August 14/8/2013 altverse
It was a usual day, as normal as it could be for the Fringe Division. Lincoln and Charlie returned to HQ having been out earlier investigating reports of a microquake in Albany, New York and an atmospheric disturbance off the coast of Nantucket, but had frustratingly hit a dead end with the lack of evidence and leads, so had come back to the office to go through any missed details.
Olivia was still stuck on desk duty until deemed as fully recovered from chemicals she'd inhaled and flicked through the photos on the screen, frustrated at herself for not being able to go out on the field until cleared to go by HR.
"Agent Dunham?" A female voice enquired over the chatter of voices in the department. Olivia looked up to see Agent Ruiz, her dark brown hair tied back in her usual bun and dark eyes smiling nervously.
"Hi!" Olivia smiled politely, having not seen her since their case. "How's it going?"
"Good!" Jill lowered her voice and leaned in a little. "I was wondering," she bit her lip nervously, "um, can I ask you something privately?"
"Sure!" Olivia nodded, her auburn hair swishing as she spoke. "What's up?"
"Oh, nothing, I, uh," Jill paused, looking around her briefly. "I was just wondering, you and Lincoln, I mean Agent Lee. You're pretty close, right?"
"Yeah, I guess." Olivia smiled and the other woman nodded in reply.
"Do you think he'd go out with me for a drink or something?" She blurted out quickly and noticed as Olivia's jaw dropped in response. "That kiss we had keeps playing on my mind and - oh god!" she stepped back, putting her hand over her mouth as she looked at Olivia. "Oh gosh, are you together? I'm so sorry, I didn't realize."
"Oh, oh no!" Olivia quickly corrected her, her hands fluttering up, sweeping the accusation away, but surprised and disappointed in herself to feel an unwarranted twang of jealousy in her stomach. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to her that Agent Ruiz would like him that way. Even though they'd kissed when undercover, she had assumed it had been an act for both of them. "We're not a couple, we're just friends."
"Oh. Oh good." Jill replied, still unsure.
"It just surprised me, that's all! But to answer your question, you'd have to ask him. I honestly don't know. I don't think he's seeing anyone, but I don't know. But here he is…" Olivia gestured as Jill's eyes widened and she straightened up from her relaxed pose. "So why don't you ask him yourself?"
"Ask me what?" Lincoln enquired nonchalantly as he sat, placing a box of files on his desk, pulling one out for inspection.
"Lincoln, I just need to go to a meeting with occupational health. I'll be back in a couple of hours." Olivia said, as he nodded in acknowledgement.
He raised an eyebrow and opened the top file in front of him.
"So you wanted to ask me something?" He asked obliviously, studying the photos in the top file without looking up.
"I, er, yes, I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink or something." Jill stuttered quickly.
"I'm fine, thanks. I grabbed some lunch on the way back from checking out that anomaly." He replied, scanning through the files in front of him.
"No, I meant with me, just us, like after work sometime."
He looked back up at her slowly as he realized what she meant and she gave him a coy smile, the dark brown of her eyes meeting the cool blue of his, looking away shyly as he raised his eyebrows.
"Oh! Oh, I see. I'm very flattered, but I -" Lincoln began, resisting the urge to play with his glasses as he often did when he was nervous and unsure.
"If you don't want to, it's fine. I just thought maybe… if you wanna think about it." She said with a shrug and smiling as he smoothed down his tie and his eyes fluttered.
"No, yes, sorry! I didn't think that, ummm…" he said, stunned. "Sure well, I'll think about it and let you know. Right now I just really need to focus on this." He gestured at the files on the desk in front of him.
"Of course, yes, I understand. Just let me know if you wanna go for a drink sometime."
Jill smiled as she turned to leave.
"I will definitely let you know." He huffed, too surprised to say much else as she turned and left.
Having finally reached the bottom of the file, Lincoln noticed Olivia entering the room, speaking to Agent Ruiz briefly. He looked at their expressions, trying to gauge their conversation as Jill left and Olivia strode over to their desk.
"Hey!" He greeted her as she reached him. "How was the meeting?"
"Good, thanks. They think I should be able to be back in the field in a few days pending a psych review. What's all this?"
"Nothing much." He replied with a sigh. "Just remaining paperwork from my side. What did Jill want?"
"Why do you wanna know?" Olivia teased, and he blushed a little and looked down at the file.
"Did she tell you she asked me out?"
"Out out? Like a date?"
He nodded simply, and bashfully lowered his eyes in embarrassment.
"What did you say?"
"I said I'd think about it and let her know…" he began before Olivia interrupted.
"Oh, come on!" She exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm away from the nearby desks and listening ears. "You can't leave a girl hanging if she likes you. Don't you think she's pretty?" Olivia reasoned, hoping he'd say he didn't want to go on a date with Jill because of her, but he just sighed.
"Yeah, I suppose she is… so she did tell you?"
"She asked if you were single, and if I thought you'd be interested."
"And what did you say?" He replied, his brow furrowed.
"I said I don't know. She should ask you, as I didn't want to assume anything. Take her out for dinner or something. What's the worst that could happen? You've already kissed her, so that's one thing you don't have to worry about." She teased, trying to double bluff him.
"I suppose you're right. Although it was hardly romantic circumstances." He said, nervously playing with his tie as Olivia did her best to hide her disappointment. "So, they don't forbid you from having relationships here?"
Romantic.
Olivia wasn't going to admit it, but hearing him say that about someone else made her stomach flip and a lump form in the back of her throat, and she quickly shook herself out of the thought.
"Um, no. She's only here on a temporary assignment, anyway. Isn't she?" Olivia added.
"Yeah, I guess."
Lincoln had taken a chance to stay here when the other Olivia began rekindling her feelings for Peter. He'd liked her, of course, really liked her, and would have easily fallen for her if he let himself, but as much as that was true, this Olivia intrigued him more. She was more sure of herself, and sure of him. He swore he had caught her looking at him in the corner of his eye when she thought he didn't notice, even flirting sometimes, but he'd put it down to the similarities between him and her Lincoln. She must realize she was the reason he'd stayed and yet, as much as he wanted what she had said to him to be true, he resigned himself to the fact that although he was in love with her, she didn't feel the same and he might as well do whatever he could to get over her as quickly as possible and preserve himself from any further heartbreak.
"I suppose there's no harm in one date to test the water." Lincoln said decisively as he pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and briefly nodded, pursing his lips as he left before he could talk himself out of it and before Olivia could change her mind and protest.
Olivia turned and saw he'd approached Agent Ruiz, who'd re-entered the room while she'd turned her back during their chat. The younger woman smiled slightly at Lincoln as he spoke, which then turned into a beaming smile, and she couldn't believe it when she saw Lincoln wink in reply.
Was he flirting with her? In all this time, Olivia had never seen him wink at anyone, not even her. In that moment it reminded her of her own Lincoln, a cheekier and more outwardly self-assured version of this one, and yet here he was with the same charm and smile. His hips swayed as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants, and Olivia almost felt like throwing up when Jill quickly stroked down the length of his tie as she turned on her heel to walk away, looking at him over her shoulder.
"Agent Dunham?" She jumped at the sound of her name coming from behind her. "I didn't mean to startle you."
She turned to see Col. Erikson, Broyles' replacement, standing behind her.
"Sorry Sir, I was just…"
"I understand you spoke to occupational health earlier about going back in the field?" He motioned to his office, and he escorted her to his office.
"Yes, Sir." She began as she followed him, no longer able to see the interaction between Lincoln and Jill.
August 14/8/2013 altverse
By the time Olivia's meeting with Erikson was over, Lincoln had vacated his desk as had most of the team, and Olivia returned to her own desk to pack up her things to leave for home, bumping into Agent Farnsworth on her way out.
"Astrid!" she exclaimed as they collided when turning the corner. "I thought everyone had left by now. Have you seen Agent Lee since this afternoon?"
"Yes," she confirmed in a flat response, "I saw him leave with Agent Ruiz about an hour ago. He told me to tell you not to wait for him."
"Oh." Olivia nodded, trying to hide her disappointment.
"Judging by their tone and body language, there is an 89% chance that they are going on date and a 68% chance of sexual attraction and chemistry, as they worked closely on the last case." Astrid continued in her analytical manner. "And so, there is a very high probability they will be compatible and initiate a sexual relationship."
Astrid's dark eyes widened as she spoke, characteristically avoiding contact with Olivia's gaze.
"I guess that means I shouldn't wait up, huh?"
"No, you should not." Astrid agreed with a nod. "Have a nice evening, Agent Dunham." Astrid said as she turned to walk back towards the main office.
"Yeah." Olivia replied, sighing heavily. "Actually, as we're the last ones here, would you like to go for a bite to eat before going home - if you don't have any plans?" Olivia asked impulsively as Astrid stopped and removed her military headgear that sat on her tight, dark curls, exposing the scarlet highlights that were usually concealed by the uniform beret.
"Yes, I would like that. Very much."
August 14/8/2013 altverse
It was late evening and Olivia and Astrid were still talking after getting dinner, sitting in Olivia's apartment and catching up on work. How their world was healing, discussing their counterparts in the other universe and laughing about old times.
"Do you remember that time when Charlie found those bugs, and Captain Lee said they were his babies…" Astrid trailed off in embarrassment as Olivia's smile dropped from her face.
"Yeah," she replied, with a hint of sadness as she played with her straw, checking the clock again for the time. Olivia didn't expect Lincoln to call if he was going to be home late, but that didn't stop her from looking at the clock, wondering what he was doing with Jill and where they were.
"I miss him too." Astrid said, and Olivia looked back at her. "But I do like the Lincoln from the other universe, too."
"Me too." Olivia replied ruefully in a small voice. "I don't think I could have gotten through it when Lincoln… I couldn't have coped without him being around."
Astrid narrowed her eyes when sensing Olivia's nervousness and Olivia swallowed the rest of her drink to avoid her gaze.
"You're in love with him, aren't you?" She blurted out, and Olivia nearly choked on her drink.
"WHAT?" Olivia almost shouted in denial, wiping the droplets from her lips and shaking her head. "What are you talking…"
"Lincoln. I have seen the way you look at him." Astrid finished matter-of-factly. "Initially, I thought it was because of their physical and genetic similarities. But it's more than that, isn't it? You should have told him. The probability of him feeling the same about you and not going on a date is very -"
"Astrid!" Olivia cut her off quickly. "I don't want to know, and I don't know how I feel. Sometimes I think about me and him together and then I…"
"What?"
"I think he thinks I see him as a substitute, a reminder of the Lincoln we knew." Olivia sighed.
"Is he?" Astrid enquired. "In that case, wouldn't it be preferable you choose to believe he is yours? And then you could love him and be happy. Or do you think he sees you as one too, for the Olivia on his side? Is that what's stopping you both from saying how you feel about each other?"
Olivia contemplated it as she had many times. For all their similarities, they were very different people ruled by different circumstances and forks in the road that had taken them down different paths.
She had almost hated her Lincoln when she first joined Fringe. He was too flippant and cocky, bordering on arrogant, with his over-styled hair and biker jackets. When she had heard he'd got the job in the Fringe Division because of his dad's connections with the Secretary of Defense, the nepotism annoyed her even more. But over the 6 years they'd known each other in the academy and at work, she realized his confidence and narcissism were a façade and a fucked-up coping mechanism. He wasn't her usual type, her exes had all been tall, square jawed and broad-shouldered men who spent too much time at the gym and who left her weeks at a time to help save the world from whatever the threat was in the news. But it was like she's flicked a switch somewhere and he was suddenly the only person who would understand her and she could ever imagine herself with, his eyes were so full of intense sadness and longing as he gazed at her, she felt like she had been blind for years.
This Lincoln didn't seem to be arrogant or assertive at all, or he was just adept at masking it behind his reserved exterior, his passion and determination just bubbling under the surface, waiting for release. He was hesitant and meticulous with a quiet conviction, but behind his glasses she saw the same unmistakable look of hurt in his eyes, the desperate need to love and belong. She wondered how and if he compared her to the other Olivia. Did he see something in her that reminded of the one he left behind, who chose another man over him?
"Sorry, that was inappropriate of me. I should go." Astrid stated as she moved to stand, interrupting Olivia's thoughts.
"Oh no, it's fine!" She protested, "I didn't mean to snap -"
"No, I shouldn't have said that. It's none of my business."
Olivia grabbed Astrid's arm as she went to leave.
"No, Astrid. You see things, things people don't usually see. And you're right."
"About what?"
"Everything. All of it." Olivia sighed, pausing as the younger agent left. "And now it's probably too late."
Olivia tidied up after Astrid left, washing up their mugs and trying not to think about what Lincoln and Jill could be doing. The scenarios played through her mind, augmented by the memory of the sounds of them kissing permanently tattooed in her memory.
August 15/8/2013 altverse
A noise woke Olivia suddenly from her dreamless sleep. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, pitch black except for the faint glow of light that bled through the edges of the curtains. Hearing it again, she instinctively reached for her weapon where it sat on the bedside table with her alarm clock, its red LED display flashing to show it was almost 3am.
Gingerly opening her bedroom door, which she'd left ajar, she peered around as a shadow moved into the dark kitchen area and she crept through the entrance, swinging her gun around the corner.
"Don't move!" She demanded loudly as the sound of a glass dropping and shattering on the floor ripped through the air between them.
"Jesus, Liv! What the hell! It's me!" A male voice cried out in surprise from the shadows.
"Lincoln? What are you doing sneaking around in the dark at this hour?"
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she realized he was almost naked, and was standing in his underwear. Suddenly, in her own state of undress, she felt self-conscious and lowered her weapon to cover herself with her arms.
"I didn't want to wake you," Lincoln began. "it's so late, I assumed you'd be asleep. I'm sorry." He replied guiltily, carefully stepping over the shards of glass on the floor.
"I was. I wasn't expecting you back tonight," Olivia replied defensively, crossing her arms against her chest and looking past him towards the door of his bedroom. "Is she here? Is that why you're… " she asked, jutting out her chin almost accusingly, looking at his state of undress.
"What? No!" Lincoln exclaimed. "Is that what you really think of me?"
She shrugged, averting her eyes in embarrassment from his nakedness and from her accusatory tone. He turned and bent over to search through the cupboards, the contents rattling as he rummaged through them.
"I don't know."
"You've got it all wrong." He replied, his voice muffled from the cupboard. "Can you turn the light on? I can't find the dustpan to clear up this glass."
She hit the switch hard with the palm of her hand and squinted as the bright fluorescent light flooded the room. Looking down at his sinewy body as he knelt on the floor, she glanced quickly at his almost naked form, having never seen him this way before. She could tell under his fitted suits he was slim and toned, but as he stretched and stood up before her, it exposed the taut muscles across the plane of his chest, covered with a fine layer of coarse hair. The mark on his arm where the bullet had grazed it, along with a healed scar on his left shoulder, caught her attention until she realized she was watching him too intently and she silently walked back out to her room. Lincoln tipped the broken glass into the trash and left the dustpan and brush on the kitchen counter, then followed her across the apartment, waiting outside her semi-open door that swung behind her on the hinges.
"First of all, it was one date, I like to get to know someone a bit before I think about…" Lincoln's voice trailed off as he felt a blush rise in his cheeks. "And this is your apartment, I wouldn't bring anyone back here without asking you first." Lincoln paused at her door, not wanting to go again uninvited but waited for her to respond. When she didn't, he continued anyway. "If you must know why I'm almost naked, it's because just before you pulled your gun on me, I put all my clothes in the washer as soon as I got in so I didn't make a mess of the place."
She opened her door again, pulling a T-shirt over her head and handed him a cream floral robe, and he shrugged his arms into it, noticing it carried the faint scent of her.
"Thanks." He said as he squinted down at himself and frowned as he realized what he was wearing.
"You're already close because of work." Olivia stated, crossing her arms across her chest again as she leaned against the doorframe. The sounds of their soft moans, heavy breathing and gasps as they kissed she'd heard moments before being exposed to the drugs echoed in her mind and she looked down at the floor, away from his eyes that were studying her face. "It's not like you're complete strangers."
"We're not - I don't know her like I know you." Lincoln blurted, watching Olivia as her eyes shot up from looking at the floor to meet his gaze briefly, before looking away again.
"What happened?" She asked tentatively, her voice small and unsure of if she wanted to know.
"We went to dinner and took her car as she suggested a place to go and obviously I don't know many places around here, and I didn't want to leave you stranded at work. We had some nice food, a few drinks, you know…" Lincoln rambled and Olivia nodded, prompting him to continue. "... It was all going okay…"
"Just okay?" She echoed as she passed him on the way to the living room, and he shrugged following her path..
"It was fine, nice. Until we got back to her car, and it wouldn't start." Olivia winced, and he nodded. "It gets worse. I tried to help, but of course I know nothing about cars, especially the type of cars over here, so I just ended up getting covered in oil and dirt, which didn't help the situation at all. In the end I said I'd wait for a tow to turn up and stay with her so she wasn't on her own with some guy she doesn't know, which took about 3 hours!" He exclaimed in frustration as Olivia burst into laughter, the relief overwhelming her and admiring his resolve to stay there and make sure Jill was okay, and she covered her mouth to stifle her laughter.
"I'm glad you think it's funny!" He laughed in reply.
"Why didn't you call me or Charlie? We wouldn't have minded coming out to help."
He scoffed, flopping backwards onto the sofa.
"I'm not gonna bother Charlie when Mona is heavily pregnant." Lincoln scoffed. "And as I had to spend half the evening convincing her we're only friends and aren't involved with each other, I don't think she would have been too keen to have you turn up."
"Seriously?" Olivia asked, looking away from him guiltily, thankful that he seemed preoccupied with tying up the robe around his waist to notice her expression. "Why would she think that?"
She thought about what Astrid had said earlier, how she said she had noticed the way they looked at each other, especially since he'd moved in.
"I don't know." He shrugged again. "Maybe she…" Lincoln stopped, pursing his lips.
"What?" Olivia asked, looking back over at him.
"Nothing."
"Lincoln, tell me." She demanded, her hands on her hips, and he sighed.
"Maybe she got confused and meant him. Your - the other Lincoln."
The words spilled from his mouth, spurred on by the courage alcohol had given him and he regretted them as they hit her like a slap in the face.
August 15/8/2013 altverse
The sudden change of atmosphere in the room was palpable, like a summer storm that hits without warning and she recoiled, stepping back into the kitchen as if the bitter implication of his words had stung her.
"Liv, Olivia, I…" He began in an apologetic tone on seeing her smile drop as she moved away. "I didn't mean it to sound like that. I…"
"Shit!" She cried from the kitchen and he jumped up from the chair rushing after her, entering the kitchen as she removed a shard of glass from her foot, glaring up at him as he stopped at the door and a droplet of blood bloomed on the sole of her foot.
"Damn, I thought I'd got it all. Let me get that." Lincoln said as he reached out to her, watching the scarlet bead roll down her heel. "I'm sorry."
"I'm fine, it's just a scratch." Olivia replied stubbornly, dabbing the sole of her foot with a paper towel as he retreated.
"I mean, I'm sorry about what I said." He breathed, leaning against the counter. "She probably heard some rumors. I shouldn't have said that."
She discarded the piece of glass into the trash and leaned her on her hands on the side of the counter, next to his glasses, where he'd removed them to undress quickly.
Lincoln watched for her reaction, waiting for a response, but she froze with her back turned to him. He turned to leave and as he did, she spun back to face him.
"No." She said simply, unable to bottle in her thoughts anymore, releasing them under the pressure, letting them erupt and spill out like suffocating volcanic ash and burning magma.
"No?"
"You're right. We were, we did just before he died…"
Lincoln nodded as his eyes drifted away in avoidance, trying to hide the disappointment in his eyes as he acknowledged her words and his suspicions were proved to be correct.
"You don't owe me any explanation, Olivia." He began, lifting his finger to stop her. "It's none of my business what you two were or did."
He shuffled his feet awkwardly as she shook her head, the thoughts still spilling out into words, overflowing like a river about to flood and burst from its banks.
"When we were tracking Jones in the park before he escaped, you asked me if we were close." Olivia interrupted. "And what I told you was the truth, but he heard our conversation over the radio…."
Olivia paused to inspect her foot. Lincoln was so quiet, for a second she thought he'd left, but she could see him in the corner of her eye, leaning against the doorjamb, completely motionless as he stared at her. The sense of déjà vu hit her hard, seeing him in the same place and position where the other Lincoln had stood moments before he'd confessed he was in love with her.
"He was always in love with you, wasn't he?" He stated simply and matter-of-factly, like it had been obvious all along. If he loved her himself after knowing her for only a few months, of course the other Lincoln loved her too when he'd known her for years.
She looked back up at him again, unable to speak, unable to meet his eyes.
Lincoln didn't need her to. Her expression was all the response he needed.
"You were…" He began slowly, trying to disguise the catch in his voice, "...in love with him too."
It sounded more like a statement than a question but either way she couldn't answer.
In truth; she didn't know what to say. She had told herself she was because she wanted to be so much.
After being let down so many times, Lincoln had always been there for her, unwavering in his support, friendship and had only ever hoped, not expected, anything in return. She wanted to love him the way he wanted, the way he deserved, especially after the dreams she'd had when he'd held her when she gave birth. But she knew she had just become tired of being disappointed and looking, just as he'd become tired of hoping. She was confusing loving someone for being in love because of her grief. Her heart burned in remorse, shame and guilt when she realized she'd indulged because she thought the Lincoln in front of her wasn't interested.
Lincoln took her silence to confirm his suspicion. He'd stayed here with her because he'd lost a partner, two in a way if you count the other Olivia, and he knew the emptiness it left behind, naively hoping that their counterparts wouldn't be a barrier for them and they would offer each other some comfort. He watched helplessly as two tears slipped down Olivia's cheek, hitting the counter next to the bloodied tissue.
"I shouldn't have left him." She sobbed, breaking the awkward silence. "If I'd just stayed with him a little longer, I would have been with him when he…"
Lincoln stepped back towards her, shaking his head in annoyance with himself and tenderly rubbing her shoulder as she hunched over the counter.
"Liv, don't. It's not your fault. Broyles gave us up, but I'm the one you should blame."
Her eyes shot back up at him again, frowning as he blinked back at her, unable to take the burden anymore. "It was my lead that took us to that site, even though Broyles tried to throw us off the scent. I caught the suspect. If I hadn't questioned him there and we'd taken him back to the HQ like you said, we'd have been long gone before the sniper arrived. Your Lincoln took a bullet for me and he's dead because of me!"
It was her turn to shake her head as she saw the regret and guilt flashing in his eyes. "It's true though." He gulped as his eyes misted. "When I saw your face in the locker room that day, I could tell you knew, but what was I supposed to say to you when it was all my fault?"
On that day, panic and fear etched across his face seeing his doppelgänger on the floor, the coppery scent of the blood blooming through the white cotton of his T-shirt and his fingers. He wondered if he would have the same look of fear when he died as that Lincoln did that day.
His warm hand was still on her shoulder as she hadn't moved away from his touch. "I think he knew - he told me to take care of you after you left and that might have been the last thing he said. I just wanted to stay here to help you but I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to live with that or how you can live with me here knowing it's my fault, and it should've been me that di- that was in the morgue, not him."
Lincoln's lip trembled as the words spilled from his mouth with the relief of admitting all the guilt he'd been carrying around since that day when he'd watched a version of himself slip away in his hands. If he was honest, he'd stayed for that reason, his heart full of regret for causing her pain and hoped he'd be able to mend the hole left in her life somehow.
Olivia's hand went to cover her face and there was nothing he could do but wrap his other arm around her, holding her tight in his embrace. They stood silently, closing their eyes as they clung to each other, time slowing as they dissolved into the comfort and warmth of each other's bodies, allowing themselves to drift together into the abyss of uncharted waters. She sighed and shifted, opening her eyes to see Lincoln's mouth, his lips trembling so close to her own and his eyes deep and dark, and searching her tear-stained face. Olivia's eye drifted imperceptibly to his lips, his slightly imperfect teeth she found strangely endearing glistened as he subconsciously nervously licked his bottom lip.
"I don't blame you for any of that," She sighed under her breath. "I'm just so…"
Her words dropped away as his fingers deftly moved to brush a hair that had stuck to her cheek, wet with tears and tucked it behind her ear, gently running his finger back down her neck to her shoulder, nestling his thumb on the protruding edge of her clavicle. She could feel his hand tremble as it traced against the collarbone and the warmth of his wine tinted breath enveloped her with the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Heat radiated between them, edging their faces closer and yet they both hesitated, their uncertainties causing a resistance.
"I should go." Lincoln gulped, breaking the silence, hovering a millimeter away from her lips grazing his.
"You want to go?"
"No." He said simply. He wanted this, more than anything, but like this? He couldn't let himself love her if she didn't love him back, and in this emotional state they were both in. "But I should, sorry."
His heart ached and mouth twitched with the words he wanted to say.
"Just tell me not to go, tell me to stay. Tell me you love me like I love you."
But they refused to rise to his lips, instead they sank under the weight of his anxiety, fears and hesitation.
Olivia nodded and sighed, blinking slowly and taking a small step backwards to release him, and he let his arms passively slip down to his sides again, stepping back too.
Lincoln looked away guiltily, anywhere but at her, and gulped again then shivered with the lack of her warmth.
"I'm sorry too." She sniffed, going back to her room, closing the door behind her, leaving him to stand in the same spot she'd found him in. He put his glasses back on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose and folded his arms, more unsure than he'd ever been.
Late afternoon, August 14/8/2013 Alternative/ Redverse
"Hey! Agent Ruiz!"
Jill turned on her heel at the sound of her name being called, her dark brown eyes widened to see Lincoln walking quickly towards her with a jog in his step as he made his way across the Fringe HQ rotunda and through the other members of the team.
"Oh, hey! Jill, please."
"Jill." Lincoln said, correcting himself with a slight nod. "Sorry. I just wanted to ask, about what you said earlier-"
"It's okay," Jill interrupted, waving her hands up dismissively. "If you're not interested, you don't need to let me down gently, I'm a big girl now."
"Actually I was wondering if you wanted to head out once I wrap up this paperwork?" He replied with a slight smile, and raised his eyebrows quickly.
"Tonight?' She enquired, glancing down at her plain, formal work attire of a dark suit and white top.
"No time like the present," Lincoln shrugged, catching her self-conscious gaze, "I mean I don't have any plans for this evening, if you're free."
Although he didn't have a particularly active social life, Fridays were reserved for his and Liv's movie nights, where they'd pick a random film and discuss any differences that he knew of. Thursdays were for a martial art class he'd managed to enroll in to continue the one he'd enjoyed in Harford, and Tuesdays were for chess club - when work didn't get in the way of hobbies. He liked to keep weekends and Mondays free for reading and keeping up with the technology and cultural differences of this universe, and occasionally indulging in some new music.
"Sure," Jill smiled, "shall I meet you in the parking lot in half an hour? I know this place called Winks not far from here that has decent beer, great bar food too, I can drive us there - no tie needed!"
"Great!" He replied, his eyes flickering slightly as she touched his tie. "I'll see you then for winks and drinks!"
Jill smiled as he punctuated the sentence with an accentuated wink, and walked away.
7.12am Aug 15th 2013 Alternative/Redverse
Despite having a restless sleep from thinking about what had happened, and had nearly happened between him and Olivia, Lincoln was up and dressed early.
Dressed in his usual suit, he adjusted his tie and glasses in the mirror, preparing to leave for work when Olivia opened the door to her room, stopping when she noticed he was there.
"Hey." He smiled awkwardly,shifting slightly on his feet. Her face looked red and puffy, and he wondered if she'd been awake for most of the night too, and hated him as much as he hated himself. "I was just about to go. I left your robe there."
He pointed towards the sofa, and she glanced over at the dark blue fabric of it draped across the back of the chair and frowned, folding her arms.
"You're leaving already?" Olivia questioned, looking down at her feet.
"I got a call from Charlie. Another case has come up, Erikson wants us in the office A-SAP," Lincoln explained, then frowned, catching her pained expression. "Wait - did you think I was leaving for good?"
She didn't look up as she picked at a piece of thread on her t-shirt, leaning against the wall by her door.
"Liv?" He demanded, daring to step slightly closer, holding his hand out in peace as if trying to win the trust of a feral animal. "Did you think I was leaving here?"
She dared herself to look back at him, taking in his appearance. He looked like his normal self in his suit and glasses, unlike last night when she'd felt vulnerable because of his resemblance to the Lincoln she'd known before.
"No! Do you want to? I didn't get a call from work. Do they need me to come in too?" She lied, rambling quickly as her flustered hands moved around, distracting him then stopped, looking at his hurt expression.
"I think Erikson just wants you to rest and make sure you're well enough before you go back in the field." Lincoln said and paused, shuffling another step forward. "Listen, Liv. I don't want to go, but I didn't mean to, uh, freak you out, so if you want me to move out, I understand…"
It was his turn to sweat now and, oh god, he felt like he was a teenager again and winced at himself.
"You didn't freak me out," Olivia replied softly. He stared as her hand reached out to his, and she thought back to his words from the night before. "I like having you here, I don't want you to move out. And for the record, this isn't my apartment, it's our apartment."
He nodded then jumped as the shrill noise of a phone ringing filled the room and jerked his hands back to his jacket pocket.
"That'd be your call," he smiled. "If you get dressed and I'll go bring the car around and we can grab a couple of breakfast pastries from that place you like a couple of blocks away on the way in."
She nodded once in reply, turning back into her room to answer the call, not noticing Lincoln's wince at himself when she closed the door.
Late evening, August 14/8/2013 Alternative/ Redverse
Lincoln slumped in the front passenger seat and futilely rubbed at the oil and dirt on the front of his pants, unsure if he was making the palms of his dirtier or cleaner in the low light.
"I'm so sorry about your suit," Jill cringed, ending the call on her ear cuff and watching him from the driver's seat. "Valiant effort though"
"No - bother." Lincoln sighed as he continued rubbing the fabric then shrugged in resignation. "What did they say?"
"They're sending a tow as soon as possible but it could be a couple of hours," she replied, shifting in her seat, "so if you wanna call a cab and get home to get changed into clean clothes -"
"- I'm not leaving you on your own for two hours in an empty parking lot." He protested.
"I have my weapon," she reasoned, meeting his eyes before shrugging, "besides it's not even that dark yet."
"It could be, by the time the tow company gets here." Lincoln argued. "I'd rather stay, for my own piece of mind - if it's all the same to you?"
"Okay, if you insist." Jill smiled in defeat, then raised her index finger as an idea appeared in her mind. Brushing his knee as she reached across to open the glove compartment, she pulled out a pack of cards, and began shuffling them deftly in her small hands. "Fancy a few games to pass the time?"
7.33am Aug 15th 2013 Alternative/Redverse
Twenty minutes later, Olivia left the apartment and walked towards the car. She could see the animated shape of him moving as she approached it, as if he was in a deep discussion but he stopped when he noticed her through the window. Lincoln had spent the whole time deliberating on if he should tell her how he felt. Every time he made a choice, he'd talk himself out of it until he saw her leave the apartment and approach the car.
She opened the door but didn't sit down, instead leaning her arms against the door and frame.
"You ready to go?" Lincoln asked as he went to place his card against the dash to start the engine and paused as she shook her head. "What is it? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, that was my mom on the phone. I'm gonna take a week's leave and get a cab to stay with her up in Tarrytown for a bit." Olivia said flatly with a thin smile. "She wants me to stay over for a few days, she's still feeling ill."
She shut the door, and he opened the window as she stepped back.
"Are you sure everything's okay?" He repeated worryingly. "If you need space, I can stay in a hotel or look for a…"
"No, no. It's fine." She smiled again, sincerely and bigger than before but still reservedly. "I'll be back in a week, tops as I need to come back for my psych review."
Lincoln hesitated. Something didn't seem right about her leaving for her mom's and him leaving her now, but he wasn't sure what to say or what to do about it and sat watching her face for a cue.
"Go! You'll be late for work!" Olivia insisted, breaking the silence and spell of the stasis between them.
"I'll see you in a few days, then. Have a safe journey." He said with a shrug, accepting her excuse unenthusiastically, and he reluctantly started the engine.
The stormy gray sky began splashing fat droplets of rain on the windshield as she shooed the car away with her hands. Lincoln drove away, watching her run out of the rain back into the building in the rearview mirror, resisting the urge and compulsion he felt in every cell of his body to turn back.
2am August 15/8/2013 alternative/ Redverse
Jill sat in silence, intently studying her hand, and glanced up at Lincoln in the low light who was sitting opposite her. He raised his eyebrows and twisted his lips expectantly, before glancing down at his own hand.
"Well?" She ventured, shifting slightly in the car seat. "What are you going to do?" Lincoln sighed, looking at the cards indecisive. He was so close to the number he wanted but if he hit, he could go over and lose. Jill leaned over and touched his hand teasingly, "C'mon, make a decision -"
"Fine," Lincoln relented, "I'm gonna stay."
"That's your final choice?" Jill replied, pretending to peer over the top of his cards.
"Yep." He nodded once, holding them against his chest, unwilling to take the risk. "You?"
"Oh you want me to choose right now when you took two hours - sorry, years - to decide?"
"I did not!" Lincoln protested, as he frowned and checked his wristwatch, checking to see only two minutes had passed. "Besides, if you're gonna nag me to make a choice, I'm not gonna let you off the hook."
"You're not, huh?" She huffed out a laugh, then reached for the top card of the pack that they'd placed on the dashboard under the windshield. "I'm gonna hit." Jill's smile dropped as she pulled the card out and tucked it with the others in her hand, and she winced when she added the total. "Dammit."
"Not what you were hoping for?" He noted, noticing her disappointed expression.
"Three over," Jill shrugged, holding out the cards of a King of Spades, four and six of clubs and a three of diamonds. "What did you get?"
"Twenty," Lincoln replied proudly, holding out an Ace of Diamonds, and a three and six of hearts. "Only one away."
"At least you finally won a round of Blue Jay!" She teased, holding out her hand to Lincoln to return the cards to the pack. Lincoln frowned, the game was identical to Blackjack, except their cards were red and blue, instead of black, and they called their jack card a jay, which was an odd difference between their worlds but one Lincoln could at least easily comprehend compared to the other games they'd tried to play.
He huffed, watching Jill tuck the pack back into the glove compartment. "I don't suppose you have a chess set in there?" He asked, before she clicked it shut. "'Cause if you do, I'd whoop your ass at that."
"Oh, really?" Jill snorted, chuckling again before turning on the radio and fiddling with the buttons to find a decent station. "Sounds interesting. Not sure where we could have put a chess board in here though, even if I did have one."
"We could have done it on the back seat." Lincoln blurted before realizing how it sounded and met Jill's eyes that glinted in the dark as she reclined back into her chair. The words and sounds of Justin Timberlake merged into Jason Derulo and they stuck between them in the heavy air as they simultaneously looked at each other, waiting for the other to respond. Lincoln shifted in his seat as he looked down, and absentmindedly picked at the muck and dirt on the thighs of his pants and sighed. "Sorry -"
"- Don't be." She interrupted and smiled as Lincoln looked back up at her, his eyes flickering from surprise, bewilderment and shock when she leaned forward towards and covered his hand with her own. "Why'd you kiss me?"
Her voice came out low and husky, barely louder than a whisper but the question screamed to him like his heartbeat that vibrated against his ribcage.
"I, er, thought it would conceal our faces so Erasmus wouldn't see us, I guess it wasn't the greatest idea I ever had." He gulped nervously, watching as the thumb of hand lightly traced his hand and her warm fingers linked with his.
"Really?" Jill asked, shifting in her seat slightly to lean further in towards Lincoln's space and gently squeezed his hand, watching him silently nod as she tentatively edged closer. "I don't think it was a bad idea. You wanna do it again?"
Lincoln barely had time to respond before she leaned in more to close the gap between them, then jumped in shock at the sound of something hitting the window behind them, and turned around to see an older man in a bright orange luminous jacket peering through the glass.
"Tow for a Ms - " He paused to check the small tablet device in his gloved hand, "Ruins?"
"Ruiz," she replied, rolling her eyes and turning back to exit through the car door to join him as he disappeared behind the open hood, exposing the engine and mechanics inside, and Lincoln let go of the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding onto.
August 15/8/2013 altverse
Charlie jogged into the Fringe HQ rotunda, watching Lincoln as he jumped up from his seat to get his attention as he approached the desk.
"Boss wants to see us in his office right away." He said, before the other man could sit down.
"Where's Liv?" Charlie asked as they approached Erikson's office.
"She's on leave, gone to her Mom's for a few days." Lincoln replied quietly.
"What happened?" He said, his voice low with dread as he reached for the glass door, Erikson beckoning them in.
"Nothing. You wanted to see us, Sir?" Lincoln asked, turning to his boss from Charlie, standing in front of his desk as Charlie joined him, looking at Lincoln sideways.
"Thank you for getting here so quickly. As you know, Dunham has taken a few days' leave. Agent Ruiz is returning to her unit shortly, as The Sandman case is being wrapped up and the suspects are in custody." Lincoln flinched slightly as Erikson spoke, looking at Charlie as he frowned. "In the meantime, we have another case; A convict on the loose."
Erikson passed over the tablet with photos and details on the suspect as the two other men scanned through the information.
"They just let her go?" Charlie asked incredulously, looking back at his superior, his dark brown wide in disbelief.
"They said she used some kind of telepathic link to make people do her will. She convinced them to release her from jail." Erikson said.
"Like the power of suggestion?" Lincoln replied suspiciously, "You're sure the person who let her go isn't implicated somehow?"
"It's unlikely. They originally classed the murders they convicted her for as suicides, but she knew too many details, ones that were only in the police reports."
"And it's certain she doesn't have contacts inside the police?" Charlie added, his voice gruff with skepticism.
"You mean like a mole?" Lincoln added, raising his eyebrows to look uneasily at Charlie, remembering how he and Liv had uncovered Broyles - Erikson's predecessor - and his plot with Jones that resulted in the deaths of their partners
"That's for you to determine, and liaise with the field office to locate and detain the suspect." Erikson added as Lincoln and Charlie left the office and returned to their desks in the rotunda to look over the details.
January 2010 altverse
"What's going on?" Charlie said as he jogged up to Lincoln, who was leaning against the slick black surface of a Fringe van, studying information on the screen in his hand.
"Broyles has asked us to go check out reports of an unidentified beast of some kind coming through in Newtown Woods." Lincoln replied without looking up from the tablet. "We're just waiting for backup."
"I'm not talking about this monster thing," Charlie sighed, interrupting him before he could finish, "I mean… you and Liv. What's going on?"
"Nothing." Lincoln said quickly, turning back into the van and sitting on the bench in the back, and catching Charlie's raised eyebrow and narrowed eyes.
"C'mon, buddy. You too are always smiling and flirting, but the last couple of days you can't even look at each other or spend five minutes together alone. You two have a fight?" He frowned when Lincoln shook his head. "You got a thing for her?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Lincoln scowled and sighed, placing the device on the bench by his side as he wavered under Charlie's gaze, and leaned forward to lower his voice. "Fine. If you must know, I kissed her."
"You - kissed her?"
Lincoln pinched a smile and raised his eyebrows in response as he leaned back. "I take it you didn't get the response you hoped for?" Charlie replied as he sympathetically mirrored Lincoln's expression and winced as Lincoln shook his head.
"Not exactly. Apparently she has a boyfriend, so -" Lincoln shrugged, "I dunno. I just thought there was something there, but... What if she thinks I'm a creep and leaves the department? Or worse, doesn't trust me as a friend anymore?"
"You are a creep." Charlie joked. Lincoln nudged him on seeing Olivia approach the van with the rest of the team, and they shuffled down to the back of the van.
"Just apologize and put it down to the drink and adrenaline." Charlie whispered quickly as the team started filing in. "She's probably just feeling as awkward as you are."
Lincoln nodded and gulped as he looked sideways at Olivia as she sat by the back door of the van, watching her nervously play with her fingers as the engine started and they pulled away.
"You okay?" Lincoln asked, nudging Olivia with his elbow.
She nodded in reply, trying not to wince at the bruise on her arm where Frank had grabbed her. She could feel the purple and green finger shaped lines spreading like tendrils across her skin and infecting her body.
"Liv, I wanna apologize for the other night. It won't happen again, I promise. You're right, I was drunk, and it was unprofessional. We're friends and we - I - shouldn't have…" he began, his cool blue eyes flickering with concern at her quietness and recoiling from his touch.
"It's fine." Olivia blushed, cutting him off before he could finish, and avoided his gaze, knowing full well that if she met his eyes, she might admit she kissed him back and would do it again. "It's fine. Forget about it."
She watched Charlie as he moved in front of them, stepping over fallen branches and crisp leaves in shades of amber and russet peppered across the floor.
"So…" she said, trying to keep her balance while holding her weapon, changing the subject as she carefully stepped over the fallen branches and tree roots on the uneven floor of the woods, concealed by dead, dry leaves, moss and bracken. "A monster, huh?"
"That's what the report said." Lincoln replied, slightly in front and to her left, scuffing up some reddening leaves with the toe of his military boot.
"Except monsters aren't real." Charlie retorted, forking off the path to Olivia's right, moving deeper into the forest and stepping over exposed roots.
"Really?" Olivia and Lincoln said in unison, to a look of disapproval from Charlie.
"So you two finally got your vulcan mind meld thing back?" He jokingly sneered, and they looked at each other, mocking his expression. "It's probably a bear, either that they made it up, or…"
"Or what?" Olivia replied and turned to see Charlie hold up some of the undergrowth saturated with fresh, warm blood, the sticky red splatters shiny and vibrant against the dull khaki green of the leaves.
Before the look of terror on Olivia's face and Lincoln's screaming could register in his brain, a grotesquely and elongated segmented tail unfurled from the branch above him and swung down to coil around Charlie's neck, cutting a line on his face into his temple, terrifyingly close to his left eye, a line of blood slowly dripping down from his brow
"Charlie - DON'T MOVE!" Olivia screamed, as if he wasn't already completely paralyzed in its grip, her gun aimed at what she could see of the creature. Charlie struggled with it as it tightened its grip around him, and he gasped when the sound of Olivia's shot rang through his ears and whipped through the branches, the bullet grazing the top of his head.
"Nice shot." Lincoln said, walking up and placing his hand on her back, congratulating her as the creature fell down to the floor, releasing Charlie from its grasp.
"And there you were thinking you didn't need an expert shooter on the Fringe team."
"The thought never crossed my mind." He quipped, holstering away his weapon.
"Uh, guys?" Charlie said, slumping to the floor, holding a stinger the creature had injected from its tail into his side. Olivia ran over, pressing on the wound, the blood seeping through her fingers.
"This is Agent Lee. I need medevac teams and backup sent to my location, now!" Lincoln shouted as he kicked the creature to confirm it was dead, and Olivia inspected Charlie's side.
"You're gonna be fine. They're on their way now." She said reassuringly, as he nodded.
"Don't say I told you so." He laughs nervously through shallow breaths.
"We told you so!" Lincoln and Olivia cried out in unison, then looked in each other's direction as Charlie rolled his eyes.
August 15/8/2013 Alternative/ Redverse
"This is bizarre," Lincoln said to Charlie without looking up as he scanned over the reports. "It says here witnesses claim Ashlyn Montgomery killed the detective in charge of the investigation merely by saying he was having a heart attack, as if her voice acted like some kind of subliminal message and made his mind think what she wanted him to believe."
He looked up at Charlie to see him silently staring right back at him with an expression that was somewhere between irritation and frustration that Lincoln found unsettling.
"What?" Lincoln frowned accusingly, putting the tablet down.
"What happened with Liv? Really?" Charlie demanded.
"I told you - nothing!" Lincoln held his hands up in surrender. "She wants to go visit her mom for a while."
"That's what she said?"
"Yes, that's what she said. Why?" He replied defensively and naively.
Charlie shook his head and sighed.
"Because you look like you haven't slept all night and I don't know you that well, but I know her and she always runs off to her mom when she's upset."
Lincoln's eyes widened and moved as he recalled the night before. The feeling of her breath on his face when he could have leaned in just a millimeter to close the gap between them, but told her he would leave instead as the fear of her heart belonging to his predecessor gripped him.
He didn't want to fall for her anymore than he had already. He couldn't.
"Okay. We, uh," he relented, pausing, then cleared his throat. "I got home really late from, uh, a date."
Charlie raised his eyebrows as Lincoln continued. "We had a bit of a thing -"
"A thing? Like a row?"
"Not exactly. But, uh, we nearly kissed."
"You nearly kissed?" Charlie said, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. "Didn't you kiss her at the football game?"
"Yeah," Lincoln sighed regretfully, looking down at his tie to avoid Charlie's stare. "But, uh, this was - it felt different. And she told me how she and the other Lincoln were ..."
In love. Lincoln paused, unable to finish the sentence and cement what he'd suspected and feared all along, and looked up to see Charlie scratching his stubble in frustration then frown.
"Who'd you go on a date with?" He replied, still confused.
"Agent Ruiz - Jill from that first case we had." Lincoln replied. "She asked Olivia if I was single and Olivia said I should take her out, so…"
"Jesus Christ! You two are idiots." Charlie exclaimed. "I swear to God, you two need your heads banging together!"
"Wait, what?" He replied, puzzled, his brow knitted in confusion. "You told me to talk to her when I went to the hospital, but I couldn't. What did you mean by that?"
"You couldn't, huh?" Charlie retorted, his voice dry with skepticism and sarcasm. "Tell me something. Do you like her?"
"Who? Jill or Liv?" Lincoln said and Charlie nodded.
"Liv. Do you 'like' her?" His eyes emphasized the word like, and Lincoln's lip twitched as his face involuntarily flushed and Charlie sighed in relief as he noticed his reaction.
"I, uh, yes," Lincoln admitted with a sigh, "Of course I do. I more than like her. Why wouldn't I? She's incredible. When she laughs, like really laughs, her eyes and nose scrunch up and her eyes shine and turn into little half moons. Then she makes this funny little snort noise… " He broke off again as someone walked past. "But every time we get close, I feel like I'm taking advantage of her grief, like she is clinging onto his memory through me and it just pushes her away. I don't know, what's the right thing to do?" He asked ruefully and shrugged in defeat.
"Why did you stay here?" Charlie said bluntly. "Honestly."
"Because it felt like the right thing to do at the time, it was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere." Lincoln replied candidly, with a deep sigh. "I finally felt like I was home, where I was supposed to be, and Liv, she - needed someone here."
He thought about what the Olivia on his side said about finding answers and of his previous partner's words; Everything happens for a reason. Like we were meant to be.
"Look," Charlie said firmly. "It's not really my place to say anything, but that isn't what Liv thinks. She thinks you stayed to get closure on your ex-partner's murder." Lincoln frowned again, his mind whirring as he absorbed Charlie's words. "I know you think she sees you as some kind of substitute, so you two really need to talk when she comes back and you've both had time to think - properly this time." Charlie stood, smiling as he shrugged on his jacket, watching Lincoln's dumb-founded expression as he tried to grasp Charlie's words of advice. "C'mon," He said, running his hands over his buzz cut and flicking his colleague's tie as he left. "Let's go speak to the local office and chase up these leads."
Lincoln jogged after him, tucking the tablet under his arm.
"Wait, hang on!" Lincoln stuttered in protest "What else did she say to you?"
21/8/2013 Alternative/Redverse
Tarrytown
A blade of bright midday summer sun streamed through the large windows of the busy restaurant, catching a small crystal ornament that had been placed on a wall shelf next to a vase of white tulips, making little fractures of light sparkle like glittering confetti against the dark walls. Olivia smiled absentmindedly as she watched the dancing kaleidoscope of colors which reminded her of the suncatcher Lincoln had given her for her birthday a couple months previously. She'd decided to hang it over his pot plant that sat on the east facing kitchen windowsill so it could catch the sun's rays early in the morning before they left for work. Despite them forgetting to water it occasionally, they'd nurtured the little plant and it had flourished in the bright spot since he'd placed it there eight months ago. A multitude of leaves in shades of amber and teal with crimson veins had unfurled from its center until eventually a stalk had appeared, producing tiny buds which sprouted into little white, star-shaped blooms.
"And in other news, I've developed heat ray vision and can melt walls made of solid steel." Marilyn said, as she leaned back and crossed her arms against her chest, watching Olivia sitting opposite her in the cafe, staring over her shoulder into the middle distance. After a pause she looked up, her hazel eyes catching her mother's accusatory glare.
"What?" Olivia asked defensively, frowning at her mother's expression and tucked her red hair behind her ear before leaning her chin back on her folded hand, her elbow resting on the table between them.
"You didn't hear a word of what I just said, did you?" Her mother replied, her eyebrows raising in suspicion.
"Of course I -" She asserted, then gave up when she realized she couldn't actually remember anything her mother had told her since they'd sat down and the server had brought over their drinks. She stirred the drink with the straw, noticing the ice cubes had nearly all melted and sighed as she relented, leaning back in her chair in defeat. "Fine, I might have missed some of it. What did you say?"
"I was just saying my hospital appointment tomorrow - you know, the reason why you came to stay with me - is at 4.15pm." Marilyn paused to sip her own drink, and smiled smugly as raised her eyebrows again at Olivia. "So are you gonna tell your poor mother what's on your mind, or are we gonna have to play a game of 'What's making you mope' like we did when you were a teenager?"
"I'm fine, Mom…" Olivia objected, stopping when her mother snorted sarcastically in reply.
"Sure, whatever," she interrupted, "but you were like this when you were with Frank - which you never told me the reason for, by the way. I wasn't gonna ask why, as you broke up, but now two and half years later, you're moping like a teenager again."
"I'm not moping!" Olivia protested, more strongly this time, and sat up defiantly in her seat. "It's probably just PMS."
"So you are going to make me guess?" Marilyn pressed, not believing Olivia's excuse. "Are you seeing him again?"
"No," She shook her head vigorously in protest, making her auburn hair tousle over her shoulders. "I haven't seen him since he left, at least a couple of years -'' she stopped the words trailing off when recalling their encounter in the cafe when he'd confronted her about their break-up, "actually I saw him a few months ago when I was out one evening with Lincoln, but no, we're done, finished."
"I never did understand what you saw in those cocky, arrogant types. So Lincoln then?" Her mother probed, narrowing her eyes again suspiciously when she caught a flicker of something on Olivia's face when she mentioned his name. "Are you two f-"
"Mom! I told you before - we are just friends," Olivia insisted again, punctuating each word in deliberation even though they stung her lips to speak every letter and she twisted her lips into a smile of resignation, "there is nothing going on between us."
"Have you talked about it with him then?" Marilyn asked, sipping her drink again unconvinced. "Because talking about your feelings never was your strong point. When Rachel died, you didn't speak about it for weeks, and when your father… well, I had to read about your feelings in your diary."
"Thanks a lot, Mom!" Olivia interrupted sarcastically, mocking her with wide eyes and from the confession. She'd always suspected her mother had read her diary, using the thoughts Olivia had written to finally open up and break through their mutual stubbornness so they could help each other heal as Rachel had been so much younger at the time, but she never expected her to admit it. "There is no 'it' to talk about."
Marilyn's expression softened, recognizing she'd hit a nerve and her daughter's defenses would only go up further if she pushed due to her stubbornness. The server returned to their table, placing their plates in front of them and Olivia obstinately snatched her cutlery, purposely stabbing the salad leaves with her food, causing the metal to clatter against the smooth ceramic surface of the plate and the sound punctuated the air between them.
"You don't need to stab your food, you know," Marilyn smirked, "it's already dead."
Deliberately taking a delicate bite of her own food and grimacing slightly at the wave of nausea that followed, she swallowed it down with a mouthful of water before Olivia could notice her discomfort. Olivia barely glanced up at her, unwilling to disclose anything, partly because she wouldn't really know where to start and how to explain, even if she could share details about an alternate universe and Lincoln not being from this one, and partly because even if she could explain, she wasn't sure what she felt.
That was a lie, she did know how she felt. Despite the dangerous nature of working for Fringe Division, Olivia had never thought she'd be without Lincoln; he'd always been unwavering in his support and friendship, and if he'd been sucked into a vortex or encased in amber, she assumed she would have been too, both entombed together for eternity in an oblivious state of stasis in some quarantined area in Manhatan, while the sky fell down and the world ended around them. It had never occurred to her he'd leave her forever without even saying goodbye and she'd be here, carrying on without him.
Sometimes she hated herself that she'd been blind to his affection that had been unconditional in so many ways for long and had been too scared to realize it until that one night she'd finally opened her eyes as if she'd been sleepwalking for years, it was a ridiculous epiphany she'd made that night after his confession when she realized he'd disguised his sensitivity and emotions because he thought she preferred more confident and self-assured men.
But life had betrayed her in a series of cruel twists of fate. She'd finally got what she needed, what she'd missed and denied herself - and him - for so long out of fear; fear of losing her best friend, or getting him hurt, or believing he'd be better off with someone else who was more deserving of his affection than her.
Then it had all been snatched away from her. She'd been given a second chance with another Lincoln, a man with the same name, same face and same soul but he had a different heart and the irony taunted her every day that how she felt about this Lincoln was how the other one had felt about her for so long.
Even if there was a chance that he felt the same about her as the other Lincoln had and she did about him, it was clear he was reluctant and afraid to admit it, and wasn't willing to complicate things between them both any further. And Olivia knew if she tried to show him how she felt again, he'd panic and run away like all the other times she'd tried to show him what he meant to her. She stopped suddenly, realizing her mom was right - she'd only tried to show him, she hadn't told him and explained what he meant to her. He could have been mistaking her unsubtle advances for flirting at best and at worst him being a substitute for what she'd lost, but he was wrong - he was so much more than just an inferior facsimile of the other Lincoln she'd known. He wasn't trying to be the other Lincoln or anyone else, he'd always just been authentically him. There was no denying it; he was her Lincoln now and the compulsion and need to tell him overwhelmed her.
Olivia gasped, swallowing the mouthful of food with it on the inhale and choked slightly.
"You okay?" Marilyn asked concerned, watching Olivia who held up a finger while she swigged her drink to clear her throat then nodded.
"Yes. No - I've been so stupid, mom," Olivia croaked with a cough, trying to dislodge the last of the food catching in her throat like all the emotions and words that had been had been swirling around inside her mind over the past year that had started in a breeze and had gained momentum until they'd become a storm that showed no signs of fading, "why don't I see things until it's too late?"
"Go back home." She replied simply, "before it is too late. Trust me, you don't know what you've got until its gone"
"What?" Olivia protested, frowning at the suggestion. "No, I can't, what about your tests -"
"Go home and talk to him," Marilyn interrupted insistently, "It's to draw blood and a colonoscopy, it's not like they're gonna tell me results there and then. I can call you when I get them."
"No, I came here for you, for moral support," she continued, despite Marilyn's look, "I'll pack my case up in the morning and leave right after the appointment. It shouldn't take me more than an hour to get back. But, for the record, I do actually have PMS. "
*** 21/8/2013 Alternative/Redverse Manhatan
After days of following dead end leads and a breadcrumb trail left by the suspect to taunt them, Charlie and Lincoln had finally tracked down the suspect. Fringe Division stormed the location only for Lincoln and Charlie to listen horrified through their comms as the team turned their guns on each other; Ashlyn Montgomery was using her ability against them, and the sounds of the bullets and screams of their team ripping through Charlie and Lincoln's ears via their cuffs.
Lincoln hurriedly removed his jacket and grabbed the last kevlar vest from a crate, putting it on so quickly over his shoulders that Charlie barely had time to comprehend what was happening and grabbed his wrist when he went to check the clip in his handgun.
"Where the hell d'you think you're going?" He gruffly exclaimed as Lincoln pulled his wrist free from Charlie's grasp.
"What does it look like?" Lincoln retorted sarcastically, replacing his gun in his holster and picking up his jacket to wear over the vest.
"Oh no, you can't go in there, it's suic -" Charlie began to protest
"I can't just sit here and listen to them -" Lincoln interrupted indignantly, then stopped talking at the thought of what horrors he might be walking into. "I have to do something."
"Why doesn't this surprise me?" Charlie sighed, shaking his head, realizing the other Lincoln he knew would have done exactly the same thing. He stood, defiantly meeting Lincoln's eyes and stubbornness. "I'm coming with you."
"No!" Lincoln demanded.
"So you can't stay here but you expect me to?" You need someone to have your back." Charlie spat, squaring up to the other man. Lincoln blinked at the confrontation then pursed his lips stubbornly.
"Look, if we both barge in there, then she's just gonna turn us against each other like everyone else in there. If I go alone, then -" Lincoln began, his voice softening. "Charlie. You have Mona, who is expecting your baby, to think about. Where as I - I don't have anyone." He added, with a shrug, zipping up the jacket and shoving his hands in his pocket, ignoring Charlie's look of disgust at Lincoln's direction pointing out the obvious.
"What's stopping her from making you turn your gun on yourself?" Charlie asked as he stared back at Lincoln, his dark brown eyes imploring Lincoln he wasn't the only one who had someone he cared about, and needed him too. Lincoln blinked back, his eyes flickering when his fingers found a small case in his jacket pocket and stared at Charlie in realization.
"What?" Charlie said to Lincoln in response, as he excitedly whipped out the small box and handed them to Charlie. "What's this?"
"My ear plugs!" Lincoln exclaimed in reply, his eyes widening as he motioned for Charlie to open the case. "I wore them at night before I moved in with Liv to help me sleep, they're noise canceling."
"So?"
"So - when we read the files on Montgomery, and what we've heard so far, I think she uses her voice to control others and get them to do her bidding."
"So, if you can't hear her, she can't control you?" Charlie replied, as Lincoln raised his eyebrows in response. "You know, that's so stupid it might just work. But it's too risky, what if you're wrong?"
"It's still our best chance." Lincoln shrugged, taking the box and opening it, to place one of the buds in his ear.
"I hope for your sake you're right," Charlie said, his voice muted as Lincoln put the other earplug in his ear and nodded, turned around and walked out of the Fringe Division van into the building.
Lincoln slowly and carefully followed the trail of bullets and bodies down the length of a corridor, drawing his weapon before turning the corner. Walking further, through the building, a slight movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention in the eerie silence and he turned on his heel to see a door swinging slightly on its hinges.
Nudging the door with the end of his handgun, he pushed it back further with his foot on seeing the trail of blood leading to the body on the floor in front of him. The man in Fringe uniform was sitting against a desk, holding his upper left chest, blood seeping through his fingertips like red ribbons.
"Agent Lee?" He gasped, as Lincoln replaced his gun in the holster and crouched to check the one on the floor next to the man, its clip empty. The man looked at him, his eyes wide in distress and confusion, as Lincoln looked under his bloody hand pressed to his chest.
"Reynolds?" Lincoln exclaimed in surprise, not expecting to find anyone alive and pulled one of his plugs free. "You should be fine, it's just your shoulder, keep pressure on it. MedEvac'll be here soon - "
"She's in the Records Archive." Reynold gasped through shallow breaths, watching Lincoln stand to his feet. "Be careful, she can make you see things -"
Lincoln nodded, replacing the earbud and nodded as he cocked his weapon, leaving the room and following the signage down to the archives.
The flickering glow of one the screens in the room illuminated the dark, determined eyes and pale of the girl hunched over the desk, giving it a ghostly white hue. Her slim fingers furiously typed at the keyboard then she screamed and slammed the desk in frustration when the screen beeped and flashed red, messing her sleek, black hair, only to calmly tuck it back behind her ears before she continued typing.
Lincoln slowly edged around the periphery of the room and her eyesight until he was behind her and slowly stepped forward until less than ten feet away and he raised his weapon, clicking off the safety catch, warily eyeing the back of her head with suspicion.
"Put your hands up where I can see them." He demanded watching her hands stop typing on hearing his demand. She turned her head slightly to look at the gun on the table next to her that was covered in blood. "Don't even think about it."
"You won't shoot me," Ashlyn said calmly, smirking as she swiveled in her seat to watch Lincoln slowly edge closer, still pointing his weapon in her direction, unaware of his concealed defense. "You're gonna allow me to get what I came here for, and then I'm gonna walk straight out of here."
Lincoln lowered his gun slightly as her hands slowly began to lower.
"I don't want to shoot you," Lincoln wavered, not looking away from the gun on the table, and lifted his weapon up again, oblivious to her words. "but I will if you don't keep your hands up."
Her mouth moved again, the smug smile on her full lips widening as she looked at Lincoln, her black obsidian eyes meeting his in the blue glow that emanated from the screen behind her, making her little more than a silhouette to Lincoln. But her words didn't affect him and he pursed his lips in concentration, not looking at her face
She rose to her feet, her face twisting in anger and the chair behind her skidded on its wheels, hitting the desk. This time Lincoln didn't hesitate and discharged his weapon, watching the flash and her expression as Ashlyn fell back against the desk to the muted sound of the bullet firing
Lincoln leaned against a wall, wiping his hands across the week-long worth of beard growth in relief, and returned his glasses to his nose as he watched Charlie traipse towards him down the hospital corridor from the information desk. His reflection in the glass panel of the ward door startled him as it looked like Charlie's; eyes heavy and dark, and over a weeks worth of heavy stubble peppering his cheeks and jaw, hair disheveled and his tie loose around his neck.
"The doctors think she might survive the gunshot, but doubt she'll regain consciousness." Charlie said as he approached Lincoln. "You did the right thing, you know. I have no doubt she could and would have kept on killing people if you hadn't taken that shot."
"Yeah, but now we might never know where her ability came from or what she was looking for." Lincoln sighed in resignation, shoving his hands in his pockets, and Charlie sensed his guilt for nearly killing someone, despite being responsible for killing or injuring most of their team.
"Local P.D said she was trying to access birth certificate records, they're not sure why yet." Charlie shrugged. "Listen, I'll wrap this up with Erikson, and get the paperwork sorted. You head home. Liv is due back in a day or two, and you need to clear your head so you two can talk. And probably the apartment."
"I'll have you know I'm the tidier one!" Lincoln snorted in protest. "You sure you don't want me to take care of the paperwork?'
"Nope!" He said, strolling to his car and unlocking it. "It's my turn, and I have to get used to doing it again. Go, before I change my mind!" Charlie shooed him away.
"Okay, okay!" Lincoln nodded gratefully as he unlocked the door to his own car and turned when Charlie called him again.
"Oh and Lincoln, talk to Liv or I swear I'll make you two do all the paperwork for a year!"
Lincoln nodded as he watched Charlie drive away, thinking as he sat in the car and pinched the bridge of his nose before he drove away into the night.
The apartment was empty and cold as he arrived, exactly how Lincoln had left it. He shrugged off his coat, hanging it on the back of a chair. Unholstering his weapon, he placed it on the table and loosened his tie as he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Slumping down on the couch, he toed off his shoes and sighed. The exhaustion finally caught up with him as the adrenaline from the case wore off, and he closed his eyes as his head lolled back, drifting off to sleep.
Some time later, Lincoln woke with a jolt, and sat upright, rubbing the sleep from his bleary eyes as they adjusted to the low amber light of the early evening filtering through the windows. Looking at his wristwatch, he realized he'd dozed off and been asleep for nearly an hour, and pangs of hunger coaxed him back into consciousness as he struggled to remember the last time he'd eaten anything substantial.
Rain spat at the windows, leaving spots of water that reflected light into little drops of glittering crystals that twinkled as car headlamps passed in the street below.
He stood slowly and jumped as a knock came from the front door. Making his way over, he peered through the peephole and frowned in confusion when he saw who was there.
"Hey!" He said, blinking in surprise as he opened the door. "What are you doing here?"
"Hi." Jill smiled, a little sheepishly, her hair and coat saturated and face damp with rain. "I was just heading back to my field office, it felt rude just to leave without saying thank you - and goodbye."
"Oh!" Lincoln said in reply, still a little in shock as his mind caught up with his body.
"I wasn't sure you were home. I knocked a few times. Did I interrupt something?" She held up a bottle of wine and a doggy bag of takeout food from a local restaurant as an olive branch, flooding his senses with a delicious aroma that in his ravenous state was in no position to resist. "I brought some refreshments!"
"No! Oh you're wet, sorry - come in." He gestured, widening the door so she could come through.
"Thanks." Jill smiled again, walking through the door as he closed it behind her.
14th Aug 2013 Alternative/ Redverse
Lincoln loosened his tie and hastily rolled it into a rough ball before shoving it into his pocket as he slid into the booth opposite Jill.
"So," she smiled, shrugging off her blazer and loosening her dark hair from the bun so it fell in soft, coffee waves over shoulders. Lincoln's eyes imperceptibly flickered across her chest when he noticed the seam of her bra could be seen through the fabric of her white blouse, and distracted himself by loosening the collar of his own shirt, "how'd you end up working for Fringe Division?"
"Oh, it all happened by accident, actually." Lincoln signed, and folded his own jacket, tucking it on the seat next to him, then caught Jill's inquisitive expression as she prompted him to continue. He wasn't sure if it was the bar that was hot, or he was just flustered with nerves and her scrutinizing gaze, but he unbuttoned his cuffs to roll his sleeves up to his elbows as a distraction. "I, er, had just lost my partner and so did Liv, so we worked together to find those responsible. And then circumstances led to me making a fresh start here." He sighed again with a slight shrug, not wanting to reveal the real impulsive reasons he'd stayed. "That was almost two years ago but it seems like a lifetime ago now."
She caught his eyes with a sympathetic gaze after a brief pause, sensing his regret around the memories of his partner's murder.
"You felt guilty that you didn't protect her?" Jill asked tentatively, then stopped as Lincoln nodded.
"Him." Lincoln swallowed thickly, "And that I survived and he didn't. I knew it was a risk you took every day in this job, but - "
Jill nodded in understanding watching Lincoln shift uncomfortably in his seat at sharing such personal information.
" - it doesn't make it any easier when it happens. What was his name?" She added.
Lincoln paused briefly before replying.
"Robert."
"Couple of years ago before I transferred to the east coast, I was stationed in the Sacramento PD. September 20th my partner Quentin and I were on this stakeout, tracking some dealers we suspected to be part of this drug cartel operating out of San Fran." Jill paused, taking a large swig of her beer to get the courage to continue and placed her bottle deliberately back down on the table between them. Lincoln watched as some of the liquid inside spilled over the top and pooled on the beer mat underneath it. "Anyway, they must've got spooked, 'cause we ended up chasing after these kids. Quentin and I separated as they split up in two directions and I called for backup 'cause I'd been sick and I knew this kid was gonna get away. Then I hear this loud bang, right? I thought it was a car backfiring or something, I dunno. So I'm distracted, and I'm tired, so I stop and before I can shoot, I hear another bang, and I get this searing pain shooting through my stomach. I look down and see blood seeping out the bottom of my kevlar vest. Anyway, I woke up in the ICU the next day minus some of my insides and a partner." She gulped again, nervously biting her lip, "That bang I heard was the other kid blowing Quentin's head off, we never caught them. He used to say everything happens for a reason, but I had a hard time believing there was a reason for that."
Lincoln looked up in surprise at her choice of words, the similarity of how he'd felt when Robert had died was spooky. That reason had led him here, to this place and this very moment and he wasn't sure what that meant, if it was a sign or just coincidence of two law enforcement officers who had to deal with the guilt and sorrow of losing partners they cared deeply about. Jill sniffed as her voice wobbled, thick with emotion and she swigged back more from the bottle. She deliberated for a moment before unbuttoning the waistband of her pants and pushing it down slightly to show a dark pink scar blooming in her olive skin just below her belly button.
"Funny how your whole world can end, just stop, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, huh?" Jill shrugged, her lips twisting into a sad smile.
Lincoln's eyes widened in realization why she'd been so detached from the team, determined to wrap the case and why she'd been so anxious when they'd ended up going undercover.
"That's why you were so apprehensive about us staking out Janak and Erasmus -" Lincoln began, and she replied nodding slightly.
"- I panicked, and froze. Then he grabbed my weapon, I thought it was happening again. I thought he was gonna kill you, kill both of us."
"I think he would've if he was a better shot." Lincoln contemplated, not realizing how flippant it sounded, he smiled sympathetically and lightly brushed her hand that gripped onto the bottle with her fingertips. "It wasn't your fault, it was a risky plan, we're lucky it ended well."
"You say that, but you got injured, and Olivia -"
"- She'll be fine, she is fine." He interrupted, not wanting to think about the spectrum of emotions that they'd both been through that had only been magnified since the case had begun. Lincoln stretched his arms out in front of him, narrowly missing Jill's drink. "And my arm is practically all healed up now."
"So you two definitely aren't… a thing?" Jill asked, making him retreat his arm back out of her space with a quick jerk, and he tucked his hands under the table on his lap.
"A thing?" Lincoln frowned.
"Yeah. You're just friends?"
"That's right, just friends, I mean we're good friends but, uh, nothing is - what?"
Lincoln stuttered slightly, stopping when he noticed Jill's inquisitive expression, her eyes narrowing as he averted his eyes from her gaze.
"Nothing, I just -" Jill shifted in her seat, embarrassed she could talk about death and tragedy but not dating, and recalled the look Olivia had given her when she asked her if Lincoln was single, and a snippet of a conversation she'd heard between Charlie and Olivia a few weeks ago when they weren't aware she was in earshot.
."- I probably just misunderstood. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping on any toes."
"Well, no toes have been injured so far." Lincoln scoffed, and Jill nodded, twisting her lips into a small smile and clinked her bottle of beer against his glass of wine.
"Okay, well, here's to new fresh starts and uninjured toes." Jill laughed.
"Fresh starts and uninjured toes."
21/8/2013 Alternative/Redverse
Barely talking while they ate, Lincoln devoured his food ravenously and he pushed his bowl to the side once he finished, taking a swig of wine from his glass as he watched Ruiz finish her meal, a towel around her shoulders as her coat and shoes dried on the radiator.
"Hungry?" She laughed, taking another bite of the sauce-covered noodles wrapped around her fork.
"Sorry," he said, holding up his hand as he took another mouthful from the glass, its contents hitting his stomach faster than the food. "I was starving. I feel like I haven't eaten properly for days."
She smiled again and leaned back in her chair, mirroring his body language.
"Are you sure you're okay? You look exhausted." Jill said, concerned, eyeing his heavy stubble and dark eyes, their usual light blue turning into a dark stormy gray.
"Yeah, it's just been a tough week." Lincoln replied with a sigh, shifting his glasses up on the top of his head for a moment to rub his eyes with the balls of his palms, which messed his hair into spiky tufts.
"Sounds like you need to unwind and get some R&R." Jill smiled suggestively. "Oh, I bumped into Charlie. He said that Olivia might be back tomorrow? Tell her I'm sorry I didn't get to thank her before I left." She added, changing the subject when she noticed his blush.
He nodded, standing to take their bowls to the sink and left them on the countertop next to it while he turned on the red and blue faucets and let the stream of water run over his hands to gauge the temperature.
"She, uh, needed a break. She hasn't been quite herself since she was exposed to those chemicals we found." He said, deliberately skimming over the finer details and avoiding giving away too much information while he rinsed out the bowls in the warm water.
Ruiz stood up and sauntered towards him with the glasses as he leaned back against the kitchen worktop.
"I hope she feels better when she gets back." She replied, studying his face as he offered a thin, appreciative smile. "I'd better make a move now the rain is stopping, before I drink too much and have to pay for a taxi home."
She stared at him while she paused, hoping he'd take the hint she wanted to stay, but Lincoln shook his hands dry then reached for her coat behind her that had been drying on the heater while they ate. Quickly slipping on his own coat and shoes, he followed her with an umbrella, holding it up over them as they walked to the car.
"Actually," she said, spontaneously turning back to him as he leaned against her car and she opened the door. "I kinda lied. The reason I came here was to apologize. I'm sorry for ruining your suit and our date the other night, I felt awful about it."
"Oh! I, uh," Lincoln stuttered slightly in surprise, raising his free hand up in objection and smiling again. "It's fine. Don't worry about it. I was told I should ditch the suits anyway, but you know what they say about old habits."
"I also hoped we could've had another date before I left," Jill added, stepping forward under the umbrella to lightly tug on his tie, "and I really hoped we could recreate the kiss we had when we were undercover, without being under duress this time."
Lincoln had little time to respond as she leaned up with her hand on his chest to cover his lips with hers, her hand snaking up to hold his face but he slipped his free hand that wasn't holding the umbrella between them and quickly leaned back before the kiss could properly materialize.
"I'm sorry," he smiled awkwardly, stuttering slightly in embarrassment from not being been completely honest with her, and himself. "I - I can't, I'm not…"
Ruiz nodded, as she looked down in embarrassment and sat down into the driver's seat, shutting the door behind her. Starting the car, she rolled down the window a little, as the streetlamps made warm amber streams of light across the windshield and cast long shadows over the sidewalks.
*** September 20th 2011 Alternative/Redverse
When she'd been sitting in the car with Quentin on the stakeout, just before they'd chased the suspects, he'd been rifling through her purse for some gum when his fingers had wrapped around a long flat plastic stick and he studied the two blue lines that were displaced across its side.
"Is this what I think it is?" He'd asked, his large blue eyes wide with shock, which met Jill's expression when she lowered her binoculars. They'd been partners for almost a year, and lovers for almost six and she thought they had been careful, but after a week of constant nausea and tender breasts that were too sensitive to be touched, she'd grabbed a pregnancy test box while getting gas one morning and had done the test there and then, shoving it back in her purse in denial. "You've been sick a lot recently… you're not ill, are you?"
Jil shook her head and smiled thinly, placing the binoculars on her lap, and looking back at him cautiously as he nervously ran his hair through his wavy, salt and pepper hair.
"No, yes it is."
Quentin's look of shock slowly morphed into a smile as his eyes imperceptibly flickered to her stomach and a small gasp left his mouth, his lips twitched and eye blinked in disbelief.
"This is a bit of a shock, but everything happens for a reason," He laughed as he leaned towards Jill over the car console to embrace her before noticing a flicker of activity outside the car window in the low light of the street lamps. "It looks like our suspects…" and checked his handgun before leaping out if the car and sprinting towards the young men on the street outside.
21/8/2013 Alternative/Redverse Manhatan
"Maybe I'll see you around then?"
"Maybe." Lincoln replied with a little huff as her car pulled away behind a cab as it drove down the road.
"Lincoln?" A small voice called out, and he whipped around to see who'd called him, surprised to see Olivia standing there with her travel case, looking at him with an open mouth and eyes wide in disbelief.
"Liv?"
Her name tumbled from his lips in a gasp as he froze like a rabbit in the headlights of her stare, squinting to see her through the droplets of rain that fell from his umbrella onto his glasses.
All the words Olivia had rehearsed in her head during her journey from her mother's back to the apartment she shared with Lincoln shattered when she stepped out of the cab and saw him standing with Jill in the heavy rain. She felt compelled to look even though she knew she shouldn't, like a voyeur of a tragic accident, her eyes magnetized to the movement of their hands on the other's body, them leaning into each other until their faces were obscured from her prying eyes by the umbrella that dripped fat tears onto the sidewalk like how his name fell from her lips. He looked at her stunned as she turned on her heel, dragging her case up the steps to the front door and ran to catch up to her.
"What was she doing here?" Olivia spat at Lincoln as if it would physically hurt her to say Jill's name.
"Why do you care?" He called, barely making it through the door as it closed behind her and shook the excess rain from the umbrella. "Can you wait for me - please?"
"I don't care who you date." She lied, glaring as she stormed into the apartment and saw their two wine glasses, empty bottle and take away food containers. She couldn't believe this was happening, she'd finally admitted to herself how she felt about Lincoln and decided to explain it all to him, despite her fears about being exposed and vulnerable, but it was pointless because he didn't reciprocate them. Worse than that, Lincoln knew how she'd felt after her strained relationship with Frank and how he'd manipulated and gaslit her into thinking it was a normal, loving relationship and he'd lied about his relationship with Jill. Olivia turned back towards her room in disgust at seeing the evidence of what she thought was their date, clipping Lincoln's foot with the wheels of her case as she turned and he closed the front door behind him. "But you lied to me about her after everything I told you about Frank…"
"Ow! For fuck's sake, LIV!" Lincoln cried out in frustration, raising his voice, not threateningly but loud and forcefully enough that was out of character for him and made her stop abruptly in her tracks. The thought that she didn't trust him and believed he'd lie to her completely floored him, and he didn't know what else to say or do. "I didn't lie to you, I wouldn't."
"But you two have been - together." Olivia stated again, looking down at the floor and not turning around to see him. It all made sense why he didn't want her now, why he'd declined all of her advances and she hated how foolish she felt for thinking he might like her like the other Lincoln had. She shrugged in defeat when her imagination taunted her with images of them fucking and laughing at her gullibility. "Jill was leaving before I got back. So, are you sleeping together?"
"What? No!" Lincoln scoffed in disbelief and reeling back, stunned by her accusation. "We're not… we're not even dating!" He replied, almost in a roar, taking a breath and softening his tone as he saw her flinch, realizing she's never seen him lose his temper like this before. And as much as the thought of her thinking he would do something like that - to her of all people - exasperated him, he knew being confrontational was only going to push her further away from him and make her compare him to Frank and his temper that would flare up at something so trivial she'd spent the last few months of their relationship walking on eggshells for fear of the repercussions. Olivia had reluctantly told Lincoln one evening after they'd finished a film about the literal bruises Frank had left on her body - and emotional ones on her heart - and even though her words had made enough hate and bile to rise in the back of his throat, Lincoln had sat patiently in silence as the unspoken words spilled from Olivia's lips. He could tell from the way she'd strained to talk about that time in her life that she'd never told anyone about it before, not even her mother or the other Lincoln, he guessed out of misplaced shame in admitting she needed help and didn't know to escape.
Lincoln passively moved his hands out to her as a peace offering but she didn't hold hers out to him this time like she had before. "Jill called in unexpectedly on the way home with food to say 'bye. I only invited her in because she got soaked in the rain, that's all. She wasn't here for much more than an hour and all we did was eat, talk and have a glass of wine. That's it, that's all that happened."
"I saw you two kissing, again…" She sniffed as her voice broke on the last word. Admittedly from her angle, Olivia hadn't been able to see much, especially with the umbrella concealing their faces, but she could tell from how close they were standing and leaning into each other they'd embraced each other.
He watched her chest slowly rise and fall from behind, and he felt like he might throw up if she was crying and he was the reason for it, and if she didn't believe him and thought he would ever choose someone else over her.
"Okay, look at me, please? Listen to me, Liv?" He implored with a sigh, desperately reaching out for her arm to get her to turn around. "I need to be honest with you about something that I haven't told you before."
She turned around slowly, her green eyes large and wet, biting on her lip, attempting to stop it from trembling. She hated crying, especially in front of other people, and even more so when it was out of anger.
"We weren't, she went to kiss me because she thought when I kissed her that it meant something to me. Which I think is why she asked me out, but I only went out with her because you said I should. But it meant nothing to me, and I feel nothing for her." Lincoln begged, slowly stepping towards her. "You must understand, Liv. I don't want her. The only thing I felt kissing her was when I closed my eyes and imagined it was you, your lips on mine, your mouth on mine." Her eyes dropped again as she sniffed and he gulped, daring to take another step closer. "Charlie told me you said you thought I'd stayed here when the bridge closed because of Robert's death. But that isn't true, I stayed because I lo - because of you."
"Then why did you run away from me at the football game, and the other night in the kitchen and on my birthday?" Olivia whispered in a sob, trying to catch her breath as Lincoln's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'd already kissed you at The Bridge and at the Christmas party, you must've known I wanted you to…"
"Because I'm a coward - and an idiot." Lincoln replied, his voice full of regret and sadness as he thought of when her face had been so close to his, but he couldn't find the courage to close the gap between them. "I wanted to, every time and so much, but I was scared I was taking advantage of your grief. I convinced myself I'd dreamed them, and that you only wanted me because of the other Lincoln. And because if I kissed you back, I could no longer deny how I feel about you."
Lincoln looked at Olivia sheepishly and earnestly studied her face, his blue eyes wide and brimming with the emotion of his confession, and waited for hers to meet his, and as they did, he smiled softly.
"H-how do you f-feel about me?" Olivia said simply as she gulped, realizing the reason for his hesitation. "Do you really think that I only wanted you here as some kind of substitute all this time?"
"I feel like I've been living in the shadow of his ghost. I know I'm a constant reminder of him." Lincoln sighed, breaking eye contact. "And there's nothing I can change about that, but I didn't want to allow myself to be in love with you - if you didn't love me back. That's how I feel about you. "
Olivia stepped towards him, closing the gap further until they were merely a footstep apart.
"I'm not saying it was wrong or I regret what happened between him and me, but I do feel guilty. We were both feeling vulnerable and too scared to reveal our true selves to each other for fear of rejection. So you aren't the coward, he was, and so am I - for pretending we were both fine for so long. Did I love him? Yes, I did - but I love you too, but not because you remind me of him. It's because you're everything he wasn't and everything he was afraid to be."
Lincoln looked back at her, stunned, his lips trembling as her words hit him like a tidal wave, his stony chest finally relenting under the rhythm of the water and his nostrils flared as he inhaled every one of her words.
"Liv, I'm so sorry, I -'' Lincoln stammered then blinked, the air thick and heavy around him like a fog and she was a lighthouse, sending out a beam of light to stop him from crashing.
"S'okay." Olivia sniffed and shrugged, and Lincoln, still stunned, watched her turn to take the handle of her case to wheel it to her room. He twisted on his heel where he stood, then stopped, turning back to her as she closed the door, courage finally winning the fight over diffidence and uncertainty. Bracing the door with his hand before it could close, the sudden movement surprised her. She gasped, turning around as Lincoln closed the gap between them and took her face in his hands, leaning into her space.
Olivia didn't dare to meet the deep watery blue of his eyes as he intently gazed at her, shimmering bottomless pools that she feared she could drown in, but glanced down at his face to his lips, so close she could count and see the different shades of hair in the stubble of his chin. She felt his breath warm on her cheek and the familiar scent of him flooded her senses, her eyes were unable to look away from his lips, transfixed as they inched closer to hers. Time slowed to almost nothing as Lincoln leaned in further, the heat on his firm chest pressing against her breasts as his breath mingled with hers. His trembling lips gently brushed against hers, warm and soft, tentatively drawing her in with a firm, yet slowly sensual and tender kiss.
She shivered as she felt one of his hands fluttering at the back of her neck, threading her auburn hair through his fingers, cupping her face in his hands to hold her in place. His lips moved slowly with hers, confirming his approval with little sighs, taking his time to explore every millimeter and every taste of her while she grasped handfuls of his jacket to steady her body that swayed in the pull of the tide. Everything he saw and knew turned from black and white into an explosion of color that sparked between them, setting his soul alight as she molded into him, her body responsive and pliant under the coursing river of his shaking hands as they made their path over her, until he broke away to recover, breathing heavily.
She barely had time to register the kiss and for a moment she thought he'd step away again, panicking over what he'd allowed himself to do, until sighed "fuck it" under his breath and he swiftly removed his usual caution and reservations along with his glasses, carelessly throwing them over his shoulder, not looking or caring where they landed and not hearing the sound as they clattered to the floor when his mouth was back on hers, except this time he didn't hold back. Any thoughts of hesitation or indecisiveness left him when his lips reconnected with Olivia's. He realized there could be no more sitting on the fence. This was his chance to become the man he wanted to be, and he was going to take it, offer everything he had in one lasting moment.
He kissed her like she thought he would; gently with caution and reverence until he couldn't hold back anymore, and he urgently pressed his lips hard against hers in desperation, as if his life depended on it. Moaning into his mouth when his tongue sought permission, she let him in willingly, gripping onto the collar of his suit jacket like an anchor against the waves that rocked her. He tenderly vocalized his pleasure with soft moans of satisfaction and she took each one gladly, the soft pillows of her lips softly caressing him in return, the pressure of his kiss making the back of her head press so hard against the door, she was certain the grain of the wood imprinted her skull like the kiss burned on her lips. When they finally separated, they breathlessly rested their foreheads against each other, their eyes still closed, letting the moment last.
"We never kissed like that," He gasped, as her breathing slowed and her grip on him relaxed. "Was that - are you - okay?"
"Uh-uh, I'm happy." She said, as a smile spread across her face.
"Then I'm happy too." Lincoln replied with a grin.
"You really need a shave though," Olivia added, rubbing her chin to soothe the friction caused by his stubble.
"I'll get right on it." He added, turning towards the bathroom with a wide smile that made his dimples travel all the way to his jaw.
The clutter of the razor hitting the basin of soapy water welcomed Olivia as she leaned against the bathroom door jamb, seeing Lincoln as he peered into the mirror, dragging the razor over the last remaining parts of hair on his jaw. He smiled softly at her as she slowly pushed the door open, with a fresh pile of towels and her toiletries from her suitcase in her arms.
Lifting his hands out of the warm bubbly water to pull out the plug, he shook them before taking a towel from Olivia and patted his face dry.
"Did your glasses survive the fall?" Olivia scoffed as she watched him squint at his reflection. Lincoln nodded, and cleared his throat. "You missed a bit." She added, taking the razor from his hand and lightly moving it across a little patch on the side of his cheek.
"Just about. Listen, Liv, I, uh…" Lincoln began with a huff, gulping as he tried to find the words he wanted to say, his eyes flickering in nervous panic on feeling her hand brush his jaw. "I don't want to make any assumptions, but do you want to, at some point, um, y'know -"
He wiggled his finger between them and blushed slightly. Olivia raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips to contain a smile as she understood him, looking away for a second as she felt his secondhand embarrassment and she coughed with a nod.
"- have sex?" She added bluntly, finishing the sentence for him and he nodded awkwardly in relief, and Olivia tried not to laugh at how embarrassed he looked.
"I was gonna say make love, but yeah." He smiled, hoping the thoughts he suddenly had of Olivia naked wouldn't cause all the blood in his body to rush to his dick with her standing so close, but hope wasn't winning the battle right now as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips firmly against his, softly caressing the back of his neck with her fingertips.
"Does that answer your question?" Olivia smiled into his mouth, continuing until he agreed with a soft groan from the back of his throat and pulled back slightly without releasing him from her grasp. "Do you?"
"Hmmm, I can't lie. The thought has crossed my mind once or twice." Lincoln replied with a nervous chuckle and raised his hands in surrender before resting them on the curves of her hips.
"Just once or twice?" She teased, feeling the hardness growing in his boxers that pressed against her lower stomach where their bodies met.
"Okay, more than a couple of times..."
"Yes, of course I do." Olivia huffed a laugh in response, and tapped his bare chest. "But I need to wait a few days, if that's okay?"
"Of course it is!" He blurted. "I mean, I'm exhausted and I've not been sleeping well 'cause of the case and I've not had you here to talk to. Charlie's great, but he's not ..." He rambled, trailing off and looking down coyly. "...you." Olivia smiled widely and reassuringly at his apprehension, taking his face in her hands to make him look at her and kissed him again, dotting little kisses across his mouth and smooth cheeks as he sighed, closing his eyes. "C-could we just sleep together tonight - just sleep - and take it from there?" He asked, and she nodded slightly. He followed her as she led him by the hand to his room and closed the door behind them.
August 22/8/2013 altverse
The diffused early morning sunlight seeped through cracks in the drapes, making patterns that cut across the cool, white bed linen that molded to the shapes of two warm, contented bodies.
Olivia blinked, reeling from the remnants of her dream, then opened her eyes. Turning to the warm body by her side, she smiled at Lincoln sleeping on his back, hypnotized by the slow rise and fall of his breathing cocooned in the soft comfort of the bedding.
Stroking his chin with the pads of her fingers, tracing the smooth sensitive skin around his mouth, his lips twitched and let a sigh escape as his eyes fluttered open.
"Hey, good morning." He smiled shyly, looking down at her in the corner of his eye as he turned on his side to face her and raised his hand to lace with hers.
"Hi." Olivia replied, as he hesitantly leaned forward and kissed her softly, his free arm snaking around her body to pull her in close.
Their hands and lips languidly and carefully caressed and traced patterns of adoration and desire on each other's skin, the pressure and intensity increasing until their breaths came in frantic gasps, their bodies pressed against each other as they rocked in unison until Olivia gasped at the unfamiliar feel of his erection that rubbed against her lower abdomen.
"This okay?" Lincoln whispered, prising an arm between them, gently brushing against her breasts and pebbled nipples. Olivia nodded and sighed contentedly, wrapping a leg around his waist on feeling the warmth of desire and arousal pooling inside her when his lips trailed down the side of her neck. Her pulse quickened under his kisses as they slipped lower to her clavicles, drawing a line down the plane of her sternum to her breasts, gently caressing and teasing her hardened nipples lightly with his tongue as she reveled in the sensation of its warm wetness trailing circles around them.
Squirming in pleasure as his hand left her breast and slid quickly down the plane of her stomach to squeeze the top of her thigh, she gasped when it moved around to her ass to push her hard flush against him.
Moving her leg up to his waist, and pulling him so his weight was leaning on her, she was aware of a low hum vibrating as he stopped mid-action and rolled back, leaning behind him to take something from the bedside table and looked at her in apologetic frustration.
"Hello?" He answered groggily, rolling on his back and frowning as he looked at Olivia. "What? When?... No, that's fine… Is everything okay?... Yes, yes - of course."
He ended the call with a gulp and flopped his arm across his eyes and forehead.
"That was Charlie," Lincoln explained. "Mona's gone into labor, so we're in charge of the case now."
"Already?" Olivia questioned, sitting up as she snapped back to reality. "She's not due for at least a few more weeks. Is everything okay?"
"He said she's fine. The contractions started a few hours ago and are pretty close now, so they're heading to the hospital." Lincoln replied, smiling as he replaced his glasses and rolled back to look at her, tracing her spine up from the waist of her pajamas with his fingertips until it reached the ends of her auburn hair and threaded his fingers through it as she smiled at him over her shoulder. "Liv, I…"
Love you, I'm so sorry, I'm so happy, I love you. I want you and, oh god, I really fucking love you, so much.
His brain screamed the words in a huge chain of thought that he couldn't decipher and were cut off before he could verbalize them by her finger across his lips.
"I know," Olivia smiled, leaning across him, her hair red cascading across his face so it draped and tickled his shoulders, hearing every word as they reflected in her eyes from his own, "me too."
August 22/8/2013 altverse
When they returned to the office after a shower, colder than they were used to but deemed necessary because to avoid distractions, Erikson gave Olivia and Lincoln the unenviable task of speaking to the families of the team who'd died under Montgomery's influence who visited Fringe Division headquarters in groups.
"The last two days have been a nightmare," one man said, pausing to sweep his long black hair back off of his face and behind his ears, meeting Olivia's green eyes directly with his own dark brown eyes before looking over at Lincoln who sat at the desk next to her, "a nightmare I keep hoping I'll wake up from. I still can't believe someone would do this… it's unreal."
"We're sorry for your loss," Olivia replied, narrowing her eyes as they left the room, "we'll be in touch when we know more."
"He knows something he's not telling us," Olivia said, motioning with her chin towards the room, leaning on the rotunda standing desk and impatiently tapped her fingers on the cold, metal surface. She couldn't explain how or why she knew or why he looked so familiar, but she knew did somehow. "He's teasing us, playing a game. Talking about dreams and nightmares, who talks like about their relative's life?"
"Liv? Are you sure you're okay? Maybe you're just not ready to be back …" Lincoln said concerned, stopping abruptly as Olivia glared at him. He sighed and shrugged in defeat, knowing she was more than capable and definitely didn't need his protection. "… sorry, I'm just worried about you."
"You don't think he seemed - detached?"
"Maybe he's in shock."
"Or maybe he's in on it."
"Liv," Lincoln repeated, dragging out the syllable like a warning. "That doesn't make any sense, but if you suspect him, we should…"
"Oh, I know it," Olivia insisted, straightening up in determination. "I'm going to ask Astrid to run a full background check, see what she can find out."
Lincoln nodded as he watched Olivia stubbornly march toward Astrid at the central console.
"I want to know everything about this guy Harry Allinson - his employment history, where he grew up, his parents, everything."
Astrid nodded in understanding as she tapped the screen, glancing at Olivia and Lincoln as he joined them both, before bringing up the details of him on the screen. The photo showed his pale, gaunt features and long, black hair swept back off his face as his cool, detached stare looked at them from his Show Me photograph and file.
"I'm confused. Why are we doing this, exactly? The likelihood of finding anything relating to the suspect has a probability rate of one in three point two thousand, at best." Astrid asked as she looked at the information. "And we are still unclear what Montgomery's was after."
"Call it a hunch. Just go with it." Olivia replied, tapping her on the shoulder. "Any news from Charlie yet?"
"Not yet." Astrid confirmed, typing the details and standing up straight as Erikson approached.
"We have a problem." He announced, making the agents glance up. "We have just identified a cyber attack of unknown origin on Fringe Division that happened last night. It appears they accessed only three files; yours Agents Lee and Dunham, and Agent Francis's, and because of the timing, we have to assume it is in relation to this case."
"Last night?" Lincoln gasped, looking at Olivia with wide eyes as she looked back at him briefly.
"Wait - Charlie!" Olivia began, the panic straining in her voice. "Mona went into labor this morning. They'll be easy targets."
"We've sent two units to guard the hospital." Erikson replied. "They'll be under constant watch until they can leave to get escorted to a safe house."
"With all due respect, Sir." Lincoln retorted quickly, his blue eyes narrowing, "The last time we did that, the team turned their weapons on each other and most were fatally wounded until I… until Montgomery was stopped."
He trailed off as Olivia stared at him, unaware of what he'd been through in the past few days, and sympathetically touched his arm as Erikson turned to Astrid.
The memory of the carnage in the hospital replayed in his mind, as he considered he'd barely had time to process the events, the shock of seeing the result of so many of his colleagues and fellow agents turning on each other without hesitation still vivid when he closed his eyes.
"I am aware of that, Agent Lee, as per the report Agent Francis filed on your behalf. We will begin issuing all personnel with bespoke headgear as a precautionary measure to reduce the effect of the voice, under the assumption whoever is responsible has the same latent ability as Ashlyn Montgomery. Do you need to step away?"
"No, sir." Lincoln replied defiantly, shaking his head.
"I want to go check on them, sir." Olivia demanded. "And why my file? I wasn't even on the case." She questioned as Astrid raised her hand.
"Statistically, I would say it's because we linked yours and Agent Lee's files." She added cautiously so as not to embarrass them. "Agent Lee has you added as his next of kin and registered at the same address. They may have concluded that you're both, um, a couple."
Olivia held her hands up as she looked at Erikson, trying to hide her embarrassment.
"Sir, I…" she began, and Lincoln interrupted.
"When I came here, I didn't have anyone else to add as a next of kin on the HR form." He explained, standing up straight and defensively. "Agent Dunham is my friend, as well as a colleague, and the closest thing I have to family here."
Olivia suppressed a smile again as Erikson nodded.
"Understood, although that is irrelevant right now. The fact is that whoever they are, they know a lot about you both, which could be used to their advantage, so the priority is to find where the attack came from so we can stop them before they strike again. Farnsworth, see what you can find on the details I have sent you, and I'll see if I can get some more plugs for you, Dunham, as I know you'll end up defying my orders if I tell you not to go. You will, however, have to surrender your weapon to me."
"Sir, I…" she repeated in protest, looking back at him, then at Lincoln, who looked back at her sympathetically.
"With your marksmanship skills, you could easily take out the rest of the team on your own." Erikson replied. "And you should have a psych exam before heading out, which we don't have time for right now."
"I think he's right. You weren't there when she began turning the team on each other." Lincoln added, his eyes wet with emotion as he noticed a flutter of betrayal cross her face.
She removed her gun from the holster and slammed it onto the surface of the podium as Erikson picked it up and left the area.
Lincoln pored over the files as Astrid continued her background checks on Harry Allinson and continued to look for more info on the hackers as Olivia paced nervously.
"Agent Dunham?" A younger agent in uniform gear approached her. "Col. Erikson told me to give you these, the ear plugs they requisitioned for you."
"Great, thank you." She replied, taking them from the other agent.
"You should be aware they block out a lot of sound and you might find that disorientating. It could affect your speech and balance, so only wear them when necessary." They added before leaving.
She nudged Lincoln as she approached him and Astrid.
"I'm heading off to see Charlie to make sure he and Mona are safe." She said, holding up the package as proof.
"Liv, are you sure you want to go? I'm not sure it's a good idea with you just coming back to work." He replied protectively, his eyes wide and voice thick with concern, and he touched her arm softly as she shook her head. "I can go if you go over the details with Astrid."
"Yes. I think if anyone is a target here, it would be you. I'll meet you back here once I've got them settled in the safe house." Olivia argued.
Lincoln recalled her mother's comments about being stubborn and realized she was right. There wasn't much he could say or do to convince her otherwise and yielded, despite his reservations, and he knew Olivia was more than capable of looking after herself, even when she wasn't entirely back to normal.
"Okay," Lincoln reluctantly agreed with a slight nod and shrug of his shoulders. "We'll call you if we find anything out. Drive safe."
"See you soon." She replied as she left, smiling slightly at Lincoln before breaking eye contact and turning to leave.
August 22/8/2013 altverse
A doctor and team of nurses hurried past Charlie, who sat on a plastic seat in the hospital ward corridor. He glanced up, doing a double take as he saw Olivia approaching.
"Liv? What are you doing here?" He asked in surprise, his expression turning to alarm as he saw the team of armed agents follow her. "What's going on?"
Data flickered across the screen, reflecting in Astrid's eyes as she analyzed the information, urgently marching towards Lincoln as he sat at a desk with her findings.
"Agent Lee?" she said in her small voice, looking away from him as he looked up at her to meet her gaze from his files. "Sorry to interrupt, but I think I found something important. Harry Allinson grew up in foster homes because his parents were murdered when he was a young boy, their killers were never found. This was also the case with Ashlyn Montgomery."
"That's an unusual coincidence." Lincoln observed, sitting up straight in intrigue.
"More than a coincidence," Astrid replied, "statistically, the odds are approximately one in 650 thousand. But what is really strange is when I did a background check on both their parents, I found they both used the same fertility clinic to get pregnant."
Lincoln's eyes widened in panic as he realized the connection, and he hastily stood up.
"We need to speak to the clinic," he began, almost running towards the glass doors of Erikson's office. "And tell Liv - Agent Dunham."
Astrid stopped him in his stride before he reached the door.
"We're still running the trace to find out where the hackers came from. Should I wait until I find out more before I call her?"
"Let's okay it with Erikson first. I think we'll need a warrant to get access to confidential files from the clinic." He replied, gesturing for her to enter before him as he opened the door.
As Olivia explained the situation to Charlie, he reentered the hospital room to gather up their belongings and get ready to leave.
Olivia followed him in and paused, looking open-mouthed at Mona as she laid in the bed, holding a small bundle wrapped in a blanket against her chest. Her hair was still damp from sweat, and she looked pale and exhausted but genuinely smiled at Olivia when she entered, then flashed a look of concern.
Brushing away a pang of jealousy Olivia felt tainting the happiness for them both, she smiled. The bitter thorn of grief pierced through the fabric of her memories, reminding of her sister and niece, how they should have been like this, but smiled in relief that Charlie had the family VPE had denied her.
She had lost them to a condition she most likely had herself. A condition that not only robbed her of her sister and a niece but a chance of motherhood. As much as she told herself that she didn't need to have a child to be fulfilled, and she was happy not being a mom, she felt bitter, as it had taken away the choice from her. Until now, it hadn't really bothered her, but the flashes of her dreams returned, taunting her with memories of what could have been. Cradling a swaddled baby in her arms, tired and aching but overwhelmed with love, as Lincoln looked at them both, his eyes full of emotion.
She blinked and walked into the room, masking her heartbreak as she'd done so many times before with a wide but fake smile.
"Congratulations! How are you both?" Olivia smiled.
"We're good, even though madam here decided to arrive early." Mona said with a lethargic smile. "Say hello to Nellie."
Olivia mouthed her name as she delicately traced a finger across the top of her head where her bonnet met her forehead.
"Hey Nellie." Olivia whispered apologetically. "I'm so sorry about this. We just need you to move to a safe location until this is over."
"Do you really think we're in danger? Because of the case Charlie and Lincoln were working?" She replied, looking between Charlie and Olivia, then down at the baby in her arms.
"We're not sure. This is just a precaution until we know for sure."
The glass door swung vigorously as they pushed hard, almost hitting the wall with the force as Lincoln & Astrid rushed out of Erikson's office towards the central stand in the rotunda.
"I'll call Agent Dunham," Astrid said, bringing up the details on her computer screen.
"I'm heading over to the clinic now to see if I can find out more about them. Let me know right away if you find anything on the hack or if Agent Dunham has any news." Lincoln replied in agreement as Astrid nodded in reply as he left.
Taking the bag from Charlie as he helped Mona and their baby into a wheelchair and pushed them out to the corridor, Olivia followed with two guards and their bag, escorting them as they walked through the hospital. They passed medical equipment and personnel until they reached the parking lot, finding the unmarked protected vehicle that would transport them to the safe house.
"We're keeping two units stationed with you at all times with specialized equipment. If you need anything or if anything feels weird, just call me, okay?" She explained, tucking her ear plugs into her pocket.
The director of the clinic shifted uncomfortably in her office as Lincoln glared at her.
A mature woman dressed in a dark, tailored suit with a graying blonde bob, she offered him a professional smile, but he could sense that she wasn't happy about giving the information he was asking for. She sighed, reluctantly handing him the files of the patients who had the same fertility treatments. Lincoln looked through the photos as she spoke, seeing those of Ashlyn Montgomery and Harry Allinson's parents with a few others he didn't recognise.
"The patients you mentioned had the same doctor, Dr. Aureolas. He had a doctorate in Bio Genetics from England. He had such a high success rate, we thought it was too good to be true." She sighed as Lincoln looked up. "Turns out he was. We found out he was tampering with genetic material, experimenting with eugenics after one of his early successes ended up with a rare form of cancer. The parents had tests run, and they discovered a range of defects because of their extra set of chromosomes."
"For what purpose?" Lincoln frowned, glancing at her before returning to the notes in his hands.
"In his disciplinary, he said - boasted - he improved them and sped up evolution to make a better, no - a super, human. But the replication of chromosomes also produced additional genes, which not only seemed to give them some unusual side effects but also, uh, skills."
"Skills?" Lincoln enquired, narrowing his eyes as he looked back up at her. "Like what?"
"Things like strength and intelligence, depending on what chromosome they duplicated. He said they showed signs of psychic ability, biokinesis, and mind-control. Unfortunately, those skills came with side-effects like reduced life span, accelerated aging, aggressive cancers, inoperable brain tumors, and psychosis. Your suspects are the final and only results left alive from his experiments that we know of."
Watching Charlie and Mona's car drive away, Olivia sat in the driving seat of her own car, rubbing her eyes into the palms of her hand in relief. Feeling the vibration of a call come in, she pressed the button on her ear cuff communicator.
"Dunham." she answered as she shut the car door beside her.
"It's Agent Farnsworth," Astrid replied down the line. "We have some developments. We think we traced the origin of the hackers to an industrial property on Salem Street, Hackensack. I'll send you the address now."
"That's over half an hour away." Olivia observed with a sigh of frustration, pulling her seatbelt across her chest, "they could be long gone by now. Can you tell Lincoln and arrange a team to meet me there?"
"Of course. There's something else you need to know about what we found out…" Astrid added as the line crackled.
"Sounds like abilities rather than skills. So what happened to him?" Lincoln frowned again. "This is completely unethical, not to mention…"
"We fired him, of course." She replied, interrupting as she handed over another folder containing the doctor's information. "The AMA censured him and we wanted to do a complete investigation. Then he seemed to disappear off the face of the planet."
He opened up the file and almost gasped at the photo inside. His eyes widened and felt his palms sweat as he looked at the information, then back at the doctor sitting opposite him in shock.
The photo was old and grainy, but Lincoln would recognize that face anywhere - he'd met him before when investigating the Sandman case - Dr Aureolas was Erasmus, who was still in a coma from the shooting.
His mind eventually registered the sound of an incoming call in his earpiece and he clicked it to answer it as he stared, stunned, at the information in front of him.
"This is Agent Lee." He stuttered, his throat dry as he tried to speak.
"Agent Lee, this is Agent Farnsworth," Astrid spoke down the line, "we traced the source of the hack. Can you meet a unit and Agent Dunham there? She's on her way now."
He stood urgently, mouthing a thank you to the woman behind the desk.
"Yes, I'll be right there." He replied, ending the call and turning to the director as he went to leave. "I have to go. Can I keep these?"
She nodded as he left and dashed towards his car.
The car wheels crunched on the rough gravel, bumping over potholes and loose tarmac as Olivia arrived at the address Astrid had given her. Pulling up to a parking space, she looked through the car window at the building. Even in the dark and poorly lit parking area, it was unassuming and apparently abandoned, close to derelict with the few dirty windows caked in smoke, grime and dust or cracked and smashed. Olivia looked around tentatively, unable to see any other cars in the area. Impatiently glancing at her watch to quickly check the time, she impulsively left her car, jogging over to the building to cautiously push the creaking door open, revealing the inside of the dark, dusty and empty industrial warehouse. A little of the outside street lamp light streamed through high cracked windows casting long, twisted shadows across the floor and musty air, tainting everything with a violet hue as disturbed dust particles danced across the faint beams of light like dainty snow falling in the middle of a December night.
A red blinking light on computer equipment and monitors stashed on racking caught Olivia's eye like a beacon through the dark and she edged closer to look at the screens, stopping as a strained voice called her from deeper inside the building.
"Olivia?"
She followed the voice to see Lincoln standing alone, a few rows of racking away, in front of rows of rusting metallic cylindrical tanks and empty cardboard boxes.
"Linc? How did you get here so quickly?" Olivia said, puzzled. "Where's your car and back up?"
"You were right about Harry, Olivia. Eramus used him to control people." He replied flatly, raising his weapon and pointing it at her unsteadily.
"Lincoln?" She questioned, her voice strained with alarm. She instinctively reached for her holster, remembering she no longer had her gun. "What are you doing?"
"He's making me do this." Lincoln whispered urgently as Olivia held up her hands, gingerly stepping towards him, stopping as he cocked the hammer of his gun, the click punctuating the air.
"Give me the gun, Linc. Where is he?" Olivia replied in frustration, straining to find anything or anyone to help in the muted light.
"He's right here. Please make him stop, Olivia." He begged, his hand shaking in fear. "Please. I… I can't stop myself."
"Harry, give yourself up right now!" she screamed desperately into the darkness, her voice breaking with panic. "It's over, you're surrounded!"
"Olivia?" Lincoln cried out, turning the gun on himself with a trembling hand and slowly pointing it at his head.
Olivia immediately ran towards him, panic and adrenaline urgently pushing her forward, feeling like the faster she pushed, the slower she went as a single crack of gunfire pierced her ears. She skidded to a stop, watching Lincoln's body limply fall backwards like a rag doll onto the hard and dusty concrete floor, layers of dust and dirt rising around him as his body hit the ground.
"No, no, no!" Olivia cried as she reached him, desperately scrambling on the cement ground and slipping on his blood as she crawled towards him, feeling his neck for a pulse. "This can't be happening." She told herself, anything to disprove what she has seen and give her some hope.
Her voice was so raw and animalistic, she didn't recognize it as her own. She pushed back the urge to vomit from the senselessness, the knot in her throat threatening to rise and to choke her.
"L-Linc?" she begged in a whimper, her voice breaking as she pushed against his chest with trembling hands, hoping the movement would cause him to open his eyes. "Please wake up."
But there was nothing. No pulse and no breathing. No signs of life at all, just his expression of shock and his blood that splattered across the floor and his shirt like red rose petals, pooling into a halo around his head, with his cracked glasses an island in the middle of the deep red sea.
The noise of footsteps behind her shook her from her grief, converting it into anger, as she grabbed his gun out of his listless hand and looked up to see Harry approaching, also with a gun in his hand.
"I'm gonna kill you, you fucking bastard!" Olivia screamed again, manic with rage, as he stopped, pointing his gun at her.
"Don't shoot - don't listen to him, Liv." Harry replied calmly.
"What?" Olivia faltered, barely able to focus on him through the tears welling in her eyes.
"It's me, Lincoln." He replied calmly, stopping abruptly where he stood. "You were right about him. He and Ashlyn were results of experiments run by Erasmus. They found each other and were working together."
"Wh- what? I don't…" she stuttered, wavering slightly as she held Lincoln's gun, sticky with his blood, and patted her pockets with her free hand, desperately trying to find her earplugs.
"I'm Lincoln. Harry is behind you. He's telling you he's me and I'm him."
Olivia blinked away the tears and forced herself to look down again at Lincoln's body once more. There was still a bullet hole in his head, just like her dream. His blood seeped out in rivulets, ebbing out behind him. The rage and nausea rose in her gut in waves, sweeping across her and pulling her down. It was then she realized how she knew him, he was the man from her dream who'd led her to Lincoln's body in the morgue.
"You! Y-you killed him! He's dead again, because of you!" Olivia shrieked, her cheeks hot with tears and anger, impairing her vision.
"Liv - I'm Lincoln. I'm not dead." Harry begged softly, his eyes squinting and long hair swishing as he shook his head in desperation. "He wants us to shoot each other just like Ashlyn did. He read our files and knows you'll never forgive yourself after what happened…"
To the other Lincoln. He wanted to say before he screamed again, cutting him off.
"Shut up, SHUT UP!"
"Liv please! Listen to my voice!" He shouted back, his voice wavering and steadied his shaking hand by holding the gun with both hands, racking his brain to think of anything that'd they both know but wouldn't be in their Fringe Division work profiles. "Your favorite flowers are daisies, you always pick raw tomatoes out of your food and put them on my plate, and for your birthday we got drunk too many cocktails and ..."
"I said shut UP!" Olivia desperately screamed her reply, her finger twitching on the trigger as she watched him step forwards, his gaze moving to over her shoulder at the floor behind her.
Lincoln paused before trying again, remembering what he'd been told. Make sure she hears you and your voice. Tell her who you are.
"Liv, please, I belong with you and you belong with me. Last night was the best night of my life since I moved…" His voice cracked as he screamed, his eyes catching a movement in the shadows. "…MOVE, NOW!" Harry shouted, his face distorted with the fear and desperation that pushed up through his body.
Olivia barely had time to register his words but quickly jumped to the side as he repeatedly fired his gun in her direction. She fell down onto the dusty floor and rolled over, to look at the body next to her, then back toward the shooter to see Lincoln standing above her, lowering his discharged weapon with shaking hands as a wisp of smoke escaped the chamber. She turned back in disbelief at the body of Harry next to her, a fresh bullet wound blooming in his chest, his face contorted in astonished agony and his dark, stringy hair fanned out around his head.
"Liv?" Lincoln sighed, his voice hitching with relief and emotion when she looked back up at him again, stunned but recognizing him as the man she thought was dead.
He slowly stepped closer to her, taking the gun from her hands and helping her to her feet, then led her away as the backup unit stormed into the building, barely registering their voices as her legs buckled underneath her again.
"It's you… I nearly…" she sobbed, covering her eyes with her hand in shame and relief as he wrapped his arms around her, trying to keep her up and not to let her feel how much his own body was shaking.
"It's okay, nothing happened. We're good." He whispered, as the rest of the Fringe team assembled around them, evaluating the scene.
"Shot fired, repeat shot fired, suspect down". Were the last words they heard echoing around them before Erikson took them away.
August 22/8/2013 altverse
Staring at the digital file Lincoln handed him, Erikson inspected the details, then placed it down on his desk.
"So Erasmus was working on some kind of experiment to control consciousness through dreams, for what end?" Erikson queried, folding his arms.
"It's unclear what his motives were, these two were the last two surviving results of his experiments that we know of." Lincoln replied confidently. "Although we have not yet discovered how many other covert experiments run at other clinics without their consent or knowledge."
Erikson leaned back, looking up as Olivia entered and picked up the file from Lincoln.
"So, there is a possibility there could be others out there with similar abilities?"
"Sir." Olivia interjected, stepping forward. "I suggest we keep a close eye on any cases like this as a precaution. In the meantime, Agent Farnsworth is running more data on similar fertility clinics to see if we can find any further information."
"Good work agents, dismissed." He nodded, placing it down and they turned to leave.
"Agent Dunham?" Erikson called again as Lincoln left the room and she turned on her heel, holding the door. "I have something for you."
He leant to his side to reach into the dark mahogany wood drawers of his desk and sat back up, placing her weapon on the desk and she looked at it with confliction and repulsion - she'd been comfortable around guns for such a long time, even being an Olympic sharpshooter, that they'd become an extension of her being. But she had almost killed her partner and the man she recently realized she loved, and thought of that repelled her, the images washing in her head with waves of nausea.
"You did good, Agent," Erikson said with praise and consolation in his voice, sending her hesitation. "You saw through his lies and games and won."
"So why do I feel like I lost everything?" She replied as she slowly picked up the gun and returned it to her holster as she left the room.
Lincoln watched Olivia as she followed him down to where he and Astrid stood at the rotunda's central podium, his eyes heavy with concern that she would never trust him - or herself - again.
"Everything okay?" He asked as she joined them, and she nodded with a quick smile. "We're releasing Agent Francis and his family from protective custody now. The statistical likelihood of any direct threat to them is so low." He added, looking back at Astrid quickly.
"I'm sure Charlie and Mona will be glad to get Nellie home," Olivia replied quietly.
"Nellie? Like in Charlotte's Web?" He smiled to himself at the coincidence as the women looked at him with vacant eyes. "The book? About a spider who is best friends with a pig?"
They looked back at each other, puzzled, then frowned and shook their heads.
"Nope, no idea." Olivia replied with a snort, a sound Lincoln was happy to hear considering the circumstances, and he shrugged in resignation at another difference between their universe and his. "Mona said it is a mix of names of her dad and Charlie's mom."
"Just in my universe, then. Shame, I would have bought them a copy for when she gets older. You wanna pop in and see them on the way?"
"No, not today. I just want us to go home." She shook her head, offering him another thin smile.
He replied with an understanding smile and nodded. Turning away from the rest of the Fringe team, he slipped his hand in hers and interlaced their fingers, not caring who saw them and took her home.
August 22/8/2013 altverse
Olivia hardly said a word on the way home or when they got back. Lincoln made dinner, and put a plate in front of Olivia, only to watch her push the food around her plate for half an hour until she declared she wasn't hungry, and left the table for the bathroom. Olivia didn't know how long she was standing in the shower, but she was there until the water ran cold, her body shivered under the icy liquid and the thought of what could have happened. On the other side of the door, Lincoln watched the door nervously from afar, twisting his fingers as he considered going in there after her until he finally heard the water stop running and she opened the door, wet hair dripping on her shoulders and she walked to her room to lay on her bed.
Retreating to his own room, Lincoln did the same. Supine on his bed on top of the covers, he watched the shadows cast by headlamps dance across the ceiling for an hour, unable to sleep. Sighing, he stood, padding lightly out of his room into the darkness of the apartment and into Olivia's room.
In the shadows, he could just make out Olivia's shape in the dim light, her curves mountain ranges on the flat mattress, curled up on her side and facing away from him towards the empty side of the bed where he'd woken up this morning.
He ambled around the bed to the other side, stopping when she stirred.
"I didn't think you were going to come back here tonight." She mumbled sleepily, her hand that was on the pillow sliding down to the covers to pull them back, inviting him in once again.
"I wasn't going to. I thought you might want some space." Lincoln replied as she shook her head.
He barely had time to lie down before she wrapped the cover across him and pulled him in close, her arm holding him tight across his chest as her hand desperately gripped fistfuls of his T-shirt.
He overlapped her arm with his, resting his chin on the top of her head.
Lincoln thought she was asleep until her breath shuddered, and he felt wetness on his T-shirt, blooming in spots across his chest and a patch sticking to the side of his ribs under his heart.
"Liv?" he whispered her name like a question into her hair.
"I can't stop seeing you gone…" Olivia softly sighed her reply, "… I can't stop thinking how I nearly, I almost…"
She sobbed again, rubbing her eyes and turning away, like showing her emotion and vulnerability to him was the final chink in her armour that she wasn't ready to reveal despite everything they'd been through and confessed to each other.
He stopped for a moment, wondering if she wanted him to leave but decided not to, instead spooning up behind her and wrapping his arm around hers, pulling her back flush against his chest.
When he had arrived at the warehouse, his heart had sunk on seeing Olivia's empty car outside, knowing she was already inside.
"Do not enter. You will die here." the voice behind Lincoln said matter of factly, making Lincoln spin on his heel, his gun poised at the pale man. He strained to make out of the shape of him in the darkness, his black suit blending into the shadows of the abandoned and derelict parking area.
"You again?" Lincoln frowned, as the bald suited man copied his words and paused. "I have to, Liv is in there with Allinson…"
"She will kill you." He repeated flatly, "Allinson will tell her you are him, and she will shoot you dead."
"Why would she kill him-" Lincoln began, eyeing the man suspiciously, his pale skin glittering in the flickering lamp.
"Because she thinks you're dead, and she cannot live with that."
"And if I stay here - outside?" Lincoln sighed, "what happens then?"
The observer paused for a moment, tilting his head to the side to consider all the possibilities of what might happen with a change of variant.
"He will kill her." He concluded.
"Then I'm going in," Lincoln replied, cocking his gun again, his eyes widening with fear and the gun slipping in his shaking hands when he heard the sound of a single gunshot echo out from the building.
"Make sure she hears you and your voice, tell her who you are," he added, watching Lincoln pause briefly and swallow thickly before entering the warehouse. "If you tell her how you feel, make her hear you, it may give you a chance."
Lincoln nodded, turning away briefly, only to see the man had disappeared once again.
"It's okay, I'm here. I told you I'm not going anywhere." He said reassuringly to the back of her head, brushing away stray strands of her auburn hair from her face and gently kissing the side of her cheek. "You trusted me, you heard my voice, and you knew the truth. It doesn't matter what anyone says or does, you'll always be able to rely on that."
30/8/2013 altverse
"So beautiful."
Holding the baby in his arms, Lincoln looked at it intently, his eyes wide in awe, like it was a rare, fragile and priceless jewel from a museum that should be under layers of security rather than blankets. Nellie was only a few days old and still so small, but the skin was peachy and soft, and he gently stroked her tiny fingers as they grasped his.
"She obviously takes after her mother." Olivia joked as Charlie rolled his eyes.
"My partner Robert, in the FBI on the other side, before I moved to Fringe Division, had kids, but they were nearly 2 and 4 when we began working together, so I never knew them when they were this small. It's just incredible." He smiled, catching Olivia's gaze and blushed slightly as he handed her carefully back to Mona. "I baby sat them sometimes when he and Jules needed an evening off. I thought it wouldn't hurt to get a little practice."
Olivia looked at him, her smile quickly fading and stepped back, reeling as the flash of a familiar distant dream or memory of a life not lived echoed in her head.
The original Lincoln beaming with joy and relief, his face wet with tears as he handed her a baby, its skin tacky and warm under her fingers, as he held them both close and cried.
"You have a son."
Then as fast as it came, it went, replaced by another flash or memory or reality or timeline or fantasy, she can't tell which, only that they all feel as real as each other. This time it's this Lincoln, with his side parting and the surroundings merging into cool blues and flickering fluorescent bulbs and the hum of hospital equipment from deep reds and flashing lanterns, and the chatter of concerned onlookers.
He cries, literally sobs, with relief and overwhelming emotion.
"WE - we have a son?"
Looking at him now, she can tell he is someone who should be a parent, part of a family. His family instinct and need to belong are so deep within his core, it couldn't be any more obvious. The knowledge that she can't give him what would make him happy makes her heart crack, the shards catching in her chest because she wants him to be happy the most out of everyone she knows.
Catching the flicker of sadness in her expression, Lincoln tries to meet her eyes again with his own look of concern, but she focuses on Charlie, scared to look at him or the newborn baby again.
"So, are you volunteering your services?" Charlie said, teasing Lincoln while wrapping his arm around Mona and their child and raising his eyebrows when Lincoln nodded in reply.
"We'd be happy to help, if we can. Right, Liv?"
"Of course!" Olivia replied, her deceptively wide smile back again, his voice pulling her out of a reverie she shouldn't have seen. "Maybe we should give you guys some space now. We only popped in to say hi and make sure you're all okay."
Lincoln nodded again in agreement and followed her as they left and got into the car.
She saw him look at her from the corner of her eyes and sigh as she started the engine.
"What?" she spat, her tone tinted with annoyance.
"Nothing." Lincoln replied calmly, raising his eyebrows in surprise at her confrontational tone, trying to diffuse her frustration.
"No, you keep looking at me in that way again and like you want to say something, why don't you spit it out?"
"You just looked like you were a million miles away in there," He began, trying to find the words to explain, "and when you came back, you were…"
"What?" she repeated, annoyed at herself for giving herself away so easily and at him for his gift of always being able to read her mood so well.
"I don't know. Are you okay?" Lincoln added softly, "You've been through so much the last few weeks, you know you can tell me anything if you need to talk, or…"
"Anything? Talk or?"
"Yeah, anything. Anything you need. Anytime." He added simply, fidgeting and shifting in his seat.
Lincoln gulped, hoping Olivia would read between the lines of his words to see the invitation to take all of him whenever she wants to, and leaves it open for her to take it when she's ready.
5th September 2013 altverse come down when you're ready/ colors pr2 halsey
It was late in the day, and Lincoln laid flat on his bed in a simple t-shirt and pajama pants, barefoot but warm, his skin still a little damp from a shower and his arms folded behind his head. Soft sounds of an acoustic guitar and violin, mixed with a murmur of a low tenor voice, emanated from the speakers on his nightstand and synchronized with the raindrops that pattered against the windowsill, surrounding him in their rhythm like a blanket. The bedside lamp encased his slim frame in soft amber shades, fractured with flashes of light from outside as the thunder of an impending storm crept closer.
"Come in!" Lincoln answered, startled by a soft knock at his bedroom door and glanced in the direction, watching as Olivia appeared at the door wrapped in her bathrobe, her hair damp and curling at the edges.
"Hey." She replied, offering a small wary smile, while hesitating at his door,in case she was intruding.
"Hey! I didn't hear you get back in. How's your mom?" He asked as he returned the slight smile and sat up on his elbows.
"She's okay, she said she's feeling better but they want to run some more tests, they're thinking it could be IBS or Crohn's." Olivia sighed.
"Like Robert," Lincoln muttered, thinking back to his partner in the FBI and continued on seeing Olivia's brows knit together in a puzzled expression, "he had Crohn's. He took iron tablets for it."
"We got caught in the storm so we came home," she continued, nodding in understanding and tapping her fingers against the edge of the door indecisively as she leaned against it.
"She came back with you?" He squinted, looking behind her as if he half expected her to appear behind Olivia.
"No, she dropped me off outside." Olivia added solemnly, shaking her head as she closed the door and ambled towards the bed.
They'd visited Rachel's grave to commemorate her 30th birthday, and had stood on the dried, brown grass, hard as needles and crunching like broken grass underfoot from months of drought.
"Mom?" she whispered under the swollen red sky, watching as she placed a small bunch of tulips next to the headstone with a white inscription carved into the dark stone, "If you could talk to Rachel again one last time… what would you say to her?"
When she had been impersonating her counterpart on the other side to retrieve the pieces of the machine for Secretary Bishop, Olivia had read her personnel file to help convince Walter, Astrid and Broyles on that side she was their Olivia and maintain her cover for as long as possible. However, the discovery that VPE wasn't a condition in the other universe and Rachel had survived labor with her daughter was not something she'd anticipated, and the news had knocked the air from her lungs and caused tears to prick the back of her eyes to the point she'd almost inadvertently exposed her true identity, until she'd blinked them away under a pretense she'd managed to concoct before arousing their suspicions.
She'd quickly dismissed it as an unnecessary distraction from the classified mission, trying to convince herself that it was enough for her to know they were alive and were living happily with Rachel's husband Greg, that they'd named their daughter Ella and son Eddie after their grandparents. But it continued to niggle like a splinter where she had buried it in the back of her mind, twisting deeper until it was almost infused into her memories and she couldn't ignore it any longer.
Olivia had arrived at their address in Chicago that she'd found through the FBI resources, and had sat frozen behind the wheel of the hired car for hours, thinking what she could say if she found the courage to leave the car. Whatever words she thought of seemed inadequate; there was no way she could explain what she felt and what she'd lost, and she knew that would reveal her as an imposter before she even opened her mouth. She watched entranced and astounded on seeing the figure at the window of the red brick building, the woman with a small child on her hips had a halo light blonde hair when illuminated by the amber street lamps and a silhouette of a girl with bobbed hair at her side as she paused briefly to check the sunset before she closed the drapes. Falling dead leaves crinkled like paper, hitting the car windshield against the backdrop of the sky that had dripped through the spectrum from cerulean blue into lilac and fuchsia, before she could find the strength to drive away into the inky black night.
"I do talk to her," Marilyn replied simply, grasping her daughter's hand in her own, "and I still hear her voice every day, you just need to listen - here." She placed it over Olivia's chest as heavy raindrops fell from the gray clouds overhead and saturated the dry earth, just like the day she was buried with her stillborn child almost ten years ago. "Hear."
"Am I interrupting anything?" She added, pulling herself out of the thought by focusing on Lincoln's concerned expression as he gazed intently at her.
"Uh, no. A band I like made an album that wasn't released in my universe, side, whatever…" He shrugged then fluttered his hands up as he explained, "so I'm just catching up on what I missed." Lincoln replied as he watched Olivia fidget as she stood in front of him, picking at the trim on her bathrobe before she shivered, and crossed her arms against her chest. "Umm, is e-every-" Lincoln began nervously until Olivia interrupted him.
"Do you mind if I get in?" Olivia gestured at the bed, pulling back the covers when Lincoln nodded and quickly stood to get off the bedding, and she turned to discard her robe, briefly exposing her skin to the air before lying down. She turned her head to the side to look at Lincoln who stood by the other side of the bed where he'd been, watching his eyes widen and Adam's apple bob when he saw a glimpse of her naked body before she pulled the bedsheets back up to her chest. "You getting in or what?" Olivia laughed, when he finally unfroze and nodded before sitting down on the edge for a moment with his back to her before turning around and lying down next to Olivia. He swallowed thickly as she leaned into him, her fingertips tracing the line of where his dimples met his jaw, to make his lips meet hers.
Mapping every crease of her lips and taste of Olivia's mouth, Lincoln's arms snaked around her waist to keep her close while he kissed her back tentatively and languidly, trying to calm the pace of her movements and revel in her warmth, grasping her wrists as her hands scrabbled at the sensitive skin at his hip to tug at the waistband of his pajamas and ruck up his T-shirt. Breaking away to catch his breath, he leaned back slightly to search Olivia's eyes - dark, mossy green in the low light. The sound of rainwater lashed against the window outside, barely audible over the rush of blood in his ears.
"Liv?" He whispered shyly, his warm breath tickling her cheek. "Do you w-want to-"
Lincoln stuttered, pausing when Olivia smiled slightly and nodded, before leaning back in to resume the embrace only for him to pull back before their lips could meet again, and Olivia frowned at his hesitation. He smiled nervously, lying on the bed next to her on his side, taking her face in his hands, his eyes and brows furrowed with concern. Her eyes looked teary and tinted pink with sadness in the corners. She never explained sister had died and he'd never found the right time to ask, knowing it had most likely been unexpected and a wound she didn't want to reopen, "You sure? If you're upset we don't hav-"
"Linc, I promise I'm fine. I don't want to wait anymore." She replied, barely able to see his features from their close proximity and the desperate desire she felt pooling in her core when he nodded.
"Say it to me." Lincoln's voice was low and husky with the hunger he felt burning deep inside, that had been desperately waiting for someone - Olivia - to release it from where he'd caged it away so many years ago. "Please."
"Make love to me, Lincoln." Olivia sighed, never breaking eye contact with him, recognizing the fire in the pools of his eyes that burned in a white-hot heat, glittering like the transparent cerulean blue of an early morning summer sky.
He stood to strip down quickly so they were equally undressed, pulling his T-shirt over his head, and pushing his pajama pants down over his hips and already semi-hard erection, nearly tripping over as he stepped out of them, causing a little nervous giggle from Olivia. Lincoln looked at her to see her meeting his gaze with wide eyes and swallowed thickly, seeing him completely naked for the first time, taking in the differences between him and the Lincoln she used to know.
"What?" He questioned self-consciously, his eyebrows raised as looked down at himself. "Is something wrong?"
"No - no!" Olivia quickly replied reassuringly, beckoning him over as she shifted to make space for him. "C'mere."
He nodded back, tucking her hair behind her ear to pull her in for another kiss, his mouth playfully teasing hers until her lips opened and his tongue slipped in her mouth, making them both groan with pleasure as he leaned into her, sinking forward onto the bed.
Feeling the warmth of desire building and arousal pooling inside her was a stark contrast to the rain falling outside as the storm approached, the howling wind making the raindrops lash against the window with the intensity of the cloudburst. Lincoln's lips left Olivia's mouth, slowly trailing down the tender skin on the side of her neck, making her pulse quicken under his kisses as they slipped lower to her shoulders and breasts. Her eyes involuntarily drifted shut and mouth opened to let a long contented sigh escape, as she felt his hand join his mouth gently caressing her breasts, teasing her aching taut nipples lightly with his tongue, the slow and deliberate sensation of its warm wetness trailing circles around them making her squirm.
Raising her knees slightly, Olivia squeezed her thighs together to help relieve the pressure building inside her, the featherlight touch of his hand on her breast sliding down to the plane of her stomach to squeeze the top of her thigh, the tip of his thumb dangerously close to her junction. He was barely grazing her through her underwear when her eyes shot open and she gasped at his thumb's sudden proximity to the area that was growing more and more sensitive.
Lincoln looked up and stopped as she gasped, the coolness of his blue eyes dark and dilated with worship and his cheeks flushed in adoration.
"This okay?" He whispered, his voice an octave lower than normal.
"No."
"No?" Lincoln replied, his hands pausing while his eyes checked her face.
"It's not okay, it's perfect." She nodded, biting down on her full bottom lip with a slight smile.
"You sure? I don't want to be putting my hands anywhere they're not wanted, we can stop if you-"
"I'm sure." She smiled again, this time bringing her hand up to cup his face to reassure him and to to give him the confidence to touch her with no self-doubt or hesitation, the way she had been aching for him to do for so long. "I want you to touch me. I want you. Please, don't stop."
Lincoln smiled and nodded as he knelt up so the covers fell off the bed, exposing their warm bodies to the cool air. As the light outside began to fade, the curves of their entwined bodies became engulfed with shadows like the determination to consummate their feelings consumed them, and they were illuminated by the soft blue glow of the music player and amber streetlights that flickered through the swaying tree branches behind the window's thin drapes.
Running his hands slowly down her sides and over the curve of her hips, he reached her thighs again, so his slim, long fingers fanned across them and his thumbs lightly traced in tandem against the bottom hem of her underwear until they edged under the lace to the dip where her thigh joined her hip. Moving back and forth in a slow, deliberate rhythm, eventually his thumbs paused at her crease, hesitating slightly on making contact with the thatch of trimmed hair and the warmth within.
Her breath hitched in shallow gasps at the touch as he tenderly explored every inch of her skin, his heavy eyes seeking her face for permission to go further.
She felt like wildfire under his fingertips, searing hot and dangerous, tearing uncontrollably through every cell and fiber of his being, and it took every drop of his resolve to pace himself.
"Are you trying to tease me?" Olivia sighed, a hint of frustration & anticipation in her voice.
"No." He paused. "Do you - want me to?" He added, slightly smirking in reply, his eyebrows high as he mentally explored the possibility.
"Not now," she replied without hesitation
"Then tell me what you like," Lincoln pleaded, his voice low and deep with a desperate desire to please and still afraid of not being enough, the tips of his fingers so close to where she wanted him to be that she almost felt like crying. "Tell me what you want, Liv."
"Please," Olivia sobbed with a gulp, unashamed by the desperation in her voice, "I just want you to touch me -."
Not even waiting for her to finish the sentence, he took that as all the permission he needed before deftly hooking his fingers under the waist hem of her panties again, pulling them quickly down her thighs as she raised her hips until they were free. The contrast of his eager, hard cock against his slim, toned frame compared to her previous muscular lovers was strangely refreshing, and she reached for him and looking at him, puzzled, when he moved back to kiss her knee, then the other, slowly trailing kisses down the tender, soft skin on the inside of her thighs. Olivia clasped her eyes shut in realization of his intention and smiled to herself as she thought maybe both Lincolns aren't that different after all and she's the only person to have had the privilege of experiencing this from them both.
"You don't have to - " she sighed, smiling as his mouth reached the crease at the top of her thigh.
"You don't want me to?" He replied, his small nose bumping the mound of trimmed hair, and he lifted his head to check her face, his eyes narrowing slightly in confusion.
"Yes, I do, but it isn't - Oh!" Olivia cried out as he returned his mouth without hesitation and any argument she had disappeared with the sensation of his firm tongue against her sex, the warm wetness of his mouth teasing, parting and dipping through the folds of her sex, and teeth grazing her clit. "... Ah - ohhhh!"
She squirmed again, her back arching as she pushed her feet flat on the bed, trying desperately to anchor her body while her hips rose involuntarily, feeling she might float away with the pleasure coiling deep within her. It didn't really surprise her that the same determination, attention to detail and methodical nature he had at work also applied to his attitude in the bedroom.
She tasted even better than he imagined, and God knows he had imagined this moment more than he'd ever admit to. Sweet yet salty, her hot briny, exotic tang flooded his senses as he allowed himself to drown in her humid scent. He lifted his head for a second to look at her, but when Olivia whined at the lack of contact Lincoln continued with his enthusiastic and unwavering pattern, teasing with each lick, suck and kiss, slowly exploring every millimeter of her folds with his tongue, guided by her delirious whimpering and moans. Pinning her hips to the bed with his hands until the warming pressure crept up on her, she turned her face to the pillow to stifle her moans, her hand brushing against the back of his head to encourage him until he shifted a little and stopped.
Gently taking her clit between his lip covered teeth and sucking hard, then flicking it with the tip of his tongue, Lincoln shifted on his elbows to slip one finger followed by another deep into her wetness, curving them up, making her come undone. She shamelessly and involuntarily bucked her hips against his face, grabbing handfuls of the sheets when his name sobbed from her mouth, and she clenched around him, feeling herself fall over the edge that she barely comprehended she had been climbing.
"Linc, I'm gonna… Ohhhhh…" she gasped in surprise as she broke into a sob, unable to speak or think as her world disappeared into a spark of bright light, her breath shallow gasps with the sensation exploding in every cell of her body. She reopened her eyes as she recovered to see him kneeling over her, his hair spiked and disheveled, his chin and mouth glinting with her wetness and a beaming smile, wide with wonder and amazement that she couldn't help but reassuringly smile back at. The familiarity of his face and situation struck her then, and threatened to cause tears to sting in the corner of her eyes, and she quickly blinked them away before he saw them. She pulled him back up to her, shifting her hips as he leaned on the bed with his bent arms either side of her body. His hands cradled the side of her head, and she felt the throbbing heat of his cock as it brushed against the inside of her thigh.
"Liv, wait!" Lincoln gasped, moving his hips back as she pushed up to meet him, and the head of his cock brushed against her wet folds of her eager cunt, aching with anticipation and arousal. "Do we need some… I wasn't expecting us - this - tonight and I haven't had a chance to buy any, uh, things."
"Condoms? I have an old packet in my room. Do you want me to get them?" Olivia replied, tracing his mouth with her fingers, his lips swollen with kisses and damp with her arousal.
He shook his head, straightening his arms and swallowed thickly.
"Stay there. I'll grab them. Where are they?"
"Left side nightstand, top drawer." She replied, and instantly he pushed himself back up out of the bed towards the door, stepping over his discarded pajamas and her robe on the floor.
"Don't move, I'll be back in one sec." He smiled as he left the room, holding up a finger as confirmation.
He jogged into her room and opened the drawer. Finding the packet, Lincoln hastily grabbed it and checked the date on the side when something underneath it caught his attention before he could close the drawer - photos of Olivia with the other Lincoln, the ones he saw her take from the locker. Little freeze frames of moments they'd shared, smiling and laughing at jokes he never heard, making him feel like an outsider all over again. He hurriedly shoved them back down, remembering what he was there for and that going through her possessions wasn't the right thing to do do, especially now.
"There you are. I was about to send out a search party!" Olivia laughed, looking up as he swiftly walked back into the room, holding up the packet in evidence. He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking slightly with his weight as he nervously unwrapped the packet. His hands trembled as he rolled it down the hard shaft of his cock, feeling her warm hand encouragingly stroking his back. Lincoln gulped, trying to wash away the thought that the last time she'd had sex was most likely with his double as it gnawed away at the corner of his mind and fed his anxiety.
Rolling back over towards her on the bed, he smiled nervously, moving his slim legs between her milky white thighs. She smiled back reassuringly, her arms wrapping around his neck and he nodded, jaw slack when she linked her legs around his waist, drawing him back down and he slowly and deeply slid into her wet heat. He wasn't the most endowed of all her lovers but he was more than well-proportioned to his slim frame, and where she hadn't been anyone since the other Lincoln or even used a toy inside her for sometime, his cock inside her created a delicious ache as she stretched to accommodate him moving inside her. The friction caused them both to sigh simultaneously when Lincoln tentatively began rolling his hips and any trepidation he'd had disappeared with the sensation.
"Okay?" He gasped in a low voice, biting down on his trembling lip and searching Olivia's face for confirmation then scrunching his eyes shut in concentration on the backstroke when Olivia nodded wide-eyed in reply. It had been a long time since Lincoln had been in bed with or had a sexual encounter with someone else, and the sensation of Olivia's body and scent surrounding him overwhelmed his senses. Although he'd casually dated Alicia briefly in high school, his last relationship with Kendra had been an awakening, and he'd learned - and never forgotten - how to be a generous and attentive partner in the bedroom, realizing that giving pleasure to his partner was his greatest motivation and turn-on, learning what she liked and disliked through her subtle vocal cues. Since her death,Robert had tried setting him up a few blind dates but they hadn't gotten past the first date stage. He'd indulged in aiding his own satisfaction occasionally but it always felt empty and a means to an end, not to mention pathetic and cliched, and almost seedy in the hotel rooms he'd stayed in before living with Olivia. He'd resisted any urge while living with her when she was at home in case she heard him in the next room and was repulsed by his behavior. He'd given in once though, when he'd been unable to sleep and on hearing her movements through the bedroom wall, the creak of her mattress and her sigh a melody in his ears, inciting the thought of if she was doing the same as him, and who she thought of when she touched herself, but stopped and guiltily repressing the thought and actions of his hand when he considered she could be having a nightmare or just crying herself to sleep.
"I-I've not had… for so long… you feel so good." He gulped thickly and dropped his head down to her neck again to brush his lips against the soft skin under her jaw, trying to think of anything to distract him from the aching pleasure rippling up from his groin as he cautiously pushed forward again.
"Linc, you don't need to hold back," Olivia replied, shifting her hips and legs up encouragingly so her ankles crossed higher behind his back and lowering an arm to link her fingers with his hand that pushed into the mattress next to her head. "I want it to feel good for you too."
"Good, because I really don't want to be thinking of my Walter naked to put myself off." Lincoln quipped nervously as Olivia giggled breathlessly, a sound that quickly disappeared when he raised his head back up to look at the dark green of her eyes, and thrusted harder. She gasped at the sensation, her hands sliding up his arms to grip onto his shoulders to anchor her with his increasing speed and panting breath coaching her on, the friction of his pelvis pushing against her making a warming pleasure course through inside her again. His pace became faster and erratic, a slight raspy moan escaping his lips with every downstroke.
Pausing briefly to raise one arm to lean on the headboard and lower the other, he hooked it under her knee so her hips shifted even further upwards, her leg leaning over his upper arm to deepen the last few hard thrusts and improve the angle of their movements. He bit down on his lip and clenched his jaw in a last attempt at self-restraint, accentuating the dimples in his cheeks.
"Oh, oh... don't stop.' She panted, her breaths punctuated by every deep thrust, the feel of his coarse chest hair brushing against her nipples, sensitive with arousal while he pursed his lips, biting down hard on his swollen bottom lip in concentration.
Olivia drank in the unmistakable scent of his fresh sweat, and the look of concentration, adoration and dedication in his flushed face as he watched her reaction to every movement of his hips with wide-eyed incredulity as he pushed further into her.
Without his hand cushioning her, the crown on her head thumped as it hit the headboard, but she was beyond caring when she glanced down to where they joined, entranced by the vision of him sliding deeper and deeper into her with deliberation, hard and slick with her wetness. Looking back up, she saw he'd been watching her the whole time to ensure she wanted this as much as him, and she twisted her hand back to link with his one that was holding the headboard, knuckles white as the sheets. Her other hand grazed down his side to spur him on.
"Linc?…" Olivia choked reassuringly through gasps when she met his gaze. He leaned his face down, meeting her halfway to catch her lips for a kiss as she reached up for him, tasting the tanginess of her arousal on his mouth when his thrusts turned into a faster, erratic rhythm.
"Oh f-f-fuck, Liv. I'm gonna co… can I?" He stammered into her mouth, replying in broken breaths as his body stiffened. A long, guttural sigh escaped his mouth as he buried himself in her as deep as he could go and his body shuddered against hers before releasing her leg and wrapping her in the comforting blanket of his embrace. Their bodies laid flat against each and slick with sweat until Lincoln rolled onto his back, sighing sorry under his breath.
September 5/9/2013 alterverse
Allowing her breathing to subside and her temperature to cool for a moment, Olivia sighed, feeling her body relax. Standing quickly on unsteady legs before sleep claimed her, she walked to the bathroom to freshen up and use the toilet, and her room to get her T-shirt she slept in.
The drawer in her bedside cabinet was still open and the photos of her with the other Lincoln caught as she closed it, making the bittersweet memories flood back until she realized how this Lincoln must have seen them too.
Shrugging the navy T-shirt over her head, she quickly walked back to his room, seeing the naked shape of him still lying on his back, with his arm flopped across his face into the crook of his elbow, his breath hitching, unaware she had returned.
For a second she thought his breathing was because of exertion, until his whole body began to shake and she hoped, almost prayed, it was laughter until she heard him gasp a sob.
"Lincoln?" Olivia asked, the concern in her voice palpable as leaned over him and tried to lift his arm to look at his face when he flinched at the touch, bringing his hand over his face to cover his eyes. She could still see enough of his face contorted with emotion and tenderly stroked the bare skin of his arm as a single tear drop escaped his fingers and traveled down the side of his face, making its home in the shell of his ear. "What's wrong?"
She didn't press, in case there is some untold history there that he's not prepared to share with her yet but kept her hand on him to ground him and let him know she's not going anywhere even as fear grew in her stomach, replacing the joy like an invading parasite.
"You saw the photos, didn't you?" She asked as his shoulders slumped. "I forgot they were there. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to see them."
He nodded, then shook his head.
"Yes, but I… that's not what… I'm sorry." Lincoln sniffed, catching his breath.
"You have nothing to apologize for!" Olivia exclaimed adamantly. He nodded again, wiping his eyes with his fingertips, but kept his eyes closed as his damp hand fluttered away and she linked it with hers. "You don't have to tell me, I just want you to be okay."
Olivia laid down, watching the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing settled, her thumb stroking the side of his hand, still damp with tears. The pull of sleep beckoned her like darkness edging closer like a vignette photograph.
"I thought you were going back to sleep in your room, like you thought I - it - we were a mistake." He whispered with a sigh, his voice suddenly pulling Olivia back from the clutches of sleep, and she frowned as she tried to comprehend how he could ever think that.
"I just needed to pee, and clean myself up before I fell asleep, silly!" She smiled, placing a hand reassuringly on his chest as she watched him nod, still avoiding her eyes. "I've had a UTI before, and it's not something I want to have again, so I prefer not to take the risk."
"It's just… I haven't had - been - with anyone properly like this since Kendra," Lincoln blurted, his red-rimmed eyes, watery and clear. "After she died, I couldn't… It didn't seem right, so I haven't..."
Olivia frowned in puzzlement as she tried to make sense of what he was trying to explain and shivered, thinking of what he was doing to her body less than an hour ago. Surely, he didn't think he was inadequate, and she was regretting being with him. Did he still not believe and understand what she felt?
"No. No!" Olivia objected in disbelief, shaking her head. She touched his jaw so he looked at her, his eyes glinting like obsidian in the low light. "This was not a mistake, and if it was, it'd be the best mistake I've ever made because I made it with you."
Lincoln blinked slowly and huffed bitterly through his nose, like he wanted to believe her but couldn't. Olivia's eyes clouded as sleep tried to claim her, and she struggled to find the right words. "Lincoln, tonight was perfect." She blurted out, desperate for him to understand. "I love you and I want you."
"Y-you do?" He looked at her incredulously, still unsure, his lip quivering in uncertainty.
"Yes, you dumbass!" She smiled reassuringly, tucking herself under his arm in the faded silence and darkness, wrapping an arm around him like a tether and resting her cheek against his chest as his lips brushed against the top of her head.
Lincoln mumbled something Olivia couldn't quite make out as he drifted asleep but she didn't care anymore because she was where she was supposed to be and so was he.
September 6/9/2013 altverse
As speckles of dawn light danced through gaps in the drapes, Lincoln woke first to find Olivia's arm stretched across him, and her hair fanned across her back. Tucking it carefully over her shoulder and lightly tracing pleasure lines on her skin from her shoulder to her wrist, his fingertips danced up and down her arm as he laid flat on his back with his eyes closed, breathing in the unfamiliar scent of their combined bodies. She sighed contentedly as she stirred, and moved so her palms pressed down on his stomach and then upper thighs, her fingers curving around them as her thumb teasingly grazed his against his balls. Smiling against his chest as his breath hitched encouragingly at the slight touch, she moved her fingertips to trace around his balls and his already hardening length, wrapping around him from the base up to the tip and down again. Lightly pressing the skin behind his balls to make him shudder out a breath, she returned her hand to his now taught cock, hardened with arousal, rising against the firmness of his stomach as his breath came in rapid pants.
She looked at him curiously, how he remained passive and accepting, but he squeezed his eyes shut in twisted pleasure. One of his hands gripped handfuls of the sheets and the other stroked her encouragingly down her spine, but with no pressure to continue. Increasing the pressure slightly, she continued stroking him, her thumb tracing around the crown of his head and then back down to the root again until she shifted onto her elbow and side, so her mouth was in line with his hips. As she edged closer, he felt her warmth breath on his exposed skin and the tickle of her hair on his thighs as she lowered herself, the sound of her wetting her lips slightly before she tentatively took him into her mouth. The tang of pre-cum glistened on his head as she sealed her lips around him and slid her hand back down to lightly squeeze his balls and perineum.
"Liv, wait…" he strained out in a gasp as she felt the head of his cock brush against her tongue and inch towards the back of her mouth. "Don't, please, stop."
His hand brushed up against her face, gently pressing her away, which confused her compared to previous lovers who had pushed her down with a hand on the back of her neck. She released his firm dick with a wet audible pop, as it slipped out against his thigh.
She gazed up at him, puzzled, catching his eyes for a second before he looked away like he was almost ashamed.
"I'm sorry," she said, resting her head back against him so he didn't have to see her eyes. "I thought you'd like it - I thought you'd want me to."
She stated simply, not expecting a response but just so he knew and waited for his breathing to slow again.
"I do, uh, it's just… it's not gonna take me long if you do that, and I don't want you to feel obligated. I mean, it's not like you get any enjoyment out of it."
"Who says I don't? I don't feel obliged, I'm offering." She gesticulated down to her legs and raised her eyebrows teasingly. "Anyway, it's only fair after last night, when you, um…"
Lincoln's expression remained serious and nervously licked his bottom lip
"I just wanted to make sure you enjoyed yourself." He shrugged, solemnly. "I don't want you to think I expect to receive it just because I, uh, gave it."
"Oh, I enjoyed myself - a lot." Olivia smiled honestly, wanting him to experience as much pleasure as he deserved like she did. She looked up at him and met his gaze as he brushed a few strands of her auburn bangs away from her eyes, seeing the truth in her face and maintained eye contact on feeling her edge her hand back up his thigh. "And I know you don't. So - can I touch you? I won't use my mouth until you want me to."
Lincoln nodded slightly in confirmation, watching curiously as her delicate fingers held him in a firm grip, massaging his length until the combination of feeling the sensation and seeing it became too much. Biting down on his lower lip, he squeezed his eyes shut so tightly he could see sparks behind his eyelids. His hips thrusted into her hand as he felt the heat of his orgasm rising and he felt impossibly hard as he strained in her hand.
"Liv, I…" He warned, his voice punctuated by whimpering sighs cracked between his panting breaths, hitching on every quickening stroke, his fingers gripping her shoulder so hard he left white pressure marks in the skin before his body jerked and stiffened against hers. "Oh, shiiit!" Lincoln gasped as he suddenly climaxed, unable to control himself and shot ribbons of his sticky white cum across his bare, toned stomach.
After a moment, he pulled himself out of bed and walked to the bathroom to clean up, smiling sheepishly at Olivia as he returned to the bedroom to get back in between the covers.
Leaning into him as he raised his arm, she began peppering light kisses against his mouth and jaw until she realized he wasn't returning the kiss.
"Linc?" Olivia whispered into his mouth. He didn't answer, so she raised her head back to look at his face. His eyes were closed as he chewed on his bottom lip where she had left her kisses. "What's the matter?"
"Are you sure it doesn't bother you?" He blurted, before continuing to bite his lip.
"What? Does what bother me?" She asked back, puzzled, still checking his face for a reason for his hesitation and frowned in bemusement.
"That I'm not your Lincoln." He stated simply with a sigh, because he had to know for sure even though he knew these five words could easily ruin everything they've just started to build.
Olivia stared at him, open mouthed, unable to speak out of shock, then thinking he might take her silence as proof he's right, resisted the urge to tease him for his insecurities that she suspected others had before. She knew it took a lot of emotional courage for him to verbalize to her what made him unsure and anxious because they had grown strong from fear of rejection and ridicule, just like hers had been rooted in being worn down and gaslit over the course of two years with Frank.
"Do you really still think that I only want you because you remind me of him? Because I don't. You might have the same name and face, but that has nothing to do with why I want to be with you." Olivia blurted out. She didn't mean it to come out so accusingly, but it hurt her to think there was still part of him that didn't believe she loved him for who he was. He nodded hesitantly, as she brought her hand up to brush his face and his eyes fluttered open at her touch as her expression softened. "You're not rash or brazen. You're more serious, sensitive, considerate, and caring… and definitely unsure when you shouldn't be. You're authentic and honest and don't try to be something you're not. You're completely new and yet I feel like I've known you my entire life. You're everything I need - and love."
She smiled at him again, hoping he could finally accept her words as truth and will believe he is worthy of her love and deserving of happiness. "Tell me something. When you look at me, do you see her, the other Olivia? Honestly?"
"No! Of course not, I -" Lincoln stopped as he realized the question and suddenly felt incredibly foolish, and cursed himself for ever doubting her, or himself. He may not have had a sexual relationship with the Olivia on his side, but he would be lying to himself if the thought had never crossed his mind, even if it was for a brief moment before Peter arrived and her memories changed, "I think I realize what made me and your Lincoln so different. I never had you or anyone to help me become the man I wanted to be." He choked with a small nod, and sniffed turned into her hand.
"So you and your Olivia -"
"She never was my Olivia. I hardly knew her, really. There was a point when I thought it could have been a possibility. We were getting close and then, well, she became another version of herself and any connection that we might have had was gone. I liked her a lot, and I could have easily fallen for her, but even if she hadn't realized she was in love with Peter, it wouldn't have worked. We're too similar in many ways, two lost souls with holes in our hearts, looking for a home. I don't think we could have ever been that for each other, not in that way. So, she fell in love with a man from another universe, or another timeline. And I just… carried on."
Lincoln let out a long sigh, shifting his eyes back to Olivia who nodded, understanding where all his hesitation came from; The worry that both Olivias were already in love with another man, fear he was prolonging a broken heart again niggling in his mind like a splinter.
"She's not the only Olivia to do that, you know. He and I were too similar too. We wouldn't have worked either, not really. I think you and I both need someone who is our opposite, to balance us out, give us confidence when we're unsure, or tell us when we're being too hasty and stubborn. You are my perfect opposite, and you are my Lincoln - my Lincoln - and I wouldn't want you any other way."
When he looked at Olivia, he realized it was the same for him.
He saw her for who she was, and didn't wish for her to be anything or anyone else.
September 6/9/2013 altverse
In the busy rotunda, multiple agents in the gray camouflage uniform bustled past the busy Fringe team at their podium. Astrid looked up at Lincoln curiously as Olivia squeezed his hand, then walked away, his eyes flickering at her red hair swaying with the movement of her steps until she disappeared through the rotunda door. He kept wanting to pinch himself out of disbelief, not only had they made love last night, they'd done it twice after she'd admitted she felt the same way he did about her, and he was half expecting to wake up and for it to all be a dream in any moment. Yet when he caught her gaze, he saw the truth, a look of knowing in her eyes that only he understood and it made looking at her even more addictive.
"Agent Lee?" Astrid said quietly, leaning forward and interrupting his thought. "Do you think Agent Dunham is attractive?"
"W-what?" Lincoln spluttered, fidgeting with his glasses as he felt a blush creep up his face.
"You blush a lot when she speaks to you, although you do seem to blush at everything." She continued, matter-of-factly and unaware of how self-conscious he felt.
"Oh. Thanks." He said, pursing his lips into an awkward smile.
"I guess you have one of those pale complexions. You're blushing now, actually." Astrid added, narrowing her eyes to study his face while he tried to avoid her eye contact.
"Thanks for making me aware of that." Lincoln said in reply, perhaps a little too sharply. He'd been told he had an expressive face before, but felt dismayed that his face had betrayed him so quickly.
"I wouldn't worry. She likes you too. It's kind of cute."
"Great!" He sighed as Astrid casually left the area.
LATE SEPT 2013 Amber had been designed and used by the Fringe team since the mid 80s to stabilize spatial rifts and prevent the spread of severe toxic air conditions, but since the machine on the bridge had activated, the tears in the fabric of their universe had not only stopped, they'd begun to heal. Nevertheless, when she and Lincoln had been assigned the unenviable and tedious task of sorting updated Show Me ID for people who'd been released after spending years - some almost two decades - suspended in amber, Olivia groaned. The thought of all the paperwork required and their families who had protested en masse outside Fringe HQ when it had been revealed they were not dead as previously told, but had been alive in suspended animation all along, filled her with dread.
After ten hours of continuous work, they had given into their growling stomachs and ordered in boxes of chow mein, washed down with tepid cups of tea that they both wished were coffee. Despite that, Olivia sat crossed legged on the office floor and smiled to herself thinking about how the day didn't seem as long or tiring as it could have been with Lincoln's methodical and organized nature helping to condense what could have taken almost a week of work into not much more than a whole day. She looked up from the final pile they had to work through, catching Lincoln's gaze as he knelt in front of her on the rough nylon carpet.
"I can't believe we've reached the last box from the past eighteen months - what?" Olivia asked, frowning at the a curious look on his face that she couldn't quite place until he leaned across the piles of paperwork that they'd strewn across the floor between them and wiped a drop of noodle sauce from the corner of her mouth with the pad of his thumb. He looked over his shoulder at the closed office door quickly to check there was no one outside and on seeing the main office lights dimmed, he replaced his hand with his mouth, in the briefest of stolen kisses.
"Sorry, I know I said we shouldn't be doing that..." Lincoln smiled bashfully, as he leaned back, then shrugged when Olivia began to grin, her eyebrows raising up at his boldness, "...but I've been thinking about it all day, I couldn't resist any longer."
"Me too. I don't think anyone else is left in the office anyway," she replied reassuringly, watching the blush travel high on his cheeks, his tie loose around his neck where he'd undone the top button of his dress shirt and she tugged on it to pull him back, and rose up to press her lips against his again, unsatisfied with his self-restraint, then pulled away not wanting to embarrass him any further, "besides, we've been here all day, we deserve a five minute break."
When they'd finally gotten home, they had discarded their clothes in a pile in heap on the floor, too tired to shower and barely awake enough to brush their teeth. Exhausted, they collapsed in Olivia's bed and spooned in the comfort of each other's embrace, their hands linking up over her stomach, and Lincoln's voice whispering 'G'night, Liv. Love you' into her hair the last noise and thought Olivia heard before she drifted to sleep seconds later.
Olivia blinked as early morning autumn sun streamed through the thin red drapes at her bedroom window, clouding the blue walls in a hazy violet hue. She stretched, stiff from not moving for hours in her sleep, feeling Lincoln's right hand still linked with hers and tucked under her chin, his stomach pressed against her back. Contentedly nuzzling back into him, Olivia felt the soft breeze of his warm, slow breaths on her shoulder that hitched as he stirred, disturbed by Olivia's movements. Her eyes flew open again at the realization that it wasn't their day off and they should've got up for work hours ago and Olivia jolted in panic, attempting to leave the bed and confines of the covers, held back by the constraint of Lincoln's arm around her who tightened his grip when she wiggled against him.
"Mmm, five more minutes, Liv." He protested groggily into her hair, his lips grazing the back of her neck, beginning a trail of kisses over the tattoo he hoped he'd find the courage to ask about one day and his fingers slowly drifted across her chest.
"No, we've overslept, its already getting light outside, there must've been a power cut-" She argued feebly, her focus on the dead electronic alarm clock on the stand blurring when his finger tips made contact with her pebbled nipple, causing her to instinctively roll back her eyes arch her back in pleasure, "-oh!"
She swore she could hear a smirk in his breath when she gasped, knowing she was close to surrender and his hand drifted down to hip to pull her flush against his hardness, and teasingly dipped futher between her thighs, causing a spark of arousal to jolt up her spine.
"If we're already late, what's five more minutes?" Lincoln reasoned, his voice rough with sleep and low between insistent kisses. His other hand eased under her pillow to twist her neck and tilt her head back so his mouth could meet hers, his skin rough against hers with two-day old stubble on his jaw. The ministrations of his hands pleaded his case and dissolved any rationalization Olivia had until he paused. "If you want me to stop, I will, but fuck work."
"I'd rather you fuck me instead," Olivia sighed a laugh and relented, lifting her leg slightly to grant him better access, covering his warm hand with hers to encourage him to continue the movements and felt the crown of his cock nudge lightly at her entrance. "F-five minutes?"
"Mmm-hmmm, as you wish" he replied, his breath hot on her cheek as he trailed miniscule circles in the humid creases around her clit, fuelled by the breathy mewling sounds that were increasingly falling from her mouth, "but, uh, if you keep making that noise it's gonna be three."
She snorted, stifling a laugh that disappeared when she felt the aching warmth of an orgasm creeping up from her core, and firmly gripped his hand slick with her arousal, desperately holding it in place in case he dared to call her bluff and stop.
"Oh, oh god, I'm... ohh..." Olivia gasped sideways into Lincoln's mouth, the ability to form sentences leaving her brain as she stiffened against him. His arms braced against her, holding her in place as the waves of pleasure rippled through her body, making her toes curl against his shins and her legs uncontrollably spasm around his hand. After a few seconds, he leaned back and she could hear him rustle in the drawer by the bed before shuffling back behind her.
"Okay?" Lincoln sighed as he slowly edged himself into her warm wet heat from behind, watching her nod her permission. He began lightly rolling his hips before increasing the pressure and speed, his thrusts erratic and sighs shallow and breathy. His fingertips dug into her hips as he groaned under the strain of holding himself back until her name fell out of his mouth into hers in a low gasp.
He slid out his softening cock and rolled onto his back, his other hand still trapped under Olivia's neck pulling her back in an embrace before she could escape and his fingers danced across her back when he chuckled.
"We still have one minute left."
The power hadn't returned by the time they'd left their apartment, so Olivia's hair was still damp from the shower when they arrived at the office, curling in soft waves around her shoulders. Worse still, the lack of power also meant she'd skipped breakfast. Lincoln had gobbled down a bowl of cereal but Olivia's stomach growled with hunger, protesting at the lack of buttery granary toast she usually enjoyed in the morning. Now it was nearly midday, and the emptiness in her stomach from eating from more than twelve hours ago wasn't going away, despite swigging back a large bottle of water and working her way through a whole packet of Bobbins.
She strode up to Lincoln and tapped him impatiently on the shoulder from behind. Turning around in his seat, his eyebrows raised in surprise, softened by a smile that twitched in the corner of his lips.
"Hey! You okay?"
"You wanna go grab something to eat? I feel like I haven't eaten in days." Olivia asked insistently, jabbing her thumb in the direction of the door, too hungry not be direct.
"Sure!" Lincoln chuckled. He tapped his pants pocket to check his wallet as he stood, before jogging after Olivia who had already turned on her heel and headed out of the door, knowing he'd follow even if he'd just spent all morning at an all you can eat buffet.
Less than twenty minutes later they were at a local deli café, and Lincoln was grinning at Olivia as she devoured her food in a few minutes.
"You weren't lying when you said you were hungry," He laughed, taking a bite of his own food and washing it down with a mouthful of soda, "I don't think you could have tasted that sandwich, you look like you inhaled it!"
"Sorry, I was starving, I would have eaten anything!" Olivia said, covering her mouth as she chewed then swallowed and smirked until a wistful look flashed in her eyes. "Although, I still can't bring myself to eat beef, after being in the lab with Gene."
"Me neither," Lincoln agreed, then huffed a laugh, "even if she stunk out the lab with her huge cow pats."
Olivia snorted, pursing her lips to contain her laugh before it escaped anyway.
"God, she really did stink, didn't she? I mean, she was lovely but I swear that smell haunted me for days when I got back here. I was never sure if it was from the lack of fresh air in that place or if Walter was feeding her stuff other than plants. Or some illegal substance."
"What, like peanut butter and bacon sandwiches?" He asked, picking at the remainder of his sandwich as the memory of the ones he'd eaten in the lab flashed in his mind. He never really liked bacon but the smoky, salty scent of it turned his stomach even more now, and the texture of peanut butter still made him gag. "Did you have to help with grazing day when you were there?"
"What's grazing day?"
Lincoln smirked dismissively and shook his head, a brief look of hurt flashing in his eyes that made Olivia's stomach flip.
"Doesn't matter."
The silence hung between them and they paid for the food, grabbing two fruit muffins and some iced tea to eat on the walk back to the office, the autumn breeze causing them to shiver as the sun disappeared behind a blanket of a stony clouds
"I would've brought you a café latte if I could, you know." Lincoln confessed, swigging back the drink from the disposable cup and avoiding Olivia's eyes, so she took his hand in hers to make him look at her.
"What?" Oliva replied in a surprised laugh that came out in a huff, then felt almost guilty when she recalled how she'd teased him for not bringing her one from his own universe on the day her Lincoln had been killed. "I was only teasin-"
"What Walter said was true. The next time I crossed over, they told me drinks were forbidden perishables."
Olivia's mouth twitched into a smirk, then a wide smile, nudging him playfully with her elbow.
"You actually did try and bring me one over, didn't you?" She asked, watching Lincoln as he shrugged his shoulders and pinched a reluctant smile.
"Maybe." He paused, turning back to look at Olivia, watching her as she looked down, preoccupied with stuffing the empty muffin wrapper in her pocket, a quick burst of the bright midday sun through the clouds making her hair shine in shades of rust and amber. "I guess I was jealous."
Olivia looked back up at him slowly and frowned when Lincoln blinked, and swallowed thickly before speaking again as if anticipating her next words. "When you asked him to stay with you. I thought if I bought you a latte like you asked, you might like me enough to ask me too."
"Linc-" Olivia began. His eyes looked almost shameful when they drifted down to his feet and he absentmindedly kicked at a cracked red brick paving slab on the sidewalk. Olivia ached for him knowing she should be the one feeling the shame, and his anxious fear of rejection was still bubbling under the surface of his growing confidence. "- I already liked you. A lot. Even when I shouldn't have because you were pretending to be our Lincoln. I knew I liked you when I first saw you on the bridge and when we were sat on that bench tracking Jones. I just..."
She reassuringly grabbed his spare hand, pulling him back towards her and out of the way of a crowd of pedestrians that were coming towards them from the busy crosswalk so they were flush against each other, her back pressed against the cool brick frontage between two boutique stores. Olivia had felt bad enough about her time in the other universe and stealing parts of the machine when she realized they weren't her enemies like Secretary Bishop had said they were, but Walter's fatherly kindness and comfort towards her that night in her apartment had made her feel even worse, even if it was relief to talk about Lincoln's murder. If she was honest, she wouldn't have been able to unload all those feelings on this Lincoln, and would have kept them bottled up for even longer.
"...I asked him to stay and not you because I felt guilty for deceiving him when I was in your universe and pretending to be your - his - Olivia. I would've liked - loved - for you to stay over, but I don't think either of us were ready for that yet."
"Me too." Lincoln smiled and nodded again, side stepping when a younger woman, that looked barely older than twenty with wavy caramel blonde hair that skimmed her shoulders, nudged him with a slight touch on his elbow to get past them.
"Excuse me, can I get th- Lincoln?" She exclaimed, frowning in confusion when checking his face and formal suit. "How can you be here?"
"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Lincoln replied, looking equally bewildered, blinking at Olivia in an unspoken request for help who pushed down a twang of jealousy over an unknown past love that Lincoln had held secret from her, even if it wasn't this Lincoln that she'd known.
"Mom said you'd died in the line of duty when I was still in amber. She told me when I got out a few months ago that she went to your funeral with your dad and Marcus turned up with his husband. Apparently he was inconsolable that he'd been such a jerk to you when we were smaller, as you were the only one who looked out for him when he came out a few years ago."
Olivia barely managed to contain in a gasp of surprise as the penny dropped and she realized who it was. Lincoln had only mentioned his step-siblings a couple of times in passing. He had told her how Marcus, the older of the twins, had teased him about liking science and playing chess as a child but had dreamed of a life in the theatre, eventually ending up in choreography and dragged Lincoln along for support to pride marches. His twin sister, Meredith, had then taken the crown of the proverbial black sheep of the family by dropping out of pursuing a doctorate at college to work in a strip club, much to the disdain of Lincoln's dad and step-mom, until the whole area had been sealed in amber due to a spatial rift. Being sealed and then released from amber, she hadn't aged at all and it had seemingly absolved her of her actions deemed as transgressions by her family. Olivia realized this Lincoln's dad must have never remarried when his face still looked completely discombobulated and having a lonely childhood would be another reason why they turned out so different.
"I'm sorry, you're mistaking him for someone else. C'mon Kevin," Olivia lied and smiled politely, hurriedly pulling Lincoln by the elbow away from the woman before she could speak again and walked briskly in the direction of the nearest subway station entrance, where the hot diesel tainted steam jetted from beneath the sidewalk, "we'll miss our train."
They walked around the block in silence for almost ten minutes, not letting go of each other's hand until they somehow found themselves back at the Fringe HQ. Olivia's light chestnut hair caught in the breeze and she stopped to tuck it behind her ears, then realized Lincoln had stopped a few paces behind her.
"I never had siblings. When I read his file when he was kil.." Lincoln cut himself off, unable to complete the sentence. He'd felt enough survivor guilt at the funeral, watching Liv and the other Lincoln's parents mourn their loss, but to know he'd had a brother and sister that Lincoln never had made it even worse, somehow. He nervously twiddled with his ID, before stopping at the main door, "when I joined your side, it didn't say he had a brother or a sister. Did you know?"
Olivia paused then brushed his arm briefly, stopping him before he turned to the door and noticing how his eyes were glittering gray like the sky.
"He only mentioned them once or twice in the whole six years we worked together, they were his step-mom's kids from her previous marriage before she met your - his - dad. I don't think they were close." She replied reassuringly as Lincoln nodded in acceptance, thankful that his dad had lived longer in this world and had a longer, happier life than the man he'd known, even if his own son had been killed. "C'mon, let's get inside before it rains. We can find out more about them, if you like?"
Truth and Monsters
"The only difference between good and evil is the circumstances under which we're allowed to hurt others."
The steel blade of the pen knife glinted in the light as it crudely carved slashes in the pale flesh mottled with rainbow bruises and droplets of blood oozed from the lines like rubies, until it was covered in a black blanket of darkness.
When Olivia and Lincoln had left Fringe Division HQ mid-morning after being briefed on a new case, the weather had been so gloriously warm for winter that it could have been mistaken for late spring. But barely an hour later, they were standing by a dumpster that had such a pungent stench, despite the torrential rainfall, that Lincoln had no choice but to breathe through his mouth. Olivia struggled to keep an umbrella upright in the strong wind that howled down the dingy alley that was in Van Cortlandt Park, one of the few remaining ambered areas in New Yonkers. Walking back to their car, they barely managed to dodge a sheet of water that rose up from under a van's wheels as it sped past them through the rivulets coursing on the saturated roads, making waves in the heavy traffic.
"I guess the machine on the bridge didn't stabilize all of the atmospheric conditions after all, huh?" Olivia said through chattering teeth as they drove back to HQ.
By the time they got back to HQ with the crime scene details, they were irritated and shivering, their clothes soaked through to the skin. Lincoln threw his dripping coat and suit jacket over a bench in the locker room, the wet patches of rain dark in the shoulders of the navy fabric. Tugging at his tie to loosen the knot, he lifted it over his head and pulled his shirt free from the waistband of his pants to find a piece of dry fabric, removing his glasses and wiping away the fat droplets of rain that had been obscuring his vision.
He spun on his heel to the sound of Olivia's voice behind him, who stood shivering in a gray Fringe training uniform hoodie and sweatpants, her damp hair curling at the edges around her face, the red logo on the front obscured by a pile of clothes in her arms crossed against her chest.
"Is the coast clear?"
"If by that you mean are there any naked men in here, 'fraid not, it's just me and the janitor." Lincoln huffed as she approached him and placed the change of clothes on the bench to unbutton his shirt, peeling the soaked fabric from his chest.
"Hmmm, I'll just have to make do with you, then."
Olivia teased jokingly as she leaned towards Lincoln, then stopped and blinked. Moments like this, when Lincoln didn't have his glasses on and his hair was spiked up from the rain and he looked at her in a certain way, reminded her of the other Lincoln and still caught her unaware.
Sept 2011
The steel locker door made a metallic clunk as it swung back on its hinges and Olivia hurriedly threw out its contents, finally finding the item she needed and shoved the items back inside on hearing a familiar voice call her name from the other side of the main door.
"Liv? You in here?" Lincoln's face peered around the edge of the door, slowly revealing his grin and dark blonde hair in its usual messy tufts. He scanned the room quickly before walking through it, adjusting the thigh holster on his beige cargo pants while he walked towards her, regarding her unusual clothing of a dark suit, white shirt and her dark auburn hair scraped back into a bun. "Their Olivia is bringing McClennan through the bridge in a few minutes so we can take him down to Norristown. You ready to get wiggy with it?"
He hesitated at the door, held back by something he couldn't quite sense when Olivia didn't laugh at his pun like she usually did but slowly nodded without making eye contact, and he frowned in response, twisting his lips into a thin smile that deepened the dimples in his cheeks peppered with stubble. "Is something wron-"
"No, nothing." Olivia interrupted bluntly, dismissively huffing a noise through her nose and shrugged. Before she could comprehend it, Lincoln was standing close enough for her to feel his warmth radiating off him in waves and his familiar comforting scent, and he grabbed the wrist of her arm that she'd been holding behind her back, making the item she'd been clutching fall to the floor.
"You okay?" Lincoln asked, his voice soft and concerned and fingers tapping lightly at her hip, breaking her from her thoughts. His eyes, so pale blue in the harsh fluorescent lighting they looked almost transparent, blinked and searched her face for a clue. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Olivia nodded, her lips twitching back into a smile. She pressed a brief kiss to his mouth then leaned back, and jabbed her thumb back in the direction of the door, "c'mon, get changed. Astrid has been running face rec and traces on traffic cams in the area of the alley we were at earlier, to see if we can get a lead on the suspect."
Lincoln smiled thinly and sighed to himself, watching Olivia as she turned and left, and resumed changing his clothes. When he returned to the rotunda, Astrid was still preoccupied with the task of checking recent activity in the area and Olivia was by her side, hunched over the desk and engrossed in the files they'd been handed by the New Yonkers PD.
"So what have we got?" He asked, tapping her arm lightly before sitting down opposite the two women, trying not to feel self-conscious when Astrid briefly looked up at him wide-eyed, slightly taken aback by his clothing that was out of character for him, at work at least.
"Two victims found in dumpsters in different areas of the city," Olivia replied, fanning her hands out across the screen that displayed the information and she shivered, unsure if it was because she'd caught a chill from the rain, or from the images in the file, "the bodies are clean, no trace of DNA from any of our databases. The profile from the local PD says the perp is likely to be white, male and of above average intelligence, but probably works in a menial job where he feels frustrated and unsatisfied. He may have priors for assault or sexually motivated crimes if they were reported as both men were found mutilated, presumably tortured to death within twenty-four hours of being reported missing."
"That's a grizzly deadline. But, uh, shouldn't this be a case for violent crimes?" Lincoln grimaced, recalling the image and unmistakably rancid stench of the disposed torso they'd seen earlier, the pale blotchy skin marked with contusions and cuts which had hardly been concealed by black plastic garbage sacks, sticky with blood and bodily fluids. The barely recognizable face had two seared black holes where the eyes had been and was contorted with an object that had been forced into its mouth. "I'm not sure why it comes under Fringe's jurisdiction."
"They asked us for help," Olivia shrugged, "apparently they hit a dead-end with the first murder and now they realize it isn't just a one-off they want to use our resources to find who's responsible before they strike again. One of the resources being you."
"Me?" He huffed, pointing at himself incredulously and frowned, "I'm not sure I follow."
"Eriksson said you spent some time in the BSU of the FBI on an old case before you joined the Fringe team on your side, maybe you'd notice a detail they missed?"
"The Ripley case?" Lincoln blinked and leaned back in the chair. It was one of the first cases he'd worked on with Robert, where a copy-cat killer was recreating murders from thirty years before. They'd finally caught the suspect - Leo Ripley - once they'd made the connection his babysitter was one of the victims from three decades prior, and he had not only seen the murder but had wanted to emulate the original killer and had visited him at the secure retirement hospice where he lived. It had been a disturbing case and not one he particularly enjoyed or wanted to experience again, but he was also determined to stop whoever was responsible for the recent deaths and a return to detective work after the weird events that were a daily occurrence of Fringe Division could be a welcome change. He pulled up the images and details of the three victims to compare them on the screen. "Has any connection between the victims been determined?"
"Not that I can see," Olivia replied, scanning through their details, "I mean, apart from them both being male and between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five there doesn't seem to be any obvious connection. They're from different neighborhoods, and worked at different companies. If there is one, I'm not seeing it - it could be anything. Astrid?"
"We could check their telephone records and credit card history. Statistically it is common for victims to have visited the same location at some point if it is familiar to the killer. " Astrid offered, her thumb and fore-finger rubbing together at the suggestion.
"Sure, if the PD hasn't checked that out already," he frowned, "Why dumpsters? Sure they're out of sight but the bodies weren't hidden well, they weren't even wrapped or bagged."
"You think the killer's choosing them deliberately and leaving them at these locations for a reason?" Olivia asked, her voice thick with disbelief. "Like they think the victims are trash?"
"I don't know, but I wouldn't dismiss it just yet," Lincoln retorted, turning his attention back to Astrid, "how's the traffic cams and face rec search of the area going?"
Astrid looked up and over at Lincoln who met her gaze before her dark eyes looked away.
"The alley is used for emergency exit access and trash collection for a commercial building that is currently home to eight registered companies over thirteen stories, however none of them reported any suspicious activity to the authorities in the twenty-four hours up until when the body was found," Astrid paused, her voice typically soft yet direct, "and we have not been able to find anything conclusive from traffic cams as that part of the alley is obscured from the cameras on the main road.
"Hmm, so maybe he chose this place as he knew he could stay out of sight?" Olivia surmised, impatiently tapping the surface of the desk. "Maybe we should look into that - interview their employees in case they saw something they didn't think to report. Or maybe the killer even works there."
"Maybe… but if so, why did he choose the other location first in East Yonkers where the first victim's body was left?" Lincoln chewed his lips and frowned while deep in thought, and then raised his index finger up when a thought occurred to him, "What days is the trash collected from the dumpsters where they were found?"
Astrid tapped the buttons on the digital keep and Olivia straightened up, motioning at the requested information flashed up on the screen in front of them.
"Huh. Both victims were found the day after a collection by the garbage collectors, but that could just be a coincidence."
"That is highly improbable, the odds would be approximately one in over twenty-two million," Astrid noted, "and therefore a clear statistical outlier. We need another variable to determine an anomaly."
"Okay…" He dragged the word out and sighed again, pushing up the sleeves of his borrowed sweatshirt to his elbows, moving his hands in a forward rolling motion, "can you run the traffic cam scan again but this time after the body was discovered and up to seven days before, and cross ref it with the same info from the other location?"
"Yes - but analyzing the footage to that extent will take a lot of time," she replied. Even though her tone remained flat and neutral as always, Lincoln couldn't help but detect a tint of skepticism in her voice, and her eyes flickered up in slight displeasure, "what exactly should I be looking for?"
"Anything you think is unusual, there has to be something linking these two places with the killer that we're not seeing," Lincoln asserted, "it could be he's been there before, and if not, many killers like to revisit the scene of previous crimes in an attempt to relive the thrill. We just have to catch them out."
"Yes Cap-" -tain Lee. Astrid cut off the word before she said it fully, but she could see the momentary flicker of shock in Lincoln's eyes when she stuttered, "Agent Lee, I will start the scan now."
"Okay, great," He smiled thinly, "Liv, let's get a list of employees from the building that uses the alley and compare it to the ones of the other crime scene and where the victims worked, see if there is any connection between them."
"Everyone always talks about the banality of evil, but what they should really talk about is the evil of banality."
The tip of the blackened iron bar, heated up by a blow torch, glowed an ominous shade of orange in the darkness of the room and the smoky metallic scent of seared flesh filled the air with the sound of a male voice that cried out agony, as a trail of blood dripped down his stubbled cheek.
"The self-righteous, the good, they justify themselves by telling themselves we're the evil. They're just monsters telling us we are the monsters but they are the ones lying. We are the truth!"
"Anything?" Lincoln looked up from his device hours later to see Olivia sit down beside him and pull up files on her screen, pursing her lips into an exasperated smirk.
"I've gone through all the current employees of the companies in the buildings that had access to both crime scenes and even previous employees that left in the past year twice and found nothing to implicate any of them. Everyone checks out and there's nothing at all out of the ordinary, you?"
"Not yet," he sighed frustratingly, "even both of the victim's employment history seems pretty average and unremarkable." Olivia's laminated Fringe ID pass dug into her hip as she perched on the stool and she flung it down on the desk in annoyance. It slid against the smooth glass surface and Lincoln leaned over to catch it before it fell to the floor. "Why do I even need that thing? I've been working here for over eight years, they don't even look at it anymore. We only get checked if we're-"
"Visitors," Lincoln interrupted, his eyes twitched and his eyebrows knitted in concentration while he absentmindedly studied the item until Olivia lightly snatched back from his grasp, "we haven't found anything because they're not staff, they're visitors. They should have visitor logs in case of emergencies for insurance purposes. We should pay them a visit to check their sign in sheets for any similarities."
Olivia looked up at the sky as she stepped out of the car so her feet stumbled slightly on the damp and loose tarmac. The rain from earlier had almost evaporated in the persistent blades of bright sunlight that pierced their way through to the ground and reflected on the few remaining puddles so the small gray pools of water glittered in the light. It had become a ritual for her to look up, in the hope of glimpsing even the lightest of rainbows through the sullen clouds but she could only see shades of ashen gray like every time before. Disappointed but not surprised, she despondently shrugged and joined Lincoln who was still dressed in the usual Fringe uniform of combat pants, sweatshirt and jacket and they entered the stylish and expensive looking lobby and reception of the building that backed onto the alley.
"Fringe Agents Dunham and Lee," she said, holding her ID up for inspection and gesturing to herself and Lincoln as she introduced them both to the desk clerk, who was sat behind the glossy white desk, illuminated by bright LED backlights and the reflection of the modern dropped chandelier that hung from the heightened ceiling, "can I get your record of all the visitors who have signed into the building?"
Giving them to a tablet that gave details of all the people who had signed in, Lincoln impatiently took it and began to swipe the screen to scroll back through the digital register.
"Wait!" Olivia cried out, grabbing his wrist to stop him moving and swiped back in the opposite direction. "There - look!"
One line stood out among the list of names as it was only partially filled in, the company name abbreviated into a three letter acronym that repeated on various dates on the data sheet.
"Hey," Olivia called over to the young woman behind the desk. Her hair was cut into a blunt, platinum blonde bob and she was was dressed in pristine button down white shirt and neckerchief in pastel shades that matched the abstract art on the walls, which were the only source of color in the clinically bright white lobby, and she stared back in a mixture of disdain and inconvenience having been interrupted twice in ten minutes. Olivia held up the device to show her as Lincoln stepped outside to answer a call on his ear cuff, "what's CCC?"
"Corporate Cleaning Company, all of the maintenance and janitorial work in the building is subcontracted out to them, just like a lot of other commercial buildings in the city," sighed the receptionist, in an annoyed tone that would have been appropriate if she'd repeatedly been asked the total of one plus one, "I think the new guy's called Freddie or Farley. Something like that. I'm not sure, I've only seen him here the last couple of months."
"Okay, thank you." Olivia frowned and instinctively reached for her earcuff to call the company as Lincoln burst back through the glass doors, his expression urgent. "What is it?"
"That was Astrid, she found something on the traffic cams - the same commercial vehicle visited both crime scenes in the week before and just after the bodies were cordoned off by the local PD. She checked the route and it was also seen in the locations of where the victims worked."
"Let me guess, a janitorial company? They would know the dates and routes of when the garbage would be collected too."
"Yep - wait, how did you know that?" Lincoln asked, his eyebrows knitting and then rising in surprised confusion when he met her eyes. "There's something else too - a front desk clerk found another body, eight miles away in the Irvington district."
"Astrid is going to call the HR of the cleaners to find out who was driving their van on the days it was picked up on the traffic cams," Olivia shouted over the sirens as the car cut through the late afternoon traffic filled with people leaving work for the day, "she's gonna call us with their name so we can track them down."
As before the male body was left partly exposed in a grimy dumpster, guarded from curious onlookers by a uniformed police officer who held up the police tape cordon when they arrived and showed their badges.
"No formal ID has been found but the description matches those of Lucas Norton who was reported missing yesterday," Lincoln noted through a thinly veiled look of disgust while Olivia lifted the lid so they could peer at the body and gulped, swallowing down the urge to vomit, "is it me or do the cuts to the chest seem more pronounced and-"
Olivia watched the blood drain from Lincoln's face, his nostrils flaring slightly as he turned away and grimaced.
"-haphazard?" Olivia finished, lowering the lid back down, "yeah, and only one eye has been scorched. Maybe he knows we're onto him and he's getting sloppy."
"If that's the case, he'll probably keep escalating before he makes a mistake that's big enough for us to catch him. He's getting more practice, they look kinda like letters but I can't tell what he's trying to spell out. "
He sighed, bending to move under the crime scene tape with Olivia that the police man held up for them and walked back through the crowd towards the car as her ear cuff rang.
"This is Agent Dunham," Olivia answered, nodding as Astrid's familiar voice gave her the details of the suspect, "so the driver of the van the last week was a Carl Douglas Fadley, he got cautioned for affray a couple of months ago but the charges were dropped. C'mon, we should get going - Astrid's paged us his home address and dispatched a back-up team with a warrant to meet us there to bring him in." She tapped her fingers against the car roof impatiently noticing Lincoln's hesitation to open the door on his side, his hand hovering over the handle. "What's up?"
"I-I wanna question the receptionist here first," Lincoln frowned and stuttered, then waggled his finger across his chest "and, uh, get photos of the body to compare against the others. I think there could be a pattern with the cuts. Can I meet you back at HQ later?"
"Lincoln?..." Olivia asked softly, her voice thick with concern. Despite his stoic and professional facade, Lincoln had gotten increasingly quiet throughout the day, and it was obvious to her the gruesome details of the case were clearly affecting him and understandably so - Olivia had learned how to detach herself from the worst aspects of human behavior a long time ago for her own sake, but even so this was one of the worst she'd seen for some time and she could see why he would find it hard to stomach, even more so as he could empathize with the victims. "...if its too much, you can tell me, we can get someone else to work the case or -"
"I'm fine." He interrupted before she could finish, forcing a thin smile. "It's not too much."
"You sure? I'd understand, it's grizzly and I've seen agents with ten years of experience struggle with these types of cases-"
"-I said I'm fine!" Lincoln snapped and his eyebrows knitted in aggravation, then he sighed on seeing Olivia recoil at the uncharacteristic outburst. His eyes softened, knowing she was only concerned because she cared, and not because she thought he was incapable as a Fringe Agent, "Look, you don't have to worry, Liv. I'm okay. I'll get a lift back to HQ - I'll see you later."
"I'll see you soon, then." She replied with a shrug, as he turned away and walked towards the front of the office block that backed onto the area
"Okay, drive safe." Lincoln called back dismissively without turning around as he opened the door, leaving her sight. Olivia paused for a moment, contemplating following him but considered if he was her, she would get even more agitated and accuse him of doubting her ability as an agent and the case was hard enough already without things being tense between them.
"Hello," The clerk glanced up at Lincoln from behind the modest front desk decorated in beech colored veneer and plum writing that matched her blazer and the couch by the door. He approached and held up his ID, her expression professional yet affable, "can I help you?"
"Hi. Agent Lee - Fringe Division," Lincoln replied, tucking his ID back in his jacket, and looking down at the badge on the breast of her jacket, and pointed over his shoulder to the door behind him, "I just have a couple of questions regarding the crime scene out the back if you don't mind, Tammy?"
"For me?" She tucked her dark wavy hair behind her ear, her blue eyes flickering nervously behind her round, gold rimmed glasses, "I didn't see anything."
"It's just procedure, nothing to worry about," he said, shaking his head lightly and forcing a thin smile, "was it you who discovered the body and called it into the police?"
"Oh no, that was Crystal, she got sent home because she was so upset," Tammy gulped, picking guiltily at her painted nails. She leaned forward towards Lincoln and lowered her voice, "she took out the trash because the janitor hadn't turned up and she said the packet of tuna salad I ate for lunch break was making the office smell real bad."
Lincoln nodded sympathetically and blinked.
"So the janitor services, are they sub-contracted out to the CCC group?"
"Yes sir. She should've just waited another half an hour for Fin to turn up."
"Is that the janitor? Is he still here?" Lincoln asked, his brows knitting in concern, and she nodded in reply. "Do you know his whereabouts? I'd like to ask him some questions about one of his colleagues as part of the investigation."
"The underground car park - he signed out just before you arrived but his vehicle is still registered as being on the premises according to the system." Tammy replied, motioning to the beech door with a small panel of glass in the corner of the lobby.
"And his name is Fin?" Lincoln confirmed.
"Uh-huh - Finley Dallas." She nodded again, swiveling on her seat as he jogged towards the door.
"Thank you for your help."
"Down on your knees - hands on your head, now!" Olivia commanded. The man's hands slowly raised and to the back of his head as he sank to the floor. The front door to the small and sparsely furnished apartment swung open behind where it had been forced open by force by the uniformed Fringe agents at her side. "Where's your Show Me?
"In my wallet, up there." The man gestured with chin towards a small cabinet in the corner, his voice cracking in distress. Olivia looked down at his long dark blonde hair tied back into a small ponytail and slight paunch exposed between the hem of his creased T-shirt and joggers, and thumbed through his wallet to retrieve the card. "What did I do?"
"Carl Fadley? Do you work for the 'Corporate Cleaning Company' group?"
"Yes, I did. But-" He nodded, shaking as he was cuffed and dragged to his feet.
"You're being arrested in connection with the murders of Lucas Norton, Isaac Adams and Erick Darling." Olivia interrupted, her face contorted in disgust at the thought of someone so average and unassuming being capable of the crimes she'd seen over the past few hours.
"What - who? This has to be a misunderstanding," he protested, struggling against the restraints as the officer pulled him away down the hall to the car, "I didn't kill nobody!"
"Save it for questioning when we get back to the interview room" she sneered, watching him being pushed into the back seat.
Lincoln's steps echoed as he jogged down the four flights of concrete steps in the stairwell and pushed open the door to the half-empty parking lot. The fluorescent lighting flickered and buzzed in the far corner and reflected off the royal blue curves of the three interlinked 'C's' on the hood of the white van that was stationary in a parking space but rumbled softly with the sound of the electric engine and music playing from the radio inside it.
"Excuse me, are you Mr Dallas? I'm Agent Linoln Lee with Fringe Division," Lincoln said as he held up his badge and cautiously walked over to the vehicle on noticing a stocky, bearded man in a blue overalls sitting in the front with one of his hands resting on the wheel, covered with a black nitrile glove, "can I ask you to step out of the vehicle? I'd like to ask you some questions regarding one of your colleagues."
"Oh, yes, that's me," the man said, his mouth twitching to contain a smirk as he opened the door and exited the van as Lincoln approached, "of course you can, I'd be more than happy to answer your questions."
The young, slim man twitched nervously against the steel gray table, making a metallic sound as his handcuffs jangled and his sweaty hands left patches of moisture on the cool looked small, swamped in the loose overalls they'd put him so his clothes could be tested. Olivia and Erikson walked in the room, placing a file down on the desk in front of them before sitting opposite him.
"Why'd you leave them in the dumpsters? Do you hate them?" Olivia asked, glaring at him with a look that dripped with revulsion and shoved the digital file towards Fadley, exposing the images of the recent murders and he turned his face away. "Look at them! Are you jealous of these men? Where'd you kill them?"
"I don't know"" Fadley sobbed, trying to rub the tears from his face with his hands that were restricted and tied to the table. "I told you, I didn't do nothing!"
"The commercial vehicle you drive for work has been sighted on traffic cams in the location of all these murders and the victim's work addresses this week -" Erikson swiped through the images, showing the van with the distinctive company livery pulled from the footage, "East Yonkers, Van Cortlandt Park, Irvington. Where is it?"
"But I-I haven't been at work, I've been seeing my shrink all week. He offered to cover my shifts-" Fadley stuttered nervously, then cut himself off and sighed, unsure of whether or not he should continue, "I don't wanna get in anymore trouble, my attorney said I had to stay outta trouble since I got arrested or I'll go to jail."
"Listen, you need to choose your next words very carefully," Olivia said as she leaned forward, snatching the tablet back before glancing back at Erikson, "because they will determine if you spend the rest of your life in prison or leave with a caution. Who covered your shifts?"
"The new guy," he replied, his face contorting with distress as he tried to maintain his composure, "we got tanked one night after work and he got in a fight, I don't even remember why. I convinced the guy he punched not to press charges, and so he took my shifts at work as a favor, we didn't tell them so I'd get paid instead of him."
"Who, Carl? We need a name." Erikson replied impatiently, his hand hitting the surface of the table with such force it shuddered and made him flinch.
The sound of a knock at the door caught Olivia's attention, and she turned to see Astrid's face peering through the glass panel, and she stood to meet her outside the door, leaving Fadley alone with Erikson.
"Agent Dunham. I am sorry but I can confirm his alibi checks out," Astrid confirmed, "His calendar showed he was at his psychiatrists at the times the van was seen on the traffic cams, we already called them to confirm it, and his clothes and apartment are clean, no trace of any DNA from the victims. He's not our guy"
"What about the carvings on the chest, has the analysis come back from the crime labs yet?" Olivia asked, crossing her arms against her chest in frustration.
"What analysis?" Astrid replied simply, frowning in bewilderment. "You didn't ask me to run one."
"Didn't Lin- Agent Lee ask you?" Olivia said, her expression also confused and he scratched her head. "He said he wanted to check if there was a pattern when he got back."
"Agent Dunham, I haven't seen Agent Lee since earlier this afternoon when you left to check the visitors log, I thought he came back with you?"
"He's not got back yet?" Olivia gulped, trying to swallow the sense of dread she felt in the pit of her stomach, hoping the reason was something as mundane as traffic and jumped as Erikson left the interrogation room.
"I got a name," he said, joining the two women as they peered through the one-way mirror at Fadley, whose pathetic figure was hunched over the desk, his head in his arms. "Finley Dallas."
Pain reverberated through Lincoln's skull like the heavy bass of a dirge throbbed through a wall and he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the blurry shapes of light that slowly began to form into objects. The stink of the stale, damp air, blood and chemicals filled his senses and lungs and he coughed as they dragged him back into consciousness. Trying in vain to move, his feet kicked against the cold floor, making crop circles in the dust and grime, held back by restraints. Grimacing and groaning at the agony of the rough rope tied around his wrists with his arms pulled behind his back, he felt the warm drip of blood run from his temple down to the shell of his ear, and he twisted to sit up from lying on his side, only to be met by the glowing point of an iron bar.
The Fringe HQ hummed with nervous energy when an agent in gray camo uniform jogged across the situation room towards Olivia, Erikson and Astrid.
"Sir, we sent a team to the address you gave us but it was empty, no one has lived there for months." The young junior agent said, before being dismissed by her superiors.
"So the address on Dallas's Show Me is bogus," Erikson said matter-of-factly, trying to disguise the disappointment in his voice and placing his hands on his hips turned to the female agents at his side, "What else do we know about him? Any family that could give us an insight into his mind or tell us his whereabouts?"
Astrid read as she displayed the brutal images of his art. "None. He has no significant other or children. His mother was jailed for killing his father when he was a teenager and died in prison. He was put in foster care before he went to Queens College. He graduated three years ago with a thesis titled 'The Problematique and Contradiction of Good and Evil'. He wanted to be an artist but was employed in various menial jobs before CCC." All of the commotion and chatter died down as the images flickered onto the main screen, the hushed silence spreading across the room like snowfall in a forest on the sight of the disturbing glimpse into his mind; empty and emotionless white faces stained with blue distorted eyes in circular blotches of brown and deep, blood red.
"That kinda makes sense, it gives him a key to the city. He can go almost anywhere undetected and without anyone questioning him. So how do we predict what he'll do next?" Erikson said, breaking the eerie silence. He walked towards the images to study them further, fascinated by the insight into the troubled mind so the colors on the screen projected in a high albedo onto his own gray-green eyes and cut deep shadows under his defined cheekbones.
"I don't think we can," Olivia gestured up at the screen that displayed the information, turning to Astrid and Erikson while adding photos of the victims to the display, "I mean, I can't see any pattern here, other than a bitter and perverted sense of morality. The eyes could be symbolic as they're considered to be windows to the soul by many cultures, but then… maybe not. "
Olivia stopped suddenly on catching a detail of the three victim's profiles, and frowned, then zoomed in on the screen.
"What is it?" Erikson queried, his eyes following Olivia's gaze towards the display in an effort to understand.
"I just noticed - all the victims had blue eyes like his paintings. Maybe he was burning their eyes as he considers them as a reflection of evil… like evil eyes."
"We also ran the photos of the markings like you asked Agent Dunham, and as Agent Lee suspected, there is a pattern to the cuts in the skin," Astrid interrupted, "the results from the lab verified there is between a seventy-eight and eighty-nine percent probability they are not random as previously thought, and he was carving the following letters in their chests."
"What?" Erikson and Olivia replied and looked up in unison, their voices strained with disbelief as Astrid displayed the manipulated photos with overlays that accentuated the slashes in the skin and blended out the burn marks, scorched flesh and bruises that had obscured the pattern.
"They each had three letters. Isaac Adams was VIA, Lucas Norton had INL and Erick Darling was EFD." Astrid added simply.
"So, they have to be a clue, right? Is it an anagram?" Olivia thought out loud, mentally rearranging the letters in her head, impatiently tapping the podium stand as she paced around it, "Denial… devil…leaf… divine. None of them make any sense, like we're only seeing pieces of the puzzle. Maybe he doesn't intend for this to be the last victim."
"Logically, I would conclude there is a high probability the victims are not random, but he is choosing them because their initials match each consecutive letter of his name," Astrid said quietly, her eyes widened as she worked her way through each name, "Erick Darling, his first victim, was born Frederick Darling. The other letter could indicate where the body was left - East Yonkers, Van Cortlandt, Irvington. Or they could be -"
"Spelling E-V-I… evil?" Olivia interrupted and triumphantly slapped the smooth glass surface of the display. "That would make sense, it seems from his thesis he has been nurturing some kind of fascination with the notion of good and evil for some time. So, if that's right, the person's initials in the pattern would be-"
Olivia choked on the letters and she pushed them down with the sudden urge to vomit when she met Astrid's wide eyes, black and bottomless as the night sky. Stumbling when her vision began to blur and the room spun around her as if the whole universe had just tilted on its axis, she gripped the desk to stop gravity pulling her down, her hair cascading over her shoulders like a river of fire.
Erikson's voice echoed through every cell in her being when he spelled out what she had just figured out.
"Two 'L's'."
"You have to let me go." Lincoln said calmly, choking back the fear that hammered in his chest and vibrated in his veins, hoping that reasoning with his captor would at least buy him enough time that his team could find his location. He strained against his restraints again and squinted in the low light, trying to make out the man's face behind the blue glow of the blowtorch in his hand, "Do you understand what the consequences will be for kidnapping, not to mention killing a Fringe Agent?"
The man's face emerged from the shadows as Lincoln's eyes adjusted to the light, his skin tainted with rusty hues and eyes black pools that narrowed when he sneered at Lincoln's words.
"Do I look like I care about the consequences?" Finley mocked, rising to his feet and bringing the bar closer to Lincoln's face so he could feel the heat of the iron bar's amber tip at his cheek, "If you're an agent, why haven't they put out an alert for you? Fringe Agents are considered superheroes right? They're like gods! Untouchable saviors of the world, held above everyone else and outside of the laws the rest of us have to obey. They should be searching for you, if that were true."
"We're not -" Lincoln stuttered, flinching at the searing metal, unable to hold back a scream when edged closer and singed his temple, barely remembering to keep the knowledge of an alternative universe classified, " - I'm… I'm undercover. And they will already be searching for me -"
Lincoln stopped abruptly, and shook his head to move away even though it still throbbed with pain and the metallic scent of his blood filled his nostrils. "P-please! Look, I'm not lying to you. If you let me go now, then maybe…"
Finley lurched to snatch at Lincoln's short hair in his large hand and yanked his head back, holding his face in place, centimeters from the heated bar.
"Why should I let you go? You think all the others didn't beg for their lives? You think you're better than them? Better than me?"
"No... no I don't," Lincoln sobbed, trying to stay focused over the pain of his skin burning under the intense heat.
"Yes, you do, you all do - you all think you're above the law." He growled back, his face so close to Lincoln's that his warm breath merged with the panicked huffs Lincoln pushed through his nose while biting on his bottom lip, desperately trying to contain the pain and fear that rose up in waves. "I will leave you like the others, like they left me, to wither in denial over the years that burned like your eyes will burn."
"No, I-I can help you, because once they realize you took me, they will look for me, Finley. And when they do find me, you will spend the rest of your life in prison."
Despite ignoring all the speed limits and traffic lights while she drove back to the office block in Irvington, and narrowly missing a collision with another car at a junction while she tried Lincoln's number on her ear cuff for the third time, when Olivia pulled up outside of the building where she'd last seen him, it had already been closed for the day and was shrouded in darkness. The desperate panic that something had happened to Lincoln consumed her like a black hole - even all the monsters and freaks of nature she'd seen over the past eight years working for Fringe Division didn't make her feel this terrified. The thought heaved its way up to the back of her throat like a splinter of a lost memory and stung like acrid bile. Erikson and a security guard eventually joined Olivia in what felt like a lifetime later with every moment stretched out infinitely through her fear.
The guard checked the lobby security camera, which led them down to the empty parking lot, and the chipped lilac paint on a rectangular concrete pillar displayed a smear of crimson, the only sign of a struggle. Olivia closed her eyes as she picked up Lincoln's crushed glasses and ear cuff on the parking lot floor, trying but unable to shake the mental image of the larger man shoving Lincoln against the cold, stone column to render him unconscious and compliant, and leaving a trail of blood as he hit his head on the corner before being bundled into the van and driven away.
"He put up a fight. We'll find him, Dunham." Erikson remarked, on noticing the scarlet streak of blood on the pillar.
Olivia knew they would - they had to. It was just a question of if they'd find him alive, and unharmed.
"Of course he did, he's tougher than people give him credit for." Olivia heaved through gritted teeth, determined to find him as soon as possible. "Sir, we need to put out a Fringe alert for a missing agent right away -"
"Dunham."
"- and get Echelon to activate his tracker. It can take a few hours for the satellite to get an accurate location. Lincoln will do his best to stall him but we only have a short time before he'll start -" she gulped, her throat thick, not wanting to imagine what Dallas could already be doing to Lincoln.
"DUNHAM. Stop," Erikson repeated, his graying eyebrows furrowing and he pulled her away to focus on his face and not the thoughts that had begun to infest her mind, "we can't put out an alert, it would be seen by the original Agent Lee's family and as he is from the other side, he never had an Echelon tracker fitted. We can run another trace on the van's license plate but we are working against the clock, so we have to focus and do our jobs properly. This isn't just about Agent Lee. It's about Isaac, Lucas, and Erick. It's about all the other victims that will be next, if we mess this up. "
"Sir." Olivia said, taking a deep breath and nodded, then walked back to her car before anyone could see the fear manifesting as tears pricking the corner of her eyes. Of Erikson was right, but that didn't mean she had to like it.
"Why are you doing this?" Lincoln gasped, fighting the urge to pass out from the agony that crept into the corners of his subconscious like a vignette photograph from the throbbing singed skin at his eyebrow. Squinting, his eyes adjusted to the light and he began to make out angular shapes in the wall behind the man's silhouette, sepia squares that rippled and faintly glowed in the ochre light. "If you're not going to let me go, why don't you tell me why you're targeting innocent people?"
"Innocent people? No one is innocent, especially all of you people! The only difference is, people like you…" Finley screamed, lurching towards Lincoln and pressing the cold blade of the pen knife against the clammy flesh of his collarbone, "...try to justify the pain you cause to others with your self-righteousness, because you've been granted the permission to inflict it."
A scream ripped through Lincoln's lungs when Finley pushed the knife into his skin and slowly carved a four inch long vertical line from his collar bone before, twisting his hand ninety degrees and slicing another four inches left to right.
"Okay, from when the van Dallas was using left Irvington, we tracked it via traffic cams where it traveled for five miles due south, then we lost sight of it when he diverted from Jackson Avenue." Erikson said, pre-empting Olivia's question as she approached him and planted her hands defiantly on her hips, "We've put out alerts and notifications for his license plates and description too-"
"Sir, I think that is a waste of time," She replied, gesturing towards the screen in a determined stance, "he's not gonna reveal himself until he is ready to find his next victim, and by then it will be too late for Lincoln. If we can't find him now, maybe we can figure out where he is if we know where he's been."
Olivia paced back and forth by the screen, studying the photos of the victims and then turned on her heel to look at Astrid. "There were no contusions or marks around the mouths and necks of the victims. He only tortured them around the chest and eye area. What does that tell you?"
"He fixated on their eyes, we already know that Dunham," Erikson interrupted, his tone impatient and unsure of Olivia's objectivity, "what's your point?"
"My point is there was bruising and rope burns on the wrists from where he'd tied them up but there wasn't any on the mouth or face-"
"He is isolated," Astrid said, looking up to meet Oliva's eyes whose mouth twitched into a slight smile at the affirmation, "I would say that he has taken them all somewhere that is private and quiet, away from anyone who could hear them. I will scan the traffic cams again and focus on any activity in areas or buildings that are remote and weren't on the list of properties serviced by his employers."
The hazy pain lifted enough for Lincoln to summon the strength to move his head from the rough, bare brick surface of the wall that dug into his back and skull. His heavy eyes flickered open and glanced down at the dark, sticky pool of blood on his chest that had coursed down his stomach and pooled in the fabric of the gray combat pants.
Light cut through the shadows from a paltry window in the far corner, mostly obscured with dirt or a makeshift covering and illuminated the dark rectangular shapes on the far wall and dancing particles of dust, revealing a collection of paintings, all of which featured distorted blue eyes warped with streaks of red and brown that spread and metastasized over the canvas with every movement Dallas made.
Lincoln gulped at the intimate and disturbing insight into the other man's psyche who still seemed to be engrossed in smearing patterns of the dark liquid on the paintings while muttering strained noises under his breath, oblivious to Lincoln's subtle movements and intent gaze. Dallas suddenly manically screamed in frustration and started stabbing the canvas with his penknife, carving gashes in the fabric until he slumped to the floor in front of it, making Lincoln flinch.
"Why are you destroying your painting?" Lincoln asked, his words catching in his throat and voice rough from his earlier screams. For a moment he thought Dallas hadn't heard him and he considered speaking again until the man jumped to his feet and spoke, without turning back around to look at him.
"Why? You don't care. None of you cared why," He said simply and turned to face Lincoln still slumped on the floor, and scoffed bitterly, "You all pretend to care, but no one cares. I'm always left alone. And they say I'm the evil one!"
" I want to know," Lincoln replied, his feet pushing as he tried to get leverage against the rough brick wall, "I-I want to understand."
"You're just saying what I want to hear, you just want to save your own skin." Dallas said, stepping closer, and pointing at Lincoln's face with the penknife still in his hand, "you don't know what it's like to be left alone."
"True," Lincoln agreed, with a slight nod of his head. If he died here and his body was left in some filthy dumpster with the trash and rats, he knew Olivia would not rest until she shot this man dead, consequences be damned. She would be ruthless and relentless in her vengeance, because he would be too and when Olivia had pointed a gun at him, convinced he was his own murderer. Fear and anger had ripped through her veins as she'd screamed at him, convinced that she'd lost him again. Lincoln's eyes widened when he noticed the momentary soft expression on Dallas's face disappear, "but I do know what it's like, to be alone and unwanted."
He stopped abruptly, and gulped hard when Dallas pressed the penknife into his chest again and tore a line straight down the front of his chest and a scream from his lungs, just as before.
"You don't, but you will know. You will understand," Dallas smirked, cupping Lincoln's dripping blood in his hand like falling rubies and garnets before walking back to the paintings and streaking it over the canvases, "when I am done, all of you will care."
"Agent Dunham?" Astrid beckoned, presenting a map of various points on the screen that pulled Olivia away from intensely studying Dallas's file.
"What have you got?" Olivia asked as she stood and rubbed her bleary eyes, focusing on the screen's display of lines and dots in a spectrum of colors superimposed onto a map of the area.
"This is all of the van's movements we have managed to find over the past weeks, all of Dallas's activity," Astrid replied, zooming into the area of New Yonkers. "But there are a number of anomalies with the patterns of his behavior, we need to deduce another variable so we can determine which is statistically likely to be his current location."
"Show us which ones you've got, agent." Erikson said. Olivia turned around surprised on hearing his voice and as he walked towards the women.
The screen flickered, reducing the overlays to a handful spread across the city map. Olivia's eyes intently studied the screen, looking for any pattern that might help, noticing a cluster of activity within a a mile radius surrounding a rhomboid patch of green.
"What's that?" She pointed at the area so Astrid could zoom in to get more details. When she did, the picture changed from a 2-D into a satellite image, showing a grassy area lined with the deep green and thick foliage of old, tall trees and peppered with the mottled rectangular shapes of a few rooftops.
"That is Reddick Road cemetery," replied, "although it is isolated, due to the pattern of activity, the odds of him being in this area are approximately one in two hundred. He most likely uses this route as a shortcut due to current roadworks on Jackson Avenue and because the area is not covered by traffic cams.
"No, he's somewhere in there," Olivia gestured to the epicenter on the map where the cams had picked up the van numerous times, "that's the area we need to search."
"How do you know? I know you're determined to find Agent Lee but if you're wrong we it could cost us time we don't have-"
"Because that's where his mother is buried."
Dallas towered over Lincoln's unresponsive body that slumped against the wall, and kicked him in the stomach, making him jolt awake with a gasp. Lincoln reeled back, fighting the urge to throw up as his heavy eyes blinked open and he gulped thickly. He felt lightheaded from the blood loss, the odds of anyone finding him in time was dwindling with every second he spent there, and every second felt an eternity with the pain that made him wish he was unconscious or even that Dallas would get this over and done with and kill him already.
"No sleeping, pretty boy. I'm not done yet."
"Who is Grace?" Lincoln muttered, subconsciously recalling something Dallas had said earlier when he was painting and thought Lincoln was knocked out. The man glared at Lincoln, his eyes flashing in a mixture of surprise and disdain as Lincoln's head rolled back against the wall. "When you were painting, you said this is for Grace."
He shifted against the cold and dirty flooring again when Dallas kneeled in front of him and peered over the man's shoulder at the paintings again, trying in vain to decipher the painted images and forced a smile, in the hope it would be seen as empathy and admiration and would disarm him.
"Do you want me to finish you off already?" He sneered, holding up the glowing iron bar towards Lincoln's face again so he could feel the searing heat and scent of the heated metal on his face. "'Cause I think you do."
"I just want to know why you're doing this. If you tell me and let me go, then I can convince them to help you, and not-"
"Do you think Dahmer cared? Or Berkowitz or Ramirez or Bundy? They only wanted to live their truths. They were the gods."
"They were people, just like their victims, just like your victims. Just like you. Our flaws are what make us people." Lincoln protested, pulling against the rope on his wrists, his shoulders stiff from being forced behind his back for so long distracting him from the agonizing cuts in his chest.
"No, their actions revealed secrets about ourselves about our desires, that there is no good, no evil. It's all an invented construct. Their actions transfigured them and made them into gods. That's why we're fascinated by them, why we read so many books and why they make countless films and tv shows about them."
"Is that why you're doing this? You want people to talk about you? Write a book or a thesis on you, so you become a god, or a myth?"
"No, I'm doing it to prove that there is no good or evil. We are all the same, there are killers in all of us. There is a killer in you just like there is inside of me." Dallas shrieked, pointing the dying glowing tip at Lincoln then back himself then stood, grabbing the blowtorch from the bench again.
The screech of tires on the gravel cut through the peaceful woodland area as the group of agents in black Kevlar vests and helmets jumped from the back of the Fringe Division trucks, flattening the green spikes of the grass with their heavy boots.
"We have an area of almost two square miles to cover so you have all been assigned a section of the park and cemetery to search." Olivia instructed, swiping her auburn hair out of her face in the wintry breeze before walking in front of the lined up agents and turned to Erikson who joined her.
"It is imperative that we search thoroughly but quickly. Remember, we are here to not only catch someone responsible for multiple homicides but also a kidnapped Fringe agent, who could be seriously injured. If you find him, call for MedEvac assistance immediately. Report back to me or Dunham," he said, pausing to motion at Olivia at his side, "on your comms right away if you spot the suspect, Agent Lee or anything even slightly unusual."
"For those of you who don't know already," Olivia added, trying to steady her voice that wobbled with adrenaline and determination, "this is really important to me, so, uh, let's get it right. Okay, let's fan out."
Stepping around the assorted tombstones that were placed across the lush lawns and fanned out across the verge, Olivia searched each epitaph for the details of Dallas's mother. Having obtained the approximate location of the grave from the cemetery office, she hoped it might give some clue to his - and Lincoln's - whereabouts before it was too late. Every stone monument was a stark reminder of her guilt - the guilt she carried every day that she didn't visit her sister's or the other Lincoln's grave as often as she should, and guilt for leaving Lincoln at that office alone. The memory of the way he looked at her the last time she saw him, his sky blue eyes nervously blinking when he walked away from her like he hoped she would follow crept into her thoughts like smoke from a fire under the crack of a door she couldn't open, slowly suffocating every inch of hope from her lungs.
Unable to push away the image of his eyes scorched beyond recognition, it rose like black smoke and smothered everything until she couldn't see anything else and she leaned onto a gravestone to steady her steps, the smooth marble cool under her fingertips.
Defiant tears swelled in the corner of her eyes and she stumbled on the lumpy ground, tripping backwards on a tuft of uneven grass, collapsing onto the damp ground in defeat. She knew he must be close, she could feel it, just like she could feel the wind sighing through the trees.
A flock of pigeons urgently flew up from the nearby woodland like gunmetal whistles scattered against the silver sky and Olivia watched as they settled on the nearby verge and headstones. She jumped to her feet to walk back to the thicket of trees they'd flown from, intrigued by what had disturbed them in the eerily quiet cemetery. Making her way through the coppice, the wiry branches snatched handfuls of her clothes and shards of light cut through the leaves igniting the woody scent of pine and amber leaves, damp moss and bracken. It thinned out to where a rough gravel drive barely wider than a footpath and overgrown with weeds crunched under her feet, leading her up a slight incline to a row of four dilapidated and abandoned garages, shaded by swaying evergreen trees.
Olivia inspected the writing on a small laminated sign nailed to the end brick wall which confirmed their old purpose before they were condemned - storage for a funeral company's fleet of hearses - and checked the doors, straining on her tiptoes to peer into the small windows placed high on the shutters. The first two garages seemed untouched for years, coating of dust on the door handles remaining intact and the edges sealed with leaves and debris caught in the grasp of grime and cobwebs. Handprints and finger marks smeared through the layers of dust on the third one showed it had been recently used and in the small window in the top of the roll door, she could just make out the shape of a white van with a familiar blue triple C shaped symbol emblazoned on the hood through the shadows.
"This is Agent Dunham. Urgent request for backup and MedEvac to my location immediately." She whispered into her ear cuff, her voice shaking as she took a deep breath to find the courage to check the windows of the final garage door, only to see they had been blacked out and lined with black garbage bags. The unmistakable sound of Lincoln's voice screamed from behind the door pierced her eardrums and Olivia wrapped her clammy fingers and palm around the door handle, unable to wait for backup.
"LINCOLN?"
His name was barely ripped from her mouth when Olivia rolled up the door with such force that it rattled on its hinges as it opened and flooded the extended garage with light. The horrific stench of burning and stale blood hit her immediately and gushed out into the air as the door creaked open, stinging like bile at the back of her throat. For a brief moment, sunlight illuminated the bare breezeblock walls that were decorated with his canvas paintings. Olivia gasped, stunned yet compelled to stare at them despite being even more disturbing than the pictures that she'd seen earlier. Unable to pull herself away as if watching a car crash in slow motion, the graphically realistic images of men's faces were distorted and twisted with swirls and drips of deep red and gaping black holes. Her morbid fascination was broken within seconds when a figure hunched in the corner jumped up in response to being exposed and lurched forward towards Olivia, then fell back to the ground with the force of three shots being fired from her gun into his broad chest as she instantly recognised his features from Dallas's file, the iron bar making a metallic clunk as it fell from his large hand to the floor.
If the last few moments had passed in seconds, then each and every second she moved further into the garage stretched out like hours. The crude equipment Dallas had used on his victims - a blowtorch and pen knife with leftover rope and tape - were displayed on a metallic bench to the side and were all coated in splodges of dried paint and blood. Olivia stepped over Dallas's inanimate thick body, the bullets she'd fired at him without hesitation making red flowers bloom in his navy overalls and the circular rips black holes that bore into his chest, to see another figure slumped and inert behind him in the far corner, that she knew was Lincoln even though he was faced away and still shrouded in the shadows.
She dared herself to edge closer, even though she was petrified it would be her greatest fear realized; that she was too late to save him, and she'd lost him again. Lost him like she'd lost the other Lincoln and how she'd been forced to imagine when Harry had almost convinced her Lincoln had killed himself by a gunshot to the head. Except this time it wasn't a dream or a hallucination. It was real and would be an eternal nightmare she'd never wake up from. She knelt on the cold concrete floor and gingerly shoved his lower leg with her hand, her dark auburn hair blanketing her shoulders as she leaned forward.
"Linc?" Olivia choked, barely able to speak with the knot in her throat threatening to choke her but he didn't respond. She edged closer, nudging his thigh that was sticky in her trembling hand and dark with warm blood that had oozed down from his chest. "L-Lincoln? It's me, you can wake up now. It's okay, he's gone."
The sight of his blackened face blurred under the hot flood of tears that filled her eyes and stung as they fell from her cheeks into fat droplets on the dusty stone cold floor, and they coursed into little rivulets that pooled at his side when she finally broke. Her face contorted with her anguish, the sound of the ambulance outside not registering in her consciousness over the sobs. "Linc. C'mon, get up. GET UP!"
Her voice changed from a whimper to an animalistic scream so suddenly, she didn't recognize it as her own. Anonymous arms pulled her up and dragged her unwillingly out of the garage before she could feel his neck for a pulse and dragged her back into the daylight, replacing her at Lincoln's side with medical staff who wheeled in a gurney.
