She wonders if she is just testing a theory.
A few weeks before she left, she told Elliot that they didn't always need each other to make it, and he told her that he knew it, and so she didn't have a problem with taking this on. Actually…she did. But it wasn't a problem according to the Feds, because she had managed to get so far in under this persona of Persephone James that no one thought she could possibly anyone else.
She was that good, Dana Lewis had told her, that they had to move her before the real Persephone decided to make an appearance.
And now she finds herself standing on the rooftop of an apartment building, and wishing that she could hear cars instead of the wind. It is this that causes her to miss the sound of the roof access door opening and the sound of footsteps coming towards her.
"You wouldn't be thinking about jumping and making a run for it, would you?" says a voice, familiar, but unfamiliar at the same time. Olivia whirls around to face the one who has spoken.
"If I jumped, I would be dead, Agent Porter," she says, because she refuses to call this person by any other name, because if she does, it will mean that she will see him again after this is over, and she doesn't really want to.
"Actually, if you were lucky enough, you'd hit the awning, from which you could probably make your escape."
"I'm not in the mood for this right now. I came up here to get away from you and the other Feds, or didn't you understand that?"
She's in no mood to be screwed around with, especially now that she's in a place she's unfamiliar with, because she hasn't yet regained her bearings, and isn't too sure that she's going to be able to do so.
It is her first day without her partner, and already, she is floundering. Agent Porter, whose first name she knows is Dean, ignores both her comment and the tone in which she made it.
"You miss them, don't you?" he asks. She gives him a look.
"I don't know what you're talking about." she says, and turns back towards what she was looking at before. Trees, and open sky, and a nearby park from which she can hear the sound of children laughing.
"I know about you, Detective Benson," Dean continues, ignoring the fact that she's turned around. "The only woman in a squad made up of guys, and the youngest one, to boot. You're lost without them."
"And I'm gonna lose you if you don't back off," Olivia snaps, patience gone. "What do you want?"
"To talk. Maybe to get to know you. I don't like working with people I don't know, and I don't know you."
"You just said you did."
"I said I knew about you. There's a difference."
"So tell me what it is and get it over with. I don't want to talk to you."
There is no making Detective Benson talk when she doesn't want to, but sometimes, there's a way to get Olivia to do it. She is trying to figure out which side of herself she is right now. But she isn't sure.
"There's nothing wrong with missing them, you know," Dean remarks. "I would, too, if I were you."
"I walked away from him."
The words come from her before she can really think about it, and she knows that she is Olivia, and feeling guilty for leaving.
"From who?"
"My partner. I walked away from him, and I don't know what I'm going to do about it." Olivia trails off, a bitter laugh escaping her as she does. "I don't know what I was thinking."
Dean watches her for a moment, and knows, somehow, exactly what she is feeling. This is new to her, but not to him, and he knows how it is to be separated from loved ones, and to not know what's going on with them, because you can't have the contact, unless you want everything to blow apart.
"You know, I'm not trying to be a jerk," he says. "I get what you're saying. And I really don't think there's anything wrong with you missing them."
"I shouldn't have left," Olivia says, almost wistfully. "I should have just stayed, but there was one of the other cases, and we were in each other's faces about it, and I just…I don't know."
And she doesn't, either, and it bothers the hell out of her.
"We even decided we didn't need each other to make it," she says, half-sarcastically. "And now I'm standing here, without the three of them, and you know what, Agent Porter, you're right. I am lost, because I'm so damn used to being with them day in and day out that I'm not too sure what to do with myself right now."
He is the only other person on this side of the country that knows who she really is: Detective Olivia Benson, NYPD, Manhattan Special Victims Unit. Other than that, there is no one else.
"Come with me," he says, finally, and Olivia gives him a questioning look, but follows him, back down the stairs, into the apartment building, and to the apartment that she knows the Feds have occupied, just to keep an eye on her.
"What are we doing?" she asks, and he shrugs, handing her the cell phone he finds stowed away in one of the drawers in the kitchen.
"It's prepaid," he says. "Even if they try, they won't be able to trace it."
She stares at him, as if she is unwilling to believe that he is about to bend the rules for her, but apparently, that's what's happening.
"I suggest," Dean says, before she can say anything else, "That you just do voicemail, because it'll be harder to hang up if you actually get a hold of them."
She knows, then, that he is about to bend the rules for her, and wants to thank him, but doesn't know how.
"Consider it the…easy side of testing the waters," he says, and smiles faintly at the look that crosses her face as she starts to dial the first of the numbers. "I have heard of that theory too, y'know."
And then he leaves, closing the apartment door behind him, and she stares, just waiting for him to come back and change his mind, but he doesn't.
Later, she realizes that the theory of testing waters is something that she doesn't have to do on her own.