Darkly
i.
Olivia, he remembers, is not one who always hides her emotions. It comes and goes, waves of tears and outbursts, then times of calm, where she looks at him with that bland look she gets sometimes and assures him that she's fine. Of course, Elliot. With water threatening somewhere behind her eyes, way back where it won't ever be in danger of spilling, and he thinks maybe he's the only one who sees.
So maybe it's just one of those times. Those years. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with him after all, and the fact that he can't read her face when he sees her doesn't mean anything.
But he can't help thinking that maybe she has something to hide. And he can't help hating that he doesn't know what it is.
ii.
When he sees her desk, it's like someone's punched him in the stomach and he doesn't know why and he doesn't know who to blame and he doesn't know how long it's going to hurt like this, how long this gaping wound somewhere inside him is going to be rubbed raw.
"She wouldn't leave without saying anything," he hears, somewhere behind him, and he echoes the words (she wouldn't leave, she wouldn't leave, not without saying goodbye, not without telling me) in the back of his mind as he reaches for the phone to dial her number (by heart; he knows it by heart).
iii.
Briefly, Olivia wonders if this is what it's like to be Alex.
There are occasional moments when she's envied her. To be able to disappear from her life and leave everything behind; to take her plagues and her horrors and just drop them on the sidewalk and walk on. Olivia cannot deny that the idea holds a certain twisted appeal.
But three days in Oregon have changed her mind. I can't do this, she wants to scream, slumped against the walls that she didn't paint in the house she doesn't own in the life that isn't hers, but she can't make too much noise or people would wonder. And nobody can wonder.
She wonders if this is how Alex misses New York, or if it's different because Olivia knows she'll go back, or if it's the same because neither of them know when things will change. She wonders if Alex thinks of herself as Emily or whoever the hell she is now, accidentally, if she turns around by instinct upon hearing the name that isn't hers, if she remembers not to look up in crowded restaurants when the word Alex jumps out of a conversation and smothers her, leaves her gasping. And she wonders if Alex ever wakes up in the middle of the night with the sheets twisted around her ankles, breathing the name of a person she can hardly even remember anymore.
iv.
They pass by each other in the hallway once before he notices. He's walking with the woman Olivia supposes is his new partner, and they're talking about something extremely important, she's sure, and he doesn't look up and doesn't see her. But it's okay. She wouldn't expect his world to change depending on whether or not she's in it.
The second time she sees him, it's in court, and he's across the aisle and catches her eye. She smiles, a faint wavery line, and his jaw drops a fraction of a centimeter before he remembers to keep stoic. He nods then, once, and pretends to pay attention to the proceedings. But he isn't and she isn't, and both of them know it, even though they never say.
On the way out the door for a recess, he lays a hand on her shoulder, light, like she might be imagining things and turn around to see the ghost of someone she once knew, a very long time ago.
"Hey," he says, and he sounds curious and angry and sad and hopeful and resigned, all at once. She can't figure out how he manages to break her with just one word.
"Hi," she says back, like it's the most normal thing in the world, like people who are so darkly in love with each other can weave in and out of each other's lives without fragmenting the universe.
"So," he shuffles his feet, "how was Oregon?"
"It was all right," she says. "But it wasn't…y'know. It wasn't here."
"Yeah," he says, "I know." This should be easier, he suddenly thinks; they have been in each other's lives for nearly a decade, but now everything is difficult and dangerous and frozen in some way he can't quite name.
"It's good to be back," she tells him. "I saw your – your, um, Detective Beck? That's her name, right? Casey said…" She jams her hands into her pockets.
"Dani," he says, suddenly awkward.
"She treating you right?" she asks cautiously.
"She isn't you," he tells her.
She's caught off-guard. "Well, no. No, she wouldn't be."
"I mean, don't get me wrong, she's a good detective. She's just a little hard on the victims. She doesn't…I don't know. Doesn't always quite know where to turn. Just…"
"Yeah," Olivia says quietly, "I missed you too."