Peter has forgiven me for my absence and I hope, dear Fringe readers, that you will too. I think the finale stunned me into an inability to properly cage the plot bunnies.

Albedineity's Flag

"This isn't the world I ordered."

Her bleary eyes leave the warehouse entrance and are rubbed into focus on her stakeout partner. A woman of direct tendencies, Olivia sips on annoyance and spits out exasperation when he says these things out of the absolutely nowhere he came from. Chasing Peter's thoughts is exhausting; fate failed to supply running shoes. Under the dim lamplight, his expression gives little away but he's got a white-knuckle grip on the white flag. She can pinpoint the exact moment he started waving it.

"Not what you ordered?" She gestures to the sleeping world hovering behind the filthy lot and boarded buildings.

"Fifteen minutes late and the wrong toppings."

It's just like the stubborn universe to screw up an order. But if the world is a pizza, he's pushing it away, already too full of its intrusive flavor. She understands the sentiment but his timing needs work. She needs the old Peter, the tease and the heat but he's entered into a new, unwelcoming pattern. There's a sense that truth has revoked her invitation. But this can't be dissected now. Tonight's task, in the unfairness of life, is watching no one doing nothing in the nowhere of now.

But damned if she doesn't keep trying. "I trust our convict would like to amend his order too."

"He'd probably like fries with his handcuffs." And the reward is a hallelujah chorus by impoverished angels.

"I'll be sure to ask when I haul him in."

The smile is only detected by microscope and Peter turns his gaze upward. "I think maybe he's freer than me."

The heavens cast a rusted silver glow on the wind-shifting litter and the image of beauty gracing refuse seems to fit her life. And Olivia hates that she's thinking like him now.

"What toppings would you prefer?" She's fairly sure the answer will disrupt her sleep tonight. There may be tears.

His tone assures it. "Doesn't matter. They're stuck in another dimension with my other family enjoying my other life."

When Walter died, the observer paid his respects by digging secrets out of the gravesite. Olivia had watched as a handful of words buried themselves into Peter even as his father was being commended to the ground.

She should be sobered by the surveillance, but mostly, she thinks about being drunk.

The first genuine confession Olivia can recall occurred after the first drinks and last magic tricks, when he reigned in his slur enough to inform her that he never felt that he belonged. His own skin was oddly comfortable even as the world around him seemed perpetually wrong. The voice of a bald man had whispered the reason over a grave bearing Peter's name.

There's no victory tonight, not on any front. A flag of surrender is hoisted at Peter's gate and while she has occasion to pass through, the hypnotic waving of blinding white is nauseating. But she keeps an ax handy, chopping bits of the pole in an effort to slowly bring the flag down. Olivia intends to trample the cloth, reverse his surrender and resurrect their bond.

And maybe, just maybe, she'll be the one who gets his order right.

Albedineity = Whiteness