this is a BIG FAT WARNING RIGHT HERE
THISE STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON FINALE.
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SPOILERS
GO AWAY NOW.
some of said spoilers are speculation, others ARE ACTUAL FACT. IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THAT LEAVE NOW.
If you do however, like some fluffly bits of love and joy swallowed by angst, then please enjoy this tale. (and please PLEASE review)
I OWN NOTHING.
He's never heard three more beautiful or frightening words in his life.
Spoken through seas of raging green pools of eyes, she says the words with a desperatay, a feeling of terror and absolute loss of control. Yet she says them with a trembling confidence, as if she were only sure of one thing in her life, one thing that mattered, it would be allowing Peter to know how she felt about him. And it scares the shit out of him.
If he were to be completely honest with himself, at the very moment those words left her eyes-her lips-then the simplest thing he could tell her was that, he too, was just as terrified for what was to come as she, and he would answer her with his own "I love you, too". But with her big beautiful green eyes so full of terror that he was almost completely positive he was shimmering, he couldn't bring himself to say them back. Because if he were to say "I love you" it felt as if he were telling her goodbye. And he was not about to let her go.
He opted instead, for the kiss of longing, the sweet way she wraps her hand around his neck just a solid reminder that there was no chance he would not come back to her and her being. When he lets go of her, he knows she's waiting for the words, but he knows that she knows he won't say them. How can three words feel like a goodbye? It was perhaps the atmosphere that surrounded them, the literal weight of the world on their shoulders. He asks for only luck and she nods, giving him everything she could give him (which was far more than he could ever ask for) before he takes to the stairs, a climb into a machine that should destroy them all.
And that it did.
It didn't literally destroy them all, but it was close enough. With the future, a doomsday he was able to see, he found that the machine, that he himself was a responsible factor in the destruction of everything. In the list of things he saw, the good, the bad, and the ugly, he found a single common factor. They all stemmed from him. Including her death.
He found that 15 years built him a beautiful life, a beautiful wife, and also a beautiful lie. There was not a moment he found himself in, that hadn't been shadowed over by the dark cloud of his actual father and the looming choice he made to enter the machine. He was not conscious that he was, in fact, part of the past, but he was vaguely aware something did not fit. But he could pretend, that for a moment this was his future, and that it was more beautiful than anything he could have ever imagine in his life.
Olivia was there, of course she was, and she was the perfect angel of everything. With a golden band on her finger and one on his, he thought that he could stay here for a while, in this treasure trove of a perfect dream. It was without fail that he loved her, and it was without fail that she loved him back. Their home, a modest house, had enough space for himself and his family to roam, a family he dreamed of mere moments ago, when he was stuck in the past. Here was the actual incarnate version of a dream that he's had for so long. And he was part of it.
But everything, everything, good must end.
At least it seemed that way, when he heard the news. It was news he wasn't able to bear, news that had him head bowed, tears leaking, face pressed against the fridge in agony as he stared at the drawing of his beautiful life. Death, or the bearer of death it seemed, had finally caught up to his sins and taken the only angel in his life, Olivia. He knew it was somehow his fault that she was gone, that if he had done something else, said something else, she would be alive. It was a direct result, he figured, of his own natural faults, of his unique original sin and thus his suffering was his own. He felt like time had cut him so short, because he hadn't gotten to play house for so long, he didn't get the chance to even whisper the words she whispered to him when he left 15 years into the past, and they were married now. He was a fool, such a fool to let such a dream go by, wasted youth because he couldn't stop his own mistakes. Olivia was gone.
He wasn't sure how future doomsday funerals worked, but he went with it, glassy eyed and tear stained cheeks as he lit the vessel up to watch it float away, the body of his all to short of life wife carried away by strange currents. He felt so cold, oh so cold, and he no longer wanted to see doomsday, no longer wanted to know what it was like to be himself, 15 years older. Life was not beautiful, if she were not in it.
He went out, of course, in a blazing glory, an all out battle with his wife's murder. Bullets and explosions left and right, he cared about nothing but putting one between the mans eyes. And it was, because of that, he was struck down, the way nearly identical to the way Olivia went. He felt a serenity wash over him before darkness came, and he thought, for a moment, he was not returning to a past but in fact going further to the future, to a place where Olivia sat in white, a halo of gold hair stretched for him to see. But it was to his disappointment that he was not going onto the valley of Olivia but in fact returning home, to a time where he was.
The first thing he did when he came back to his body, when the shackles came off was collapse to the ground. Olivia made a move, a lounge to him, but he stumbled upwardly and lounged forward, his body telling him, begging him that forward would not be the way it went, but his mind, his heart, his soul focused on the blonde woman reaching for him. He wraps his arms around her, squeezing her, making sure she was real before tangling fingers through long blonde hair and inhaling, over and over and over again. He's seen the day she dies, he won't wait another minute to tell her what he needs her to hear. It has a whole new meaning for him. Time was too short, too close, too small for him to let it slip away because of his silly fear. These words meant that he wasn't going anywhere.
"I love you, Olivia."