Olivia Dunham knows one thing: Lincoln Lee would burn the world down for her.

She knows this before she's curled up in his lap in the middle of Chinatown, in labor and clutching at him with all of the helplessness and desperation these last few months have bred. She knows this before she stumbles out of the place of her captivity; it's why it's Lincoln she calls, why it's Lincoln who she spends her precious time gasping for. She knows this before she grows suspicious and paranoid that someone is watching her, before she starts confiding in Lincoln about her fears.

There had been moments—while she was there, in Chinatown, being held by whoever it was that was so invested in her pregnancy that they had to accelerate—when there had been only one thing she was sure of: she would escape. And if it wasn't of her own doing, it was because he would come for her; Lincoln, who worried after her and smiled after her and cared in a way she sometimes couldn't comprehend.

He loves her. He told her so, in those moments when they were both so terrified that she was going to die, but she had known anyway; in some way, at least, some distant little part of her heart that recognized him as something special.

She doesn't love him; or, at least, she does, but not quite in the same way that he loves her. But she could. There's this potential in her—this potential that's nudged awake sometimes, this potential with the most horrible timing—that comes alive and whispers in her blood that she could love him like he were a part of her. This potential, alive and sentient inside her soul, prods at her from time to time; like when she's giving birth on the floor of a shop in Chinatown.

It's not awkward, though; him having told her that he loves her. Maybe it should be, since she is not exactly in the same place as him at the moment, but Lincoln is her best friend, her closest friend; outside of her mother, he is the closest to her in the world. Olivia is glad for that, because without Lincoln, where would she be?

It has crossed her mind that maybe her mother is right; that maybe her being alive and the baby being alive are miracles. She wonders, distantly, if she would still be alive if she hadn't had Lincoln's hand to hold; there is something healing about clutching for someone you love and knowing that they are there, that they will always be there.

As that potential, lurking in the valves of her heart and the whoosh of her blood through her veins, so helpfully reminds her, she needs Lincoln in a way she can't even begin to comprehend. She'd burn the world down, too, for him.

He sits at the foot of her hospital bed, cradling her little son in his arms and letting the infant wrap his tiny little fingers around Lincoln's pinkie, and asks, "Why didn't you call for an ambulance first? Or the police? Instead of me?"

She gives him vaguely amused look, an are-you-stupid look. "Well, who would you call?"

"You," he says, and attempts to shrug; he learns—as she is—that it is a bit more difficult with such precious cargo in your arms.

"Exactly."

This, she supposes, is want he wants to hear. That he would go to the ends of the earth for her, and she knows it; and she would go to the ends of the earth for him, and he knows it. He does not want an "I love you" like he gave her, because he knows that right now it would be a lie. He wants an affirmation of what it is they do have: a love that's not quite as deep as it could be, an ever-present potential to turn that love into something more, and the kind of fierce loyalty that makes them dangerous to everyone except each other. (And Charlie; each other and Charlie.)

Olivia knows this: Lincoln would burn the world down for her, and she would do the same for him. It's a nice feeling.

A/N: Short and maybe kind of ramble-y, but I HAD to write about this episode. It pretty much blew my mind. I was in a place where I really felt like collapsing into sobs on my floor, but I was in too deep of a state of shock for that to happen.