ziparumpazoo | Timestamps (again and finally) for rainer

Sooooo..... a long while back I was taking timestamp prompts and

rainer76 asked for "Two years later, Olivia's back in Mid-World"

I haven't forgotten this one; quite the opposite. I just couldn't get a handle on what I wanted to do with it for a long time. There is apparently more to this story than the 100 words called for in the meme, but in the spirit of filling the final request, here's a snippet for the larger work:

~

"You lied to him." Astrid corners Walter in the hospital corridor, out of Peter's earshot. She holds a finger up to stop him before he can protest and draw attention. "You told me that Cortexiphan has a partial regenerative effect on organic tissue. Partial, Walter."

"It does," Walter whispers harshly and hustles her farther down the hall to the line of chairs in the waiting area. She still looks far too fragile to be up wandering the hospital, in his opinion. Too pale. He drops heavily into a chair and holds out a hand to steady Astrid while she hugs an arm over her gut and eases into the one beside him with a wince.

"And it did," he continues once she's settled. "Once the bullet was removed, Olivia began breathing on her own. The human brain has an incredible capacity to heal itself."

"Partial, Walter," Astrid repeats, gentler this time, more of a question than an accusation. As much as he's been trying to avoid it since the medevac had bundled Olivia off the ship, Walter has to admit that she's got a point.

"You told Peter that Olivia'll be fine." She clutches his sleeve.

Walter looks up into her gentle eyes and sees the same worry that's been gnawing its way around his gut since they'd arrive and Olivia hadn't woken up. He shrugs and the weight of his coat feels like it's doubled… tripled, and it's dragging him down. He balls up his traitorous left hand into a fist and jams it into his pocket so Astrid doesn't see that it's trembling.

"What was I supposed to tell him?"

~

~
The sun, which had been high overhead the first time she'd tried to open her eyes, was now crawling toward the horizon. The daylight was softening to shades of later afternoon gold and the trees, taller and likely older than any she'd ever seen, cast shadows so long that it was impossible to tell where they ended and where they began.

The steps lead to a path through the trees, which widens into a pine-needle carpeted clearing at the top of the hill. Fingers of pink granite jut through the thin undergrowth of junipers and moss and give the huge pines something to wrap their phalange-like roots around. Olivia stops to catch her breath, resting her hands on her hips as her heart pounds in her ears while the front of her skull does its best to keep time. She tells herself it's because she's gotten soft, that she allowed herself to get lax about her workouts lately, but that's not entirely true. The job is still as physical as always and she's had no trouble keeping up. In fact, since they'd caught Nina's double and the gas lighting had stopped, Olivia's felt great; she doesn't want to think about how much the migraines had been taking out of her.

This is something else entirely. It's like… she has to stop and close her eyes because she's felt this before, And she hasn't. The idea's there, just over the horizon. She can see the shape of it but she can't make out the details yet. The problem is, she can't tell if this is another memory conflict, or if there's something actually wrong with her.

The sun glints off a rock for a moment and catches her eye. Shards of mica sparkle like glass.

There was glass on the ground, she remembers, and waits.

The other voice doesn't disagree.

There was glass on the ground and there were sirens. It smelled like diesel exhaust and wet pavement and the city after it rains.

And Peter. Peter was there.

There was no Peter.

Was.

Wasn't.

He was there.

He wasn't.

Olivia stumbles and sits down heavily. The impact jars her from tailbone to the top of her head. Her teeth click together and she tastes blood on the end of her tongue, but at least the arguing stops.

She'd been in a car accident; she knows that much is true. It had been in New York and she'd gone through the vehicle's windshield.

Charlie told you they'd had to cut the car open to get you out because the frame was twisted on impact.

Doesn't matter, she thinks. This is what it had felt like afterwards, right after she'd woken in the hospital and before she'd been told they'd thought she wasn't going to wake up at all. It's the same sense of confusion she'd had as the right half of her brain had argued with the left over who should have control of her motor functions, while the rest of her had struggled to catch up.

Her doctors – both times – had talked about brain damage.

Given the circumstances, Olivia won't rule it out now either.

Oy's sitting on his haunches, watching her from a cautious distance. He shifts his weight from one front foot to the next, impatient for her to collect herself and get moving again.

"Is there somewhere you need to be?" Olivia asks him, and it's then that she notices the sign behind him. Impossible to miss if they'd been travelling in the opposite direction toward the lake, and not away from it. Three feet across, wood weathered silver and splintered, it hangs crookedly on its posts. The only reason Olivia can still read it is because the letters had been routered into the wood. It reads:

RAY-DON LAKE SCENIC OVERLOOK

And below, in smaller font:

Portal to Midworld. Check with Park Office for arrival dates and times.
~