9. What Was Written - S4 AU, Olivia/Peter + Olivia/Lincoln, time slips and memory - "When Doves Cry" by Prince
There are seconds where she knows where she is and then there are seconds displaced, where she's somewhere else and she feels only pressure on her lips. As soon as it starts it's over and she's alone in her apartment.
There are seconds when she's shouting with mad fury, anger raised from deep within her. She doesn't have any idea why, but it feels right and then the world normalises and she's in the lab, paused mid-sentence and she equally has no idea why.
A dove flies past, arcing in her line of sight and she feels a sense of deja vu. The lab is cold and Walter is babbling in the background unsatisfied with the results and the bird flopping on the floor; what was done doesn't last.
Time skips again and she's raging at Peter, his scowl disbelieving and he's moving out the door. Time skips again and her lips are on Lincoln's, the hint of a memory chased out of hiding, of yearning. And then she's back at the present, confused, and they're both watching her.
"Something is very wrong."
She isn't sure she trusts everything to unfold as she saw it, but she isn't sure what to be sure of anymore. All she knows is she wants to get to the bottom of the mystery and though she wants to know how it comes to be she fears the future inexplicably. And the edge of something new-no, old, rediscovered-tears at her. As if she's forgotten a whole life that she may have lived, of what would make her who she is if she were a little different, and it doesn't seem like it's one she's yet to experience. The other her she gave up is no longer a theoretical memory. The glimpses are merely a catalyst, a foretelling of what the memories will do but Olivia was never good at waiting for answers.
"Tell me what I'm missing."