A/N: I was in love with Fringe in 2011. By chance, I found this again going through my old forum posts. It's distant enough that I don't really remember the day I wrote it, but I remember the feelings that I had when I typed in that last period. This is my ode to that gut-wrenching scene at the end of season 2, when Olivia realizes that Peter is not from this world.

completed September 2011

On the Fringe of Happiness

He had words and lies and brains and foolishness. The perfect recipe for running away. His lips had crooked smiles and broken promises, genuine words painted over with a sheet of sarcasm. He belonged to no one and no one belonged to him. His home had no roots, all fabricated memories imprinted in a photograph with a boy whose face was not his. A long ago him in a long ago time.

His eyes were cynical and easy to judge, always alert, always seeking a way out. To where? Anywhere but here.

He is attuned to the vibration of broken promises, of false hopes and lies hammered on lies. It isn't that he believes. That's not what bothers him. It's that he wants to believe, that he can't kill the little boy that walked with his father to the bus stop, hands held, mirrored smiles.

And he scares me. With his easy smile that I can't decipher, with his crows' feet eyes that try to cover up.

He's going to run away soon. I see it.

He's going to disappear soon. I know it.

His legs sway back and forth, always on the move. A boy with nothing to lose.

She's scared of everything, that girl. And she'll never admit it. Too much justice, too much intensity and courage. She'll kill herself one of these days. She looks at me with hawk-like eyes, brimming with accusation that I can't turn from.

That hero, that reckless child, that fully-armored fool. She'll never let me in.

Those sharp eyes and measured words. She hides behind the fortress of her suit, the business of her words.

She angers me.

With that hesitant smile, as if her mouth is drilled into a frown, her back too straight, the pains of life turning her to stone.

She scares me.

My rootless toes have wriggled into the earth and I can't move. My eyes can't seem to close, to forget, to look away. Because that's all she knows and understands, because that's what she expects. A world that forgets her, that breaks her, that hurts her and then walks away from her.

And I don't want that. Because she needs me. I know it. And I don't want to lose her.