A/N: Quickly written, quickly posted (sorry for any mistakes). After last night, I had to throw something out there. Title is another possible reply from the Magic 8 Ball.

Better Not Tell You Now

Nina laid it out very clearly for her.

Olivia, in the metal and leather Massive Dynamic chair, listened carefully while Nina explained that it was imperative that she - and not her Alter - be Peter's choice. That the fate of the universes depended on it.

"I'm sorry," Olivia said, "I'm not sure I understand." But she did understand; she just couldn't believe what she was hearing. The fate of the universe would come down to whether or not she was lovable.

This was not why she'd joined the FBI.

"Use everything in your power," Nina suggested, eyebrow raised suggestively, and suddenly all her counseling about William Bell and feelings turned into pure horseshit.

Olivia stood up. She nodded.

"I understand," she said.

She left the room. She'd never be back.

If her universe ended, she'd never have the chance to regret it, anyway.

It took her one week to pack and vacate her apartment, which she managed to do in utter secrecy - eventually disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving only a note that nobody was to come after her - and then she was unpacking in a cabin on a remote lake that she'd purchased for a song. Simon Phillips'd had the right idea. Get away: stay away. Her life, like his, was different: not just a little different, and not just for a little while.

She knew that, eventually, someone would track her down. They'd either knock at her door or they wouldn't, and she'd either open the door - or she wouldn't.

The knock comes a month after she moves in. She doesn't have a peephole so she goes around the back of the cabin and peers around the shingles.

"Oh," she says. He's staring right at her. "It's you."

He smiles. "Should've known, right?"

She sighs and follows him in through the front door she always keeps locked.

Coffee hits the table ten minutes later.

"Decaf," she says. "I switched."

"Feel better?"

"Yeah, actually. I do." She smiles over the lip of her mug. He takes it in. He's been scanning her cabin since he walked in.

"And how's that going for you?" he asks. She plays dumb to see what he's noticed.

"How's what going?"

"Lights, but no switches," he says, looking to her walls. "Locks, but no keys. No gun in your hand when you came out to greet me." Clasping his hands around his mug, he feels radiant heat. "Not to mention fresh coffee, but no power lines. And I don't hear a generator."

Olivia sits back in her wooden chair. "Not much else to do out here."

"But practice."

"Yeah." She sips. "But you knew I would."

"Admittedly true. Good coffee, by the way." Sam looks over the table. "Don't suppose you keep cows, too?"

"I still take it black," she says. "Sorry."

They drink coffee together, for a while, in silence. Then he asks her if she's still disappointed. Without clarification, she knows exactly what he means, and the answer is that she'll always be disappointed in how easily Nina and the others bought into that crock of shit Sam cooked up for them.

The fate of the universe coming down to Peter's crush? Hell, no. Seeing how readily Nina was willing to discard Olivia's own importance, her abilities, her central position in the events of both words, was a different kind of crushing. Worse, still, was hearing Nina discuss it with Walter while Olivia waited in the antechamber to her office. Hearing Walter quietly agree that he would help in any way he could.

"I'm sorry it had to hurt, kiddo," Sam says, seeing the look in her eyes.

"Still kinda does," she admits.

"If it makes you feel any better, those people were good for you. So good you might never have left on your own. And don't take it too personally: sometimes people just feel better when a man plays the hero."

"That's supposed to make me feel better about leaving?"

"No. The way you feel right now is supposed to make you feel better about leaving."

"How do I feel?" she challenges. She's got a elbow on the table, hiding her face behind her mug.

"Powerful. Good. Right."

She nods.

"This is the right way," Sam assures her. "You know that, now."

"Yeah." It's getting dark outside. Olivia glances at the ceiling and the light bulb clicks alive.

"You never asked me for the truth," Sam says. Sitting forward in his chair, he pushes his empty mug beside hers. "That's not like you. I thought you'd come see me before you took off."

She shrugs. "Did you tell them the truth? Yet?"

"They can't handle the truth," Sam grins.

"Can I?" Something darkens her eyes, even in the warm tungsten light.

"Oh, I think you can handle a lot more than that." Sam reaches into his pocket and brings out something quite small: a little metal pellet no bigger than a pill. He slides it across the table. "Don't you?"