Disc: I don't own anything. Seriously.

Requiem

For this world, things were getting better.

But for Olivia Dunham, things weren't getting better. Things would never be better, not ever again.

She pulls her hair back with an almost militaristic precision. Not a hair is allowed to escape. Looking in the mirror, Olivia thinks she looks very much like her doppleganger, even with her own dark hair. There are circles under her eyes. Her nails are bitten to the quick. She looks horrible.

For once in her life, she doesn't care.

Her military uniform makes her look boxy. She straightens the front. The navy blue contrasts starkly with her pale skin in the florescent light of her bathroom. She pulls at her pants and unrolls the end of her left sleeve. She takes a breath, confronting her reflection in the mirror.

She nods. But, inside, she is still screaming.

They met in the Academy. He was sitting alone in the mess hall on the first day. Olivia had spent most of her childhood standing up for various nerdy kids against bullies, so it was natural for her to go and sit across from him.

She was right about him being a nerd. He was wearing awful, thick-rimmed glasses. "You should really get your eyes fixed." She told him, digging into the whatever-it-was they'd been served.

"What?" He looked up from his own food. Olivia looked at him appraisingly. He wasn't bad-looking. His eyes were blue-or maybe green, she wasn't sure-and she'd always been a sucker for pretty eyes.

"Your glasses, dummy." She gestured towards his face with a fork. He leaned back from the fork jabbing near his eyes. "They're horrible."

"Hm." He tilted his head to the side, his mouth quirking a little. "Thanks for the tip…" He trailed off, waiting for her name.

"Olivia." She supplied, giving him one of her less-mocking smiles.

"Lincoln." He stuck out a hand for her to shake. She took it.

It takes her ten minutes to find her shoes. Then, another ten to fix her makeup. She doesn't really know why she's bothering. She's always been Olivia Dunham, impenetrable and unshakeable. But now, she's been broken. Her insides are on display for everyone to see and she can't find it in her to force the heart hanging from her sleeve back into her chest.

She flies out of the door ten minutes late, crushing her hat onto her perfectly-done hair. Her shoes click on the stairs and she longs for the reassuring thump of combat boots instead.

Olivia rushes out into the rain, not bothering with an umbrella. She's already late. She's always late when Lincoln forgets to remind…Well. It seems she's always going to be late from now on.

In a lot of ways, the Academy was like high school. And, just like high school, there was a "cool table" at lunch. Olivia Dunham's table was the "cool table." There were always a dozen people attempting to fit around a table built for four fewer people. Everyone wanted to sit there.

But no matter how many people tried to squeeze in, Olivia always saved a seat for Lincoln Lee. He'd slide in with a grin for her and an apologetic shrug for everyone else vying for his seat. It was funny, really.

Olivia was growing to like Lincoln. He was a little hesitant to join in her games and her jokes. For the first two or three weeks, he was quiet. He only talked to her.

But as time went on, he expanded his audience. He seemed a bit surprised that people genuinely liked him. Olivia was perplexed. Where had this boy been hiding at? He was funny, he was charismatic, people wanted his attention.

Still, she knew that she was his favorite. She got to deliver the punchlines to his best jokes. He laughed the loudest at her funny stories. He had a special goofy grin reserved just for her. He made her feel special, this boy with horrible glasses and an oddly endearing smile.

She neglected to tell him she had a boyfriend waiting for her.

Exactly six people are at Lincoln Lee's funeral. Olivia looks at the faces. Broyels. Lincoln's parents and his brother. Farnsworth. The pastor. And Olivia herself made seven. Suddenly, the sadness gathered in her chest crystalizes into icy, impenetrable rage. Seven people? Seven people stopped and made time to respect a man who had saved the entire world more times than Olivia can remember.

This isn't fair.

Things are getting better here, but that doesn't mean that Fringe agents have stopped dying. It's commonplace, accepted. They go out, they fight the impossible fight and sometimes they die. Lincoln Lee is a name forgotten between hundreds of others. He is not the first casualty in this war, a war that has raged for as long as Olivia has been alive.

Lincoln was a man who people listened too. People liked him, wanted his attention. He was brave, he made bad jokes, always had a laugh ready, never said a bad word about someone who didn't deserve it… Olivia finds herself not sad, but angry as she thinks of the man who was her partner.

The world does not stop for Lincoln Lee. The bustling city behind Olivia pays no respect to the fallen soldier. Olivia watches numbly as a coffin is lowered into the earth. Mud stains the edges of the flag draped over it.

She watches as it disappears into the gaping hole by her feet and she is numb. She is a thing made of ice, feeling nothing. She watches as Lincoln's mother turns away, sobbing. That is what she should be doing. This is her partner. There is no person on earth she had ever trusted more, depended on more, felt more for…

But she is motionless as the last remains of her partner disappear into the wet earth. She watches as they give Lincoln's mother a folded flag. She cries harder. Olivia feels empty. She is not Lincoln's wife, girlfriend or anything else beside his partner, but she still feels like she deserves that folded flag.

He was a part of her. Still is a part of her, no matter that he's gone.

She is numb.

He's not coming back.

"Woo!" Lincoln hugged her close after they graduated. "We did it!"

"So high school." She playfully shoved him away, but he laughed and held on. She couldn't stop smiling. They were Fringe agents now, the country's first line of defense against the weird, strange and impossible. She was excited.

"Know what I wanna go do now?" He tugged her hair teasingly and she grinned back at him.

"Protect the world against Fringe events?" She teased, dancing out of his arms.

"Nope." He put his hands on her arm and whirled her to face him. "Let's go get wasted!"

"High school." She told him.

Nevertheless, they sat together in a bar an hour or so later with the remnants of their "cool table." Olivia hated drinking. She'd never told Lincoln. It had never really come up. So, she sat at the bar drinking club sodas as he gulped down six and a half beers.

"What'reyoudrinking?" Somehow, Lincoln managed to slur an entire sentence into one word. Olivia laughed, delighted. He was a fairly adorable drunk. His glasses were hanging off the end of his nose.

"Soda." She swirled the cup. "Finest in the city."

"No alcohol?" He looked intensely perplexed.

"I don't drink." She smiled at him, feeling superior.

"Awwww." He pouted. "Why'd you come then?"

She shrugged. "Somebody has to drive."

He laughed manically, as if that statement was insanely funny. A moment later, he tumbled off his stool.

After having a good laugh, paying the bartender and taking a good number of pictures of Lincoln drooling on the floor, Olivia picked her drunk friend up and helped him towards her car. They were stumbling under a streetlight when he suddenly dug his heels into the ground. "Liv." His voice was surprisingly steady. "Stop."

"Come on, Lincoln." She laughed and tugged at his arm. "Let's go."

He looked down at her, a strange burning look in his eyes. Her next joke died in her throat and she found that, suddenly, the air seemed rather thin. "Olivia…" He pushed the hair away from her face and she knew, she knew she should stop him.

She didn't.

His fingers traced the curve of her cheek. She opened her mouth to say something, but it was too late. He bent down and kissed her.

Olivia hates drinking.

But tonight, it doesn't matter. She sits alone in her darkened apartment and knocks back half a dozen shots in a few minutes. Anything, anything at all, will do to dull the hot-cold feelings of loss and anger raging through her body.

Her lips sting. Her mouth tastes like cheap vodka. She runs her tongue over her teeth and grimaces. For a few moments, she is lost in the physical, in her body's reaction to the alcohol. Her head feels heavy, her fingers tingle, the room swims in and out of focus.

She stares at the wall in front of her, not thinking, not feeling. The burning in her throat does nothing to dispel the iciness inside her chest. A moment later she realizes that her cheeks are wet. She puts a hand to them and feels tears that she doesn't remember crying.

She is so numb and she doesn't understand why. Olivia Dunham felt everything. She was not her alternate, a cold and icy version of herself that seemed to keep everything she felt trapped beneath her skin. She was fire, she was rage and love and passion. Her partner, her best friend, was gone. And she felt…nothing.

Perhaps, she reflects, it's like getting a limb or some other essential part of her being cut off. Her body is recoiling from the shock, attempting to shield her from the reality of it as long as it can. But there can be no shielding herself from this, not anymore.

She takes another shot, flinching at the bitterness of the alcohol.

The more she drinks, the more angry she becomes. At herself, at her alternate, at Walter Bishop, at Broyels, at Lincoln himself. But mostly, she is angry at the people who took her partner away. She decides in that moment that no force in either universe will be able to stop her from finding and destroying the people who killed Lincoln Lee.

Strangely, the kiss and following revelation that Olivia had a boyfriend hadn't done much to alter Lincoln and Olivia's friendship.

"So, Frank?" Lincoln raised an eyebrow. They were driving to a Fringe event, their first Fringe event, and Lincoln was quizzing Olivia on her boyfriend.

"Frank." Olivia nodded. She didn't want to talk about this.

"What does he do?" Lincoln's newly unbespectacled eyes were fixed on the road.

"Uh…he works for the CDC." Olivia examined her nails. Part of her hated that Lincoln had taken her advice and gotten his eyes fixed. He looked good without them, but she missed the terrible thick frames. "Containing smallpox."

"Cool." Was all Lincoln said.

"Look," Olivia looked over at him. "I'm sorry I didn't…"

"Nah," Lincoln waved a hand and glanced away from the road to smile at her. "Don't worry about it, Liv."

"Okay." She smiled back, but still felt terribly guilty. Despite Lincoln's drunkenness, it had been a good kiss. A very good kiss. The best kiss Olivia had been on the receiving end of in quite a while, in fact. They had chemistry, that much had been clear for a while now, but Olivia hadn't expected a lab explosion.

Part of her wished that she had been drunk too so they could have gone on kissing for a while longer. Because, try as she might to deny it, she definitely would have kissed him and kept on kissing him.

Still, that didn't change the fact that she really did care for Frank. So, they would be friends. Close friends, good friends, best friends, but nothing more.

It was the right decision, of that much Olivia was sure. That didn't stop her from wondering what a sober kiss with Lincoln Lee might be like.

As she straps on a gun and laces up her boots, Olivia regrets more than anything that they never even tried to be something more. She straightens up, pulling her hair back.

She isn't her alternate. She isn't cold, she isn't guarded and she knows she has Lincoln Lee to thank for a lot of that. Still, she fashions her hair into a severe ponytail and takes a deep breath before leaving her apartment.

She's going now, going to find the people who killed her partner. She will find them at any cost. She would happily die to bring them down, just as she knows Lincoln would do for her. Her combat boots thump on the stairs and her rough cargo pants pull against her thighs.

There will be no stopping her.

For this world, things were getting better.

But for Olivia Dunham, things weren't getting better. Things were getting even.

A/N: So, there's that. As you can tell, I'm not even a little bit okay with any version of Lincoln being dead. Still, I'm intrigued to see where the whole Altlivia/Our!Lincoln things goes. Review and all that good stuff.