to the covered body.
“He was stabbed,” Walter said carefully, and picked up the nearest clipboard that had the day’s earlier breakfast order on it. “Erm…” he said, and then took the proffered clipboard from Astrid that had the right information on. “Yes, here we are. Thank you, Ashford, my dear. Stabbed: at least sixty times, possibly up to eighty times. There is so much internal tissue damage it is almost impossible to be accurate.”
“But there’s no external marking. What about the arm?”
“Ah. Therein lies the mystery. As for the arm, well, there were so many slashes down into the flesh,” Walter said, accompanying his words with a helpful illustration of the stabbing motion, “So many that it was, to all intents and purposes, hacked off.”
Olivia frowned.
“It was most probably an accident,” Walter added helpfully, in case it would make her feel better.
~~~~~~
The warmth of her breath was sweet and intoxicating, mixed with the faintest hint of her raspberry lipstick. Just a few millimetres away. “Astray,” Walter whispered, his voice quiet as if the moment might shatter.
“Astrid,” she reminded in the same hushed tone. Walter closed his eyes. He could feel her lips moving against his, so nearly touching it almost hurt. They were as one. As always. There was a long dormant part of him, roaring to be set free. She couldn’t possibly understand the violence of the blood. His fingers tightened where they rested on her arms.
“Well, one of us is astray,” Walter remarked quietly, trying to think about why this was a bad thing. She was so young, so in awe of him, and he’d committed this sin before once, when he had been determined not to know better. Now he did. I could always claim insanity, he thought, his mind brought into shocking coherence by the heat between them. And then she would be the temptress, the one who was wrong. Impossible. Astrid was far too beautiful to be wrong–
“Earth to Walter!” Astrid said in front of his face, waving her fingers through the line of his vision. The daydream splintered, shards of it lodging in his heart and soul as he looked into her compassionate eyes. She was too young, and he was too lost. He struggled to move to the next moment like an exhausted swimmer on the verge of giving in to the tide. But there was no possibility of surrender here.
To be so sure of what he was doing, or at least sure of what he should be doing, only to lose the comfort of certainty and find himself confused and bewildered again in front of the people who knew him best.
“You were telling us about your theory,” Olivia prompted, her words falling like pebbles into a pool whose surface was already cloudy and dark: Walter shook his head impatiently as if he was warding them off. There was something he was supposed to be thinking but the shape and contour of it was gone.
Theory. Yes. “I, um,” he faltered, and looked at Olivia, then at Peter. No help there really. He looked around him. “Agent Farmstead,” he said, purely guessing, hoping he had got it right, wishing his brain would work. All of his cognitive abilities had drained away again, leaving his superior intellect trapped in a prison of its own making, and there was no way to articulate the horror of it. But she… what was the word? She rescued…
“We’ll get back to you,” she said to the others, her voice firm, helping him towards a chair as he gibbered because he’d realised the daydream had left him with another problem.
“Oh! Um…” he managed, willing it to die down, and he felt rather than saw that weary disappointment on Peter’s face. “I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said quietly.
“It’s all right, Walter,” Astrid said kindly without a trace of embarrassment, and she knew, and it didn’t matter because she was so easy on him. So soothing, and he managed to forget all the things he didn’t know, because he knew her.
Author's Note: Just a reminder – if you enjoyed this, please tell me. Reviews/constructive criticism will make my heart sing.
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Butterfly