Olivia woke with the sun, with Peter's hand resting on her hip and his breath tickling the nape of her neck. She heard a rustle down the hall, small bare feet padding across plush carpet, and smiled at the rightness of it all.
Similar moments had occurred over past three years, but today felt different and somehow, strange. She had a feeling of anxiousness, of anticipation.
Her hand joined her husband's on her hip, and she twined their fingers together. She felt him stir behind her.
"Etta is gonna come in here, and jump all over you, because you got her all excited about going to the park today," she whispered over her shoulder.
"Um-hmmm," came the drowsy reply.
"Make sure you put on your surprised face, she loves that," she teased.
"Um-hmmm." Peter yawned.
Peter did manage to look surprised when three year old Etta burst into their room and took a flying leap into her father's arms.
"Oh, Princess Henrietta!" Peter said, as he squirmed to make room for her between them, "...what is today?"
"Day-off!" She replied, in the sing-song tone she used when was very happy.
"And what do we do on days off?"
"Sleep-in," she sang back.
"Do you consider six a.m. to be sleeping in?"
Etta screwed up her little heart shaped face adorably as she considered her words.
"We have to go to the park," she said, enunciating carefully.
"The park doesn't open until nine, baby girl," Olivia said, "Let's sleep for another hour, then have pancakes for breakfast."
Etta cheered.
The book she was reading seemed familiar, as if she'd read it before. But she never forgot anything she read, ever. Olivia could still picture the words on the pages of books she had read when she was a child.
The whole day had been a series of déjà vu, a lingering sense that this happened before. At breakfast she had known what Peter would say before he said it. She had known entire paragraphs of his playful banter with Etta, while she made pancakes (chocolate chip-banana, her favorite).
She found herself repeating things she remembered saying, but had never said. And far from being alarmed, she felt reassured and confident, that this was the way it was supposed to be.
Peter lay on the grass with his head pillowed on the small of her back, shielding his eyes against the sun, watching Etta play with dandelions. Normally a bundle of kinetic energy, she had suddenly stopped and crouched, studying the seeds of a particular flower as if they contained the whole of human knowledge. She had spent the last five minutes studying that particular dandelion.
"You know? I think could spend the rest of my life, right here," Peter said.
Olivia smiled at him, appreciating, not for the first time, that the Peter of today was a very different, and far better man than the Peter she had first met.
"We'll, we should get her home, and into a bath. You know hard that is."
Olivia closed her book. She knew what the next page would say, anyway.
Peter sat up. "I nominate you for that one."
Out in the field, Etta pursed her lips and blew, scattering fluffy seeds everywhere.
Peter stood and called her, "Etta!"
Etta stood and ran towards him, her long hair blowing in the wind.
Olivia found she was holding her breath in anticipation, of what she wasn't certain. But then the seals were broken on her memories, all of them.
Watching Walter and Michael approach the shimmering blue tunnel, hand in hand.
Smashing Windmark, may he be forever damned, between two cars.
Meeting her alternate and Lincoln again, after so many years.
Peter collapsing into her arms, after removing the Observer tech implant from his neck.
Peter, in Etta's apartment, anticipating what she was going to say.
Etta dying in a filthy warehouse, her hand clenched around an antimatter baton.
Being expelled from the amber in 2036, into Peter's arms, and meeting suddenly twenty four year old Etta.
Ambering herself in New York to prevent her capture.
Etta disappearing from the park, this very instant, in a different turn of the wheel.
Olivia exhaled, letting her tension go. When she breathed in, another wave of memories nestled deep inside, looking for empty spaces they could fill.
Olivia breathed, Etta reached Peter's arms and was lifted high. No Observers appeared from nowhere, no buildings were annihilated by antimatter bombs. Olivia felt her heart flutter in her chest, and a wide smile appeared on her face.
Etta spread her arms wide, mimicking the airplane Peter was providing sound effects for.
Sorting the day's mail, Peter smiled at the commotion upstairs, and stopped at an odd letter. The letter was addressed to him, in Walter's handwriting. On the back was an address, in a strange script.
He opened it, to reveal a drawing of a tulip. Very strange.
Strange enough to make Peter dig out his cell phone and call Walter. When his father didn't answer, Peter ran upstairs and swapped his shorts for a pair of jeans, then stuck his head into the disaster area that the upstairs bathroom became whenever they dared bathe Etta.
"Liv, Walter isn't picking up his phone. I'm going to go to the lab, to see if he's there."
Olivia, soaking wet, lips pursed with the frustration of convincing their bundle of joy to wash behind her ears, nodded. Then did a double take.
"Peter!" She called, but he was already down the hall.
Peter pushed through the doors into the lab, as he had countless times before. But this time it felt different somehow.
"Walter? Are you here?" He called, but only the cow greeted him. Gene mooed and stomped her feet.
Peter walked through the lab, making a thorough inspection of the premises, finding nothing unusual. When he approached the bovine, she mooed and stamped her foot again.
"Oh, you haven't been milked today," he noted, "I'll take care of that in a minute."
On his workbench, he found a VHS video tape, labeled "For Peter Bishop Only", but that was the only thing out of place. He left the tape there, and approached Gene's stalled, grabbing a bucket and stool.
That was how Olivia found him, twenty minutes later. She entered the lab, walked up behind him as he milked and ruffled his hair.
"Astrid is watching Etta. Are you cheating on me?"
Peter looked her up and down and gave a knowing nod.
"You know, don't you?" He asked, "Where Walter is? What happened to him?"
Olivia looked startled, then nodded.
"Yeah. This is the way things have to be. Walter...will be all right. What about you?"
Peter hesitated, then handed her the letter from Walter. She opened it, gazed at the drawing for a moment, before replacing it in the envelope. Olivia wrapped her arms around him from behind and laid her head on his shoulder.
"What do you remember?" She asked, "Anything?"
Peter smiled.
"I remember a field of tulips. You made it snow."