Chapter 14: Shibboleth

Po Chu-i, from "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow":

We'll be in heaven as birds flying wing to wing,
On earth as trees with branches intertwined.

Olivia looked around the front room of the sparsely furnished house she recognized from the shared dream state.

"Sorry it's not very...inviting. I don't get a lot of company," Peter said.

She laughed, then turned to him. "Oh Peter, it's so good to see you."

He stepped across the gap between them and wrapped his arms around her. They embraced for a long minute before their lips found each other. They kissed for an even longer minute. Then he drew back and just looked at her, gazed into the eyes of the Olivia he loved, with whom he'd spent the past three years investigating the most nightmarish cases they could imagine, the Olivia who had twice now crossed the borders of dimensions, bending the laws of physics to find him.

The Olivia who remembered him.

"Do you remember what I called you the first time we met in Iraq that really annoyed you?" he asked.

She smirked, recognizing that this was his test to make sure she was who she said she was. "Sweetheart," she answered. "And do you remember the first thing I said to you after I woke up in the hospital after the car accident?" It didn't hurt to be careful.

"'Be a better man than your father'," he said in Greek.

She smiled and rested her hands on his shoulders. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. We need to be careful. Speaking of, we should probably come up with a new code phrase. But not here; I'm pretty sure they have my house bugged."

"Kinky," she joked.

He laughed. "I've missed you so much, Olivia."

Her smile faded away. "I have so much to tell you."

"There's so much I want to tell you," he said, thinking of the future he'd seen for them. "But it can wait."

"Peter, there's something...there's something you need to know." She looked unhappy when she spoke, distracted. There was something wrong.

"Is it about Walter...?"

"No, Walter's fine," she assured him. "I don't know how to say this..."

"It can wait," he told her. "Neither of us got any sleep at all last night. You can tell me in the morning."

She nodded.

He led her to his bed. They both climbed beneath the covers, and then just looked at each other, overwhelmed at being together again.

"I'm afraid that if I fall asleep this will turn out to be a dream," Olivia confessed.

"Don't worry about it," he took her hand. "I'll be right here when you wake up. You need your rest."

She didn't close her eyes. Her smile was distant and flickering. "When you came out of the machine, you said you'd seen the future. You seemed surprised that I was alive. I died there, didn't I?"

For a moment he was too overcome with emotion to answer. When he did it came out in a choked whisper. "Yes."

She didn't say anything. The expression on her face was one of sympathy.

"You know, the world didn't end all at once," he said, his voice now steadier. "It happened a little every day, piece by piece. The day the world ended for me...was the day I lost you. And then I lost you again after coming out of the Machine, and then again when I came here and realized the Olivia who came to me in the hospital didn't recognize me." He lay back and stared at the ceiling. "I keep losing you."

Olivia shifted in bed and lied down on top of him. For a long moment, she just looked at him, her eyes taking in every familiar detail of his dear face, and he gazed at her with the same fondness. Then she kissed him.

And then she kissed more deeply.

He backed up a few inches. "Hey, better not start that. You need rest."

"I need you," she countered. She kissed him again, and he didn't have the willpower to argue.