Her footsteps are soft, quiet, bare-against the cold pavement. In the early morning hours, Olivia stood under a street post on a street she'd never seen before, dripping wet from head to tow and shivering. It was cold, so cold.

She was wet, her shirt clinging to her outline as her breath made foggy imprints in the air. She had jumped in the water with the help of Henry and she's here now. She knows what has happened. She's come over to their universe, no, her universe. She can't remember who she is anymore. But what she does know is that she's no longer in the water, floating. Instead she freezes now as she wanders down the street in the early dawn morning.

She doesn't know what to do, so she stands under a streetlight and stares ahead. She's brought nothing with her, no money, no phone, no gun, no I.D. She starts off down the street again in hopes that maybe she'll wander upon something, someone a kind soul who will help her, and she can start to figure out where she is and who she is. There's a small store at the end of the block with a neon light so she wanders down to it and enters, the long tubular lights looking familiar and yet strange, like she hadn't seen them in so many years.

"Can I help you?" a voice asks and her head whips around faster than she could have ever thought. She comes face to face with a young woman, in her early 30's with glittering eyes. Olivia smiles at her and ducks her head, not sure what to say.

"Do you," she tests, her voice still a bit shaky, "Do you have a phone I could use?"

"Sure," the woman says, "It's in the back by the bathroom."

"Thank you," Olivia nods and heads back towards the back of the small store. She eyes the phone and realizes she hasn't seen one like this since she was five. No. No, that's wrong, she's seen them. They look like everyday phones. Her memory is clearing and yet it remains fogged. She picks up the phone and hears the dial tone before pressing numbers. She thinks they are random, but only for a moment. Then she sees they are her own, her house phone numbers and she's calling herself. It rings once. Twice.

"Hello?" A gruff male voice answers. She recoils visibly, the voice strange and yet familiar. She remains silent for a few more moments.

"Hello?" he asks again, clearly upset. She falters, who was he and what was he doing in her apartment? Was it her apartment?

"Peter?" she asks. She doesn't know what prompted her with that name and yet she says it. It comes out in a whisper, a soft wisp of wind that caresses a fall leaf as it dangles, fragile and balanced on a remaining twig.

"Who is this?" he voice demands.

"It's me," she whispers, her voice glittering with a small smile, "Peter it's me, Olivia."

There is tension over the line followed by a long pause and Olivia doesn't know what's happening. Has he hung up? There is the sound of a woman in the background, and she can make out the sound of her voice and what she says.

"Peter, who is it?" the voice asks. It sounds like her and she hangs up quickly, clicking the phone back on its post. There is this wrench in her chest and she inhales, only to have her breath caught by it and stopped short. Her eyes sharpen and fixate on a point by the phone as she grips her hands on the frame. This was not how it was supposed to be. She inhales and tastes the now sour air of her home before pushing herself away from the booth and striding back into the main store with a confidence she lacked before. The woman behind the counter looks at her.

"My name is Olivia Dunham and I'm with the F.B.I.," she stops there because she doesn't know if this universe has a fringe division. Of course they don't, it's her universe. Her mind fuzzes for a moment but switches back when she looks at the woman again, "I need to borrow your car."

The woman looks uneasy, but Olivia gives her a persistent stare and she hands over the keys wordlessly. Olivia nods a thank you to her and whips out the door, back into the frozen air that bleaches ice into her clothes.

The sun is peeking by the time she hits the highway, the heat blasting as she wrings out her wet hair. At the moment she could care less that it puffs out a bit, looking like a cheap wig, and she drives in and out of traffic like she were actually at work. But no one knows she's returned because know one knew she was missing. For a second her mind un-focuses on the task at hand and she panics, not knowing where the other her lives. But her mind refocuses at the sound of a horn and she knows exactly where she lives and just how quickly she can get there. It's barely six in the morning and the sun peeks above the horizon but she sees fine, everything is clear and in perfect precise and she drives faster than the speed limit should ever allow, but she needs to get there, she needs to set this straight.

Olivia parks down the street from her place, seeing the blinds drawn closed and she turns the engine off. She's still wet but she's warm and she sweeps from the car in a hurried motion, not bothering to take the keys or lock it. The streets are still empty and she bolts a cross it, heading to the other side quickly and quietly. The blood pounds in her ears, filling them up so they block out noise and sounds. She's slightly grateful for it as she doesn't want to hear sounds if she were to interrupt something they were doing. Olivia grits her teeth at that train of thought and how he wouldn't have ever known yet should have known it wasn't her. With stealth she reaches above her door and finds that small silver key and flips it over in her palm. She likes the feeling of being home, and she wishes it were under different circumstances she where here too. She slides the metal into the slot and quietly, without a single sound, the metal turns and lacks a scrape as the lock opens and she can freely turn the doorknob.

Her apartment is strange, different. The furniture has been rearranged, changed and odd, spread out across the room in a way she wouldn't have ever thought of. There are clothes strewn about, her clothes and men's clothes mingling in piles over objects. But there is one thing that looks to be untouched, a single table by the door. She walks over and crouches down, feeling for the key that locks the drawer and finds it, peeling back the tape that holds it in place and sliding it into the lock there. In the silence she opens it, and resting atop a stack of unfavorable birthday cards is her gun, a beautiful silver desert eagle that she kept since her training days. She pulls it out and shuts the drawer, heading to the bedroom for the scene she knows will be there.

Her alter self has curled herself into Peter's arms, her head resting on his clothed chest and eyes completely shut with a drawn smile. It was cliché, a moment that she had seen in many a movie many a time and that didn't bother her then. But the thing that the movies lack, the tale of the happy couple they so missed, was that the woman he belonged with, the woman he thought he slept with more than once is actually standing at the foot of the bed, with a gun, unlocking the safety and checking to see if it's loaded.

"Get up," Olivia says, her voice calm and harsh. It's loud and resonates throughout the room, causing Peter's eyes to open slowly, before looking at her from the foot of the bed. They go wide, his eyes and he watches as she points the gun at him, hands unwavering, her face frozen. He leaps away from the woman in bed and she doesn't move her gun from him, watching as Olivia, the one in bed stirs and yawns before looking at Peter. Seeing his face shocked and panicked she looks towards the edge of the bed and freezes. She's been caught unaware as her alter-self, Peter Bishop's actual Olivia, stands with a gun pointed at them.

"Olivia?" Peter says, looking at her. She wants to laugh at the stupidity of the question but she refrains from doing so, a simple smile at him was all she gave. He looks at her and then at the other Olivia before scrambling away and standing up. He moves and watches as Olivia leaves the gun trained on him. He steps back and raises his hands in front of him, staring her down. His eyes are dark and his jaw set, balancing on the edge of watching her and judging her.

"Olivia put that down," he says slowly, watching as the other Olivia moves to stand and checks the gun drawer, only to find it empty. Her eyes lock with Peters and he sees real wickedness flash across them.

"You know I can't do that Peter," she breathes, her voice coming out in an almost whisper. She looks over at the other her, her alter-self and turns the gun on her, her fingers unwavering and her eyes blank with rage.

"Hello again," Her alter-self says, "I'm glad to see you're okay."

"You knew," she says, "You knew this was going to happen."

"I had no idea," she says though her eyes tell a different story.

"I know you knew," Olivia says, "That's the only way the switch was so easy."

"How could I have known, I've been here this whole time," she says in an awful tone. Her infliction lies with the word here and she smirks looking at Peter. Olivia's eyes flash an emotion and Peter catches it; pain.

"What do you want from us?" she asks in a long breath, "What did the secretary want?"

"Oh it's the secretary now?" She asks, catching Olivia's mind slip. Her mind goes fuzzy for only a moment before she shakes it off. Her alter-self catches this.

"What did he do to you, exactly?" she asks, moving just a bit. Olivia clicks back the safety and cocks the gun, the sound silencing anything that could have made noise in the world.

"I am you," Olivia answers, "Literally you. I know you cheated on Frank with Lincoln," she starts, watching Olivia's eyes grow wide, "And that you never do laundry because you're afraid of the dryer because your friend scared by playing dead in it when you were little. You had a dog, but you drowned him in the bathtub. You can shoot with precision and your trigger finger is a little happy-"

"How?" she hisses, angry.

"Easy," Olivia shrugs, her arms staying still, "I was you."

"I was you," she counters.

"No you weren't," Olivia answers, "You couldn't be me."

"Why not?"

"You couldn't do it," Olivia says, "You tried to be me. You fooled Walter, he's easy to fool. And Astrid, but she's too busy to notice-"

"I fooled him," she says, pointing over to Peter, who stands with a darkening glance. He's been staring at his hands, the skin he's touched on her, the skin he's murmured sweetness into and the skin he's dreamt for, a lie. He lifts his face to hers and stares, hard and cruel at the woman that fooled him.

"I want answers," Olivia says, tactfully avoiding and answer, "What was your mission?"

"It doesn't matter now," she answers cruelly, "It's almost over."

"I want answers," she repeats, curling her fingers around the trigger. "Now."

"I can't tell you that," she answers. Her smile is wicked and cruel, her face twisting like a bleached bone in the sun. She watches as the heat reveals her ugliness and then Olivia wavers, because it was her too, this girl was her too.

It was her chance to jump herself, flying over the bed and wrestling for the weapon she held. She reaches Olivia with ease and slides her fingers around her throat, squeezing as she lands atop her. Peter moves himself, catching the alternate Olivia's waist and hauling her up while grabbing the gun. He pushes her back onto the bed and presses the gun to her temple.

There is fear in her eyes, on her face. Peter is angry, a misplaced rage for himself that he directs at her. He watches her with thin eyes as she looks into his. She looks for the kindness she once enjoyed to see. Olivia stands and wipes her face, watching as the even unfolds on her sheets. Olivia looks at Peter and sees red, all red. She lunges for him and hears the shot that echoes throughout the world's silence, a single shot that resonates and permeates the air.

And Olivia is broken now, seeing her alter-self bleeding out on her sheets. Her eyes mirror her own and she stares at Olivia with an emotion she hasn't seen in herself in a long time, regret. She coughs and sputters blood through her teeth as she heaves in a breath to speak.

"We've both suffered," she says her eyes full of regret and kindness, "Our worlds were never meant to fight. We're pawns," she splutters out blood and it lands over Olivia's red cheeks and she tries to save her alter-self, pressuring the wound. "He never cared about me," she says, "The Secretary. Newton was right. Don't hate me, please. I was following orders. I was being a good solider."

Her eyes go lifeless and body limps. Olivia feels a sob raked through her body. She was a better version of herself. She turns to Peter who kneels next to her and she hits him. Once. Twice. Three times. She pounds her fists into his chest and yells and screams meaningless and strange things. He himself is numbing and cold. He lays her in his chest, clinging her to him as she grows angry and pounds away into his skin.

He closes his eyes and sees a vision of blackness, with a thousand eyes staring at him. He feels the weight of them all. The whole time. Everything was a lie. The whole time. He fell for it all. And now he lays still with his Olivia, the real one as she pounds into his chest with her fists and yells and screams muffly into his clothing. And he holds her in silence, feeling the warmth of the blood seeping into his back as her bed becomes soaked, soaked with the fake existence he trusted. Nothing was real. None of it should have mattered. And for him, right now, he's filled to the top with fear. Two universes and one Olivia.

And he prays to God he's got the right one wrapped in his arms.


reviews?