(Part XVIII) -2036-

{Olivia}

Before he even snuck back in here, she already felt him, a force-field of his gravity that pulled on her skin, an essence of the static that plays in her blood, seems heavier now, if at all possible, in this place, in this world.

Or maybe it's a bio-kenetic attribute, one twice as sensitizing now, passed on to the baby girl nestled in her side, the young woman who's breath is falling peacefully into the nook of her shoulder, whose joyful tears have dried now, along the line of her neck.

"The last time I saw you do that, she was only three feet tall."

The honey gravel of his voice warms her, a beautiful feel of his presence under the heavy weight of her lids, and through her closed eyes, she smiles, her fingers, brushing through their daughter's hair, silk strands weaving in and out of her digits in the whisper of a twenty-year old memory.

"All these years, and she's still so much like you."

She comments, and hears him shuffle, envisions him taking his seat on the vacant side of her...bed.

"If you're referring to her mouth, I was going to warn you."

As she's sure he'd intended, this amuses her, her whole body vibrating with quiet laughter.

"Actually I was talking about what side of the bed she favors."

She hears him chuckle now, soft, short, impressed again, in a rare moment when she proves he's rubbed off on her in more ways then one.

When their daughter came in, he'd excused himself, said he was going to talk to Walter before he'd kissed her, squeezed Etta's hand before giving her a tight hug.

For what seemed like hours they'd talked of nothing and everything, their little girl of her upbringing, of Nina's careful guidance, her hazy memories, preference for risky situation and effortless skill when it comes to snowing people over. In return, she spoke of things like Etta's first tooth, the first time she'd walked, said "mama" and "grandpa" and "transubstantiation", (daddy taught her that one during a case). They spoke of the things they had in common, of her grandfather, her partner, her job, the new sibling she'll have and the days she's already spent with her dad by her side.

It'd all felt so comfortable; a connection, a close knit bond never forgotten, merely lost, finding itself in easy camaraderie and silent affection, a fluid love that infused sanitary air.

All the times I'd imagined what it'd be like, her daughter had said then, her big blue eyes misty, and none of them compares to how great it feels to have both of you back, to finally feel like I have a real home, to belong to my family again. I don't know that I've ever been this happy, Mom.

Me either, baby, she'd responded, caressing the soft skin of her daughter's cheek, sopping up stray tears with the pad of her thumb, you've always been so precious, Etta, I'm so proud of the woman you've become.

It's then when their daughter crawled into this chaise, let the overwhelm of everything sink in as she was lauled to sleep the way she use to be, when she'd be contented by nothing other then the feel of her mother's arms.

"She's everything I'd hoped she would be." she tells him now, her focus on their daughter, taking in her grown form, still small somehow, as her hand moves to caress her back.

"Perfect?"

He questions, his voice low, and she knows he's absorbing the beautiful sight, too.

"Yeah."

The room gets quiet, in the soft way it use to when the three of them and fluffy Rufus shared a queen bed, nothing existing but their perfect little family.

And she knows he's feeling it too, when his hand finds her abdomen, and when she looks at him, there's a gray-blue happiness hinged in another vying concentration, reality commingled in some new private introspection. She knows this look, recognizes the way the line between his brow etches deeper, an embedding of his compartmentalizing thoughts, so she reaches out now, strokes her fingers through much shorter, darker tussles.

It's longer then before, chestnut tufts falling over his temples, and when she brushes them away, she wonders for an instant, if their unborn child will get his unruly curl.

He's pulled back to the room with the touch, and when he smiles, it's radiant, reassuring. She can only guess why he left in the first place.

"What did Walter say?"

She asks him, and the breath he blows out tells her she was right, a mix of amazement and wrangled acceptance; an awe of belief.

"You sure you wanna know?"

In response, she entwines their hands again, their palms pressing together before their fingers hook.

"At this point, I think I can handle it."

So he tells her, speaks of things like warped time, conjoined realities, The Machine, and her determinate will, and when he's finished, when the last, unbelievably fantastic thing leaves his mouth, her only reaction is to grab her head, the new news spinning her headache again as she digests the possible impossibilities.

"Wow," she says, quiet, and for a moment she's silent, her body overcome with the numb of realization, and when she presses her lips together, it's to properly ascertain the knowledge with the effort it requires.

It makes her think, again, that impossible is a coward's way out, the firefight they consistantly surmount, a code they continually re-write, and re-define until nothing is insuperable anymore.

But of course, an easy conqour isn't a luxury their tour de force ever grants them.

"We can't ever escape the most complicated way out of things, can we?"

She comments, and when he shakes his head, it's with an illustrating grin.

"What fun would that be?" he replies, his features colored in sarcasm, "Though, in this case, I'd say complicated just got a few degrees more complicated."

And it's while she absorbs, too, the one hundred and eighty different levels of the theory's complexity, that he thinks of something else.

"And we still kicked its ass."

She laughs at this, understands that he too, knows the curse they keep out-living, the burden on their shoulders they keep defying because they won't give up. They don't give in.

They're not Atlas and they're not Icarus. They don't surrcome to their fate.

That's not their life.

The air takes on a different quality now, as his eyes change, a delicate blue, pale almost under the reaching white-arm and the light shades the angles of his face in a seeminlgy softer flouresence.

"I'd say what's next," he tells her, "but, I guess we already know."

"Well, whatever we face now going forward," she responds, "we're together again, we're a family, and somehow that makes all the circumstances of this world seem a little less frightening."

His mouth stretches, a tiny curve of something pleasant, a pull of the beautiful place where she promised, so long ago now, to live in forever. A show of the same peace, the same tranquility she has knowing their love is whole again.

"I'm not scared of what's to come, Peter." she confidently states, "We've defied so much already to have made it this far, and there's no reason to believe that we won't still."

She squeezes his hand tighter.

"No matter how hard it could be, we'll get by," she says, suddenly feeling heat behind her eyes, "we'll figure it out. Because that's what we do. We survive. And we live."

The smile he's giving her is beautiful, matching the look in that pale-blue, the concord of his soul that's sighing into her own.

And when he reaches out, strokes the side of her face, it deepens, a complete suffocation of everything she is at the feet of his affection, his love, and if it filled her chest anymore, she fears she'd explode from the heat of it.

"That's what having faith gives us."

It's a simple statement, a pleasantly stern re-iteration of what she'd said earlier, and it only makes her ten times more glad that she'd taken his last name, that she'd said "yes" when he'd asked her to marry him because there's no one else in the world who's nearly so perfect, so absolutely stunning with permeating inner beauty.

All these twist and turns of our fate, he'd said to her, years ago, before sticky fingerprints glittered every wall of their home, they're nothing compared to this. And in the quiet of her bedroom, as they laid bare, his sweat drying on the edge of her skin, he'd pressed his nose to her cheek, left the fainest butterfly kiss there as he whispered in her ear. This is the greatest thing about us, Liv, that we're still here together, after everything we've been through, we're still here.

And for the rest of my life, I'll only ever want you. I'll only ever love you.

There's no one else who could ever take so much of her.

"I love you." she tells him now, leaning into his palm, and it steals her breath away, again, the way his eyes hold a hundred and one emotions, a shine of everything he feels for her caught in deep gray, darkened now, by way he's looking at her under his lashes.

Forever, I'll want you.

"I believe it."

He responds, and when he kisses her, she tastes his happiness, his lust on the tip of his tongue, and again, her skin is brimming with his electricity, a hot spark of the magnetic profusion that lives now, deep in her viens, and before it grows urgent, before this cell-numbing chemistry calls out for more, he pulls back, as crazed and dizzied as she.

"We really gotta stop doing this in public places."

And quietly, she laughs, and when she does the light above them flickers for only a second, buzzes brighter just like the vitals machine, and to follow, as if in silent response, her daughter sighs, burrows her head a little deeper into the side of her body. And the bullet dangling off his neck, it moves too, sways a little in the air before it settles down again.

And the look he's giving her now is priceless, a light blue sparkle of realization, awe and second-hand amusement under a raised brow, and when he smiles, the high arch crimps those beautiful eye lines.

Then his hand finds her middle, the heat of his band melting through her T-shirt as he absorbs again the miracle they've created together.

"This kid definitely takes after you."

And for the umpteenth time in their life together, she couldn't be more happy that this beautiful man she loves so relentlessly wears fatherhood so effortlessly, so amazingly, that it takes her breath away.

There's no one else she'd give so much to. Forever, she'll want him, too.

And because she can't help it, because she's so godamn thrilled with the way it feels, she pulls him into her mouth again.

This is their salvation, the only way they'll survive.

Together, in love as a family, they'll make it by, because they're meant for more then failure, and they always will be.

Again and again, she'll make sure of it.

They'll know no other fate, now.

They're not meant to.