10. Past Tense – S4 Lincoln - "Asleep In The Back" by Elbow
He wants to ask so many questions.
If she remembers the time they drove to Minnesota or the case with the polydactyl assassin. Sometimes he even wants to confront her with the things about him that he isn't sure she knows, or wants to know, anymore - like do you know why I'm here or do you know why I stayed.
She doesn't ask any questions of him.
He'd belonged.
But Lincoln's quiet, considerate and accepts the evidence given for how it is her doing, that she's correcting some wrong to the timeline in a way that only Olivia will experience. Something she shares with Peter. Another thing to bring them closer.
He wants to ask are you happy but he knows the answer already. She smiles. She looks at Peter like he's everything right in the world. She needs that, so Lincoln steps back, tries to find a new place for himself on the team and in her life.
He doesn't bank on how he's not just displaced, he's wiped out completely - a blank entry against his face in her memory, with no more meaning attached except someone she once trusted, a partner in technicality. Peter takes that place too and Lincoln wonders if things might've been different if he'd tried harder, fought for the woman who he'd known.
He'd told himself not to rush her, or himself for that matter, that they had time to get to know each other. The universe had made that into an inadvertent lie, it seems. Now she doesn't want to know and isn't who he knew, and he has to learn to be okay with it because it is what it is, what she chose. It's not okay though, not when it's so fresh, but he'll make it so, somehow. He has to find that feeling again, somewhere.