Well, I'm back. Sort of. Fringe isn't mine, of course.

He watches the silver droplets of liquid falling from the sky bounce and roll off of the smooth, wooden casket in utter shock. She was gone. Her life had been ripped from her in an instant of morbid circumstance. He felt as if he'd lost his the moment she left as well. Who was he without her? A shell. One that was hollow and sullen, gathering specs of unrelenting pity dust.

The speaker up ahead drones on, trying hard to hide his annoyance at the weather and the little splotches of soaked fabric beginning to make patterns onto his crisp "funeral attire". The wind wisps through the ages of the book he's reading out of, adding the sound of fluttering paper to the already present unease.

Peter shifts his gaze toward the wrinkled portrait of Olivia's face sitting nearby. She's almost unrecognizable against the dripping color. Why she wanted this in the rain, he didn't know. "Its peaceful,Peter. It's the only thing that can make me forget." He reluctantly agreed to her proposal, but only because of the quick expression of happiness that overtook her grimace at the time. Now, the familiar grimace mocks him. You should have been there for me, it seethes. You should have saved me. Shaking the voices from his head, he then lightly brushes his beard with a finger and runs a weary hand through the dark strands flopping on the top of his drenched head. I know, he whispers back in defeat.

An endless pit, or so it seems, appears beneath his feet, threatening to engulf his trembling body in a comforting blanket of complete surrender. There would be no more running. There would be no more worry or doubt or grieving. There would be breathing and that would be all that fills his throbbing ears.

A tap on his left shoulder-blade creates ripples of irritation and snaps him out of the daydream.

"Son, the ceremony is over," Walter pants, stumbling slightly. His father's voice is shaky, careful even. "I think this is the appropriate time to leave." Peter only nods, but not before kissing the pale forehead of the woman he was and still is in love with before two broad men lower the eery box into the damp earth.

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