Elliot on Trial

Chapter 1: Doubting a Friend

Disclaimer: Don't own them right now but my birthday is coming up in a few days. Dick Wolf, you would make me very happy if you wrapped them up and sent them to me. Oh and could you put a nice bow around Elliot? wicked grin I'm bad.

A/N: I had an idea swimming in my head for a little while and of course, this week I've just been writing a lot of stuff so I decided to write this. I hope you all like it.

"You've got to be kidding me Casey," Cragen looked at the papers in his hands "As if this wasn't bad enough before. Why am I a witness for the prosecution?"

"You're their commanding officer," Casey responded with a heavy sigh "You've seen them interact. You've seen the way he reacts some times. I wouldn't have risked it but I'm not the ADA on the case, remember?"

Cragen nodded, he definitely remembered. How could he possibly forget? He sighed and looked at the subpoena in his hands once more "I know he didn't do this," he said resolutely to Casey.

"I'm with you," she stood from her chair "But there's no evidence to the contrary."

Cragen nodded sorrowfully and turned to leave Casey's office. He had two stops to make before he could go home and resist the urge to climb inside that bottle again. "See you later," he murmured unenthusiastically as he closed the door behind him.

"Tell him I say hi," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

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Elliot sat down and stared at Cragen on the other side of the glass. He picked up the phone in front of him "Hey," he said in a sad voice. He seemed to be moving in slow motion these days. Nothing had seemed real since that morning that Munch and Fin had knocked on his apartment door and told him that he had to come down to the station, that he was a suspect in… he couldn't even think about it. What he had been accused of was just to horrible for him to even fathom.

"I've been called as a witness for the prosecution," Cragen told Elliot, not wasting any time.

"You don't think I…" Elliot trailed off "Don," he addressed his captain by name "You know I could never…"

"I know Elliot," Cragen reassured him "I don't know what kind of trick this new ADA is trying to play but I'm not gonna let him get away with it."

"What are you saying?" Elliot asked.

"I'm not gonna testify," Cragen told him, knowing full well the implications of what he had just said.

"Not only will you go to jail on contemp charges," Elliot began, trying to convince Cragen why this was the wrong thing to do "But the prosecution will think that you have something to hide."

"I do have something to hide," Cragen told him softly "I've pulled far too many strings for you two over the years. My refusing to testify is better for you in the long run."

Elliot shook his head "I can't let you do this."

"It's not your decision," Cragen stated before changing the subject "I've almost got enough money together for your bail."

Elliot sighed in relief "I need to see her," he whispered.

"Even if you make bail," Cragen said sadly "There's a restraining order in place. Her hospital room is under constant guard."

Elliot hung his head "I need to see her," he whispered again.

"Trust me," Cragen told him straightforwardly "You don't want to see her this way," Cragen tried to keep himself from crying but he felt his eyes misting over anyway.

"You need to find the person who did this," Elliot tried to keep his voice even but he was angry. While he sat in jail the real perp could be out there hurting other women or planning to come back and finish what he started.

"Munch and Fin are trying as hard as they can to get to the truth," Cragen told him "But proving your innocence isn't their nine to five job."

"This isn't about my innocence," Elliot felt the anger bubbling up inside him "This is about catching the man who attacked my partner, raped her and left her to die in some God forsaken alley. This is about making sure that he can never do this to anyone again."

"She's safe where she is," Cragen reassured him "The only people let past the door of that room are her doctor, me and a few select nurses. There's a twenty four hour guard. If anyone suspicious shows up, we'll get him."

Elliot sighed, that would have to be enough "Have you seen Kathy or the kids?" he asked. None of his children had come to see him since he had been arrested. He hadn't heard anything from Kathy either. He wondered if she really believed that he could hurt anyone in the way that he was being accused of hurting Olivia.

Cragen nodded "Kathy came by the squad room," he sighed and looked away. He decided to leave it at that and not say anything about what Kathy had said. Any decisions that Kathy made about their children were her business to discuss with Elliot.

"Did she say anything?" Elliot asked, making Cragen wish that he could just get up and walk away.

"That's something you should talk to her about," he said simply. He wished that he hadn't heard what Kathy had said. Heck, he wished that he hadn't sent Elliot and Olivia home that night that it had all happened; perhaps he wouldn't be sitting here in this position if he had told them that they should have stayed even five more minutes longer than they did.

"You're going to visit the hospital after this aren't you?" Elliot knew his captain all too well.

Cragen nodded "I'll let you know if there's any change," he told Elliot. There hadn't been one in the three weeks since it had happened but he, Munch, Fin, Casey and especially Elliot were hoping and praying that there would be an improvement any day now.

"What did the doctors say were her chances?" Elliot asked. He asked that question every time that Cragen came to see him. He hoped that maybe her odds had changed.

"Thirty percent chance of waking up," Cragen stated, the same way he had every day for the past seventeen days "Ten percent chance of waking up without any permanent brain damage." The last part always made Cragen think; even if she woke up, there was a ten percent chance that she wouldn't be able to clear Elliot's name.

"She's tough," Elliot murmured, the same way he did each time he heard those odds "She's beaten the odds before and she'll beat them again," he didn't even ask about her odds of walking again and he didn't want to even touch the subject of how she would recover emotionally.

"She's a fighter," Cragen agreed, more to reassure Elliot than anything else; he had gone to the hospital every day. He had seen how frail she looked. He had watched as the ugly bruises that had covered her face and arms and places that he couldn't see them but knew that they were there, faded and left her looking paler and more vulnerable than he had ever remembered seeing anyone in his whole life. He knew that even if the restraining order hadn't been in place, he couldn't let Elliot see her like that.

"Talk to her for me?" Elliot requested in a small voice; the weeks of solitude in prison had taken their toll on him "Let her know that I miss her," he raised the back of his hand to his eyes and wiped at them in a futile attempt to quell the moisture and keep the tears at bay "Tell her I love her and…" he trailed off. He knew that his messages of love that he passed on to Olivia through Cragen were partly the reason why Cragen refused to testify but that wasn't the only reason he had stopped talking. He took a deep breath "Tell her that I don't want her to be in pain," tears fell now and he couldn't stop them "Tell her that if she needs to… tell her that its okay to let go," he buried his face in his hands.

Cragen nodded. Silently, he refused to deliver the last part of Elliot's message. He knew that what Elliot had said, he said out of love but there was no way that he could let the only witness who could clear Elliot be lost that easily "I'll let her know," he told Elliot, even though he only intended to tell her the first two things.

"Thanks," Elliot whispered. He hung up the phone and stood up. He headed back to his cell where he could cry in private.

Cragen sat there for a few seconds watching Elliot go before he too got up and left. No guilty man would ever react that way. Cragen knew that Elliot could never have hurt Olivia but there had been so much pressure to make an arrest. He sighed as he got into his car, hoping that Munch and Fin would find something that could clear Elliot. If they couldn't, then the entire case rested on the testimony of a woman who currently lay in a hospital, surrounded by guards and in a deep coma.

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"Whoever did this knew enough to clean her up so there wasn't any DNA," Fin told Casey.

She sighed; she had called Munch and Fin into her office to find out the facts of the case. She felt out of the loop ever since Arthur Branch had pulled her off so fat that her head was still spinning from the shock "But didn't you say that when you picked Elliot up the next day he was so drunk that he didn't even recognize you at first?" she asked.

Munch nodded "Yeah but he could have gotten drunk afterwards. I mean, having just donw something like that would be enough to push Elliot into some very heavy drinking just to forget."

Fin and Casey stared at Munch, their mouths hanging open slightly "You think he did this?" Casey asked. She was teetering on the edge of infuriation. How could John think that Elliot could ever lay a hand on Olivia like that?

"I'm just saying that we should consider all possibilities," Munch said defensively "She was found a block away from his building."

"Purely circumstantial," Casey stood toe to toe with Munch and stared him down "It doesn't prove anything."

"You didn't see her Casey," Munch stated in a low voice.

"But I did." Fin told his partner softly "And I know that Elliot would never do that to her. He doesn't have it in him. We owe it to Olivia to find the real perp."

"What if he is the real perp?" Munch asked. He had a lot of doubts that he had kept inside. Everyone had been so sure that Elliot was innocent but in the end it wasn't so cut and dry.

"How can you even think that?" Casey asked incredulously "The person who hurt her is still out there and we aren't doing anything by fighting," she turned away and picked up a file from her desk "If you excuse me," she pushed past Munch angrily "I still have a job to do," she headed to the courtroom where she was prosecuting an indecent exposure case.

The two detectives simply stood in Casey's office, staring at each other "We should get going," Fin said softly before her walked out of the office, leaving Munch, regretting that he had ever voiced his opinions to the people he had called his friends.

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Cragen nodded to the two uniformed officers that kept vigil outside Olivia's room before he entered. He stood still for a moment; the sight never ceased to shock him. There she lay among the sheets in this bleak hospital room. He walked closer and pulled a chair up to the side of her bed that wasn't cluttered with life sustaining machinery. He took her hand and held it. It was so cold. He rubbed it between his hands in an effort to warm it.

He began to speak, wondering all the while if what people said about how people in comas could here it when people talked to them "I saw Elliot again today," he always started his talks to her this way "He's looking more worn down each day," he admitted in a soft voice. It was true; each day Cragen saw him, Elliot looked less and less like himself. Cops were housed away from general pop in prison and the guards were supposed to make sure that no one came after him but Cragen suspected that the guards weren't doing their job. Either they were being neglectful on purpose or they really were horrible guards. Either way, Cragen wouldn't even vocalize these thoughts to Olivia, even while she was in a coma.

"He misses you, you know," he continued "I'm trying to get the money together for his bail but two million in cash is hard to come by," he almost laughed then "Believe it or not, I actually have a million and a half already," his voice dropped again "He wants to see you and I'm sure you'd want him to but," he paused "I told you already that the judge put a restraining order on him."

Cragen hung his head "He needs you Olivia," he whispered "He told me again today to tell you he loves you. I know you love him too and that's why you have to fight this thing," he stared into Olivia's face for any sign that his words were getting through but as always, there was none.

"You've got to wake up and set everyone straight. I know that there's no way he could have done this to you but," he paused again and hated himself for the words he was about to say "Every day you lie there, it gets harder and harder for me to believe his innocence. There's nothing else we could find to say that he's not guilty. As it stands, the prosecution's evidence is shaky but it's more than the defense has."

He sighed "I don't want to believe it Olivia. I've known you both too long," he took a deep breath and let out a sardonic laugh to cover up the sob that was trying to erupt from his throat "But then, I never thought that you would end up in here like this."

He took a moment to compose himself before he continued to speak "Please Olivia, you've got to beat this thing. You have to wake up. I need to hear it from you. I need to know that he didn't do this," his doubts had slowly been getting the better of him for some time now. He didn't want to doubt Elliot and yet here he was, practically begging a comatose woman to miraculously wake up and confirm the truth for him because he wasn't strong enough to believe in Elliot by himself.

A nurse knocked on the frame of the door before walking in "I have to draw some blood," she explained to Cragen.

Cragen stood up and moved out of the young woman's way. He looked down at his watch and decided that it was time for him to get going anyway. He bent down and whispered in Olivia's ear "I'll see you tomorrow. Remember, you need to fight this," and with that, he left.