Breathe Me
Post Psycho Therapist
Stairwell
It's cold. It's hard. It's dark.
Her eyes are closed and the metal railing digs into her temple as she leans against it.
Her eyes are closed but she still sees him. His fiery eyes, his spittle hitting her chin as he taunts her, it's on a continuous loop behind her eye lids.
Her breathing is labored, her chest aches and her throat hurts from the grating pressure of her quiet sobs.
She can't go home. She can't sit there in domestic bliss and pretend it's what she wants.
She can't go sit and let Brian think what she needs is to be touched. To be soothed, to be reassured when all she can think about is regrets, mistakes... lies.
As she sits in quiet solitude in the courthouse stairwell, she's reminded of her demons. She's a loner. She's a fighter. She's a survivor. She's a warrior. She's independent. She's a liar.
She lies to herself all the time now. She didn't used to.
She used to thinly veil the demons threatening to escape with her job and her partner and with the cases that didn't exactly follow her home that night.
She's now kidding herself about everything. Lies.
And maybe Lewis is right. Maybe she's been lying to herself this whole time.
You were trying to be alone with me! You came into the bedroom, started talking to me about your romantic fantasies about your ex partner and how he woulda known what to do with me.
"He would've," she whispers into her arm as she clings to the metal railing. "He would've."
It's not the lies she told on the stand that worry her and that scares her. Because she now only cares about the ones she tells herself everyday.
She thinks about booking a hotel room for the night, needing the solitude more than coddling right now but she doesn't trust herself. She doesn't trust her instincts right now.
Lewis is going to prison but it doesn't appease her unease.
He'd gotten into her space once. He could do it again, even if only in her subconcious, and she'd nearly taken Cassidy's head off because she'd second guessed her instincts.
Another sob escapes and she clenches her teeth and bares herself to the empty stairwell, the echoing of her guttural pleas the only sound.
She doesn't expect anyone to come looking for her.
They all have some kind of unspoken agreement to give her space when she asks for it and she knows Brian won't seek her out...
He's pensive around her as it is and she knows he has no idea what to do with the situation. He tries to be there, in person and emotionally, but there's only so much any of them can do really and it's almost too much and not enough at the same time.
She sits up, releasing her iron clad grip on the rail and plants her elbows ontop of her thighs.
Resting her head in her palms, she breathes, she simply tries to breathe and take in everything that's happened the past several weeks and during this trial from hell, in which she feels like she was the perp instead of the one testifying against her attacker.
Everyone had come to support but somehow it just didn't negate the fact she'd been already hollowing out from loss.
What loss, she isn't sure.
It's a billowy atmosphere within though, a smog clouding up her vision, her lungs and it presses against her insides with immense feeling.
Loss.
She leans back and for a split second, she wonders if she'd get away with camping out in the stairwell, avoiding life in general for a few days.
But when she looks around at the unwelcoming off green stairs and the grayish colored walls that might have been white at one time, she shivers.
She covers her forhead with her hand, and almost on cue, a throb slowly starts to form behind her eyelids.
She almost welcomes the ache, as if to deflect from the constant one that's been there in her chest for longer than she doesn't even bother to keep track of anymore.
The throb in her ribcage , in time with her heartbeat, is what makes it all real though. It's a lingering presence that she desperately needs to feel functional as much as she hates it.
If it's not there, sometimes she feels as if she'll drift off into space, an unconcious plethora of nothingness.
A prickling sensation on the back of her neck causes her hand to fall away from her face moments later, making her realize she's in the present.
She feels someone glide through the door to the stairwell and a swift breeze from the door closing swooshes past her, briefly tossing up the tendrils of her shorter hair.
She almost sighs in annoyance that she'd been wrong in believing she'd be left alone.
But she doesn't, instead, she holds her breath, letting her cheeks fill with oxygen before letting it slowly escape.
Without turning around, she whispers, trying not to convey the annoyance she feels for she knows those around her are only concerned.
She bites her bottom lip and isn't surprised when she tastes the metallic hint of blood on her tongue when she speaks.
"I still need a minute," she breathes out to the presence behind her.
She rubs her clammy hands up and down her knees, expecting the door to click open and shut again, but only silence lingers behind her.
She sits still, and suddenly she thinks that maybe this is another hallucination or that Lewis is behind her, that he's fooled the system again and finally going to finish what he started, but she quickly shakes the thoughts out of her head. She'd seen him being led out in cuffs.
He's going to prison... but the prickling on the back of her neck doesn't fade.
She takes several deep breaths, not knowing what to expect when she turns around but knowing, somehow, it's going to be much more than just a concerned face.
Turning her head slightly behind her, she keeps her eyes focused on the metal railing as she speaks.
"I said I need another minute or so. I'll be out there in a minu-..." she trails off as the swooshing of fabric rubbing against fabric distracts her from finishing that thought.
She furrows her eyebrows as she pants against the ebbing sobs building up again in her chest.
Swallowing, she timidly turns her head all the way, turning her torso at the same time so she can look at the person behind her.
What she sees standing there will be forever etched in her mind.
He's standing there. All of him. He's in a black, zip up jacket, blue v -neck t-shirt underneath, dark jeans and brown work boots.
Her face warms instantly and she's sure it looks swollen and blotchy from crying so much lately. She probably looks foreign to him.
She feels like laughing at that because he's the most foreign specimen of all, especially in a court house dressed as he is surrounded by suits and ties.
Not counting the fact he's been gone for so goddamned long.
Her breath hitches when she tries to speak. Her voice disappears when she opens her mouth and she closes her eyes reminding herself that if this is a hallucination from all the stress, she can make it. She can still make it.
When she reopens them, she sees the defeat written on him and her eyes glaze over with moisture. His eyes are downcast, his head bowed, the little that she can see of the skin around his eyes reddened from threatening tears, and his stubble covered jaw grinding, underneath the taught skin.
With his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket and his back leaning against the wall, he almost seems vulnerable. No. He can't be. She needs him to be her rock.
She needs him to be the stability this time. Maybe that makes her selfish but he has to be because she can't anymore.
She turns her body around again, trying to control her ragged breaths and she hears him shuffling behind her.
If one thing's for sure, she's not giving him an inkling of how much she needs him right now. He can have everything else inside of her, but she'll keep that last bit of herself.
She covers her face with her hands and rocks back and forth, trying to fight against this horrible hallucination, which is what she's convinced herself this is.
She thinks about how she's been having so many of those lately. About how at that moment, it again feels impossible that after all this time he'd really be standing there, hovering, lingering, sheltering her from the outside.
And yet, she can't fathom why her heart and mind would conjur this one up. This one simply hurts too much.
She barely rocks back and forth, and it's her own voice she hadn't even realized was murmuring something that makes her squeeze her eyes closed even tighter.
Please, please, please, please.
When she opens her eyes, all she sees is black but then she remembers she's got her face pressed so tightly into her palms that she can't breathe and slowly, she lifts her sweaty hands away from her face.
It's silent again, and she thinks the image of him is gone but seconds later, the shuffling sound returns and she can't get herself to move. She's too weak. Too tired. Too mangled emotionally.
Frozen.
I froze.
Before she has a second to process the words, the ones she'd uttered in court, the one's describing why she's in the courthouse stairwell sobbing at all, she feels a heat forming against her back, and a solid wall of warmth and protection she never thought she could ever feel in one embrace.
She isn't scared.
Her heart pounds though as she feels his face burrow in against her shoulder, his breath hitting her neck with each of his sobs.
He's sobbing.
Her eyes slam shut just as she feels his body start to tremble against hers, a vivid reminder that yes, this is reality.
His chest presses firmly against her back and slowly, tentatively, he snakes his arms around her torso while sitting one step higher than she, wrapping himself around her tightly, his shaking transferring to her body as she squeezes her eyes closed and quietly sobs against the solid, soft, warm, steel of him behind her.
She wants so badly to touch his arms that rest against her stomach. But she's afraid of the intensity of feelings that will spring forth, knowing he's really there, not some apparition of days past.
He slowly, gently starts rocking them back and forth and that's when she breaks fully, a loud gasp escapes her mouth, followed by a guttural sob, pouring so fluidly and passionately out of her.
His arms wrap even tighter and if this were anyone else, she'd feel suffocated. But she doesn't and he doesn't stop rocking her.
His knees splay out on either side of her and in an attempt to ground herself, she grabs onto the solidness of them and holds on, letting her back fall against his chest wholeheartedly, letting him take the weight of them both.
He doesn't say anything; he just speaks with his own labored breathing, sadness and tears. His stubble drags against her jaw and neck and she revels in it because she feels it.
It makes her feel something. The roughness goads her to keep going, to keep breathing, to keep fighting.
It's when he finally speaks that she starts to fully process where she is again, who's touching her and who's breathing against her neck.
"I shoulda shot her in the leg. It's my fault," he pants in her ear.
She takes a clammy palm from where it rests on one and his legs and grasps one of his hands where it rests agains her middle, effectively stopping his mumblings of regrets.
"What are you talking about?" she murmurs back, sniffling back the moisture.
"You regret it, don't you?" he asks instead, avoiding her question.
"Elliot, I don't..."
"You regret not killing him, don't you?"
"I..." she starts, then stops. How he knows her still haunts hers. The moments Lewis's spit came precariously close to hitting her in the face, she'd been futher reminded he was a monster. She'd already known, but in that instant, she'd wished she'd pulled the trigger back at that cabin.
Sniffiling, she turns her head, looking back at the man she'd spent twelve, goddamned grueling years with, the one who covered her back, took up for her after her fuck ups, told her she was a good cop.
"Yes," she breathes out, hiccupping, needing air more than his response but she gets both anyway.
"I wanted to kill all those perps. I wanted to kill them all. But that girl, I killed her and I didn't have to," he laughs lowly, a small growl escaping in frustration she realizes. "I'm a screw-up Olivia, there's never been any doubt huh? Just like now, this should have never happ-"
"Stop, just stop," she pleads tearfully. He does but he doesn't let up his hold on her. If anything, it feels tighter with every one of his ragged breaths. She doesn't want to hear his regrets. She doesn't want to hear how he's been struggling. She doesn't want his excuses and doesn't want to know why.
She thought she did, but what she wants more than anything is for him to never not be her rock wall, protecting her from the demons he knows little about now.
"I'll kill him..." he grates out against her shoulder, effectively catching her attention again as if he's reading her mind. "I should kill him for what he did to you," he swallows and she wants to tell him to stop, to stop trying to protect her, even though she wants him to, but she realizes that he'll never stop.
He'll never get over this.
"No you won't," she answers back, grabbing onto his arm and pulling it away from her body, allowing herself to turn slightly in his arms. "You won't do anything stupid, Elliot. You won't, you won't..." she grates out. "You have no right!" she grates out angrily. "You have no right. You lost that right when you put in your papers."
He immediately shakes his head but doesn't say anything. She knows he wants to argue and when she looks closely into his reddened eyes, the message lingering there in the gloss coating the whites almost makes her want to run.
She squeezes his hand unconsciously thinking about his absences, his disappearance from her life and again she's reeling. But, she knows all she needs is this moment. This one embrace and she thinks she can make it through the rest of her life.
They'll go. He'll lead her out of the stairwell, into sunlight again and she'll have to say goodbye, but he showed up. She'll be able to breathe again and she'll have the scent of him on her clothes still, the feeling of his lingering touch and maybe one day it'll be permanent, like a tattoo.
"I know, Liv," he whispers, his eyes lifting up and she sees the intense shade of blue for the first time. It's as if they have brightened up in the short amount of time they've been together.
She feels the lift too. The heaviness inside of her chest seems to lift by the second and as she feels his hands drag up her sides and under her arms to stand her up on the step below him, she realizes something.
This is what she had needed all this time. To breathe him in. For them to breathe life into each other again.
I'm kind of leaving this open ended because I wasn't sure where to end this. Keep an eye out, I may add a second part. Thanks for reading. :)