Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe, nor am I associated with Joshua Jackson, Anna Torv or JJ Abrams.

A/N: Although we've only seen one other universe, Walter implied in the beginning of season 2 (and maybe the end of season 1?) that there are infinite universes each based on different choices so this plays off of that idea.

A Future Epilogue

Years after the end of the world, Peter Bishop dropped his young son off at school. He pushed his hands in his pockets as he watched the little boy run off to join his friends, a hint of a smile on his face.

"Which one is yours?" a quiet voice asked from beside him and he turned, only barely startled, to face the pretty blond beside him.

"Ah… Charlie," he answered, gesturing to him. "The little shit over there in the corner. You?"

She laughed merrily, smiling up at him. "None of them, actually. Ella's my niece," she explained.

Peter nodded understandingly, holding out a hand. "I'm Peter."

She paused, sliding her hand into his. "Olivia."

"Would you… like to have breakfast?" he offered. "There's a great little diner around the corner."

Olivia raised an eyebrow, laughing softly. "I don't know if I would call Denny's great but…" She trailed off, a soft smile tugging at her lips. "Stale coffee's on me."

Peter glanced back at Charlie for a moment, letting her hand slip from his. "Lead the way," he smiled.

They sat in a Denny's for two hours, talking and laughing over pancakes and far too much coffee. "So what do you do, Peter?" she asked him at one point. He replied that he was a chemistry professor at MIT. When she asked what MIT was, he lied and said it was a Michigan university. Sometimes he forgot nothing was always the same.

She told him she worked for the FBI. It was all he could do to hide his surprise when she added that she was only a secretary but she liked her job. Sometimes he forgot Olivia wasn't always the tough, hardboiled crimefighter. (Although he would always find it difficult to wrap his head around the universe where she was a candystriper.)

They wandered along the river all day, laughing until they cried when they got caught in an unexpected rainstorm and had to huddle inside a bus stop for twenty minutes, soaked to the bone. She invited him up to her apartment to get dry and he followed her inside with a desperate longing in his eyes. She changed and he stripped down to jeans and a t-shirt and they sat at the kitchen table talking while their clothes tossed around in the dryer.

"So… where's Charlie's mom?" she asked hesitantly, hands wrapped around the warm mug between them.

Peter glanced down into his own cup for a long moment. "That's a loaded question," he murmured finally.

"I'm sorry; it's none of my business…" She scrambled to apologize but he waved a hand.

"No, please. I'd be curious too. Um…" Peter swallowed, trying to decide how to answer her without entirely lying. "His blood mother died giving birth to him," he began, blinking to try and wipe away the memory of a redheaded Olivia in a dingy hotel room halfway to the middle of nowhere, squeezing his hand so hard he thought his fingers would break, sweat dripping down her cheeks with Charlie, Lincoln and Walter vainly trying to save her and the bab-

Olivia reached slowly across the table, her hand sliding over his. "Are you all right?" she asked gently, bringing him back to Earth. This Earth, anyway.

Peter shook his head, somehow nodding at the same time. "Yeah, sorry. Um- And his mom, the woman he would have called Mom, anyway, my- well, we never married but I would have, given the chance… she was killed in- in a- an- explosion. She… worked for the FBI and there was a bomb threat and… she didn't make it." He closed his eyes, wetting his lips slowly, steadily. Not so much an explosion as an apocalypse but close enough…

"My god, I'm so sorry," Olivia breathed, lightly squeezing his hand. "I can't even begin to imagine what that's like."

"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "Poor kid lost his whole world," he murmured, tears stinging his eyes.

"Sounds like you did too," she pointed out gently. "Did you love them both?"

Peter wiped at his eyes with his thumb, nodding. "Yeah. Very much. Um, Charlie was… very much an accident but his mom still meant a lot to me. We weren't the most orthodox couple and there were times we hated each other but..." he paused, laughing slightly under his breath, "But I did love her. And Li-Um- well, like I said, I would have married his mom if we hadn't run out of time and, believe me, I'm not the marrying kind." He glanced up, clearing his throat. "Sorry. I'm usually of the mind that men don't cry," he joked half-heartedly.

"Nonsense," Olivia smiled softly, her hand still resting on his. "Seems like you needed to talk about that."

He nodded reluctantly. "I hate to but- I don't get to unload very often. Can't exactly talk to Charlie," he admitted with a sigh. "Kid's been through hell and I like to keep his life as normal as possible." It wasn't often possible but he did try.

"What about you? You have to take care of yourself too," she prodded, thumb rubbing across the back of his hand. "I've seen Rachel, my sister, do it time and time again. She throws all her energy into taking care of Ella and then she falls apart."

Peter hung his head with a shrug, watching her hand intently. "My life's already been screwed up. Least I can do is try to keep him from becoming me."

Olivia reached up slowly, smoothing hair back behind his ear. "Now I'm sure that's not true," she murmured, fingers sliding down his cheek.

"How do you know? You've known me less than a day," Peter pointed out as he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch.

"I feel like I've known you my whole life. Is that cheesy?" she asked as she leaned in, lips a breath away from his.

"No," he promised in a whisper as he closed the gap, kissing her warm and tender but with a fierce familiarity he just couldn't help.

She moaned quietly against his lips, her tongue darting out to tease and taunt him. This Olivia was happier, didn't seem to quite carry the world on her shoulders, so her kiss was sweet, but it held the same intensity Olivia Dunham had always kissed him with, no matter what universe she was from. She brought her hands up to frame his face and he came undone at the seams, pulling her up only to push her down onto the table. It was too fast, too soon, but she didn't seem to mind, only wrapped her legs around him and nipped at his bottom lip, fingers tangled in his hair.

Peter tugged her black slacks down her thighs, thumbs hooking under a pair of Victoria's Secret with far more lace than Olivia ever would have worn. He pushed the thought away and continued undressing her, one hand sliding up her ribs beneath her blouse. She moaned in his ear and he shuddered. Her underwear might be different but her voice, her touch, her skin was all the same. She fumbled for a moment with his belt before shoving his pants down, tugging him closer with long, lean legs.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up, whispering an "Are you sure?" in her ear to which she responded vigorously and eagerly, before he sank into her with a moan. Her hands slid around the back of his neck for support as he dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. "Oh god, Liv…" he whispered, the familiar nickname slipping out unchecked.

She didn't seem to notice – let alone mind – as he rocked slowly in… and out… his hands drifting aimlessly over her skin. Her head fell back and he kissed down between her breasts, popping open one button at a time. Her chest heaved with shallow breaths and shaky moans as he played her, well aware exactly what she liked. (Silently, he had to amend his earlier thought: how Olivia liked to be touched was quite possible the only thing that really was always the same.)

Her nails bit into his shoulders as she came close and he held her up, urging her on, practically begging her to come. It had been far too long since he felt her tighten, felt her lose control for just a moment, and all because of him. (The last two universes, he hadn't been able to find her.) Olivia gasped his name in his ear as she came, pulling him over with her as she uncoiled in his arms.

He picked Charlie up from school an hour or so later, still happy and loose. Two suitcases sat in the back of the car and the little boy knew what that meant. "I like this one though, Daddy," he complained quietly, curling up beside his father on the bench seat.

Peter smiled, wrapping an arm around him as he drove, the complicated system of dials on the modified dashboard telling him when they were close to a soft spot. "I do too, kiddo. But just think: maybe we'll run into Grandpa in the next one, or Uncle Charlie, or Lincoln or Auntie Astrid…" That seemed to cheer the boy up as he prattled on about his long dead family.

Glancing in the rear view mirror, Peter heard that tiny voice of conscience buried inside him somewhere tell him yet again that it was wrong to leave behind dozens of potentially happy lives, not to mention Olivias. He shut it up with two quick, harsh memories:

A grave with only a cross with her name carved into it in a little backwater town somewhere along a state highway. No dates, no dash, no evidence of a life that wasn't even supposed to be present here anyway. Just a funeral attended by six people, a crying baby and the local sheriff who had felt sorry for them, no money to bury their redheaded sister.

Blond hair clinging to tear-streaked cheeks as she tried uselessly to shut down the machine deep underneath Massive Dynamics. He had never been able to truly conclude whether it had been the collision of the universes or the bullet his blood father had threatened to put between her eyes that had killed her. (He had been barely coherent for most of the ordeal.) Either way it was his fault.

The tiny voice retreated to its dusty corner of his brain and he looked away from the rear view mirror.