2 - THE DOOR

The surroundings were painfully familiar, yet everything was different. He walked through the redecorated squad room, looking for his old desk out of habit, but couldn't see it. He also looked for any familiar items on the desks, hoping he would recognize anything belonging to his former colleagues. He didn't recognize anything or anyone on the way to the interrogation room. It was like the room made a point to remind him that he didn't belong anymore.

When the detectives announced they were taking him to the precinct for further questioning, Elliot decided not to bring up his past as a cop. He didn't want to seem like he wanted special treatment or raise more suspicions by trying to claim he was above suspicion. He hoped everything would be cleared up without the need to drop any NYPD names, and simply obliged to the detectives' request to come with them.

However, when he recognized the precinct, and especially when he got off the elevator on the SVU floor, he started to rethink that approach. If he was being brought to answer questions about an SVU case, it was bound to be a sex crime, and he knew well that any suspicion of involvement in that type of case could be a lot harder to clear up. Especially if nobody there knew him from his time as a detective.

As he thought about all that and looked for any familiar signs, he allowed himself to wonder specifically about her. Olivia. He felt a tightness in his chest as he remembered his former partner and wondered if she still worked there. Seven years had passed. Seven years worth of gruesome cases, ruined lives and failures in the justice system allowing guilty perps to get away with the horrible things they had done. He wondered if anything could have happened to make her decide to leave, as he had, or if she had been stronger than him. Probably.

The air escaped his lungs as another possibility emerged in his mind: what if something had happened to Olivia? What if she had gotten hurt, or worse… He didn't allow himself to go down that road. He tried to soothe his sudden worry by thinking that if something bad had happened, he would have known. But then he remembered that he had taken every measure to make sure he was out of reach. How would he have known?

The grey-haired detective sat him down in the interrogation room, and Elliot uttered his first words since they had left the apartment building, in a sudden need to know:

"Does Detective Benson still work here?" He could hear the anxiety in his own voice.

The detective furrowed his brow, and Elliot couldn't make out any signs of recognition in his face.

"Sit tight," the detective said, ignoring his question. "I'll be back."

Elliot sighed, looking at the double-sided glass and wondering who was watching behind it.


"Are you all right, lieutenant?" Carisi asked, worried, placing an arm under her armpit, and that's when Olivia realized she had momentarily lost her balance.

"I'm fine," she said, before making sure she really was. She steadied her legs and shook her head to get rid of the dizziness. She felt the blood coming back to her face. "Don't worry, I'm fine," she repeated, with more conviction this time.

"Did you recognize the name?" Carisi said, slowly releasing her from his grip.

Olivia looked up at him, remembering the reason for her physical reaction. "Yes," she let out breathlessly, then cleared her throat. "Yes, I did. It's my old partner."

Carisi dropped his jaw in shock, looking like he didn't know what to do with that information. That's when Amanda and Fin joined them.

"Elliot's here?" Fin asked bluntly, looking intently at Olivia. "Amanda asked me to run his name for a rap sheet. Did you see him?"

"Not yet," Olivia managed to reply, still trying to make sense of the situation.

"Our suspect is a former cop," Carisi explained to a puzzled Amanda. "A former SVU cop."

Amanda opened her mouth, looking at Olivia, and taking in her boss' expression and body language, she understood.

"Your partner before Nick? Why didn't he say anything?"

"He did," Carisi rectified. "He asked about the lieu."

Amanda nodded, trying to infer from Olivia and Fin's stance whether the new information had any impact on the suspicions around the man they had brought in, but they looked almost as confused as she felt.

"I assume you'll want to question him," she said, ready to take the party to the interrogation room, but she was stopped by Olivia's hurried reply.

"No," she said, a bit louder than intended. Then, she cleared her throat and fixed her tone. "Not yet. Let's not mix things up. Why is he a suspect again?" She had already forgotten Carisi's description.

"He lives next door from the victim and showed up with a fresh scratch on his arm," Amanda explained.

Olivia took that information in, but didn't believe for a moment he could be the perp. Then, she reminded herself she hadn't seen him in seven years and didn't know him anymore.

"He can't be our perp," Fin voiced, looking like he was going through the same thought process. "Can he?"

"Does he have an alibi?" Olivia asked, wondering if Kathy also lived there next to the victim and would vouch for him. Kathy. That name still hurt even voiced only in her mind.

"No," Carisi said. "He claims he was out of town, alone. He did show up carrying an overnight bag."

"Ok," Olivia said, recollecting herself. "Let's get this over with then. You two question him," she pointed at Amanda and Carisi, then went on looking at Fin, "I don't want any familiar faces around him yet. Let's see what he says. I'll watch from my office."

"You got it, lieu," Carisi said, heading to the interrogation room with Amanda.

Olivia walked into her office with Fin, both silent, her eyes trained on the closed blinds that covered the glass, asking herself if it was really possible that Elliot was right behind it, that she would really see him there. It didn't seem like a real possibility, it was weird to think that he still existed after so much time getting used to a reality in which he didn't.

She took a deep breath and opened the blinds. As soon as the cover was pulled, she was immediately looking at those blue eyes that used to be the most frequent sight in her life for so long. She looked at Fin looking for confirmation that Elliot was really sitting there.

"I'll be damned," Fin said, looking just as shocked.

Amanda and Carisi entered the interrogation room and sat across from Elliot as Olivia took the sight of him in. He was a bit older, with some grey hair on his head and on the slight beard around his jaw and neck. He was wearing a dark grey t-shirt with long sleeves rolled up, and she saw the scratch the detectives had mentioned. He seemed calm as he looked back at Carisi when he spoke.

"So, Mr. Stabler, like we said, we need to ask you a few more questions."

Elliot nodded cautiously.

"How long have you lived in that apartment?" Amanda asked.

"Four years," he said, and the familiarity of his voice struck Olivia harder than she had expected.

"Alone?" shot Carisi.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"No Kathy," Olivia let out in an involuntary whisper, and beat herself up over it, avoiding Fin's eyes. To her relief, he acted like he hadn't heard her.

"Do you know Jessica Smithson, your neighbor?" Carisi showed him a picture of Jessica.

"No, never spoke to her," Elliot said, sighing impatiently. "Like I told you, I spend more time in my cabin these days."

Amanda and Carisi proceeded with the interrogation, asking for the location of the cabin and confirming again that he had no alibi for the night before. They also asked him to volunteer a DNA sample, to which he didn't object.

Olivia watched it all as if she were detached from that reality. Elliot Stabler, her old partner, in an interrogation room answering questions from the new SVU detectives, while she watched from behind the glass in Cragen's old office. She sighed. It really seemed like Elliot didn't have any information about the case or wouldn't volunteer any, and there was no reason to continue asking questions that wouldn't lead anywhere.

Amanda and Carisi seemed to think the same thing as they both threw glances at the glass and got up to come into her office. Before Amanda opened the door between the two rooms, though, Elliot asked a question.

"Detective, please." Amanda turned to him. "Olivia Benson, does she still work here?"

Olivia felt her heart jump when she heard her name in his voice, and before Amanda could reply to him, she knocked on the glass to urge the detectives out of the room. She didn't want him to know yet. She didn't know why exactly, but she suspected she was afraid to find out why he wanted that information. Was it because he wanted to see her or because he didn't?

Elliot's question went unanswered again, but he heard the knock on the glass at the mention of Olivia's name and saw the puzzled look on the female detective's face. They knew Olivia. Maybe she was even behind the glass, at which he stared now, containing the impulse to follow the detectives out towards the other side. He felt his chest tightening as he imagined seeing her again. He had no idea what that would feel like, and he was suddenly afraid to find out.

"Can I go?" he asked after his previous question was ignored and with a sudden need to get away from that place, but the detectives were already closing the door behind them. "I have nothing to do with your case. I wasn't even home."

Olivia almost felt like Elliot could see her through the glass when he looked at it, and that sensation sent shivers down her spine. Amanda and Carisi came through the door, ignoring Elliot. He seemed to calm down, still looking at the glass, and Olivia guessed he was waiting for the deliberation to take place in the next room, aware as he was of how interrogations worked.

"So what now?" Amanda asked, all business, bringing Olivia back from her reverie.

"Now we wait for the DNA results," she sighed.

"I'll take the sample to the lab and ask them to put a rush on it," Carisi said, leaving the office.

"We could do a voice line-up," Fin offered. "See if the vic recognizes his voice."

Olivia had almost forgotten that the perp had said something to Jessica. She hated being off her game like that, especially because Elliot was the reason for it.

"Yes, good idea," she said distractedly. She was looking at the door to the interrogation room, suddenly flabbergasted at the fact that simply going through that door would get her in the same room as Elliot after seven years of complete silence.

"I'll go arrange the line-up," Amanda said, sensing she should leave Olivia and Fin alone.

Fin gave her a thankful nod and waited for her to leave before addressing Olivia.

"How you holding up?" he asked.

Olivia had been watching Elliot as he stood up and started walking around the interrogation room with his hands in his pockets, looking very much like he used to when he was the one asking questions in there. She turned to Fin with a puzzled expression.

"I don't know," she said. "What do you make of all this?"

She needed someone else's opinion, because she was having trouble connecting all the dots in the current situation. Elliot there, in the precinct, answering questions about a rape.

"I don't think he did it," Fin said. "I think this is a hell of a coincidence. Do you think he could be guilty?"

"No," Olivia said before thinking, then corrected herself. "I don't know. We don't know what happened since he left."

"Maybe you should ask," Fin said cautiously, watching for her reaction.

"Me?" she was suddenly breathless. As much as she wanted to confront him, she was suddenly very scared to cross that line, that seven-year line that separated them, even if crossing it was as simple as walking through a door.

"I could take a run at him first if you want."

"Please," she said, relieved. She was glad she could put off deciding whether she was going to speak to him or not.

"You got it." Fin took a deep breath before asking a question. "What do I say when he asks about you? 'Cause he will."