A/N: First of all, thank you all so much for reading, faving/putting in your alerts, and of course, smooches to those of you who reviewed :') I was a happy Frenchie today. I'm not going to lie, I'm very excited about sharing more of this story with you guys, I've spent so many hours of my life on this since Christmas, it feels good to finally share it.

This might hurt a bit. You know me, I will squeeze every drop of angst out of this before I give you good feels :p Enjoy!

SHIVERED BONES

II.

Walter meant well.

Walter usually always means well; he probably redefines the saying 'no good deed goes unpunished' by now. He meant well when he experimented on children. He meant well when he crossed over to save Peter's life.

He also meant well when he decided to take Olivia on a tour of Massive Dynamic today.

He obviously did so trying to make up for the fact that no one had informed her of the change in ownership.

Peter knows the moment the three of them first step into the elevator that this is a bad idea, watching as Olivia's body language begins to change.

She's never completely relaxed, nowadays, never when he's near her, in any case. But the way she tenses up in that car has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with being in a confined space. He's noticed it, how she now avoids elevators when she can, favoring the use of stairs instead. In a building as big as Massive Dynamic, she's not given much of a choice.

Walter is babbling excitingly as they rise, talking about how he has yet to finish visiting all seventy-three laboratories present in the building, oblivious to the fact that none of them is listening to him. Olivia is breathing her way through the elevator ride, while Peter watches her.

He does that a lot, lately, not simply because Broyles asked him to keep an eye on her. He always used to watch her closely, although he's a lot less subtle about it these days. He learned fairly early on that Olivia would rarely –if ever, let any of them know how she feels, and that the key to deciphering her emotional state was through patient observation.

Yet another skill that flew out the window when he needed it the most.

He's back to watching her, something he avoided doing after her broken rejection, trying to respect her need for space. Now that he's started doing it again, though, it has become hard for him not to do it constantly. At times, he almost feels too aware of her, physically.

After spending two months with a noticeably different version of her, everything that makes Olivia Olivia seems accentuated.

She's a lot like you. Darker in the eyes, maybe.

It all comes down to their intensity. He told Olivia that one of the things he did notice was how this other her seemed less intense; retrospectively, he had phrased this very poorly.

The Olivia who came back with them wasn't exactly less intense; their intensity expressed themselves in different ways. The other Olivia projected her intensity outward, with bigger smiles and an easy laugh, along with a carefree attitude that was a bit entrancing –particularly when you convince yourself you're the reason why she's letting it all out in the open.

Because the Olivia he's spent the last two years of his life with? Her intensity is all in the inside. She feels too much, all the time, always trying so hard to keep it all in, not to let her mask fall off, or her walls crumble. But anyone who's been near her can feel it, this inner strength that drives her, wherever she goes, a drawing force that is more than a little entrancing; captivating is more like it. Peter felt it in Iraq, moments after meeting her, and he feels it now, standing behind her in this elevator.

Olivia is pale and anxious, battling with something huge inside her, but hell if she's going to let it win.

When the elevator finally stops, she's the first one out. She reacts the same way throughout 'the tour', whenever they have to step back in there again; she doesn't complain about it once, and Peter sure isn't going to put her in the spotlight by asking her about it, when she's so clearly trying to keep her struggles hidden from view. His concern for her grows, though.

Broyles was right to worry about her; for the most part, she seems to be doing alright, but little things give her away. She's more nervous than she used to be, consequently more jumpy, too. She's got a definite tendency to draw her gun a bit too quickly, not unlike how she was after her car accident. Peter stopped her from actually firing it a couple of times, when he first joined her back on the field; after that, she seemed to get a grip on herself again, and he likes to think –wishfully, that his presence alone does serve as a voice of reason.

Today, Walter remains blissfully oblivious for the duration of the tour, beaming with pride as he shows her parts of the building they would never have been allowed in otherwise; he's particularly proud of the newest lab, focused on developing specifically bacon flavored food –"Including pudding!"

"Oh, wait until you see this floor!" He exclaims as they enter the elevator yet again. "When Nina told me about it a couple of months ago, it had mostly gone to waste. With Belly gone to the Other Side for years, no one was using it. But I had specialists work on it for a few weeks, and now, it's finally ready!"

Olivia actually throws Peter a 'should I be concerned?' look, but he shakes his head.

"It's harmless," he promises.

When the elevator's doors finally open on the 38th floor, Olivia looks taken aback, and Peter can't blame her. He probably made a similar face the first time Walter took him up here.

Instead of the cold and sterile hallway that has greeted them on every floor, they are standing at the entrance of a rather glamourous loft.

Peter has to admit that the designer team Walter hired did a nice job; the furniture in this 'living room' is mainly made of dark mahogany, most of the floor covered with thick, fluffy carpet –Walter's request.

Peter notices the flickering light against the dark furniture, and frowns. "Did you seriously get a fireplace installed, Walter?"

"Not a real one, I'm afraid," Walter says, disenchanted. "I was advised against it. It looks rather authentic, though, doesn't it?"

Peter eyes the fake fireplace, which does emit soft crackling sounds that are quite believable; when he turns to Olivia to see what she thinks of it, she's not by his side anymore. She's moved, now standing in front of the giant glass window that replaces most of the south wall, arms crossed. He walks to her.

The sun is setting over New York, and Peter cannot blame her for being drawn to the sight. High up as they are, the whole city seems to unravel in front of them, the orange glow of dusk bouncing off the skyscrapers.

"Quite the view, uh?" He asks her, and she flinches a little in surprise, another proof of how edgy she is.

She brings a hand to her hair, pressing her palm to the top of her head; even though she's been using pins since she came back, keeping her bangs hidden, he's noticed how she cannot help but check regularly.

"Yeah," she breathes out, offering him a nervous smile, before turning her gaze back to the scenery, arms once again crossed tightly over her chest. She purses her lips, then, shaking her head a little, as if in disbelief.

"What is it?" He asks.

At first, he thinks she's not going to answer. His heart leaps a little when she does.

"It's just…" she begins, looking confused and almost pained. Her eyes are lost in the city, the setting sun having turned their glistening green to gold. "For a moment, I didn't understand why I couldn't find the Twin Towers." She gives a short laugh, shaking her head again. "Crazy, uh?"

Something painful constricts his insides when he realizes that she does believe herself to be crazy.

Peter wants to say something, try and persuade her that she's most certainly not; taking into account what she's been through lately, she's dealing a lot better than anyone else would expect her to. Before he can utter anything, though, Walter interrupts them.

"Olivia!" He calls out, and besides him, Olivia winces again. "Come and see your room!"

Even though she looks a bit too shaken to Peter, she offers Walter a polite, confused look. "My…what?"

"Your room, dear," Walter says, pointing at one of the doors. "Peter and I each have our own. I made sure both you and agent Farnsworth had one as well. Having a place to sleep whenever we have to stay in New York makes things much more manageable. I was getting a bit tired of all the transit, to be honest with you."

Olivia almost jumps at the opportunity to walk away from Peter and the window, already pretending the moment never happened. The reaction is so typical of her, it might have made Peter smile, six months ago. As it turns out, Olivia seems to be rather pleased with the idea of having a place to stay at instead of constantly travelling back and forth between Boston and NYC.

The tour now officially over, Peter begins to think the whole thing might not be as disastrous as he dreaded; but on their way down, Walter abandons them, under the pretext that he wants to check his 'food' lab again. However, judging by the sly look he gives Peter before exiting the elevator, he's mostly trying to play matchmaker.

This proves, once again, that his father has indeed been completely oblivious to Olivia's quiet but increasing distress. Beyond the fact that she seems uncomfortable having been left alone with him in the small moving car, there's also this something else that has made her so jumpy and anxious.

Her forehead shines with sweat now, her breathing too shallow, eyes fixed on the descending numbers.

26…25…24…

"Hey, you okay?" Peter asks, his voice soft, fighting the urge to put a comforting hand on her.

She doesn't look away from the numbers.

21…20…

"Yeah," she breathes out, curtly.

The fact that the elevator hasn't made a single stop yet is almost a miracle, definitely a blessing in disguise. Peter is starting to think they might make it all the way to the ground floor in one go when their luck runs out.

It pauses on the 18th floor, and the doors slide open; a second later, Brandon Fayette enters the car.

He recognizes them right away, of course, and his face breaks into a delighted grin before the doors even close behind him. "Agent Dunham!" He exclaims. "It's good to see you again!"

But Olivia doesn't seem to share his elation in the least. She's somehow retreated against the back wall, arms crossed, holding on tightly to her elbows. Her eyes, now cast to the floor, are wide, almost panicked, breathing in and out in loud and short spurts. When the elevator comes to life again and starts moving down, causing its inevitable drop, she gulps for air.

"Olivia, what's wrong?" Peter asks, unable not to move closer to her, extending a hand as if to put it on her arm, although he doesn't. He's learned his lesson, the memory of her recoiling from his touch a few weeks ago still vivid in his mind.

She shakes her head, closing her eyes. "I need…air," she breathes out.

Peter doesn't hesitate. Turning around and glancing up at the numbers, he presses the button to the closest floor. A moment later, the elevator stops again. As soon as the doors open up, Olivia bolts out. Peter makes to follow her, but stops in the threshold as she's turned to face him, a hand raised; she doesn't look at him.

"I'm fine, it's okay," she says to his feet, still breathless. "I'll take the stairs. You go down."

Before he can say anything, she's walking away, looking as if she's trying not to run from them.

"What was that about?" Brandon asks behind him.

Peter ignores him, his eyes still on Olivia's retreating form.

Haunted, I guess.

…

That night, Olivia finds another one of Peter's belongings in her kitchen.

She's only tried to sleep for a couple of hours, and she's exhausted, her every limb aching and protesting from lack of rest. The stress of the day has made her whole body sore as a result of having been so tensed and alert.

She didn't use to be so familiar with the after effects of panic. Now, barely a day passes without her chest aching or her muscles cramping, not to mention the way her heart thumps at an insane pace, her chest constricting and closing off her lungs, making her feel like she can't breathe.

Ever since she made it home from New York, tonight, she's been feeling on the verge of a panic attack; the fact that she didn't have one in that damn elevator is a miracle in itself, especially after Brandon's unexpected appearance. Rationally, she knows he's not responsible for his alternate's actions, but her fight-or-flight response didn't seem to care much about that, considering the last time she'd seen his face before today, he'd been about to cut her open with a bone saw.

Despite her exhaustion, Olivia would not even allow herself to sleep, even if she could. Every night since her return, any time she's managed to drift off, she's been going back to the Dark Room. Back to those last twelve hours she spent in there after her failed attempt at going home, awaiting death. After what happened today, she sure isn't about to let her mind put her through another particularly vivid nightmare.

Around 3am, she gives up, rolling off her couch and turning her coffee machine on. She isn't surprised to find her mug shelf empty; she's been living on caffeine instead of food and sleep, and she can rarely be bothered with using the dishwasher. She reaches higher in the cabinet, aiming for one of her travelling cups. When she brings her hand down and sees what she grabbed, she freezes.

The cup is cheap, made of white plastic, with a black lid and a black handle. What differentiates it from any other cup is the small graphic on it. It's a loading bar, halfway full, with a caption that reads:

PLEASE WAIT. SARCASM LOADING.

She recognizes the cup; she had given it to Peter as a housewarming gift the previous year, when he and Walter moved out of their hotel.

"That's for all our upcoming 'middle-of-the-night' trips," she'd said with definite cheek. "I know they're your favorite."

She'd seen the cup in a gas station the previous night when she'd stopped to fill up her tank and buy some M&M's. When she'd read what it said, an affectionate smile tugging at her lips, she found it way too fitting not to buy it for him.

"Agent Dunham, you really shouldn't have," Peter had replied, adding extra sarcasm to his voice for the occasion, leaving the two of them grinning like idiots, the way they often were, back then.

As she stares at the cup tonight, Olivia feels completely numb.

Another feeling is sneaking in, though. She tries to keep it at bay, without success, every memory of the easy camaraderie she used to have with Peter cutting at her, like razor blades. She's not even hurt by the presence of such object in her apartment –she's found too many of those by now to be affected by it the way she used to be.

What hurts is the reminder of what she's lost, way beyond the futile hope of having him as a lover, maybe.

You seriously don't have a best friend?

Best friend.

As she grew older, Olivia became reluctant to label any of her friends as such, mainly because of her unresolved trust issues. Her sister aside, Charlie was the closest thing to a best friend Olivia ever had.

Until Peter, that is.

Because that's exactly what they had become at some point, isn't it? At the very least, they had been close to it. They trusted each other implicitly, back then, seeking the other out whenever they needed someone to talk to, sharing memories from their messed up childhoods, sharing secrets, even.

Sharing fears.

All of this is long gone, now, and the loneliness she feels at that instant is almost unbearable.

It all shattered the moment she saw him glimmer for the first time, and decided to keep that secret from him. She lied to him, even though it was the only secret that truly mattered, the only one he deserved to know. Given enough time, she believed they could have moved passed it, moved on and healed together, had she come back with him.

But she didn't.

She was replaced instead. She was replaced by a version of herself that was less…broken.

Less intense, maybe.

And there lies the problem. Olivia cannot compete with that. Peter may have come back when she asked him to, the woman he then spent the next eight weeks with was happier, quicker with a smile.

This thought swirls in her head and squeezes her heart every time she inadvertently shows him just how damaged she has become, the way she did today in that elevator. It makes it impossible for her to accept any kind of comfort from him, too afraid of the pity she will find in his eyes, because it would confirm what she suspects, what she already knows: that she is, indeed, the lesser version. The one that was left alone in the dark.

She's still in there, now; frozen to the bone.

…

Peter rubs his eyes, glancing at the digital clock on the microwave.

3.27am.

He wonders for a moment if getting his first cup of coffee that early would be ridiculous, before realizing that it doesn't make much of a difference anyway, considering he hasn't slept at all.

He looks back down instead, refocusing on the page he's spent the last fifteen minutes rereading, his brain constantly drifting off, fogged with fatigue. He has lost count of how many times he's done this, in the past few weeks, read Olivia's report; probably too many times for someone who isn't supposed to have read it at all.

He can't help himself. He has no other mean of knowing what happened to her, Over There. Once upon a time, she might have told him about it, or let him in just close enough so that he could deduce part of it on his own, deduce how she was feeling, and what she needed from him.

Once upon a time, they might have been in the same room at this late hour –or sitting together in her car, more likely, in a comfortable silence or joking around.

Once upon a time, thinking about her wouldn't have made him feel so damn miserable.

Peter sighs, closing his eyes and hanging his head. Elbows on the counter, he cups the back of his neck with both hands, feeling drained and dejected, his familiar nighttime companions of late. Olivia's words dance behind his closed eyelids.

I was held captive in the DOD for a few weeks, during which they attempted to implant me with my alternate's memories and personality, until I managed to escape from the facility for a short time.

On their side, Brandon Fayette is in charge of most of the science department, as well as of any experiment conducted there.

I was once again briefly held in the DOD after a failed attempt at crossing back over to our side. Colonel Broyles, head of their Fringe Division, assisted me in escaping again, before taking me to Harvard.

In other words, professional. In light of what happened today at Massive Dynamic, though, he can read between the lines.

He'd already deduced from her newfound dislike of small spaces that she was detained in a confinement cell. Her reaction to seeing Brandon also confirmed that she was mistreated by his alternate.

Signs of abuse, her doctor had said, back at the hospital. Needle tracks and scarring on her arms, some old, some very recent.

Peter almost embraces the anger he feels towards these people who hurt her; it offers him a small respite from the other kind of anger, the one he usually directs towards himself.

"Peter?"

He raises his head to find his father standing in the kitchen's doorway. While he's not surprised by the apparition, he's grateful for the fact that Walter is wearing clothes.

He lets go of his nape, closing the report. "Hey," he says, his voice hoarse, lowered by his quiet anger.

"I see you're still having difficulty sleeping," Walter notes, shuffling to the counter. "I can help you with that, you know."

Mouth against his joined hands, Peter shakes his head. "I don't think drugs's the solution."

"Quite true," Walter says. "But neither is spending most of your nights brooding over what cannot be undone." Before Peter can respond to that, Walter adds: "Trust me, I would know."

Peter's anger is already receding, replaced by his familiar bone-deep fatigue. He sighs against his hands. "I know, Walter."

If anything else, having made such a fool of himself and hurt one of the most important people in his life, has somehow mended some of what had broken between him and Walter.

Nothing beats feeling like a couple of asses together to strengthen bonds.

"She'll come around, son," Walter says, comfortingly enough. "You'll see. You eventually did, didn't you?"

Peter closes his eyes, hanging his head again, feeling beyond tired of it all, of the repeating pattern of his life. Betray, or be betrayed.

Trust at your own risk, because you never know what lie awaits, around the corner, ready to knock you to the ground when you're at your most vulnerable.

"I guess I did," he eventually replies, keeping his eyes closed, not elaborating on what had led him to come around.

Or rather, whom.

In his mind's eyes, Peter actually sees her, Olivia, standing in front of him at her most vulnerable. Telling him that both worlds could be damned, for all she cared, because he may not belong on her side, he belonged by her side. What she said with words, she then repeated through touch.

And he felt it, that night, like he felt it so many times before. That inner force of hers, drawing him in, pulling him to her, like a homing beacon.

No, he didn't come back for Walter; he doubts he would ever have come back for Walter.

He had come back for her.

…

The building is both lit and open when Olivia approaches it, just as the sun begins to rise, as she expected it to be. After all, that knowledge is what made her leave her home and get in her car in the first place, unable to stay in her own apartment a minute longer.

Despite what she keeps telling everyone – including the psychiatrist she's forced to see, she is aware that she's not okay. The last time she'd felt something remotely similar, there only was one person who was able to help her. Considering she feels drastically worse than she did at any point the previous year, seeking him out today seems like the right thing to do.

She cautiously walks up to the lanes, her eyes roaming the room; he's nowhere to be seen.

"Hello?" she calls out, her instincts directing her steps toward lane 7. Sure enough, a few seconds later, he emerges from the dark hole at the end of it.

"Dunham!" Sam greets her, his tone enthusiastic, and anything but surprised. "I was wondering when you'd show up, I was waiting for you."

She lets him come to her, hands deep in the pockets of her coat.

"Of course you were," she says, offering him a smile that, although brief, feels like her first real smile in weeks. "Nina Sharp?"

"Nina isn't my only source of information," he says, cleaning off his hands with a towel. "I'm a very well connected man."

"So it seems," she says, her smile already gone. At least, she doesn't feel awkward around him.

Sam peers at her, looking more solemn, now. "How you holding up, Buttercup?"

She holds his gaze for a moment, before shrugging a shoulder; the smile that is now tugging at her lips is of a much sadder kind. "How much do you know?"

"Enough to know another version of you walked in your shoes and deceived all of your friends for a couple of months."

"Man," she huffs without a hint of amusement. "You weren't kidding about these connections."

To be honest, Olivia didn't realize Sam was that well informed about what was going on in her life and around the Fringe Division, but she isn't exactly surprised by it either. After all, he had been Nina Sharp's 'therapist' after she lost an arm through a universe-crossing door.

He is peering at her in a familiar way, now, as if scanning her. Generally speaking, Olivia doesn't like feeling gauged, but she never minded it much with Sam.

"Let's go get some breakfast," he says in a bright voice, throwing the towel on a bench.

"I'm not hungry," she automatically counters.

"Well, I am," Sam says, already walking toward the exit. "Some of us need food to survive, Dunham. Don't be so egotistical, it doesn't suit you well."

She's actually smiling again as she follows him out. Less than fifteen minutes later, they're sitting at a diner, having ordered coffee, eggs for Sam, and a few slices of toast for her.

"So," he says, after their waitress is done filling their cups. "On a scale of 1 to 10, how awkward does it still feel to be around your friends?"

Olivia puts her hands around her mug; the liquid is too hot for her to drink, but she enjoys the warmth seeping from the ceramic to her palms. Anything to make some of the cold recede.

She shrugs again, not looking up at him. "On good days, I would say it's down to a 4. On bad days…it goes way back up."

Not to mention how it goes way beyond 10 with some specific people.

"Have you actually discussed what happened with them?" Sam asks.

She shakes her head, smiling her not-so-happy smile, before tilting her head, finally meeting his eyes. "Not really. Nothing past the unavoidable 'Here's What Happened While You Were Gone' talks when I first came back."

"Do you let them try, though?" He prods, not losing a beat.

As predicted, he's reading right through her. She wants to be annoyed at him for seeing past her facade with such ease, but she can't. This ability of his, to take one look at her and know what's going on in her head, is the reason why she came to see him. Or one of the reasons, at least.

Her heart begins to beat faster, as she finally asks him what she truly wants to know: "Would you have known? If you had met her?"

Sam holds her gaze, eventually shrugging, almost in defeat. "I don't know. I'd like to say 'Sure, of course I would have known the moment we made eye contact', but like everything else, that's easy to say when speaking all in hypotheticals. Other elements have to be factored in, like the way people will go to great lengths to bend their perception of things, just so that it can match how they want these things to be."

Olivia nods, too fast, her face constricting now, staring at her steaming coffee, the tension back in every muscle of her body. "I know," she says, curtly, looking back up at him. "And I know that I can't really blame any of them for not realizing she wasn't me, but…"

When she doesn't finish her thought, he does it for her: "…it sucks to find out none of your closest friends actually know you that well?"

It hurts.

Sam hit the nail right on the head, paraphrasing what she would have said, yet it hurt like hell to hear the words out loud.

She brings a hand to her nose, forcing the prickling sensation away from her eyes, once again staring at her coffee instead of at the man sitting across from her. "You could say that," she answers after a moment.

The next time he speaks, the food has arrived at their table, although none of them is touching it. "This is a hell of a thing to happen to a person, Olivia, and that's saying a lot, knowing what kind of life you've already got. You have every right to be angry and sad, and to feel betrayed. It will take time for the residual awkwardness to subside completely, and maybe you'll never be able to trust some of them the way you used to. But you don't have to be a passive victim in this."

She looks back at him, meeting his eyes; like the rest of him, they are both kind and focused, not in the business of sugar-coating things for her.

"They screwed up. Badly," he adds. "But when you think about it, really think about it…what does it tell you about yourself?"

She does think about it for a long moment. She pushes aside the hurt and embarrassment thinking about the Switch always makes her feel, looking beyond. Finally, she says: "It tells me that my friends didn't know any better because I never really let them in."

He blinks, giving her a small nod. As he starts eating his eggs, Olivia gets lost in her thoughts again, her view on the situation beginning to shift. Most of the blame did fall of them for not seeing through her alternate's deception at all, but…she thinks of Charlie, then.

Charlie, who she knows with the most infallible certainty, would have realized something was wrong, enough to mention it to the others and raise suspicion. He had been more than her closest friend; he was her mentor, a guardian angel. And yet, when he was killed and replaced by a shapeshifter, she hadn't known.

She had to shoot him right between the eyes and watch as silvery blood slowly dripped on his forehead to be convinced of it, and even then, she didn't grasp the enormity of it all.

Not only hadn't she known, she hadn't known for weeks.

She hadn't known, because as much as he was her confident, she hadn't been his, a reciprocity that hadn't exactly been missing; it simply wasn't needed. After hearing him talk about the death of his first partner, she understands why he didn't let her in.

Olivia had done the same thing after John's death. Put up walls, kept everybody at arms' length.

Except with Peter. She didn't let him in, as much as he had found his way in, somehow. By the time she realized he had come past the walls, she was relying too much on his presence there with her to push him out.

Yet, he hadn't known either. Maybe these glimpses of her she let him see hadn't been enough.

She's startled out of her reflections when Sam speaks again, forcing her eyes back on him.

"I don't have much details on what happened to you, during these eight weeks, but just by looking at you, I can tell you're way too tensed, anxious, and not sleeping." There's concern in his gaze now. "Besides the nightmares, has anything become particularly triggering?"

She almost wants to shrug it off, pretend she's dealing much better than she thought, dismiss his question. She doesn't. "Not much besides small spaces," she says, trying to sound casual, but his look remains grave, so she shrugs a shoulder, pursing her lips. "Some smells. Unexpected or loud noises."

Some faces.

"You know what those are symptoms of, don't you?" he asks.

She tilts her head briskly. "I did take a few psychology courses in college."

He doesn't push the issue, for which she is grateful, going back to peering at her instead. "When you do try to sleep…do you do it in your bed?"

She's not in the least surprised. "No."

She thinks of her couch, on which she's been 'sleeping' these past few weeks. Even though she's washed her sheets and linens a few times, she simply cannot bring herself to sleep there, knowing her alternate slept in it, too.

Knowing who she slept in it with.

"I've got an assignment for you," Sam says, and Olivia smiles a little.

"Does it involve the color red? Because I gotta tell you, I'm not that fond of that shade anymore."

"No color involved this time, no business cards either," he says. "I want you to go shopping."

"Shopping," she repeats.

"Yes, shopping. I'm sure you've already cleaned your place from floor to ceiling three or four times, and filled up a couple of trash bags, but believe it or not, that's not enough. You need to reclaim your living space as your own. That's the first step to reclaiming the rest of your life: you need to fix your relationship with yourself, before you can fix all the other ones. So, I don't know, go to Ikea. Buy new sheets, new towels, new plates. Whatever makes you feel like saying 'I don't give a damn about that Redheaded Bitch'."

She doesn't miss the fact that she never mentioned the other Olivia having red hair.

Yet again, Sam didn't need her to.

A/N: One of my favorite things about season 2 is Sam Weiss. And there are many, many things that I adore about season 2. But Sam is a great character, and he's exactly what Olivia needed back then, someone who doesn't bullshit her too much but also makes her realize she's a human being who needs time to heal like everyone else. The way Sam was used in season 3 was...uhm. Yeah. I don't think I would have minded the whole 'First People' legacy thing, if he'd also been there for Olivia the way he used to be in season 2. Because hell, she needed it. So, I wrote it.

I probably won't update again for a few days, because of work and school, but part 3 should definitely come before the end of the week.

Reviews would be lovely, really really lovely :')