That weekend, she'd eradicated every trace, every germy epithelial that other her left.

She'd wiped down her apartment, scrubbed it clean until satisfaction bled her knuckles raw. Nothing inanimate could perturb her anymore because last night, she'd slept on new sheets.

And she bought crisp suits and purchased fresh towels.

Even her toothbrush rose questions, so she has a new one of those too.

Now everything around her felt like pure cotton and smelled of new promise.

Except his shirt.

It still smelled of him.

It's hiding in her bureau, his grey M.I.T softness, stuck in the drawer to the left where she stores her photos and buries her knickknacks. If nothing else, her over there reminiscence owes his essence her freedom so in gratitude, she's keeping it.

To her reasoning, that sounds most logical, factual, because sooner or later, the persistent thump in her diaphragm has to stop.

Because it always does.

Because she thrives on impassivity.

At the end of her stepfather's knuckles, she'd thickened her skin. That bastard taught her, through blue and purple bruises, the emotional prime of insusceptibility.

And she was trying, dammit, she was trying to restructure what she'd learned.

Distance away from Peter should have, in a perfect world, urged her toward that steel and brimstone defense; her decades old impregnable fortress.

Instead, it's built a castle of sand; a fragile stronghold ready to crumble with any swift movement, and it wavered, faltered dangerously, when the book had come.

And it had enervated her.

Because you'd asked, the note inside said and he'd signed it, black letters that kicked at that granulated rock. She'd checked the order date, the packing slip and though she already knew, the novel wasn't meant for her.

At first she only eyes the hardback, feels the crushing weight of it under her stare and in the palm of her hands. Then she wonders in what quiet hour, what bedroom moment that hers curiosity drew this result.

Her fingers ache and head throbs in an immersion of discord that taps on her skull. She's been reminded harshly, unforgiving of the late night whispers robbed to her ears and she wants to throw the tome at that other her's figment, hit and kill with the title's contempt.

Instead, she closes her eyes and feels the numb of carcinogen.

That her infuriates every time he undoes and it's an arsenic; a trioxide that's poisoned her veins.

And it's toxic to her mental complex.

So fuck them and their bane and her re-composition because her vitriol's more potent then venom.

She's driven, with granite determination to comprehend herself again.

It's her blood-lust for her once self, unassailable and steadfast, that's the antidote to their poison.

So she's giving the damn book back, she decides, as she tucks it in her jacket.

It's not for her, and he's not hers and she won't be this unnerved by an unwelcome never was.

She can't allow herself exposure.


They entrance her, the couple talking softly on the couch.

She'd caught sight of them when Broyles left, watched as the woman put her hand over the man's. Their faces are worn, creased, marked by age, but beautified with laughter.

They've shared time and it's clear to see.

Here on that sofa are two lives entwined, years spent dancing, in a selfless waltz of for better or worse till death do us part. Children and pets maybe filled those years, different schools, jobs and cities, too. Written in wrinkles, are decades of moments, days shared together in a lifetime of love.

When her mouth curves, Olivia's heart jerks, descends a tiny bit down her chest's depressed concave.

These two sit close, lean close, whisper and laugh close. They're sharing themselves completely, and Olivia knows, understands, how divided they'll be when the other is gone.

They'll hold on to this moment, these minutes, because that separation will leave them disheartened and scattered until the next nine allowable visiting hours.

It's not near enough time.

Behind her, she feels Peter approaching, a swift discompose of her protons that drives her neurons into mutiny.

She was resolute when she arrived here, vivified by her self-promised toughness. Broyles led her through the motions, introduced her to their case, and she ignored all the while, the singeing of her hipbone from the book in her side-pocket.

It was an uprising, a heated revolt against her body because everything he touches only wants him.

And fuck her bulletproof vest for its negating, because her on-edge atoms tell her that's true.

And insurmountability, that can fuck itself too now, because since she's been here, with him crowding her airspace, all it seems to be giving her is a head-numbing ache.

"That's sweet." he says, when he stands besides her and she looks again at the old couple, at the woman and her beaming, glowing smile.

She has her ever-after, that woman, because some 8-year old girls get back thier glass slipper and find their prince charming.

When you get the fairytale, once upon a time has a happy little ending.

"Yeah it is." She agrees, and her words fall flat to her ears.

If you get the nightmare, it just doesn't work the same way.

There's no room for white carriages on a path to dark places, and she was driving sightless on a twisting black road.

So fuck happy endings too.

Searing now, is the heat in her pocket and when she pulls out the book, it doesn't cool in the air.

"I ah, I don't think this was for me." She tells him, suddenly feeling the weight of his presence. "I figured it was probably for her." she finishes, after explaining of the package slip and the order date.

"Look, Olivia-"

"It's okay." she assures, cutting him off.

She feels the slow approaching of a gigantic white elephant and it's quaking the floor beneath her feet.

This conversation requires too much attention, too many careful words, and this wasn't the time or place for his explanation and her apprehension of it.

Standing right here is awkward enough.

They're separated by inches, but she feels estranged somehow, distanced by ways he may have changed in eight weeks past.

Or maybe he hasn't.

If she can't predict herself anymore, maybe he can't gage who she's become.

It isn't her nescience she feels but every breath of his caution.


A week ago, when she left the hospital, all she wanted was to fit back in. To her world, her job and her own thick skin, she wanted to feel the familiarity of the belonging to her life.

It was a pipe-dream hinged at the base of her return.

She was good at puzzles and hints, finding connections where there are only empty clues, and she still bore that talent, felt its pretension.

It's the hairline fissures, the tiny personal breaks cracking through her investigatory skill, that are tearing her up.

It's difficult, to say the least, working with him again. She doesn't want to need his beautiful mind, instincts or patience for Walter, but their cases rely on all three.

So in the name of answers not found, she's dealing with her on-the-edge atoms. If the fucking white elephant would stop trailing her heels, pretending she was fine could be cake. It stops in, hovers, crowds every room Peter's sucked the air from already.

And right now, she wants to pull out her gun and shoot dead the hardly manageable tension.

They're in the lab's office, and he's just pulled the book, that goddamn fucking gift for her, from his bag.

Olivia's skin tightens when a stabbing in her gut twists, slices into her a side a little bit deeper.

Oh god, they're going to talk about this now, with Walter and Astrid outside and the weight of unsolved mystery in here, they're about to have this dreaded conversation.

She was tempted to run out the open door.

Her fingers twitch because he senses her panic and he throws a hand in the air, assuring friendly fire.

"I just want to try and explain the book." he says, carefully, methodically and she swallows.

"You don't have too." She responds quickly, and she crosses her arms, braces herself against her own discomfort.

She wants him to take this leave and bow out.

Her Advil's already reached its daily quota.

God, she hates feeling so demoralized.

"She asked me what my favorite book was." he says, and when he nears her, she clenches her teeth, gnashes her molars against her unwelcome vision and his disrupting aura.

This is so heavy a moment, it's weighted her eyes to the floor.

"I understand that she was probably just trying to gather information about me but...I also know that I'm not the easiest guy to get to know."

She feels his stare, grey blue that storms her capillaries, capsizes her hemocytes to crash against stones.

And she's swimming from the wreckage, submerged in a sad manifestation that's backstroking her blood.

From their first meeting, she knew personal detachment comes easy to him, thanks to a well armored infantry that keeps others at arm's length.

For years he's been charging at hers, and in eight weeks, that she's immobilized his.

Along with her life, she sucked up his words, and she stole his stories and cleaned out his mind.

She could have learned him in many varied ways.

In ways Olivia still doesn't to this day.

"...which is actually something I think we have in common." he says, after he's spoken of those invisible defenses.

Slowly, she faces her grey tumult and her pulse quickens to a tachycardic rate.

His eyes have sped up her backstroke and it's too powerful, too asphyxiating so she looks back at nothing.

"The book wasn't meant for her." he tells her, with liquid words. "It was meant for the Olivia Dunham I've spent the last couple of years of my life with."

And that Olivia's nerves were at war, raging a civil conflict between injustice and anger and she puts her hand to her mouth, holding back the screaming-kicking chord of resentment.

None of this was fair, not his mislead initiatives or her spiraling discomfort.

"..I wanted you to read it." he says, setting the book on her desk. "You're the person I wanted to share it with."

It's injustice, a bittersweet grievance that's won the fight and Olivia swallows feeling divergent, intensely discomposed.

At this moment, she wants to hide within herself.

This is all uncustomary, his emotional exposure and her rapacious upheaval, and suddenly she feels divided.

Between who she was and how she is, what they were and how they are, she's been torn, miserably split between both longing and reality.

How it is, isn't how it should be because she can't even read the book's forward.

It's burning a hole through her desk instead, turning wood to ash while it singes her soul.

And she was painfully aware of the burn.

"You know I feel like Rip Van Winkle." she tells him, after gathering her thoughts. "Everything is different. Even you opening up to me is different."

Disparity softens her voice, drops her heart to the pit of her stomach and when his eyes fall, his empathy tempts to crossover.

But her chest, head, skin and bones, ache with a power that overwhelms her senses.

"This book is just a reminder of all the things that I missed." she admits. "Conversations we didn't have-"

Astrid interrupts, before Olivia can continue, and when the junior agent insists they see Walter, Olivia's relieved.

It's a struggle anymore, holding to herself.

Because dammit, he'd belonged to her once, in that world when she pulled him back with her conviction and kiss, he'd been purely, solely hers.

And it'd made her break her promise when her thoughts spilled out as words.

She can't hold to herself, because every part of her was still holding on to everything about him.

And she doesn't want to admit that she can't let go.

Because no matter how small now, she still had love for that old, beat-up car.


In her dream, Peter never came back.

Instead he'd stayed to live in their world, to experience things new and strange because he still bore the weight of his oldest scar, a kidnapped child who wanted, needed, to get home and belong.

He'd said he'd had no future, over there in her world, in that place not meant for him, but she'd begged with him, pleaded that he take her hand and follow her back. Even in sleep, he'd beat under her ribs, and his resistance was cooling her blood, splitting her neurons.

Where I am, you have to be, she'd told him, desperate, I need you, you were meant for my world, because everywhere, all the time, I can feel you. You belong with me.

I don't Olivia, he'd said, backing away, chilling the air that had heated her persistence. Nothing over there can be real to me, not the job, or lab, or Walter. There's no truth in a world where I'm a lie.

Then his face grew dark, pained, and he reached out, touched her cheek, frictioned her skin with the stroke of his thumb. In his eyes agony twisted conviction, a grey-green fight that made her shake with discordance.

I don't belong with you, he'd said, because you're not my reality.

His words had been soft, hushed, and then he was gone, lost to her dream in the whisper of heartache.

In her sleep, he didn't come home.

Because he never loved her.


They're headed to FBI headquarters, when her mind's eye brings alive what her dream-state had buried.

Hovering between traffic lights and consciousness, it flashes, so quick and steady it stalls her breath.

You're not my reality, the words are a whisper, a soft sound of what could have been, and she tightens her grip on the wheel.

I don't belong with you, Olivia, go home.

And instantly, after she turns the car, she's back in that world and she's breaking.

He's walking away, and there's nothing she can do about his decision or her leaded body.

He's let her go, in a swift tearing away of her every molecule and it's a painfully slow killing, putting to death her life and all hope.

And there's a dashboard in her vision now, and street signs and yellow lines and his shuffling of files and the car's rhythmical hum.

He's saying something now, but she can't hear.

Her senses are too enveloped, too acutely aware of only his magnetism, his electrons because he's all too real, and he's stunning, and he's here because he chose to come back.

She hears the blinker now.

He'd come home.

She feels the pedal under her foot.

And he'd stayed.

It's on contrition now, that she swallows.

More so then the betrayal or anger, she feels the wrath of her mistreatment, her brash, unstated unfairness toward him, and her self-reproach nauseates while attacking her apathy.

Since the cafeteria, since his words and her unforgiving madness, she'd been selfish, trapped by the pity she's been spitting in his soul.

And maybe it wasn't fair.

So maybe she'll attempt to see past the blinding red of her reactive emotions, and try, at least try, to take stock in the moving, breathing, reality sitting next to her.

She'll be okay with him because she trusts in fact, and the beautiful, astonishing, actuality speaks for itself.

Peter was here, in this car, with her, and there's a sweet meaning in real truth because right now, it fills the air and it sparks her atmosphere.

He came back, and he stayed, and that has to be good enough.

Because it's all the looking-past she can muster right now.

He says her name, and when he touches her arm, she blinks away her cogitation.

"Hey." he says, "You okay?"

That beautiful, brow-bending muscle, holds the same concern and worry of the morning she got back, and she nods, embarrassed.

"Yeah, no, I was ah..."

There wasn't a lie she could think of telling, so she simply tells him she's fine.

But to her dismay, his beautiful mind was perceptive and un-foolable, with an undeniable power to see through her mastered talent of masking all-rightness.

So as she always does, she ignores her agitation when he nods and sits back, in his calm acceptance of her rogue personality.

He's like this with her, patient, unquestioning and it's now, in her retrospective all-overness, she's keenly mindful how much space, time and quiet endurance he's always shown her. He's never tried to strip her mind naked or peel her thoughts raw.

That he does unconsciously, without effort.

He's terribly sweet toward her aversion to personal exposure, and right now, it was ruthlessly adding to her sense of shame.

So fuck whatever life she has now because she shouldn't have been so hard on him.

She moves her hands down the wheel as her lips form around some kind of apology, some kind of decent explanation of her recent reactions she can give to better-off her guilt complex.

Then his phone rings.

And she doesn't get the chance.


The times she's almost lost him remain countless.

He's been victim to a contagion and a teenager, a mind probe, a gun barrel, his own reluctance and the truth of where he's from. At first in those hours, adrenaline infused her. She'd been impassioned by determination and her need to save him. It was in the quiet hours, those bathroom-stall stealing chances, when devastation came to threaten her with fear.

And dealing with it meant busier work or hiding, alone, in a dark hallway's silent shadows.

Today, instantaneously, unexpectedly, another tally mark was added to her heartbreak's countless sum.

Six hours ago, they'd come back from Boston. Not surprisingly, they were again left asking questions after Peter had been stunned by a pulse, an electro-magnetic bullet trigged by a vanished Observer.

That time, he'd walked away, he'd been bruised and curious but a domino had tipped, effecting a line of events that led again to his life's threat and her sweaty, racing pulse.

It happened when they returned to the lab.

"Peter," she'd said to him, after he'd grabbed his head, "Are you sure you don't want to see a doctor?"

Dismissing her concern, he'd put his hand up, said he'd be okay as he un-pocketed his Advil and reached into the fridge.

So she'd dropped her worry.

There's a time of the day when silent accomplishment fills the air, a light and momentary case-ending ease, that for one night or even just a few hours, makes Olivia feel valuable.

That time of day was then.

Until she spied the book.

It was in his bag, peeking out and she'd touched it, slowly, anticipating the bite but it didn't hold fire anymore, only ash.

She'd burned through its hatred in the car, when she'd felt his real, came back for her heat. Nothing could be hotter then the fact of his being here in this world with her now.

But questions of her and them still rose in the smoke, and as she'd turned the book over, it'd begun to weigh down her hands.

It felt like an instant black hole then, a vortex draining the energy from her fingertips and toes, and she was left fatigued, saddened not angry, by all the things they'd shared in quiet.

Like the book, and his couch and her bed.

And it had hit her, hard, all the things she really didn't know of him. To a T, she understood the deeper parts of him, the who, how, and why, but it's the simple things, like his favorite movie or band she's clueless of.

If she'd felt emasculated before, she'd felt absolutely deplorable then.

That her may have been gathering information, analyzing her mission, but the taunting fact remained.

She probably knew the names of his childhood friends and his favorite elementary memory.

And Olivia can't even recall his favorite color.

He'd spoken to her then, before he'd turned from the icebox, saying something of questions and answers, but she didn't hear, only stared, hard, at the book's cover.

She'd been tempted to open it, read the preface, but turning a page would only unleash her reality's fleeting emotion.

The book had been meant for her.

He'd shared some part of his life with who he thought she was because he'd wanted her to piece every part of him together. He wanted her to know him completely.

Maybe it was about time she tried.

If only to make her feel, in the least, good enough to love him.

He called out her name then, and it tears her eyes from the black and white cover.

He'd been curious of her pondering, his questioning eyes had told her so, and so she'd smiled at him, in assurance that her thoughts hadn't been to deep or heart-pounding to escape from.

Even when the book had felt ten times heavier then it should have.

"So why is this your favorite book?" she'd asked and waved it slightly as she'd neared him.

"Because it talks about not depending on other people for answers. That you can only find the answers inside yourself. Which-" he popped the pills in his mouth. "-given our current situation is kind of amusing if you think about it."

She'd looked down then, entrapped by his words. Funny thing it really is, being a paradox unto yourself, trying to live up to the strong and certain version of who you'd been by elongating a smile or wearing more eyeliner.

That her had had motives, a mission, a destination and an end.

And the beginning of truths was dealing better and more confidently, in her aftermath.

Olivia couldn't find answers in science and patterns if she was constantly questioning the holes in herself.

That meant she had to search through scar tissue, her insusceptibility, the deep connections in her nerve fiber's resilience to find the secrets that her left behind.

No one teaches you how to gain independence through self-defenses.

Intimately and honestly, they both know that's a lesson learned through oneself.

She'd been struck then, pained by her own truth and she couldn't have anticipated the breath-staking anxiety he'd then bury in her flesh.

The collapse had been quick and sudden, frightening, accentuated by the broken glass of the milk jug that had slipped from his hands.

She'd called his name then, shouted it, as though her voice could have ceased his body's raging tremors.

And it's a blur of racing time, what had happened next, sped by her reactive panic and thready, racing heartbeat.

She'd called Walter, she remembers, after she'd run to Peter, threw herself to the ground and met his seizing form and her fallen chest.

The milk, Walter had said, something had been wrong with it, reactive inside it, and over the phone he'd guided her, directed her as she'd pleaded he concentrate because she had to help Peter.

She'd had to save him.

Because, dammit her body had run cold, drained of the life-blood that convulsed before her.

Violent determination aided her then, to the phosphates and the syringe and under her shaking, frantic digits, its needle had met his flesh.

He'd stopped seizing then, after she'd hollowed the barrel, compressed the anti-coagulant into his veins while fear swam through her own.

And it had worked.

She'd heard Walter's voice on the phone, as frenzied as her nerves, and when he'd asked of his son, she'd told him he'd stabilized.

Breath came then, back to her lungs, matching the tempo of the chest under her palm.

God, she remembers the relief, inhalations of his still-here air that supplanted her fear when he'd groaned and twisted under her hands.

Then she recalls his heat, like a phoenix, an instant rising of fire that had scorched through her cells to reawaken her blood.

And then that beautiful muscle creased, in retract of pain and confusion, and she'd traced his brow smooth with her thumb.

She'd said his name, softly, gently, and he'd blinked open his eyes before his lips curved in a slow, small awareness of who'd been above him.

It had been sudden and overwhelming, the urge to have kissed him, but underneath her relief, that scar tissue itched.

So she'd only smiled back instead.

He'd grabbed his head then, moaned again, and when he'd rose on his elbows he'd taken in the broken glass, and empty syringe. She'd remembered his eyes, a gray perplexion turned conscious before he'd set his brow and turned back to her.

Then his mouth curved again.

"I've never told you, but I'm lactose intolerant."

She'd laughed then, in relief, overcome simply by the beautiful way that he was. Even near death, his sense of humor won out.

"Makeshift Epipen?" he'd asked, as he'd held up the syringe.

"Yeah." she'd answered, before he'd thrown it down and nodded his head. "I called Walter. It was the best we could do."

His smile had grown tooth-full, and when his eyes had bore into her, she'd felt the scourging in her fingertips.

"Thanks for saving my life."

Deep in her bones had been the weight of his gratitude and she'd dug her knees in the floor to brace her light-headedness.

"Thanks for coming back."

Her words had been quiet, severely honest, and when he'd rose a brow, he 'd silently understood.

It hadn't been that day or moment she'd spoke of.

She'd ushered him back to three months past, and when he'd nodded, slowly, she'd looked down before he'd spoke.

"I'll always come back."

The words were quiet, almost a hoarse whisper and she feels their plea in her chest.

For you, Olivia, he'd really said, I came back not for her, but to you because it's where I want to belong.

Then that scar tissue tightened, squeezed, begged her to weigh the what-had- happened facts.

And the discomfort suppressed her.

But so did the feel good-side of his words.

Pressing silence had filled the air then, and she'd felt her cheeks redden on her own fragility.

Then she'd heard him pluck a piece of glass and her eyes met it's gleam.

"How can I miss out on all this?"

And when his wit had cut the room again, she'd laughed before helping him to his feet.

He'd pressed into her then, while gaining his balance, and more then the book, he'd burned through her side.

When he squinted, he'd grabbed his head and she'd asked again if he needed a doctor. Once more, he'd brushed it off.

Then his smile drew lines at the corner of his eyes.

"What's another day at the friendly neighborhood lab?"

When those lines stretched, her smile had met his.

"C'mon," She'd said then, yanking gently, on his coats sleeve. "Walter will want to check you out, make sure you're okay. I'll take you home."

And she'd had.


Now she was sitting in her car, parked between his side-street and her up-in-arms mind.

In the window she sees shadows, silhouettes of Peter and Walter in front of a lamp's dim glow, and it's the surrounding darkness that's her indecision's safe-haven.

Countless times, she's almost lost him.

And this time, she'd felt regret and desperation chocking her soul.

Strange how introspective you become when what you love has been threatened. All the thoughts you've had over are like rain drops in a pothole, spilling over in a puddle to flood your cerebrum.

Everything that might matter seems definite somehow, because all the small wonders have grown ten times thier size.

So she was toying with an idea of her apology, wondering if she should step out of this cabin and knock on the door.

Simply, easily, she could tell him she'd been unfair, harsh even, since she'd learned of his truth with that her, and though she stands between acceptance and insufficiency, he didn't deserve her verbal backhand or cold shoulder.

Especially not when, even now, her skin still burns from it's resurrected fire.

She knows, in the least, she should try and smooth down the rough edges between them, iron the wrinkles of tense uncomfortably by telling him she'll look past her lingering anger and just accept inadequacy.

Because in spite of the feel good wanting side of her brain, she still felt incomparable to that her.

The facts are she's better, funnier and less complicated, and so had been Peter when he was with her, so in the end that drove Olivia's self-reproach mad.

He'd learned her by her unassailability, and though recently delicate, she questions if insuperability is her lonely, empty fate.

It's a tragic thought, a horrific inquisition, that because she's incapable of happiness she can't be his.

And after today, after those painstaking minutes of his near-death threat and her restrained lungs, her heart-rending conceptions seemed five times more real.

It's why she's decided to drive away and forget why she's been sitting here since she brought him home.

Her certitude in life was in danger and death, and now, he was safe and alive.

For right now, she'll let that be enough.

Even though, when she pulls the gearshift and turns the wheel, her fingerprints burn, instant and hotly, through the leather.