A/N: This is the first 1,000 words of what was supposed to be a oneshot. I wrote 3,000 words after that, but you'll never see them, because the current plot on the show killed it. I also wrote 6,000 words of another onehsot before this, that was also killed by canon. I'm not very happy :D

Anyway. This was written after 'And Those We've Left Behind', and before 'Wallflower'.

NOT YOURS

The problem with Peter Bishop –beside the fact that he's not supposed to exist, is that he looks at her with love in his eyes.

Generally speaking, he seems like a rather confident man. And that's a bit of an understatement. He's well aware of his skills and abilities, possessing a brain that easily competes with Walter's, even more so since, unlike Walter, Peter is not crazy. Or at least, not as obviously crazy.

But when he looks at Olivia and he thinks she's not aware of it, when their eyes meet and she finds herself trapped in the intensity of his gaze, during that second it takes him to look away or mask it all, there is no sign of arrogance left on his face. No attitude, no smug smile.

All he does is look at her, and his eyes fill up with tenderness and affection. He looks at her as if she's the only thing he needs, the only thing he really cares about.

As if she's the reason why he erased himself from existence in the first place.

Peter looks at her with love in his eyes, and that is what makes her feel so uncomfortable around him.

She can't match his fire, the passion she can tell there must have been between him and another version of her. It's only been three days since he has appeared in her life, after all; for all intents and purposes, he is a stranger.

Of course, they both know now that he's been visiting her for more than three days. But dreams are just that.

Dreams.

That's why she lies to him when he asks her if she's felt something while in there, a hint of hope in his voice.

That's why she doesn't tell him that she did dream of the park, of Walter swinging, of soft fingers on her cheek, of gentle kisses and perfect days.

These were just dreams. When she's awake, everything she knows and feels during the night morph again, and Peter goes back to being this disconcerting stranger who looks at her as if she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

She's not the woman he loves. And when they finally talk about it, acknowledge it, and she realizes that he knows it, she almost feel her entire body and soul relax, freed from that burden she has never asked to be bearing in the first place.

"Well, I hope you get back to her."

Another luckier version of herself, she thinks briefly as he smiles at her. She's not envious of her; she's honestly glad to know that this kind of love is possible for her, even if here, in this world, Peter Bishop never existed.

He doesn't belong with her.

"Thank you. Me too."

That is Olivia's first mistake. When she lets her guard down around him, because she thinks it's safe to do so. He's taken, burned to the core by this other her, by this woman she's not.

She lets herself smile at him, when she shouldn't have. She lets herself ponder on the strength and depth of that bond, even though it is not wise.

Because as it turns out, for a second there, she understands perfectly how she had come to love him back.

Peter cannot go back home.

He cannot go back home, because home is where he is now.

The major problem he has with this statement is that everything and everyone he cares about, everything that made this place home in the first place, it's all gone. People look the same, feel the same, just like his house does, but everything is empty.

There is no trace of him left. There never was any trace of him in the first place.

He's the stranger, the anomaly, the 'Fringe Event', as Broyles so regularly points it out to get Walter to work with him.

He watches his 'father' mumble and glare at him warily, chewing on his red vines, and he remembers his lucid face, his quivering smiles and the deep wrinkles on his skin when he did so, remembers feeling blinded by the warmth and pride in his eyes.

He stares at Olivia, and even though he enjoys the fact that she smiles at him now, instead of recoiling whenever he's too close, he despises the quality of these smiles. He doesn't need her pity.

He remembers how she used to smile, how she used to smell, her face so close to his, her eyes loving and tender; her remembers how good it felt, to have her, to simply have her, to love her without restraint, and to know in every fiber of his being that she loved him back.

The time jumps and bouts of hallucinations he keeps on experiencing don't help. He's pretty sure that if Walter really accepted to help him, they could figure it out together, but the man is so incredibly stubborn. And so he keeps on flashing in and out of this reality, sometimes ending up wearing clothes from another time. The wedding ring is what troubles him the most, in the most excruciating way, because it causes him to hope, hope that at some point he will pop back somewhere where his Olivia is. And yet, parts of him also know that wherever he ends up –or rather whenever- when he jumps through time, he sees glimpse of a future in which she's likely to be already dead.

He often awakes with jolt in the dark of night, her face still carved in his mind eyes from his peaceful dreams, convinced that everything so far as been nothing but a nightmare. If he opened his eyes, Olivia would be right there, her back to him.

In those moments, he always lets his mind wander, lets it recreate the smell of her warm, sleeping body, and he can almost feel her curves under his palm, the smoothness of her skin under his fingertips, the silk of her hair against his nose. It is hardly a sexual desire he feels in those moments, but pure longing for her.

Because for fifteen years, she has fit so perfectly in his arms that now, so completely deprived of her, he feels like he was missing a limb. Or half of his soul, really.

He wants to go home.

A/N: I really, really think that Peter is where he is supposed to be, and that he will come to realize it in future episodes. Therefore, I can tell you I don't approve of the Lincoln/Olivia development at all. All I could do at the end of 'Wallflower' was cry in my pillow and I wish I was exaggerating. I just miss my OTP too much ;_; So I'm sorry for the abrupt end, the rest of this fic was about Olivia slowly remembering him and Peter having weird timejumps that combined with her remembering him, and it would have had a happy ending. But Fringe happened.

I'm trying to kick the muse back to life, I'm almost done with the new chapter of 'In Time', so really, any feedback would be truly appreciated at this point.