Title: Buried Deep
Words: 3,140
Spoilers: Up to Season 3 Finale, but especially 2x12, 2x14, 2x22, and 3x22.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Fringe. If I did, Olivia and Peter would find plenty of time to be sickeningly fluffy between being BAMFs and saving the world, I would be Walter's sous-chef, and Astrid would be more than just a lab assistant.

Author's Note: AHHHHH! First time posting a story on FanFiction. We'll see how this goes. Scared out of my mind, tbh. This is longer that I thought it was going to be. After I read it a few times, I realized that I get hung up on details and telling you all things that you already know. My apologies.

Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine.

Well, here goes nothing...

Peter Bishop had a habit of being taken.

She learned that very early on in their partnership. Peter Bishop was a fearless, reckless man who was not used to being told to stay out of the action, and consequently never did. He wasn't one of them, though. He fought on instinct rather than years of training and experience, which meant he made mistakes, leading to multiple kidnappings and abductions. She thought, very early on in the beginning, that he might be more a liability than an asset, but now that's ridiculous because he's Peter and of course they need him.

She doesn't know exactly when the normal stress she felt when a colleague was taken turned into something else, something different, something much deeper and scarier that made her chest ache and her stomach turn. Something she hadn't wanted but got anyway, because there was no fighting Peter Bishop. He was her kryptonite, the key to her undoing, her greatest weakness and her biggest strength, the solid rock she clung to and the quicksand beneath her feet.

She doesn't know when it started, when the black fear began to creep into her mind that wouldn't be erased until he was by her side again, images of blood and being too late, images of emptiness and a certain morose quietness in the lab and an empty passenger seat in her car on the way to a crime scene. But she knows that when it did, she could keep it at bay with the fact that they always got him back, and the next day he was there with them again, a scratch or two on his forehead, but alive nonetheless, as dubious and sarcastic as ever.

She always finds him, always finds him, always finds him…

…Except when she doesn't.

Except when the thing that holds him is beyond her or anyone else's control. Except when he's taken by something she can't shoot or fight or arrest, or even see. She can see him now, he's right there in front of her. She could go into the building and touch him if she wanted, but then she knows that it's not really him that she sees, that the virus that's taken him over has wiped any trace of Peter from his body, and she wouldn't get very far before he attacked her.

They want to shoot them, all of the infected. Him. They want to shoot him. And by that time, the fear has already begun. She sees the empty passenger in her mind. That can't happen. She won't allow it.

So she volunteers to go in. She's always found him before, and she'll find him again. No matter how far lost he is, how deep he is buried, she will find Peter Bishop.

As she walks through the quiet, cold corridors of the building, blueprint in hand, she is afraid in many different ways. Afraid for herself, of becoming infected. Afraid for Walter and Astrid, who are still in the building somewhere. Afraid for him mostly, afraid that she won't do it in time, afraid that he'll be deemed too dangerous to go on living. She sees herself sitting at home on a Saturday evening looking over case files and sipping a drink, no one to pry her from her work and take her to a friendly, hectic bar, buy her a beer and show her silly card tricks.

She is afraid, and she wonders who she's supposed to talk to now. She thinks back on their conversation that took place only moments before everything went to hell.

"I thought that was the point of having people that cared about you in your life. To have someone to talk to when you scared."

She doesn't know when he joined Rachel in that category, she just knows that he did. And now he's sick, and Rachel isn't picking up, and who is she supposed to talk to now?

She finds it almost humorous that he decides to show up then, but then she sees the blood dripping from his nose and the pink rims around his eyes and she knows that this everything but funny. He, this man, doesn't react the way Peter would if it were really him, as he fights her for her gun. He gets it after a struggle, and he points it at her. She's helpless, and if he wanted to, he could kill her. Shoot a bullet through her skull and watch her die.

But somewhere inside him, Peter Bishop prevails over the disease, and as he tells her to stay down and runs away, she knows that if she didn't have to find him before, she absolutely has to find him now.

They save him. Walter does, anyway. He finds a cure, and after a few hours he stares up at them with tired eyes, tucked under blankets, Walter wiping the sweat from his forehead as his fever breaks.

He tells her he's sorry.

"You weren't yourself."

You're back now, she thinks. We found you.

Walter and Astrid walk away at some point, and she takes the cloth that Walter was holding and places it against his skin. His eyes close and he breathes deeply.

"I found you," she breathes, quietly enough for no one but herself to hear.

A single tear falls from her eye then, unexpectedly, and she wipes it away before anyone sees, all evidence of it gone just as quickly as it came. A small smile plays on her lips.

She always finds him, always finds him, always finds him…

…Except when she doesn't.

Except when she can't find him no matter how hard she tries. Except when he doesn't want to be found. Except when he runs, when he takes himself away, leaving her behind with countless memories and a heavy heart.

She tries to hate Walter, from stealing him from his universe and lying to him for twenty-five years. For Cortexiphan, for experimenting on her and Nick and all of the children, doing God knows what to them in that daycare center.

But she can't. Because if Walter hadn't taken him, Peter Bishop would be a what could have been in her life, instead of something that was and is and will be for a very long time, even if she never sees him again.

She sits at a bar, a half-empty glass sitting before her. The bartender doesn't even ask as he walks by and fills her drink up. He doesn't have to. They've been at this routine for days now.

She thinks about him as she sits there, thinks about how much she's come to care about him, how lovely it felt when his hand cupped her cheek, as he whispered to her not to be afraid, his skin against hers. She thinks about how excited she had been as she drove to his house that night, how elated she was that they were finally doing this together. She was nervous – scared, even – but more than that she was ready. She wanted this badly, wanted to memorize the feeling of his hands touching her skin, wanted to discover what it felt like when his lips moved with hers and his fingers played with her hair.

Then he glimmered. He glimmered so brightly, so unmistakably, and she had never wanted to cry more than she had wanted to in that moment.

Peter Bishop's habit of being taken had started long before she met him.

She should've told him, regardless of her promise to Walter. She should've tried to explain it to him. Maybe then he would have stayed.

But Nina Sharp was right. If she didn't realize that before, she realized it now. She wasn't prepared to lose him.

She had always found him, time and time again, but this is different. This time, he has to let her find him.

She lays her head down on the bar, and for the first time since Peter Bishop left, she cries.

But then, he's taken by something palpable, something that she can see and follow and stop. His real father takes him this time, and this should be the end of everything, the worst thing that could have possibly happened. She should be absolutely terrified, more terrified than she's ever been, but she can't deny that she feels traces of relief deep inside her that she has something to save him from now, a reason to go to him that no one, not even he, will be able to deny.

He should be gone forever, lost in an unreachable world, and they should have to desperately hope and pray that he has the strength and wisdom to see past his father's schemes and save their world. But unbelievably, disturbingly, she can reach it, and if there was ever a time to thank Walter for what he did to her it is now.

She stares at the awful drawing she holds in her hands, of fire spewing from his eyes. And she will not let that happen to him. She will not fail him.

She will find him.

She ends up, eventually, in a living room of an apartment she's never seen before. He's standing across from her, he's finally there with her after weeks and weeks of time when he was not. She would let herself be happier about this if she didn't know that getting to him was only half the battle, that she now has to convince him to come back.

He's different from the last time she saw him. His shoulders slump in a way they never did, and there is a flat tone to his voice. His eyes are dark with anger and betrayal. He looks tired, both physically and mentally, and all she wants to do is wrap her arms around him and tell him that it's okay now. Even though it isn't.

He knows about the machine and this Walter Bishop's plan. Another step is taken towards bringing him home. She apologizes to him, for everything. She wishes that it took something as simple as an apology to make everything better.

"How long did you know?"

"A few weeks."

Too long. She knows that. He sighs and looks away from her when she answers, and she knows that she failed him. He trusted her and she betrayed that. She wanted to keep him too much to tell him the truth. She was afraid that he would leave.

She remembers that not that long ago, she was under the impression that she wasn't afraid of anything anymore. How things have changed since then. She let her fears motivate her actions. And now she risks losing him forever.

She won't lie to him again.

"Peter, you don't belong here."

"No, I don't belong here. But I don't belong there, either."

She knows what she has to do now. She has to convince him that he does belong, no matter how out of place he feels right now. She's thought about this endlessly, ever since she knew they were going to cross over. She could've swore she had a speech planned out in her head as she walked down the hall to this room with a Charlie she hadn't shot. But now it's gone, and she can't recall even a sentence of it.

Words tumble out of her mouth, and she doesn't know if they're the right ones and she doesn't know if they'll change his mind at all. But they're the only words she has left. The only words she can think to say. And she can't stop them.

"Yes you do. I have thought of a hundred reasons why you should come back, to fight the shapeshifters, to take care of Walter, to save the world. But in the end, you have to come back. Because you belong with me."

Please, she silently begs, staring at him with desperate eyes. Please come back. Please don't leave me.

And if there's ever a time in her life when she's needed someone to want her back, it's this moment.

She kisses him then, because she's scared and she doesn't know what else to do. She kisses him, and at first, he doesn't kiss her back. He's stiff and unresponsive, and she begins to panic. She starts to think that this is the biggest mistake she's ever made.

But then his hand is on her back and his mouth moves with hers. And kissing him is everything she imagined and more. And as their lips part and they breathe each other in, his other hand reaching up and tangling in her strange red hair, she knows that he has to come back now. Because this is real, this is the beginning of something beautiful, and he can't leave it behind.

When they pull away, he brushes her new bangs from her forehead and gently kisses the skin there. And then he says five of the sweetest words she's ever heard.

"I'll come back for you."

(Months later, after more pain and more betrayal, too many tears for her to count and thinking that what they had was ruined forever, they'll talk about that moment, one morning in his small bed. The scent of Walter's cooking will waft into the room, and the sun will shine in through the window, creating a glow around him that she will welcome with open arms. She'll be cocooned in the warmth of messy, tangled sheets and his bare skin pressed against hers, his fingers tracing undefined patterns on her back. With each passing second, with each beat of her heart, with each rise and fall of his chest, she'll fall more and more in love with him.

She'll finally feel like she's home.

He'll press his lips to her cheek and whisper against her skin that he never felt more confused and out of place than he did in that moment. He never felt more lost. But then she kissed him, and for the first time since he found out he was from the other side, he'd had hope that everything would turn out okay.

He'll smile, and press a soft, lingering kiss to her lips. He'll tell her, "You found me."

She always finds him, always finds him, always finds him…)

…Except when she doesn't.

Except when she can't.

Except when she doesn't even know he is missing, because she doesn't even know that he was ever hers. Suddenly, he is stripped not only from her memory, but from her world, from both universes. From existence.

How can she find him if she doesn't even know he needs to be found?

He's taken from her, but no fear consumes her this time. Instead, there's a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach that keeps her awake at night, and endless frustration as the ghost of something lurks around every corner, but always disappears just before she can discover what it is. It's always right there but it never is, and she knows this, she swears she does, but she doesn't.

There's a strange quietness as she walks around the lab, and an empty passenger seat on her way to work that shouldn't bother her, but does. There are lonely evenings that have always been lonely, but now fill her with a sadness that she can't explain.

My God, there's something wrong, but what is it? What is it?

She walks into the lab one day. The other her is talking to Charlie and Lincoln Lee. The Bishops stand face to face, arguing quietly about something that she probably doesn't understand. Astrid catches her eye as she watches the two old men, and sighs heavily, sending her a small smile.

She begins to cry.

She sobs, and her knees give out as she falls to the ground. Olivia Dunham is not a crier, she does not show weakness, and she hates that she's doing this, breaking down, but she can't help it. It's there, in the lab, all around her, she can feel it. She doesn't know, she still can't figure it out, but she must. She has to. But she can't, it's impossible, completely undoable, and what the hell is she supposed to do?

She feels a hand ghost over her back.

Her eyes open suddenly, and she sees Astrid crouched down in front of her, the rest of everybody else standing over her, not knowing what to do. She turns her head.

There's nobody behind her.

It should frustrate her even more, really, but instead she stops crying. A warm feeling begins to consume her, beginning in the tips of her toes and not stopping until it hits the very top of her head.

For the first time in weeks, she is comforted. She has hope that everything will turn out okay.

She will find this, whatever this is. She doesn't know where or when or how she's going to do it. She doesn't know where to start, and she doesn't know how you start doing something you don't know how to do.

But she knows that she'll find it. A problem, an answer, a solution. Something, someone…

Him.

Who? she asks herself. And she doesn't know. She truly doesn't know.

Just, him. Him, him, him, him, him, him, him…

She always finds him, always finds him, always finds him.

A/N: I'm going through serious Fringe withdraws. September 23rd needs to get here asap.

Reviews would be lovely :)