Lagan

Disclaimer: I didn't create Fringe. Opening poem is from The Kokinshu, translated by Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius. Starts at the end of "Patient 9."

Taira no Sadafun, Kokinshu 666:

I shall not say I
do not know you for I hope
to remain in your
embrace as long as the depths
of the White River flow clear

He heard footsteps entering the hospital room, and turned to see Olivia. Relief washed over him.

"Olivia," he breathed. "Thank God you're here."

She stared at him in confusion, as if trying to place him. She shook her head slightly. "Who are you?"

His face fell as a realization hit him: the reason no one had been giving him answers was that no one remembered him. How could that be possible?

He stared at her hard for a long minute trying to figure it out. He shook his head. There was no way she would be teasing him, pretending not to know him. Which meant that she really didn't remember him. "Olivia?"

"Yes, that's me," she confirmed.

Was it? Even the Olivia from the other side wouldn't pretend not to know him, but could she be some kind of shapeshifter? Or had he somehow landed in the wrong dimension?

He took a step closer to her, closer than was socially appropriate for a stranger.

Her eyes widened in shock, with a trace of fear, and a trace of something else. He stared into her eyes, searching them.

It was Olivia. She was his Olivia. He looked into her eyes for several seconds longer. "I'm Peter," he said in a whisper. "You don't know me?"

"No," she replied shakily, and took a step back to calm her rushing blood. "I've never met you before." She didn't say she'd never seen him before, because that would be a lie. "Do you have a last name, Peter?"

Pain and confusion were evident in his face. "Bishop."

"Bishop."

"Do you know Dr. Walter Bishop?" he asked.

She was still staring at him. "Yes."

"I'm his son."

That was impossible. Peter Bishop was dead. Long dead. This man either didn't know that, or...

Or what? What possible reason would he have for impersonating Walter's son?

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She flashed him a smile and walked to his side. "What's wrong," she said, taking the tone she used with suspects, "is that Peter Bishop is dead."

She watched his reaction. He looked distressed, and shook his head in flat denial. "That's not true. I'm right here. I'm alive. The doctors were pretty clear on that point."

He made a joke even when faced with proof he was lying. Who was this guy? And why did he feel so familiar?

"You might be alive," she replied, "you might even be Peter Bishop. It's a common enough name. But you're not Dr. Walter Bishop's son. So I'm going to ask this again: who are you?"

He sank slowly into a sitting position on the side of the bed and rubbed his face. "I don't know what's going on here, but if I gave you any other answer than the one I already gave I'd be lying." He blinked rapidly. "Can I talk to Walter?"

Without answering, she walked out of the room.

Once out of sight in the hallway she took several deep breaths and tried to come to terms with what she was feeling. When he'd advanced on her, stood mere inches from her face, she should have drawn her gun. That's what she would always do. But something had stopped her. And as he stood so close, eyes locked on hers, she'd felt something. She felt like he wanted to kiss her. Or maybe she was the one who had wanted to kiss him.

In all the bizarre cases she'd ever worked, she'd never felt her emotions so confused.

On some level, Olivia knew that everything she'd said about security was just a justification. She was just glad Broyles had accepted her argument.

Objectively this was a bad idea from any angle, letting a man she didn't know into her house. A man who technically didn't exist, no less. He was Peter Bishop; genetic testing had proven that he was Walter Bishop's biological son. Walter refused to believe it, insisting there was some other explanation, Broyles wasn't sure what to believe, and Astrid was keeping her opinions to herself.

For her part, Olivia couldn't decide whether to trust her own instincts.

Normally, of course, keeping a person of interest in her house would be out of the question, but considering the circumstances...he knew too much about Fringe Division; she was one of the few people with the security clearance to keep an eye on him, and the only one who had volunteered.

The man who called himself Peter was sitting at her kitchen table, looking back at her.

"Do you want something to eat?" she inquired.

He wondered if he should ask her to prepare one of the packets of hard-to-find spicy Indonesian noodles that she kept in a stack on the middle shelf between the peanut butter jar and the spice rack her sister had given her as a Christmas present, but he didn't want to freak her out any more than she already was.

"No, thank you. I'm not hungry," he claimed, even though he was actually famished.

"If I don't feed you, I may be cited for mistreating a prisoner," she said.

He shrugged. "If you have anything quick and easy." He, of course, knew that she didn't have anything in her kitchen that didn't fit that description. "Mi goreng, maybe."

She jolted. But she didn't ask how he knew she had those noodles. He knew so much about their lives that it shouldn't surprise her that he knew what she had on her shelves. Besides, maybe he'd checked her shelves when she wasn't looking.

She put on some water to boil.

"You don't have to let me stay here."

"I don't have much choice. You don't have the security clearance to stay at the lab, but we need to keep an eye on you, make sure you don't make a break for it."

He closed his eyes. It stung for her to suggest he would try to leave, after how much he went through to get back to her.

"Besides," she added, glancing back at him, "Where would you go? You don't have an ID, any money, and if no one remembers you, there's no one you could go to."

It was true, Peter realized. But then something else occurred to him. "Of course, if I were lying, I might have an apartment, or some money stashed away, or someone waiting for me with a getaway car, in which case you could follow me and find out about it. That's what you would do, Olivia. That means part of you believes me."

"Hey, the door's right there. You can leave whenever you want. But you're right, I would follow you."

"You don't have to worry about me leaving," he sighed. "I lived with Walter, and apparently he doesn't remember me, so I really don't have anywhere to go."

"You lived with Walter at the lab?"

"No. We have a house in..." It suddenly hit him that, if he really hadn't existed in this timeline, he not only didn't have a house, but he had no other material possessions, no bank account, no money, no contacts.

But he still had his memories. He knew half a dozen languages with varying degrees of fluency. He still knew how to con people. He knew where to find people who would make him fake IDs in exchange for favors. He always used to travel light, both literally and metaphorically. But he didn't want to live like that again.

"We had a house," he said, surprised to hear swallowed tears crack his voice.

The water was boiling. Olivia emptied two packets of noodles in it and mixed in the seasoning and palm oil. "That's hard to imaging, Walter living in a house." She spoke with forced levity. "I guess you really made a difference in his life."

"Yeah."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the kitchen for a couple of minutes.

When Olivia placed a bowl of mi goreng in front of him, Peter noticed the burn on her arm. It triggered a flash of memory. He reached out without thinking and touched her wrist. "How did you get that?"

She looked at the burn. "How do you think?" Her question wasn't accusatory, it was curious.

His brow wrinkled as he tried to remember. "You were lying in your bed. I wanted to wake you up. I just wanted to get your attention. I'm sorry. I didn't know it would hurt you." He shook his head. The memory seemed out of place. Like it was something he'd imagined.

Olivia was frozen at his touch, completely helpless. No one had ever done that to her.

He caught himself and drew his hand away, releasing her from his spell.

She shook her head with a slight smile. "It's nothing."

Sitting down, she wrapped up a forkful of noodles and waited for it to cool. "So, according to you, when did we meet?"

He watched her. "September 2008. You needed Walter's help to save your partner's life, but you couldn't get to him without a relative, and I being his only living relative, you came to Baghdad to find me and drag me back."

"Baghdad? You were army?"

"More like an independent contractor, but not everything I did was exactly on the up and up. How I got there is a long story, and I'm really not proud of it. I'd spent my entire adult life trying to get as far away from my father as I possibly could, and I wasn't really eager to take you up on your offer. I went out of my way to avoid making a good first impression. But you wouldn't take no for an answer."

"How so?"

"You threatened me. You told me if I didn't go with you, you'd let my whereabouts become known to certain interested parties. You were bluffing, and I figured you were bluffing, but I decided not to take that chance. You dragged me back to the States, and next thing I knew I was the legal guardian of the father I'd sworn I'd never have anything to do with, working for you, investigating the craziest stuff you can imagine." He kept watching her, hoping for any spark of familiarity. "I kept saying I would leave, but time and again you talked me out of it." He shook his head and his smile faded as he slowly twirled noodles around his fork. "I wish you could remember."

"So do I."

He was surprised by the sincerity in her voice.

"Tell me more," she requested. "Tell me about some cases we worked together."

They talked for over an hour, long after finishing dinner. Olivia made them both camomile tea, on the excuse that it helped her get to sleep. She didn't want to leave the presence of her enigmatic house guest, and he didn't want her to leave.

Finally, after midnight, she said they had an early morning and should both get some rest. She told him he could sleep in her guest bedroom, and watched as he went straight to it without needing to be told which room it was.

As soon as Peter closed his eyes, he realized he'd never been so tired. This was the first time he'd slept since...he wasn't sure. When he was wherever he was before swimming up through that lake, was there sleep there? Already it was hard to remember. The images and feelings of it tumbled around his memory, and he wasn't sure how real they were. He fell asleep, but he had horrible dreams, and kept jolting awake.

Olivia couldn't sleep. She couldn't stop thinking about the man in the other bedroom. Peter Bishop. If he were lying, how to explain his presence, his existence? And if he was telling the truth, what did that mean for everything else? He knew her. It wasn't just that he knew things about her that he shouldn't know, it was the way he said her name when she walked into the hospital room, the way he looked at her.

It wasn't just that he knew her: there was something between them.

She had left her door open, to hear in case he did try to leave. She heard a noise coming from his room, and got out of bed to investigate.

She slowly opened the door to the guest bedroom. Her guest's breathing was ragged. Then he made what sounded like a whimper.

She took a step toward him, wondering if he was asleep, and if she should wake him.

"Liv."

She jumped slightly at the sound of his voice. Had he been saying her name, or the word 'live', as in he wanted to live, or was begging someone else to live?

He answered the question a moment later with another somniloquence. "Livia."

He bolted awake at a touch. At first, when he felt the unfamiliar bed beneath him and saw the curtains backlit by moonlight, he didn't know where he was. Then he saw Olivia sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Liv!" He sat up and wrapped his arms around her.

"Hey," she whispered. "It sounded like you were having a pretty bad dream. What was it about?"

"I don't remember. Liv, I feel like the world is ending." As he spoke, his memories came creeping back: the future he had seen, Olivia's death, the machine, and the dizzying wasteland where he'd been lost for he didn't know how long.

He drew away and stared at Olivia, who looked like a beautiful mirage in the moonlight. He frowned, trying to figure out what was real and what had been a dream. "I'm sorry if this sounds crazy, but...do you remember me?"

She looked at him for a long moment. She wasn't sure if he remembered the events of the previous day and was asking if there was some spark of recognition in her when she looked at him, or if he thought yesterday's events had been a dream and he wanted reassurance that she was the Olivia he'd worked with for years.

Considering the way he'd embraced her when he woke up, she figured it was the latter.

"Until I saw you in the hospital yesterday, I'd never met you before," she said carefully, not yet wanting to admit that she had dreamed about him and longed for him before she ever laid eyes on him. Not now.

His face fell in the same look of devastation he'd had in the hospital room when she asked who he was. He pulled his arms away from her, crossed them, and looked at the window. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"It's okay," she said quickly, aching in sympathy for him.

He sighed. "Ever wake up from a nightmare, and then get that feeling of relief when you realize it was just a dream?" He swallowed. "It sucks when that doesn't happen."

"I'm sorry." She hesitantly reached out and placed her hand on his arm. Part of her was selfishly wishing his arms were still around her. "Hey, Peter, listen to me: you're gonna be fine. We're gonna get through this."

He looked back at her, wanting to believe her.

"We're going to figure out what happened and fix it," she continued. "Try to get some sleep, okay?"

"Right." He lay back down and closed his eyes.

Several minutes later, he heard Olivia leave. A tear slid from the corner of his closed eyelid.