Emotions are funny things. Sometimes you wonder if there's something wrong with yours.

You can remember the day the feeling began- an emptiness inside of you, as if you had forgotten about something essential or misplaced something of great value. You tried to dismiss it, writing if off as something akin to deja vu, something your imagination created, a product of your mind's reaction to your line of work. It'll be forgotten, in time... you'll adjust.

But you don't, and the emptiness doesn't go away. The hole becomes part of who, what you are; drives you to become better, stronger, because no matter what you do, and how well you do it, it always feels like something is fundamentally wrong. As if some missing piece of the bigger picture is hovering just out of your view, and try as you might you can't seem to grasp it. And gradually, that feeling continues to grow.

In an effort to keep the emptiness from consuming you, you construct walls around your heart, hiding behind the front of being the tough FBI agent, that false exterior providing you some semblance of protection from the world around you, if not from what hides within yourself. You think that maybe you're beginning to cope with it, to heal from whatever mystery has caused you to feel as if you're missing part of yourself.

And then the dreams start.

They're fuzzy, the first few nights, though you're aware that you're never alone in them, there's always someone- the same someone- with you, and he makes you feel safe. And slowly, the clarity increases, and your dreams coalesce into something more.

It bothers you a bit, that you can see him so clearly in your dreams and then be so hard pressed to remember the details of his face when you wake up, to be aware of the fact that you carried on an entire conversation only to forget every word. It bothers you that you, who remembers every detail of every case, can't seem to recall even one tidbit of your own dreams.

That changes, one morning, when you wake to realize that the image of his face is still burned into your retinas, the whisper of his voice echoing in your ears.

Remember me.

Your hand works furiously, pencil flying over the piece of paper as you struggle to transfer the memory onto a more permanent medium before it fades and you forget again. You don't want to forget again. Something about this man feels important, feels as if you should know who he is. Because for those short periods that you're dreaming and he's with you, you feel whole.

The sketch gets folded up and tucked into your jacket pocket, where it goes everywhere that you do, and occasionally you pull it out when no one's looking, when you're having a vulnerable moment and you need something from which to draw strength. It's silly, you think, that a drawing of a man you've only dreamed of can ground you the way it does, and you tell yourself over and over again that you'll only look at it one more time, but there's always another time after that.

Remember me.

You want to remember, so badly. You want to know who he is, what he was to you, what you were to him. Why he calms you, how he soothes the hole in your heart that you had thought was just an integral part of who you are.

But the dreams continue, and you start to wonder if you're losing your grip on your sanity.

When the FBI gets a report of a man that just appeared in the middle of Reiden Lake, one who seems to know more than he has any right to about Fringe division and your cases, your curiosity is piqued. Your first guess is that it's someone from the other side, since Fringe division isn't exactly a secret over there, though you're not sure how anyone could have gotten across the bridge without security clearance. You lose yourself in your thoughts on the matter during the drive to the hospital, trying to line up the possibilities in your mind.

You were not prepared for this.

"Olivia... Thank God you're here."

It's him.

You suddenly find yourself unable to breathe as you take him in- the way his eyes have lit up, the apparent relief etched across his face, the way his gaze travels over you as if he hasn't seen you in years. A thousand questions stampede through your thoughts- how does he know you, why are you so familiar with his body language, why has he been in your dreams- but your overloaded brain can only transmit one of them to your mouth.

"Who are you?"

When he is safely in a holding room back at the FBI offices, you allow yourself to stand on the other side of the glass and look in on him, every second driving home the fact that this is the man that you've been dreaming of for weeks. At least now you have a name to put to the face- Peter. And as much as you're trying not to admit it to yourself, the hole inside of you has begun to heal.

I miiiiiiiiight be planning a second part to this one. Shocking, I know, since all I've been able to get out so far are oneshots.