Author's Note: A final AU fic in some ways, before speculations ends on events of S5.

"You named me for a son you had with Mom's double from another universe?"

Peter and Olivia look up from the computer screen to see their very irate daughter standing there, hands on her hips, looking at the both of them with incredulity and plainly visible anger.

"Walter told you didn't he?" Peter sighs, exchanging a look with Olivia, before settling his gaze back on Etta.

"Oh yeah… we've just had the loveliest little chat." She nods, folding her arms across her chest, looking at Peter mainly with rife disapproval on her face. "Of course he doesn't remember anything given he's as high as a kite right now. But… um what on earth were you thinking?"

"Regarding…" Olivia asks cautiously.

"Regarding the fact that your husband cheated on you with another version of yourself and knocked her up and then convinced you to name me after his freakin' love child?" She says, her voice several octaves higher than before.

"Ok first off, I did not cheat on her." Peter says putting up his hands in defense. "And secondly… you were kind of a love child too honey."

"Is that what you take out of this? Seriously?" She almost yells at him before turning back to Olivia.

"How could you let him do this to me?"

"I…" Olivia almost stumbles back, completely caught unaware and almost a little frightened by Etta's tirade. "I… we had our reasons honey. You have to understand."

"Oh no… I do not want to understand. Whatever your reasons are… this is just way too weird and inappropriate." She says throwing up her hands, before shaking her finger sternly at Peter. "And you, you don't talk to me ever again."

She stomps off after that in loud and angry footsteps.

"Wow… she…" Olivia says letting out a breath she didn't even realize she was holding. "She really unloaded on us didn't she?" She turns to Peter, who looked just as she probably did, taken aback, almost shell shocked.

"Completely steamrolled us." He nods in agreement. "I don't whether to be proud or scared. I know I shouldn't have told Walter any of that stuff. I should go talk to her." He sighs, bringing a hand to his forehead.

She shakes her head, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I'll go. I think I should be the one to talk to her."

"Hey." She says softly to Etta who was sitting in Walter's old office, taking apart her gun and putting it back in repeated motions.

"Hey yourself." She shrugs.

Olivia takes a seat opposite her, watching the way her nimble hands work at the weapon. "You know I used to do that all the time. It's a great way of working out your frustrations. Mind if I have a turn at that?" Her mother asks.

She nods and hands over the gun to her, watching as she deftly disassembling the gun into its components and puts them together effortlessly.

"My partner, Charlie and I, we used to have contests on slow days at work. Record our timing. Whoever lost had to buy the winner a drink." She smiles, thinking back to her early days with the FBI.

"I thought dad was your partner." Etta says curiously.

"Yes, though not officially…" She shakes her head. "He just sort of worked himself into the picture, and I did have a life before him you know." She points out.

"Really, you don't say?" Etta rolls her eyes at that. "The way you two are joined at the hip… wouldn't seem that way."

"I know." Olivia nods. "But there is a lot more to things than what they may seem."

"Don't I know it?" She says sarcastically. " Here I thought, my parents were devoted to one another and turns out, my father's no better than a lying, cheating…"

"Enough." Olivia cuts her off in a stern voice, making Etta look up at her in surprise. "You may be an adult now, but that does not mean you can talk about Peter that way. I won't stand for it. He's your father and you will respect him. Do you understand me Etta?" Her voice leaves no doubt for negotiation.

She doesn't but she nods anyway, almost a little chagrined by the look of disapproval on her mother's face.

"Why are you defending him mom?" She asks then. "You of all people...Walter told me what he did, what he did to you…"

"Walter doesn't know everything." Olivia says calmly, interrupting her impassioned argument. "And neither do you for that matter. The only people who know the truth about what happened are your father and I, so I suggest you save your judgments until you know the whole story."

"Fine." She shrugs, still unconvinced. "Tell me the whole story then."

Olivia sighs tiredly. "I never wanted to tell you any of this and I am not going to tell you everything because it's personal. It's very personal and it's between me and him. But I can't have you thinking about Peter this way. Like he was some…" She shakes her head, her voice emphatic.

"Etta, your father did not cheat on me. What happened was not his fault. He thought she was me. His feelings were always for me and if you knew her, this other me, you'd probably think him crazy to have ever chosen me over her. And he definitely did not lie to me. He could have though. He could have very easily kept the truth from me and act like nothing ever happened but he told me everything."

"And you were just okay with that?"

"No… I was mad and angry and very hurt for a long time. I thought we were done. That there would never be anything between us. I shut him out and made the both of us suffer because I couldn't get past what had happened. And even then, he was always there for me, regardless of whether there was a relationship or not, always had my back, always took care of me."

"Well he's good at that." Etta admits reluctantly.

"Yes, he's very good at that." Olivia nods, taking her daughter's hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

"So then what changed? Why did you take him back?" Etta asks.

Olivia smiles then, her memories taking her back to that day after Brooklyn, when they'd nearly been ambered. "Because I finally realized that we could spend all our lives without each other being hurt and disappointed over something that neither of could have changed or helped, or we could be with each other and have a lifetime of happiness together."

"Just like that?" Her daughter says incredulously

"Just like that." Olivia nods.

"I don't get it." She shakes her head, not looking quite so upset anymore, but rather disbelieving.

" You've never been in love have you?" Olivia asks knowingly, feeling slightly relaxed herself as she absorbs the change in her daughter's demeanor.

Etta scoffs at her. "I don't have time for such silly things."

"Well, we'll have to change that so you can make the time." Olivia smiles at her. "Because then you'd know, it's very difficult to resist something like that."

"If you say so." Etta says in a bland voice, though not unkindly.

"My daughter's a cynic. What a surprise." Olivia's lips curl into a smile. "You know your dad once told me that beneath every cynic, there is a frustrated romantic."

Etta snorts. "This from the guy who basically can't go sixty seconds without making some sarcastic, overly caustic remark?"

"That same guy." Olivia nods fondly.

"Have I mentioned how weird the two of you are?" Etta says then, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated motion.

"Once or twice I think."

"So what happened then?" She asks abruptly, changing gears on their conversation. "So you decided to let bygones be bygones and lived happily ever after?"

"For a while." Olivia says with a smile on her face, which falters quickly. "It was literally like something out of a fairy tale and then…" Olivia's eyes become pained as she speaks. "There was just emptiness for so long, the kind that swallows you up from the inside."

"Why what happened? Did you and dad break up or something?" Etta asks hesitantly, not sure why her mother seemed to be in so much anguish.

"Mom…" Etta calls out, troubled at the shadow that had set over Olivia's eyes and she turns her gaze once more towards her, speaking slowly... like the words were taking a great deal of effort from her.

She tells her about the machine, about how it took Peter away from her, and how he returned despite it all, a man without a past, who knew everything about everybody and who nobody knew anything about at all.

Because he had never existed and his presence from their lives had been written out.

"We were torn apart. Your dad was literally erased from existence, written out of the timeline altogether because of a choice he made to save this world, to save two worlds actually. He was gone for a while. There was nothing of him left, I didn't even remember ever having him in my life, and for a long time I lived with this hole in my heart. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, I couldn't fill it."

"Dad was really gone." Etta whispers when Olivia tells her about the new timeline, her face white with fear. She couldn't imagine losing him that way.

"It's okay. He came back and he's not going anywhere." Olivia reassures her, knowing it was a lot to take in.

After all she still had nightmares of him disappearing again for years after they were married.

Etta doesn't believe her when she tells her about how her memories were overwritten, how she allowed it to happen of her own free will.

"When my memories began to return to me, it was like I finally knew myself for the first time The way he looked at me, like I was always more than…" Olivia tells her. "You of all should know how difficult it is to have known your father's love and then have to go without it. I never wanted to let that feeling go… of being in love with him, no matter what the cost."

"But you didn't even know if he would come back to you Mom."

"It wouldn't have made a difference." Olivia shrugs. "I was never good at letting him go and I knew that even if he didn't want to be with me, I wouldn't be able to stop wanting that feeling. It's the kind of love you can go all your life searching for and never find. And I had that and I wasn't willing to give it up. I doubt I could have stopped what was happening to me anyway. It was how things were supposed to fall in place I guess." Olivia says, remembering the heartbreaking relief that had coursed through her when she had seen him that day outside her apartment, after she had resigned herself to being alone again.

"And then we had you and if anything was proof that I had made the right choice, it was you." She says, bringing her hand to rest on Etta's cheek affectionately. "I never thought I would ever have that with anyone you know, a family of my own and a home, somewhere to belong. Your father… he taught me how to live, how to laugh, how to not carry every burden for eternity and simply be happy."

Etta smiles at that, but the question nagging at the back of her brain, the one that had upset her so much had still not been answered. "But what about his son? That didn't bother you."

"I didn't know about him. Neither did Peter for that matter." She says, swallowing audibly. "We only knew of his existence, after he was gone. Look, I know it might seem callous to you that we named you after him but you have no idea what it's like to lose a child." She says her hold on her daughter's hand tightening, her voice now pained. "And I hope you never have to know that. There isn't any suffering like it." She clutches her palm with both hands. "I didn't even have the slightest comprehension of what he must have gone through, till we lost you. Its agony. It's the worst kind of agony." She repeats in tortured whisper.

"Honey, I know it's very hard to make sense of any of it. You've always had a tendency to put your dad on a pedestal and I think that's part of the reason you're so upset, because you finally have to confront the truth that he's human like everyone else."

"Do you think he wishes he could have had him back?" She asks then hesitantly. "Is that why he gave me his name. Am I supposed to be some sort of replacement?"

"Oh no. God no…" Olivia exclaims as she takes in the scared look on Etta's face. "Is that why you were so angry? How could even think that?" She looks at her daughter, taking both her hands now. "Etta, your father loves you more than anything in this world. There is nothing, nobody, not even me who could come close to the place you have in his heart. You have to know that. He just wanted to remind himself of everything it took for us to get here, to have you. That's why he named you after him. He wasn't trying to make you a replacement. He could never do that. He loves you for you. Because you're all ours."

Olivia sees the way her daughter blinks, processing everything she was saying to her.

"I guess… shouldn't have blown a fuse huh?" She says then softly. "Dad must think I am a real spitfire."

"You're his kid. He wouldn't expect any different." Olivia smiles. "Go talk to him before he starts to get all snappy. I can only handle one fuming Bishop at a time."

"Astrid can you pass me the soldering iron?" Peter says reaching out his hand without looking up from where he was sitting, bent over his desk.

"Here you go." A soft voice, which was most definitely did not belong to Astrid, says, handing him the tool in question.

"Thought you weren't talking to me ever again." He says dryly, as he switches on the iron sets it on the ledge allowing it to heat, as he looks up at his daughter.

"Change of plans." Etta shrugs, perching herself on his desk.

"Really?" He asks bringing his focus back on the circuit he was attempting to repair, picking up a star screwdriver. "What changed?"

"Knowing the truth." Etta says, bringing a hand to his shoulder, directing his attention back to her. "I am sorry I went berserk like that. I should have known you wouldn't…"

"It's fine." He cuts her off and smiling at her. "Let's not dwell on it okay."

She nods. "I'll let you get back to that." She says and slides of the desk, making as if to leave, when she pauses, bending down to give him a peck on the cheek.

He looks mildly surprised at that, his smile widening. "What was that for?"

"Just for being you."