Olivia's not lying. Not this time.
Disclaimer: Do I own Fringe? Yeah right. Do I wish I did? Probably not. I'd destroy it with my fangirl-ness.
You know when you suddenly look at someone, someone that you have known for years and trusted and maybe even loved, and you don't recognize them any longer? When they have become such a separate person, a phantom in your memories, that you can no longer see what you saw in them the first place? When you start to wonder why you are associating with them? When you begin to feel a strange sense of loss, though they are sitting right next to you? When you just have to get away, because you cannot look them in the eyes anymore? You're haunted by who they were and who you thought they were, and you can never go back to that.
It's like a poison, slowly working its way through your veins. You start to feel the side-effects, but you brush them away with, "It's fine". You start to get nauseous and feel your stomach contract whenever you are near them. You start to do anything that will get you out of that toxic situation.
She said that he belonged with her. She recalled drinks after work. She remembered they would sit a little too close, side-by-side, going over case files. She envisioned a kiss there, a hug here, and the occasional hand-holding whenever someone else was not looking. She dreamed of their future.
So now why could she not look him in the eye without feeling like someone was injecting ice into her bloodstream? It was not just his betrayal – the ultimate treachery of him being unable to distinguish between her and her alter-self, despite glaring differences in personalities and appearances – that wore heavily on her heart, it was his lack of… of… she was not sure what he lacked. But he sure as hell was not sorry for what he did.
And she is sure as hell not sorry for what she said. It was easy – far too easy – to let those six words fall from her lips. They were true, through and through. "I don't want to be with you" was perhaps the most honest thing she had said in the past two months.
She had lied before, obviously. She had done it countless times to that son-of-a-bitch stepfather who tortured her family. She had done it a few times at Northwestern. She would deny doing it at the Academy. She did it on a regular basis in her job. She had done it to get him to come with her back to Boston in the first place. She did it selfishly, to keep him with her when she thought he might run. She had lived a lie for two months after she had tried to correct her previous one.
So she was done lying. She was done with the tightness in her chest and the weariness on her mind and the constant act of pretending. It was finally time to tell the truth – the complete and total truth – and she knew exactly what she was going to say.
No. She did not belong with him.