“A Short Story About Love” is episode fifteen of season four of Fringe.
Olivia meets with Nina Sharp in a restaurant; Nina has been enacting security measures after what her double did in the previous episode, “The End of All Things”. Olivia talks about how she’s in love with Peter; Nina has spoken to Walter who thinks the cortexiphan is allowing Peter to make her remember things. Olivia says that she remembers things Peter doesn’t know, though. Nina says they will figure things out. Olivia says they should do this more often. Except they do this every Saturday; Olivia has forgotten. Nina is worried and Olivia will talk to Walter.
A woman arrives home after a funeral. She’s listening to a message as a man with possibly a burnt face is behind her applying a liquid to himself. She turns the light on and sees the man; he grabs her as she tries to ruin. Then kisses her. She kisses him back, willingly. Then starts struggling and he suffocates her.
Olivia arrives at the lab where Walter explains the teddy bear cam he got to watch the cleaners caught what happened with Peter and the Observer. When the Observer disappeared, a table was knocked over; Walter has a blur on the video. Astrid arrives with apparatus designed to slow down video.
Olivia gets a call from Broyles about the dead woman, and she heads there. The marks around the woman’s neck aren’t bruising but caused by the reaction to a chemical on the killer’s hands. This is the second killing this month with the same marks. And each woman’s husband had just died, dumped in a field, completely dehydrated. In both cases, the DNA of the dead husband was found on the victim’s neck.
Walter is watching the video. He calls Peter, who was leaving for New York, staying away from Olivia as Walter said. Walter thinks the Observer did something to Peter’s eye.
The video shows other Observers taking September, who manages to drop something in Peter’s eye, unseen by them. A small thing with writing on it was placed on Peter’s iris.
The thing has an address, 228 1/2 Morrow Street, written on it. Walter thinks it would have been transferred into Peter’s brain, leaving him unaware but compelled to visit. Then people turn up with the woman’s body.
The killer is cleaning something out and smelling a liquid.
Walter has the dead husband’s body as well. He says that his pheromones were also lost, and on the wife’s neck was not only DNA but a very concentrated solution of her husband’s pheromones. He agrees that yes, it could be a kind of love potion. Walter wants the first victims. Lincoln trips over Peter’s bags; Walter says Peter was heading for New York. Olivia didn’t know.
Peter is looking for the address. There’s an unlabelled door between 228 and 230; it looks like September’s home. Or where he lives.
The killings don’t take up as much of this episode. Olivia asks Walter about reversing what’s happening to her. Peter is finding stuff September has left. And he gets a surprise at the end.