"You should have your own theme track you know that…" he'd told her once noodling on the piano keys idly in the lab one late night after a case when she was filling out an endless pile of paperwork, belting out vague and ominous tones ambling towards something that would play nicely in the background of some grand quest scene in a movie.

A lifetime and a timeline ago, when there was just that one universe of hers and Peter Bishop had not been at the centre of it.

Though he'd begun to inch pretty close to it.

She'd laughed at that and met his sardonic grin with a curve of her own lips

"Why don't you write me one then?" She'd told him wryly before turning her attention back to the report she was writing.

He hadn't said anything but had returned her smile in kind and then gone back to fiddling with that worn out instrument that seemed to always, at least in her eyes, come alive at his touch.

"You should really go home and get some rest. You've had a long day." She'd said, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and the tired lines that were etched on his face.

"And leave you all by yourself in the Bishop house of horrors while you drudge through your paperwork. What kind of gentleman would do that to a lady?" He'd cocked an eyebrow at her, lips pursing in mock disapproval. "I may not be authorized to help you with any of that stuff, but I can certainly keep you company while you do your bit towards the denudation of our precious forest cover can't I?"

"I'll be fine. I am used to being alone." She'd said absentmindedly, not really pondering her words until she'd said them out loud, and regretting them almost in the next minute.

"Doesn't mean you have to be lonely all the time." He'd said looking up from the piano briefly at her and then shrugged in the next second, acting as if he hadn't recognized the deeper significance of her words...or his for that matter.

"And I could certainly use some company that didn't consist of my father high on smack and possibly exercising the clothing optional clause that comes with being slightly off up there." He'd rolled his eyes a little too emphatically. "Trust me; I am doing myself a favor by not going home just yet."

And then he'd gone back to playing, something by Gershwin that she recognized from having heard in the living room of her parents a long time ago.

They had sat in very agreeable silence for the next two hours, she finishing up her work while he played one tune after another.

Doing paperwork was not really something she had ever enjoyed, but there was something about the mundane task that felt soothing….almost pleasurable when it was done to lilting Jazz notes in a basement lab with him.

A week later, she'd found a cd on her desk along with a piece of sheet music.

Olivia's Theme. It was titled in neat handwriting. There was nothing else, no note, no explanation.

She wasn't a sentimental woman but she had had a sudden urge to cry when she saw the musical notations in black and white, incomprehensible to her unlearned eyes but still brimming with a sincerity that had touched her much too deeply than anything in a long time had.

She had gone home and listened to it. Three minutes and fifteen seconds of sheer brilliance and beauty, a remarkable blend of strength and delicacy in tone, a haunting descant that uplifted her spirit and left her heart heavy in the same vein.

It was like he had drawn every note from her very soul to write a melody that reflected her.

It had scared her that he could know her so intimately without even being intimate with her and yet she realized she had come to expect it from him. She had become comfortable with his explicit and subtle ways of looking out for her, for caring for her, letting her know she was important to him.

It was the first time she had realized that she felt the loneliness so much less when she was around him. That she had unknowingly come to rely on him to dissipate that solitude that she had made herself so comfortable with.

Somewhere in the short while that Peter had come into her life, he had made her dislike being on her own all the time. Made her want to hear something besides her own thoughts and voice… made her want his presence around her.

The realization put her guard up. She knew just how dangerous unlearning her loneliness could be.

Sooner or later everybody left and if you let them in too close, they left with a part of you.

And she really didn't have all that left to part with.


Which is why when he disappeared from her life after coming to know the truth of his existence, she had felt something inside her disappear along with him.

She was alone once again and it was unbearable …the feeling

She never wanted to feel like that again.

Which is why she had crossed universes to bring him back, pushed aside every qualm in her mind and heart and told him that he belonged with her.

And held on to him with everything she had when she wasn't even sure of who she was anymore.

She hadn't even cared that he was just a figment of her imagination, as long as he was around to make her feel like she wasn't all alone, that she belonged.

Which is what she had felt like when she had opened her eyes in the hospital that day to find him by her side, looking strangely disconsolate and apologetic but completely real, his hands finding hers and his lips pressing against her forehead, finding contentment she didn't even know she was lacking in her life.

But he had slipped through her grasp once again, a comedy of errors that you could laugh or weep over depending on whether you chose to take into account the sheer absurdity of the events that had transpired or the soul crushing tragedy.

Her life had become a macabre version of A Midsummer's Night Dream and the cruelest joke was that she hadn't even been the leading lady of her own existence, wallowing in oblivion off stage while a better version of herself stole her spotlight and her hero.

She had welcomed the loneliness back into her life then, embraced it whole heartedly because as dismal as it was, it took the sting away from the pain of betrayal, just a little bit.

But she hadn't counted on just how hard it was really. The prospect of a romantic relationship lost to her as it had seemed that time, and her earlier easy partnership with him now fraught with spoken and unspoken tensions.

She missed him to distraction despite how hard spending five seconds alone with him was proving to be.

In true Peter fashion, he had sensed her unease around him and after a few sincere efforts at trying to restore normalcy had simply withdrawn from her, reducing his interactions with her to purely those that were functional and eliminating the wisecracks completely from his repertoire, never hovering around her a second more than required or insisting on tagging along when she needed to be in the field and generally actively avoiding any situation that put them in proximity by themselves.

He even stopped bringing her coffee after that night.

Olivia knew his reasons for pulling away were to do with his supposition that she didn't want to be around him but it had made her angry nonetheless.

Why wouldn't he fight for her, for what they had? Was she not even worth that much effort to him?

If there's anything she couldn't forgive that woman for it was not for taking away what should have been hers but for having nearly destroyed what she had built with him.

In the end the determination to save their relationship had come naturally, like the last piece of a puzzle that fell into place.

She needed him too much to be without him.

As she lay beside him that night, foreheads touching and bodies clinging to each other in his creaky twin bed that wasn't really built for two, under warm linen sheets that carried his indelible scent, she watched him watch her, his fingers counting the freckles on her right breast, eyes lingering on each one of them.

"What are you thinking?" She had asked, her hand coming to join his.

"That maybe we shouldn't have done this." He had said softly, his voice choked and his gaze meeting hers with an expression of unhindered yearning. "If you changed your mind tomorrow… I don't think….Olivia… Are you sure about this?"

She smiled and moved further into his embrace, resting her head against his chest, listening to the reassuring sound of his heartbeat.

"I am not changing my mind tomorrow or the day after or for the rest of my life for that matter." She had looked at him a little hesitant. "So the real question I guess is…. are you sure about this? I mean do you still want me?"

He had smirked, turning her chin up towards him. "Of course I want you, you beautiful idiot. I want you very very much. That's kind of the whole point really."

"Be careful what you wish for…sweetheart." She had echoed his own words to him, closing her eyes and giving into sleep, confident in the knowledge that he would still be there when she woke up.

She would never be alone again.


We all get really good at pretending that the loneliness isn't there and then something comes along to remind us.

The inexplicable hole in her heart always feels twice as large when she's around that man. The man who claims to be Walter's son from another timeline and knows things about all of them.

The man who looks at her like he knows her better than anyone else. Even after he accepts that she is not who he thinks she is, he still knows too much and acts with too much familiarity with her.

The way he seems to know how she takes her coffee without asking and refills her cup every two hours without her even realizing, or how he casually picks out the two yellow M &M s before sharing a handful with her.

That in some other reality, someone had known her so well to show her these little considerations makes her feel aware of just what she was missing in her own present.

The roots of her unexplainable sadness, that single constant to her ever variant life are beginning to point more and more towards Peter Bishop and it confuses her.

She feels simultaneously less alone and lonelier than ever when she's with him if such a thing were possible.

She's getting dangerously used to his presence and she knows she ought to stop.

Because he wasn't here to stay and he certainly wasn't hers to keep.

She sees it in the way he talks about his Olivia, the one who did get to keep him. The one he has found his home with.

She doesn't really realize what she's doing later that evening, as her fingers dial the number for Damiano's and she rattles off an order without having any idea of what was on the menu. She doesn't pause to consider why she's pulling out two instead of one wine glass or why she puts Texas Chainsaw Massacre on her Netflix instant queue.

It's only when Peter pulls back from her kiss with a look of utter confusion on his face that she realizes what she has been doing.

And as she sits through his worried interrogation and brushes off his concern, trying to salvage what's left of her poise after the embarrassing incident, she can't help thinking how wonderful it had been that past hour she was living someone else's life. When she had dressed in that black sweater that she knew he liked because of its soft fabric, or when she had put on that little bit of lip gloss and had looked in the mirror happily, eyes shining with anticipation at the thought of seeing him and being with him.

For a brief while she had known what it was to exist without that damn hole in her heart, that vacuum at the core of her being that she has lived with for time immemorial.

It had been beautiful.


It's the feeling she has when the memories begin to overwrite hers.

His, hers, theirs… it doesn't matter. They tease at her consciousness, ripping open the divides between real and imaginary. They're repairing the abysses in her foundation, bringing back to her something that was lost, that she has felt so hollow without for so long.

They're bringing him back to her and she can't think how that could possibly be a bad thing. Why everyone including him seems to want to deny her this… her happiness, her essentiality.

She's only just found her sense of equilibrium and he wastes no time in making the earth under her feet crumble.

It could only happen to her she muses ….that he's willing to run away from her just so he could find his way back to her.

Like a horse with blinders on, he's searching for something that he's already found if he only cared to look away from the path he's on.

That she has to compete against herself not once but twice for his obstinate and unyielding love for her…sometimes she thinks she'd like to believe in a God just so she can congratulate him on his ingenious sense of humor.

She does win in the end …in the race for his heart, beating every other iteration of herself... its she who always wins because she's never learnt to lose him and let him go.

There may be multiple hers but there is only one Peter and he belongs with her.


For years after she never feels the loneliness ever again. She thrives instead in the togetherness that she shares with him, in the family they build together.

Even when everything around them falls apart and the life they created together crumbles in a desiccated heap, and she's forced to part with the only person who means just as much to her as he does.

She doesn't feel alone… ever.

She forgets that she had once ever felt that way till now, till this moment.

"Why can't we do this together?" She asks him, trying not to show how scared she is. She knows she needs to be brave but this is killing her.

Not knowing that she needs to do this but the fact that she has do this on her own.

"It's too big a risk Liv. One of us has to make it out if we are ever going to have a chance." He tells her, his tone unconvincing of his words. "It has to be this way."

" But what if I never find you again?" she asks unashamed of the desperate nature of her question, as she clutches at his jacket, trying not to let the tears win the battle against her willpower.

"That's something I am not really worried about, trust me." He tells her, flashing her his trademark grin that she has seen so little of in the past few months, even as he's fighting tears himself.

"You always find me no matter what Olivia." He tells her, pulling her close and kissing her what seems like an eternity.

"You always find me in the end." He whispers against her lips.

They break apart and she nods silently as he places the canister on the floor of the stage of the Orpheum where so many years ago she had defied space and time and reality to bring him back.

"Peter… I love you." She tells him, willing her heart to not cease to function as he begins to step away from her.

He nods, eyes filling with inevitable tears as he retreats farther and farther. He doesn't say it back because she knows those words are no better than a goodbye as far as he's concerned and he wasn't ever going to say goodbye to her.

It's not his style really.

He activates the switch.

"I'll see you again…soon. I promise." He tells her instead, shards of hope scattered in the brokenness of his voice that she gathers and holds onto in her mind.

She wants to close her eyes but thinks better of it, leaving them wide open and continues to look at him as he grows distant and hazy as the fumes around her grow thicker.

Her last thought that will remain with her in stasis is of him, of them together again…

You belong with me… she tells herself as the amber solidifies around her.