A few months ago I stumbled upon a little band called We As Human, and a song called We Fall Apart. (I recommend that you go listen to it, look it up on YouTube or something.) Couple this song, which immediately made me think of Peter and Olivia, with the fact that I'm watching Fringe through for the second time and I just finished season three, and add in the challenge that I was given- take a song and turn it into a fic without actually making a songfic- and you get this. Just had to cram one more fic into October. ;)

Your world is on fire, and all you can do is watch it burn to ashes as her casket floats out into the bay, ablaze. Your heart goes with it- she was the thing that you loved the most in this world.

You have a hard time believing you'll ever be able to smile again. Your time with her was too short; there are so many things that you wanted to experience with her that were postponed by one Fringe event after another. You'll never get to see her smile again, hear her laugh, hold her close, or make love to her. You'll never get another chance to wake her up with breakfast in bed- two eggs over-easy, bacon, and grapefruit juice, like you did last Sunday, enjoy takeout from Damiano's on Friday night while you watch some cheesy horror flick, or surprise her with lunch at the office. You'll never be able to take her backpacking through Europe, enjoy the beaches of Hawaii, or go scuba diving in the Caribbean. In the instant that it took for her to register Walternate standing in front of her, the rest of your life was taken from you, everything good ripped away.

Walternate was wrong, you know. He isn't going to kill your world slowly. All it took was one bullet. And as of this moment, you're not even really sure if you care about the rest of his plans and this constant battle of good versus evil you've been fighting for fifteen years, because your world is gone.

It was beautiful, the life you had together. Magical. Even with everything falling apart around you and your lives consisting of one tragedy after another.

Some part of you thought that the two of you were invincible, unbreakable, invulnerable. You never thought that it would end this way. You never thought that you would be the one left behind. She was your better half... your stronger half. She managed to turn you from a liar and a con artist into an honest man. And even though you were both imperfect- everyone is, after all- together, you were so much more. You weren't alone.

Like you are now.

You can't help but wonder if you could have made a different choice when you stepped into the Machine all those years ago. Could have stopped this war that you've been waging ever since then against a world that's self-destructing, could have saved all of the lives that have been taken so needlessly. Maybe then she would still be alive, and you wouldn't been sitting here drunk, alternating between sobbing out your heart, because you loved her that much, and raging at the man who should have been your father for taking her away from you.

You just want one more day with her. One more chance to make love to her and hear your name escape from her lips, one more moment to feel her in your arms, one more time to tell her how much you love her. It kills you that your last words to her weren't "I love you." They should have been, even if she knew how much you loved her. You should have told her, even if you didn't need to say it.

The world has become that much darker of a place without her in it. It doesn't feel right that the sun will rise in the morning, and you'll have to face dawn- her favorite part of the day- without her. It doesn't seem right that you'll have to go into the office and try to run Fringe Division without her. It doesn't seem right that you'll go to bed alone, and her pillow will still smell like her, but she won't be there for you to hold as you fall asleep.

Nothing about this world is right anymore. And without her, you know, you'll fall apart, because there's nothing left to hold you together.