Joel Wyman said "I would want to sit in my car the day after the final episode and think, "I know it's over, but I can kind of imagine where everybody is. I can still feel these people I loved. They're not gone."

Thank you, Joel, for creating this amazing world and such finely crafted characters, for making it so easy to envision what happened after Walter and Michael walked into the future, and so hard to give them up. This one's for you.

As always, many, many thanks to my extraordinary Beta reader, fellow Fringie, and quantum entangled writing partner and sister at heart, OConnellaboo.

Originally published at the Fringenuity web site for Fringe Fan Friday.

All characters property of Bad Robot, Fox, WB.

Prologue

Olivia smoothed the curls away from Etta's face and pressed a kiss to the sleeping child's forehead before slipping out of her room. She walked down the hallway to their bedroom; finding it empty, as she often did lately, she walked downstairs.

At the foot of the stairway, she paused and listened for signs of activity. She heard faint strains of music from the back of the house. She paused in the doorway of the darkened room, its only occupant barely illuminated by a small lamp on the side table next to the overstuffed chair. Peter's face was in the shadows, but she could see a dog-eared album cover in his hands. His fingers traced the worn spots on the cover as he gazed into their back yard, watching the fireflies' tiny bursts of gold.

He didn't look at her as she entered the room, just reached for his glass on the side table. She perched on the arm of his chair, and silently accepted the glass he offered after he'd taken a sip. Black Bush, a couple of ice cubes barely covered by the whisky.

"This was one of his favorites, wasn't it?" she said after the song ended.

"Violet Sedan Chair," he replied with a low chuckle. "Remember Roscoe Joyce? The old guy from the nursing home that saw his son who'd been dead for twenty-five years? He was one of Walter's heroes."

"He was so excited," Olivia said, with a soft smile. She took the album cover from his hands and walked over to the turntable Peter had brought home a week earlier. She removed the album from the turntable and sleeved the vinyl carefully, then turned to him, a questioning look on her face. When he shook his head, she replaced the album on one of the shelves commandeered by Walter's extensive collection and walked back to his chair.

She held out her hands to pull him up, but instead, he tugged her gently into his lap. She relaxed into his loose embrace and rested her head against his shoulder, nestling her face into his neck. He smelled of whisky, and soap, and faintly of the cologne he wore occasionally, and of something that was uniquely Peter. It was why she loved sleeping in his shirts after they'd made love, and why she hated taking his peacoat to the cleaners; it lost that Peter scent that permeated the dark wool.

He rubbed his thumb over the fingers of her left hand, playing with the simple band that matched his own. She waited… sometimes he needed to talk, sometimes he just needed her close to share the silence and the dark as he sank into his own thoughts.

"Etta told me she missed her grandpa today," he murmured. "She wanted to know if I missed him, too." He sighed. "It's been thirty days…"