Disclaimer: I hold no intellectual rights over Fringe.
Escheat
Olivia woke up with the sun shining through her window. Her heart fluttered in a moment of panic that she'd be late for work before she remembered it was her day off, which was why her alarm hadn't roused her an hour ago.
She lay back and let her eyes fall closed again.
She hadn't slept well. She'd had another of those dreams, the ones where she almost found what she was looking for.
For as long as she could remember, she'd had feelings like this. Like there was something missing from her life. She didn't know what it was, but she had always felt like she had to look for it. Perhaps it was that drive that had given her life such a melancholy tinge. Even as a child she had always been more somber, more reserved than her peers.
She could go for months without thinking about it, but then something would almost trigger a memory. Especially in the hypnogogic haze between sleep and consciousness she could almost remember a name, almost see a face.
Reluctantly she slid out of bed and headed to her bathroom.
Perhaps it was that search for the intangible something that had taken her to her strange career at the FBI, unraveling the weird and unknown with Doctor Bishop and Astrid and Boyles.
She smiled into her bathroom mirror. It certainly had been a strange, crazy ride. The mysteries, the monsters, the alternate universe...
Her smile slipped away.
She used to talk to people - her mother, her sister, friends - about the sense that something was missing in her life. They told her everyone felt like that; it was normal. After a while, she stopped talking about it. But this couldn't be normal, or people would have done something about it. They would have developed some drug to treat it, this hollowness, this longing without an object.
She stared into the mirror for a moment, then closed her eyes. Her fingers brushed against the cold glass. She could almost think of his face. Almost...
Her eyes opened. She chuckled at her silliness, a familiar ache forming in her chest. Of course she couldn't envision a face. The person she was trying to remember didn't exist. Just a figment of her imagination.
Just a figment.
She turned away from the mirror to get on with her day.