7. A Quiet Faith - post S4 alt!Olivia/Lincoln - "Here Comes The Sun" by The Beatles
Liv keeps looking up after the rain.
She had planned to regardless of the parting advice from her double. She always hoped against the odds that she'd be proved wrong, one of the few things she'd prefer to lose on. She looks up, again and again, and it's the same. The sun shines a little brighter, in clearer skies after the storms calm but she never sees a rainbow.
Sometimes she thinks Lincoln misses them, a far away look on his face when he comes to meet her at the window. Is it worse for him, a reminder of what he gave up? Stability and certainty, for a universe lacking in either. Eventually, when she can't stand second guessing his feelings in this life, with her, she asks him.
He doesn't say anything for a moment. "I miss a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I want to go back there."
He doesn't call it home. Not anymore. She grins in appreciation and hugs him tight.
"As nice as this is, I hate to distract you from what you were really looking for." He says, indicating towards the view. Sure enough, behind her is a weak band of colour in the sky, barely visible.
"Now my life is finally complete. I can die happy," she says, meaning it as a joke. She's been happy for years with him and she realises the feeling's mutual, something she'd been afraid to see before, expecting it to be temporary.
When their son is born, she wishes fervently that he'll get to see a rainbow for himself someday, bright and colourful, not as a fantasy or a mere drawing from a picture book. It's hope in their broken world and she thinks she finally knows now why Lincoln chose to come here.
At first she'd imagined he'd put aside thoughts of everything that he would miss and yet worried that he couldn't. She was right - of course he couldn't let go of what he'd had before but knowing what they were missing made him want to fight harder for it, to return to them what they should have had.