Chapter Text
I.
Standing behind her with both hands on her hips, Peter leads her forward, only coming to a stop when they reach the perfect spot. She’s still smiling as he unfolds the scarf he’d tied over her eyes a little while ago.
Although not blindfolded anymore, Olivia plays along, keeping her eyes closed. She does raise an eyebrow as she asks, more amused than anything else: “Are you done being cryptic? Can I open them, now?”
He brings a hand back around her waist, pressing his palm over the soft fabric of her black dress, worn especially and quite exceptionally for this occasion–the restaurant had been all kinds of fancy. He applies pressure to bring her closer, pinning himself to her back, breathing in her scent.
“Go ahead and look,” he whispers in her ear. “Happy anniversary.”
She complies, opening her eyes. As she stares, her smile turns into pursed lips, her confusion causing her brow to wrinkle in a way he knows all too well. She turns her head, looking up at him. “Is that supposed to be my gift?”
“Yep,” he confirms with a goofy grin, loving how perplexed she looks.
She brings her gaze back to what’s in front of them. “You’re offering me...a hotel room window?”
He chuckles in her hair. “A very expensive hotel room window, to be honest. As much as I love their curtains, your gift won’t actually show up for another...” He looks down at his watch. “Eight hours.”
She looks at him again, still at a loss. “What’s in eight hours?”
He kisses her temple before nuzzling her cheekbone, causing her frown to finally relax, going back to smiling softly. “Sunrise’s in eight hours,” he says in her ear. “I asked experts, and they all agreed. This city still has the most beautiful, naturally colored sunrise in the country.”
There she goes, pursing her lips again. “Oh,” she says. “Peter, are you offering me the sunrise?”
“Our ten-year anniversary, honey. I had to do something big.” He’s not upset by her lack of happy reaction. He expected nothing else from her.
“Are you seriously bringing up that silly conversation we once had again?” He nods with a cheeky smile. “You’re never gonna let me forget I said that, are you?”
“Nope!” he says, kissing her cheek this time, and she turns in his hold, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I’ll bring it up again on our twentieth anniversary.”
She chuckles, now looking around the room, which is as nice as one would expect, given the price of it, before bringing her gaze back to his. “Ten years, uh? Doesn’t that make you feel...”
“Lucky?”
“I was gonna say ‘old’, but yes, I feel very lucky,” she agrees, bringing her hands to his cheeks to pat them a bit teasingly. “I have such a romantic husband. I would have been happy with just a piece of jewelry, though, you know?”
He grabs her left hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss her wedding band. “First of all, except for that ring there, you never wear jewelry, not even the ones I give you.”
“I’m wearing earrings tonight,” she objects.
“Second of all,” he continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “I lied. Well, not exactly. I want us to see that beautiful sunrise, but I’m fully planning on us enjoying this expensive hotel room for the next eight hours, first.”
She’s patting his cheek again. “Sure. But don’t be surprised if after the first four hours or so, you remember you’re not thirty-five anymore.” She looks over his shoulder, then, stretching her neck to look at the ceiling. “That mirror over the bed is pretty intriguing, though.”
Her exposed neck is simply too tempting. He leans down, until his lips are grazing a favorite spot of hers on her sensitive skin, and her hand moves from his cheek to disappear into his hair. He lets go of her other hand so she can use it as she sees fit, while he slips his arm around her to bring her closer, still.
But the hand he just released falls limp, as does the other one. Soon, her whole body is crumpling in his arms. He is so shocked by how heavy she suddenly is that he loses his balance and stumbles backwards.
That’s when he feels it, trickling from the back of her head onto his hand, still splayed over her back.
Thick and warm.
He falls with her onto the floor, and her face comes into view, offering him the most horrifying sight of his life. There is a red, bloody hole where her frown used to be, only minutes ago.
Her eyes, glassy and wide, stare but do not see.
A terrified scream builds up within his chest, ready to burst out and pierce the air with his despair and—
Peter jerks awake at the feel of warm fingers on his face, both his hands desperately coming up to grab them.
“Olivia!” he half-moans, half-exhales.
The hand leaves his cheek, squeezing his trembling fingers. “I’m sorry, Peter, it’s me.”
He recognizes her voice, just as his foggy, intoxicated brain finally takes in the face hovering over him.
Astrid.
He remembers, then. It will never be Olivia again.
Olivia is dead.
He has no control over what happens next, as this realization grips his insides and twists his guts, twists them so hard that he has no other choice but to roll onto his side, his body dry-heaving violently. Once, twice, three times.
But he has no food to throw up. He hasn’t eaten in over two days.
He’s trying, though, as if his whole being was attempting to rid itself of that deep, smothering anguish and pain poisoning his insides. In the end, all that comes up is some bitter alcohol that burns the back of his throat.
He spits a mouthful of it onto the floor, inches away from Astrid’s feet. He is far beyond caring, stuck somewhere between being sickeningly drunk and badly hungover.
Not to mention heartbroken.
Apparently, Astrid doesn’t care either, because when his useless heaving eventually recedes, he feels her hands on him again, pushing him gently back onto the couch, and he lies down, head throbbing.
“Don’t move, I’ll be right back,” she says in a soft voice, listening to her footsteps going to the kitchen, where she turns the water on. He’s forcing himself to focus on every sound she makes so he doesn’t have to think.
He cannot think, he just can’t.
But the sound of her shoes upon the floor brings forth a familiar image, Olivia entering the house and kicking off her heels with a contented sigh, leaving them be wherever they may land, which was pretty much all over the place.
He opens his eyes, which feel feverish in their sockets, and his blurry gaze falls on the bottle, sitting there on the coffee table. He reaches out for it, quite impressed when he manages to grab it on his first attempt. He takes off the cap, just about to bring it to his lips when Astrid, who’s made her way back surprisingly fast, stops his arm.
“Peter, don’t.” She’s trying to sound firm, but her voice is shaky and hoarse.
“Why are you even here?” For his part, he sounds like an old drunk, trying to get away from her grip, but somehow, she’s stronger than him.
“The funeral is in a few hours,” she whispers. “We need to get you ready.”
The mention of what’s to come is enough to drain all energy from his limbs, and she finally gets the bottle from his grip, his head falling back on the couch, throbbing more painfully than before. After another hazy moment of silence, he feels some kind of cold, wet cloth on his forehead. He reopens his eyes, focusing on her face.
Even in the dim light, Astrid looks pale, dark circles under her eyes. He guesses he isn’t the only one who’s lost the ability to really sleep.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his voice cracking as he speaks. Because it’s not to her he wants to apologize, but he has no choice.
There’s no escape, no solution.
She meets his gaze, and whatever she sees in his eyes causes hers to fill up with tears. “What for?” she asks softly, still cleaning off his sweaty face with a gentle hand.
A lump forms at the back of his throat as he tries to answer. It takes him a few excruciating seconds, but the words eventually come out. “Even all ranked up, you still end up having to take care of some useless Bishop man.”
She smiles down at him, and it’s a heartbreaking smile, really, her eyes so full of tears he wonders how on earth they aren’t spilling out, yet. She brings her other hand to his face, resting her warm palm upon his messy stubble, her thumb caressing his skin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says softly. “All I’ve ever done was take care of the people I love. It hasn’t changed.”
He has to close his eyes, fighting the sudden urge to push her hand away, because it feels so familiar, yet so painfully different. He’s not surprised when his own tears trickle out from beneath his closed eyelids, soon pooling in his ears.
“You need to shower and dress,” she says, trying to sound less emotional, and almost succeeding.
But he shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t go in there.”
“Where?”
He reopens his eyes. She’s put the bottle back on the coffee table. “The bedroom,” he says, reaching for it again.
“Peter,” she protests feebly, trying to stop him, but he shakes off her hand quite roughly this time, managing to sit back up, ignoring her concerned, disapproving look. “You’re still drunk. You need to sober up, not the other way around.”
He opens the bottle, looking her straight in the eyes when he says: “My wife is dead, Astrid. I think I’m allowed to be shit-faced.” He takes a long swig from the bottle, pretending the pain he feels inside is caused by the burning alcohol going down his throat.
Astrid sighs, defeated, before moving from her crouching position to sit on the coffee table, watching him take a few more sips.
“I hate to ask you this but...have you thought about what you’re going to say? For her eulogy?”
The alcohol tastes absolutely disgusting, all of a sudden, and his arm falls limp, no longer able to hold the bottle up, shaking his head. “Might just wing it.” Incredibly, he chuckles. “I’ve always been very good at bullshitting my way through speeches.”
He meets her gaze. She doesn’t look amused. She doesn’t look offended either.
Peter closes his eyes again.
Everything hurts.
“How do you sum up eighteen years of your life in a few minutes speech?” he whispers, his heart pounding hard, now, so hard that it feels like it’s trying to burst its way out of his throat. “How do you sum up Olivia in a speech?” At the mention of her name, more tears start pouring down his face, and again, he doesn’t care.
Tears. Funny things, really. Tiny little drops of salty water. Until two days ago, it’d been quite a few years since he’d cried.
He remembers all the time she’d cried, though.
He takes another long gulp from the bottle. Maybe if he drinks enough alcohol, he’ll get completely dehydrated, and his body won’t be able to produce tears anymore.
Surely if he can’t cry, he will stop feeling, too.
But it’s pointless.
“You’ve ever seen Olivia cry?” he asks, quite randomly, yet not really. He opens his eyes, meeting Astrid’s reddened gaze.
A small smile stretches her lips, and she shakes her head, barely. “I don’t think I’ve even seen her get teary eyed. Or the few times I nearly did, she ran off before I could be sure I wasn’t making it up.”
He chuckles, but really, he just wants to sob. “She doesn’t like looking vulnerable, that’s for sure. But I guess when you spend so many years of your life with someone, you get to see every part of them, even the parts they don’t want you to see.”
He closes his eyes, and he can just see her, as if she was right there in front of him. He clings to that image of her, since there isn’t any physical picture of her around for him to look at. Not for the first time, he wishes he hadn’t been so weak and selfish.
He wishes he’d been braver, so they would have talked about it all. So they could have had those picture frames all around their home.
Stupid wishful thinking.
“Her cheeks get all...flushed, you know?” He’s not even whispering those words to Astrid, talking to that image of Olivia his mind has conjured up instead. “And her eyes get…so big. It’s like the tears she’s trying to keep in there are magnifying them. And you just wanna die.”
Peter chuckles again, but the sound turns into a broken sob, hastily bringing the bottle back to his lips to shut himself up, taking a long swig, the world spinning, and he doesn’t give a damn.
“She cried happy tears, once,” he says after another long stretch of silence, and that distant memory is mingled with so much pain, so many emotions he hasn’t allowed himself to feel in years, that it actually hurts more than to think about all those times she cried out of despair.
But he remembers her well, oh so well, so much younger, and genuinely happy, and he’d been happy, too.
“She had the most beautiful smile on her face,” he whispers, and the ephemeral image in his mind offers him that same smile, her eyes glistening with tears and joy and hope.
And then, it simply vanishes. She vanishes.
She will never smile again.
(May 8th, 2026)