After Charlie was gone, they gave her a partner.
He's Special Agent Lincoln Lee. He dealt with a few strange cases before, but nothing like this. To say he was excited to work with them would be an understatement.
He's smart, funny, witty, eager, and good at his job. He quickly filled the space where Charlie's jokes and laugh used to be. Olivia thinks they would have gotten on very well, the two of them.
She grew to very much like Lincoln Lee. His approach to the job was completely different to her sullen, serious one, but she found it refreshing, not annoying like she feared she would. He made her smile on days when smiles had previously been long forgotten things. And he made her feel more normal than she had felt in a very long time.
With Lincoln Lee, she didn't feel lonely anymore.
No, she didn't feel lonely.
But she did feel like something wasn't right.
"Agent Dunham, Agent Lee, I know where the monster that killed Agent Francis came from."
She was excited to hear these words come from Walter's mouth. She'd been waiting to hear them for weeks. She wouldn't deny that she was eager to go and enact revenge on the people that took Charlie from her.
His next words, though, she wasn't exactly thrilled to hear.
Lincoln looked at him like he was crazy.
"You think that these things are shape-shifting soldiers from a different universe?" he asked incredulously.
"Well, yes," Walter stammered. "Belly and I hypothesized that there are an infinite number of alternate realities, each unique, each containing slightly different versions of ourselves that have changed based on the choices we make. Thus, the concept of déjà vu. We believe that we've experienced something before in our lives, because in fact, in another universe, we have."
"An infinite number of universes?" Lincoln asked again. "Did you just say that there is an infinite number of universes out there?"
"That was just a hypothesis between Belly and me," Walter corrected. "We've only confirmed the existence of one."
"Wait, let me get this straight. You confirmed the existence of another universe?"
Walter nodded. "Yes."
"How?"
"I've been there, Agent Lee," Walter said straightforwardly.
Lincoln laughed suddenly, in disbelief. "You've been to another universe. Fantastic." He ran a hand over his face. "Jesus Christ."
When Walter walked away, promising to "soon explain everything in simpler terms that will make perfect, logical sense to all", Lincoln looked at her with skeptical eyes.
"Liv, I've seen some crazy things since I began working here, and I think that I've been pretty open-minded and accepting of all this weird...whatever you call science. But another universe?" He shook his head.
She nodded. She didn't know what to say.
"What you think?"
She shrugs. "I think that we should let Walter explain everything first. How he discovered this place, how he got there. Why he wanted to go there in the first place. I think we should hold off our judgment until then, though. If there's one thing I've learned about Walter after all this time, it's that he usually pulls through when you least expect him to."
She didn't tell him that to her, for some reason, Walter's crazy theory (And it was crazy. It was insane. She shouldn't have believed him.) didn't sound that implausible.
Dr. Walter Bishop and his lovely wife, Elizabeth, had a daughter. A beautiful little girl.
Her name was Lucy Elaine Bishop. She was born on April 8th, 1976. She weighed seven pounds and five ounces, and had her father's nose and her mother's eyes.
Her favorite color was pink. She had a teddy bear name Mr. Fluff that she took with her everywhere. She had the most beautiful smile Walter had ever seen, that revealed two adorable dimples. She was a happy child, so happy. She radiated joy wherever she went, and could light up a room with her mere presence.
At age nine months, she took her first steps. At age two, she declared she wanted to be a ballerina. By her third birthday, though, she had changed her mind. She wanted to be a scientist, just like her Daddy. By age four, she taught herself to read. "She was gifted," Walter declared with a nostalgic smile that broke Olivia's heart. "So very gifted." She lost her first tooth two weeks after her fifth birthday. In August of that same year, she began kindergarten, running to catch the yellow school bus every day with a bright pink backpack slung over her shoulders that was almost as big as she was. She was the smartest kid in her class. Her best friend's name was Emily. When school ended, she couldn't wait to go to first grade.
At age six, she became very sick.
She was always tired, constantly running a fever above 101. She was nauseated all of the time. On the bad days, she was lucky to be able to keep down dry toast and ginger ale. She battled bouts of diarrhea and dizziness. And all of the joy that Lucy exuded went clear out of her.
The doctors said that her kidneys were failing. They didn't know how. They didn't know why. They did so many tests, tried too many treatments for Dr. Bishop to count, but they always came up empty-handed. Lucy didn't get better. Lucy got worse.
Lucy was dying.
It was hell on earth for Walter. Not only was his only child, his pride and joy, his little baby girl dying, but he was a scientist. And he couldn't save his own daughter's life, no matter how he tried. And he did try. For months, he more or less lived in his basement lab at Harvard, working day and night trying to find a cure for the disease that consumed his daughter.
He couldn't.
"Belly and I," Walter told them, "had recently invented something that allowed us to look into the other world. We could see them, unbeknownst to them, like we were peering through a window. We had technology that would enable to cross into their universe, but we never intended on using it. It was far too dangerous."
"Dangerous how?" Olivia asked.
"Our window only temporarily stretched the fabric between the universes. It made it thin enough for us to see through, but then went back to normal, like nothing had happened. The fabric between the universes, it's very elastic. But to be able to travel between worlds, you have to tear the fabric. You have to create a permanent hole between universes, a crack that will never be erased. And just like a piece of glass, that crack would lead to more cracks, until the glass eventually broke."
They never intended on using it, Dr. William Bell and Dr. Walter Bishop.
But as they observed the other world, they saw the advanced technology that they possessed. Technology that this world didn't have. Innovations in everything from science to education to sports to marketing to medicine…
And maybe, even though this Walter couldn't find a cure for his daughter, maybe his alternate could, maybe he was, finding a cure for his.
So he crossed.
"You can't imagine what it's like to lose a child," Walter whispered solemnly.
He found the other Dr. Walter Bishop. He was a scientist working out of Harvard, just like him. But this Dr. Walter Bishop wasn't working trying to cure his daughter.
This Dr. Walter Bishop didn't have a daughter. His wife, Elizabeth, couldn't have children.
But, after Walter's pleading, and after the scientist got over the initial shock of finding out that there was another universe out there, an alternate reality, he agreed to help Walter.
The two worked tirelessly to find a way to make Lucy better. And, after two and a half weeks of experimenting day in and day out, they did. They found a cure.
Except, when Walter traveled back to this universe, he discovered that he was two days too late.
Lucy was gone.
Walter took a deep, shaky breath.
Olivia had never seen the old man so sad before.
"Belly gave me hell," he continued, with a forced smile, "when he discovered I'd gone to the other side. He told me that I'd started a war, a great storm, that would ultimately lead to the destruction of one or both universes. And not too long after that, our partnership ended."
She couldn't, in the days that followed, shake the feeling that she'd heard this story before, multiple times. But the characters were slightly off and the ending different, but just as sad.
"…slightly different versions of ourselves…"
But she didn't. She couldn't have. And she didn't.
It was, however, the strongest feeling of déjà vu she'd ever experienced.
