Real is just a matter of perception…
A very wise figment of her imagination had told her that.
One that wore a pea coat and the face of a man she loved.
If she closes her eyes, she can still feel the way he had leaned in, pulling her lips in an unassuming kiss, his breath warm against her skin, making her toes tingle and her heart swell with happiness.
If that was a hallucination, she had one hell of an imagination.
I am here. And I'm a part of you that you have to hold onto. You can't forget who you are Olivia. You can't forget where you're from. You can't forget this.
And she hasn't… she hasn't forgotten the apparition she once had conjured when her own memories were deceiving her, a weak imitation of the real thing that she had willed into sight and sound and… even sensation that had forced her to stop believing her own lies, kept her from forgetting, kept her from dying.
A memory within a memory, from a timeline that no longer was… She had wondered for a long time, if all she had was the memories of that life that had been lost, or if she had actually experienced what she could remember.
She had never solved that puzzle…coming to the realization that it didn't matter.
It was real to her, and it was all she cared about.
Until years later, she finds herself seeing him again.
The man who had visited her dreams, the phantom who had walked by her side and urged her to remember.
He now comes to her… in the same blue pea coat, vintage jeans, stubble… a rounder haircut, younger by a few years, the same haunting voice, and the same smile on his face.
It happens just like before. At first there are flashes, blink and you miss it moments when she sees him in the crowds and before she can realize it, he's gone.
One day he stands there in the kitchen…. next to her definitely real flesh and blood husband and looks at her with that same expression on his face.
"What's wrong Olivia?" Peter asks looking at her with concern when he takes in her frozen expression.
Him… he walks over to her, placing a lingering kiss on her cheek, before he disappears.
"What's wrong?" He asks her again.
"I thought I saw something." She says absently, still too shocked.
After that he never goes away.
Like a shadow he doesn't leave her side, walks next to her, matching every step with his. He doesn't talk, simply watches.
In the nights, she feels his weight press against hers, invisible arms encircling her in their warmth.
In her dreams, he holds her, bathed in blue incandescent light… she feels like she's floating, no solid surface supporting her except for his strong, reassuring arms, tracing the contours of her body with feather light fingers as he makes slow and gentle love to her.
You can't forget this…he whispers in her ears.
She wakes up every time after, her eyes finding nothing but bleak darkness and the sight of Peter, a few feet away in his mattress, a single tear makes its way down her cheek.
She thinks she's losing her mind…
"Why are you here?" She finally asks after two days, when she catches his reflection in the mirror, from behind her as she runs a comb through her wet hair.
She's tired of this… tired of being watched over by an apparition of a man who was already here, real and alive and around her all the time.
She can't afford to go crazy, not right now. Too much was at stake.
"To help you remember." He finally speaks.
"I don't need you to help me remember." She tells him futilely. "I don't need you for anything. I have Peter…I already have him." She says forcefully, her voice hollow, unconvincing even to herself, let alone a hallucination of him.
"If you did, you wouldn't need me." He says simply.
"Go away." She tells him angrily. "Go away… I don't need you. I don't want you anymore. Don't you understand?"
"Of course you want me." He tells her with a patient smile. "If you didn't, I wouldn't exist."
"You're not who I want…" She stumbles backwards on her feet as she moves away, trying to put some distance between herself and her phantasm. "You're not the one I want."
"You do." He moves forward with her, bringing his hand to reach out to her cheek, as she flinches away. "You want this. You want me. I am the one you want. I am the one who loves you Olivia."
"Peter…" She lets him touch her this time, feeling the sensation of a familiar calloused palm tracing her cheek gently, as she recognizes the truth in his eyes.
"I am the one who's always loved you."
Peter… her charming, brilliant, perfect Peter with his boyish grin and his beautiful, mischievous eyes, who always made her heart beat go just a little bit faster just by the way he looked at her.
"I've missed you so much…" She whispers, closing her eyes, leaning into his touch.
"I've missed you too."
"Then why did you leave me?"
"I am not the one who left you. I will never leave you."
"You're not real." She shakes her head, shutting her eyes tight as a tear escapes her lid, opening them again to find Peter standing there, looking at her with a grave expression.
"Who's not real?" His expression looks quizzical and grave. "What's wrong?"
She looks around confused.
He was gone again….
"I keep seeing him Peter." She clutches at his shirt anxiously, panic rife on her face. "I keep seeing him and I don't know why. I don't know why…What's happening to me?"
"Olivia… calm down." He takes her hands in his, pulling her into a hug. "Calm down." He whispers again gently this time, as she burrows into his embrace.
"Who do you keep seeing?" He asks, after a few seconds have passed, his hand gently raking through her hair. "What's the matter?"
"I…" She closes her eyes, letting herself be enveloped in the warmth. "I don't remember his face…" She lies.
"It's okay… whatever it is… it'll be fine." He says soothingly.
"You know I am right here? You know that don't you." He asks her walking backwards as he faces her, hands in his coat pockets, a definite smirk , as he glances behind him to where Peter and Etta were walking, a few feet ahead of her.
"That's me right there…" He points with his finger. "You don't have to invent me in your head when I am right in front of you."
"I didn't ask you to be here." She whispers under her breath, as she trudges on.
"Then why am I here?" He quips. "Why are you seeing me then?"
"I don't know. Maybe all this has finally gotten to me and I am starting to go clinically insane." She mutters.
She has stopped fighting his constant presence by now, the way he's everywhere she turns. Most times he's silent, like a shadow. But she feels him, feels him smile at her, or brush her fingers with his, or wrap her in his embrace.
And despite how concerned she should be, it makes her feel that much better.
The dreams continue to haunt her in the night…
"Maybe." He shrugs, walking alongside her now. "But we both know that's not true. I am not a symptom and you are not crazy. If you were brave enough to go to Walter with this, he'd probably tell you that the Cortexiphan gave you heightened powers of perception and you're simply channeling your latent abilities to be able to visualize me."
Now she's annoyed. Its stands to reason that even an imaginary Peter Bishop can be just as obnoxious when he sets his mind to it.
"You're in my head and you're trying to psychoanalyze me?" She asks incredulously.
"Do you see anybody else here who has the time or the inclination?" He asks with a shrug and then looks at her contemplatively. "Olivia you have to listen to me."
"Listen to you about what?" She sighs tiredly. "What do you want from me anyway?"
"It's not about what I want sweetheart. It's about what you want and what you're going to do about that."
"I want you to leave me alone. That's what I want." She says forcefully.
"You don't want me to leave." He says arrogantly. "If you did you have asked Walter to help you by now. You would have found a way to get rid of me."
"Walter has a lot of things on his mind right now." She's defensive for no reason.
"Is that what you're going with?" He cocks an eyebrow at her, far from convinced. "Then how come you lied to me that day….when I asked you what was wrong. You could have told me, but you didn't. It's because you don't want to let go of me Olivia. Don't you see what's happening? You can't let go of me."
"Why is that exactly?" She crouches down to tie her open shoelaces, glad for the opportunity to put some more distance between herself and the team, so that she didn't have to explain why she was outright talking to herself now.
"Because…" He shrugs mirroring her position. "Because I was once your promise for everything better. It's why you're seeing me again...after all these years. Because you know that if you held on to me, you'd make it, make it out of a place you didn't belong in. And because…" He pauses. "I am not broken like that man there."
She inhales sharply, meeting his gaze which is looking at Peter right now, and he smiles at her knowingly. "It's the truth isn't it? I am not the one who let you down, you caused you pain, who left you alone."
"That's not what happened…"
"It doesn't matter what happened or how it happened. That's how you feel deep down isn't it?" He cuts her off. "You keep seeing me because you want to go back to when everything was better… because you were always sure of me then, sure of my love for you. But you're afraid now."
"Afraid of what?" She asks, unable to help herself.
"Of what you've always been afraid of. You're afraid of being vulnerable. You're afraid that you can't fix this… that this is just who you are, so you won't even try. You'd rather talk to someone who lives solely in your head than deal with what's happened." He's looking at her with an intense gaze now, bringing his hands to cup her face gently.
"I am the boy you fell in love with Olivia…" His thumb traces her lip, as his gaze strays to his side again. "That's the man you married."
"You're the same person." She says, her voice disbelieving even to herself.
He shakes his head. "I am the one you've always been sure of, the one who you knew with all your heart belonged with you and more than anything in the world I think you're afraid that he doesn't … that he doesn't love you back the way I do."
"Maybe he doesn't " She pulls away. "But I still have you don't I?" A sad smile rests on her lips, as she gets up noticing that Etta and Peter were waiting for her at a little distance, looking at her with a questioning expression
"I am here as long as you want me to be." He smiles and places the softest kiss on her lips.
"Just don't leave me again…please." She pleads.
"I will never leave you. You have to hold on to me… Olivia. I am the part of you that you have to hold on to."
She smiles, before she moves on to join the two of them. She stops for the briefest second as she turns back to see him there, standing, hands in his coat pocket…
….like nothing had ever changed.