A/N: When you work for the NYPD and have some serious federal connections, no one is ever truly "gone."

DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or basic plot points, I do, however, own the words and storyline of this particular story, so don't sue me, Dick Wolf.

"Did you hear me?"

Olivia looked up, her blank expression suddenly softening into slight remorse, a grim smile crossing her face. "No, sorry."

"I asked if you were feeling okay," Elliot repeated as he dug a huge potion of rice out of a Tupperware container and into a green bowl. "You usually eat three bowls of my chili, you barely made a dent in your first, something's up."

She shook her head and forced a spoonful of her dinner into her mouth. She gave an involuntary appreciative moan as she chewed and came out of her haze slightly and looked across the table at him. "You're taking all of this rather well," she said, poking at a tomato with her fork. "A little too well."

"Honestly," he said on a sigh, "I don't feel like this is a bad thing. I feel like…" he exhaled. "Look, I know I've been kind of distant…"

"Ha," she scoffed. "That's putting it mildly."

He chuckled as he shoveled a large spoonful of chili into his mouth. When he swallowed, he looked at her with something unfamiliar in his eyes. "I knew this was coming," he admitted. "We got into this...huge fight. A few weeks ago. Over toilet paper."

"Seriously," Olivia intoned dryly.

He nodded and slowly brought another spoonful of food to his lips. "Two-ply isn't thick enough, double-soft is too thick, the good stuff is too expensive, the stuff we can afford feels like sandpaper…" he babbled. He dropped his spoon into his bowl and shoved the green ceramic away from him. "It was our fourth stupid fight over stupid fucking shit, and when I found myself yelling, across the goddamned room, 'I don't care, you only use it to wipe your ass,' knew." He sighed again. "We weren't really fighting about the toilet paper."

"El, maybe I can…"

He held up a hand; he wasn't finished. "She brought it up first, asked if I knew where she put the papers. I told her exactly where they were, without even thinking," he laughed bitterly. "Sad, huh? She asked, ya know, who should go. I said I didn't want to talk about it. It was her choice. If she wanted me to leave, I would. If she wanted to leave, I wouldn't stop her." He blinked away a few tears he wasn't even aware had formed. "We fought for hours, every night since. Nothing of any substance, except for…"

She could tell by the way his voice broke off, so abruptly, what the unspoken word was. "Me," she whispered, her eyes fallen and now staring into her chili.

"Wednesday, that was when she crossed the line." His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed, his chest began to heave. "No one, Liv, not even her, nobody talks about you like that without me running defense. Shit she was saying, whether it was true or not, was so fucking…"

"Elliot!" she snapped. "You let your wife walk out because she called me names? Are you out of your fucking…"

"She accused us of having an affair! Again!" he yelled. "Then she called you a few names that had me questioning if she was really Catholic!" He shook his head. "I was as respectful as I could've been, but I couldn't lie to her. Not when she asked me...point blank...if I had any…" He stopped again, this time to save himself embarrassment and rejection. He sighed once again. "That night, I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and made my way to the couch for the, what, four-hundred-and-seventy-fifth night in a row? She asked why I was just giving up, and I said...I told her she knew why. Then I said, I looked her dead in the eyes, and I said, 'If you want to go, just go.' I fell asleep, woke up an hour or so later, I went upstairs to apologize and...she was gone. Just the note, and her rings."

There was a long pause, silence only broken by the metallic clink of silver against ceramic, and then finally her soft words. "I still have those text messages. I could talk to Morales, we could find her. If you...if that's what you..."

"Liv, don't," he almost pleaded, his eyes closing as his head fell back. "Just...it's better this way, that's what I'm trying to tell you." He lifted his head and looked at her. "The tension in this house...it's gone. I've spent the last two weeks sleeping in an actual bed, with no fear of being awakened in the middle of the night by a screaming woman who thinks everything I do is wrong."

She noticed the way his eyes flickered slightly as he spoke, and she allowed herself to breathe.

He continued with a small smile. "My children...Liv, I haven't heard them laugh the way they've been in so fucking long. I haven't had to send them to their rooms so I could fight with their mother, like we didn't know they could hear us through the walls. I let her go...because…" he took a breath and licked his lips, trying to recall how he'd put it when he'd said it to Kathy. "I never wanted our marriage...the past fifteen years, our four...beautiful children...to be something we regret. That's where we were heading, we both knew it. If we stayed together, we would've resented each other, and...along the way, we would lose the chance to truly be happy...and we would rob the kids of that chance, too." He looked at her, then, a severity in his eyes that had only ever existed when he spoke about his children or his faith. "We would hurt other people, too. People who...who are the last people in the world we would ever want to hurt."

Clearing her throat, she looked away, and she grabbed her bowl with two hands. "Are you, uh, are you finished? We should...we need to…"

"Liv?" he intruded, gravity in his tone and benediction in his eyes. He tried like hell to communicate without words, to make her hear him without speech. It was one of the things they were always so good at, that sometimes they failed for fear of seeing the wrong thing. Or the right thing at the wrong time.

She returned his heavy gaze, remaining fixed on his stare as she took his green bowl, half filled with chili and half filled with hope. She refused to believe what was hidden in his eyes, what she was so plainly seeing. "What?"

"Am I keeping you from something? From...someone?" He asked the question, his heart drumming louder the more time passed between his last word and her response.

She shook her head and gave a crooked smiled. "No, of course not. You're my priority, El, you and the...the kids. Why are you looking at me like that?"

He had a stupid grin on his face, the kind a child gives when presented with ice cream before dinner, even after getting an F on a math test. Like he'd won the lottery without ever buying a ticket. "Promise me," he said softly as he rose to his feet, "That you won't go looking for Kathy, that you won't try to fix my broken marriage, again."

She flushed, her bottom lip curling in between her teeth. "You know about that, huh?"

He nodded, moving slightly closer to her. "I know about both times, and I swear, I know you thought you were somehow saving me, but all you really did was prolong the inevitable. Just...trust me, okay? Trust that I am making the best possible choices for myself, for my kids, and...maybe...eventually for…"

Her ringing phone impeded the conclusion of his sentence, and he rolled his eyes as he took the bowls out of her hands and dropped them inelegantly into the sink.

"Benson," she answered, stifling her laughter at his childlike petulance. "Yeah, we're here. We'll be down in a minute. Where? Wait, from who?" she squinted as she listened. "Okay, we're on the way." She hung up and bit her lip as she looked over toward Elliot. "Duty calls," she said, shaking her cell phone in her hand.

"Of course it does," he said, a flat grin on his face. "Anyway, you promise?"

She laughed as she nodded, and she exhaled slowly as she pulled her coat up off of the metal chair, kicking it back under the cafeteria table. She looked around the tiny kitchenette, nestled in the corner of the SVU break room. The place held a lot of memories, laden with guilt and a fiery excitement she could never fully justify. She let out a hard breath and looked toward Elliot. "You know where she is, don't you?"

"Two weeks till Christmas, the mother of my kids?" he queried with an innocent look. "Yeah, I think I do." He put on his long, wool coat, and then draped an arm around Olivia's shoulders,m leading her out of the door and down the steps toward the squadroom. "Hey, do you have any idea what bit Cragen?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, taking the last step with a bit of a kick, leading Elliot toward the doors to the hall.

"He's been really...I don't know, chipper? That the right word?" he laughed, heading down the hall with his partner. Ever since Thanksgiving, he seems to be a lot happier, you notice?"

Olivia hummed as she hit the call button for the elevator. "I guess he's been less of a pain-in-the-ass than usual."

He guided her through the opening doors. "Maybe he's seeing someone," he said. As the doors slid shut he said, "I'm happy he's happy, it's making our job a lot easier, but...I really wish he'd stop singing 'Silver Bells."

A/N: OH? Let's hope that's just a coincidence, huh?