"Who are you?"

"I'm Don…." he said gruffly, cursing himself for not being able to better arrange his face to cushion her reality, "…I'm your friend."

"My friend?" turning awkwardly, reaching to her bedside table with her good arm not in sling Olivia lifted her glass. Sucking sceptically on the straw she swallowed a sip of water with a quenching gulp. Her mouth was dry, like the desert of her mind. Tumbleweed. "You've been here for days. That's some friend."

"I've known you a long time Olivia."

"Right…." pursed lips, she lowered caged eyes and stared into her glass of water uncomfortably.

"Years, a lot of years. We go back a long way, is what I'm saying. I just wanted to…." he had never been an eloquent man in the face of emotional distress, at least not without being able to hide behind his shield. Not when he felt all the things he felt in that moment. He couldn't find words, any words. "I wanted to be here. For you; now, in this."

"I'm not even sure I understand what this is Don. I mean you're here, with me, in this hospital room. I know they just patched up my shoulder from a bullet wound and I know I hit my head. They tell me my name is Olivia."

"It is, that's your name. You were in a….." catching himself, seeing her suddenly so painfully vulnerable, newborn and exposed, he sighed, "… you were in an accident. You're Olivia Benson, that's who you are."

"I'm gonna have to take all of your word for it on my name…." setting her glass down, biting her lip Olivia looked to the window and shook her head steadily side to side, "… but I haven't the first clue who I am."

"Would you like me to leave?" he asked, reverently, moving to get to his feet.

"I don't know?" she laughed, a shallow empty little laugh that faded breathlessly. She turned to him, brown eyes wide and terrified. "You seem like a nice man. I can tell you mean well."

"You've always had a solid gut."

"I have?" she whispered, and her eyes felt the hot prick of tears. She looked away, blinking defiantly. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, of course…."

"The doctors, that therapist, they didn't mention anyone out there. Is there? Anyone out there, I mean?"

"Out there?" said Cragen, buying himself a moment. "Well, there's Fin sat in the visitor's room. He hasn't left since you were brought in here. He's a good friend."

"Fin, right…." she said blankly. Pushing a curtain of hair from her face, she tucked it behind her ears and forced a smile.

"And Elliot is also here, somewhere, he just stepped away. He's your partner."

"My…."

"Work! Work partner, you work together. Closely, together. He's…."

"Let me guess…." it was so strange to him, how like herself she could be while being entirely elsewhere, "… another friend?"

"Ehrm…." hesitating, deliberately avoiding her eyes, Cragen strained, "… yes, yeah another friend."

"So I had surgery on a bullet wound two days ago. I hit my head hard enough to knock out just about everything I ever knew at least a day before that. I've seen a doctor, two doctors, and a therapist and now I'm sat in here with you. Don: my friend. Out there is Fin and Elliot, my friends."

"Your friends."

"I don't have any family, do I Don?"

"I…." at a glance the same strong, beautiful woman she had always been, in Cragen's eyes in that moment she was a lost little girl. He hated himself for seeing her that way, apologising to her in his mind, and yet felt unable to feel anything but paternal and responsible.

"I hope to God you're not an actor or a diplomat because you are a terrible one if you are."

"I'm a cop."

"Oh…." her delicate cupid's bow dipped, and her lips formed a teary circle.

"Look, I'm gonna level with you here Liv. They were very specific about how this was supposed to go. The docs, they're worried about you. They said things are still, you know, fragile. You're fragile still. I'm not supposed to overwhelm you."

"Is that right?" she scoffed lightly. "You really want to level with me? Tell me honestly are we really friends? Or are you just some cop with a guilt complex over how I wound up in here? Am I part of your case? Is any of what you just told me even true?"

"All of it."

"I think I'm ready for you to go now…." she said, the jarring awareness that it was impossible to tell truth from fiction and she had absolutely no frame of reference becoming too much. "If you don't mind?"

"I could've killed Jenna."

"But you didn't."

"I could've gotten Liv…."

"But you didn't Stabler."

"This you being nice to me Tutuola?" asked Elliot, laughing grimly and taking a long slurp of tar black coffee.

"Nah, nah this is me wishing you'd stop making my ears bleed. I'm trying to put a sock in you and your neurosis."

"Neurosis?"

"You never struck me as an over-thinker before. Don't start now; it's not a good colour on you. Hell if any of us will ever know whether or not you would've pulled the trigger with that gun pointed at Jenna. So what if you had? She was about to open fire again, she had form, ask Sister Peg. Yeah she's a messed up kid but that doesn't mean you can just walk into a cop precinct packing and start firing vigilante justice."

"She lost her mother…"

"We've all lost people…." said Fin quietly, shrugging his shoulders, "… doesn't excuse it. Explains it, maybe, where her head was at. Doesn't mean you weren't doing the right thing taking aim. Besides, you didn't shoot her. She's shaken, she's still messed up, but she's alive."

"Yeah."

"And so is Liv."

"She threw herself at my loaded weapon without a second thought."

"For the first time?" asked Fin drily.

"Huh?" puzzled Elliot, turning his head to meet Fin's black eyed stare. "What'd you say?"

"I said…." hesitating, then deciding if he didn't ask now he never would Fin dared, "… was that the first time Liv has thrown herself at your loaded weapon without engaging her brain first?"

"You son of a bitch Tutuola!" gasped Elliot, throwing himself to his feet and balling his firsts. "I can't believe you have the fucking nerve to…"

"Am I wrong?" challenged Fin unflinchingly.

"You need to show little more respect talking about Liv like that…." growled Elliot, squaring broad shoulders and showing his feathers protectively. "She's a damn class act and she deserves better from you."

"I apologise…." said Fin plainly, lifting his palms in a sincere show of conciliation, "… truly, man. You're right."

"What happens now Fin?" sitting back down, sinking slowly into the chair and throwing his head back Elliot exhaled a long sigh. Leaning the crown of his head against the wall he stared up at the florescent tube lights on the hospital ceiling.

"Honestly?" came the slow reply, as Fin shook his head sadly. "I dunno."

"Cragen says she doesn't remember anything. Anything. You realise what that means?"

"Childhood, her mom, SVU and all that means. It's ironic, right?" breathing shallow Fin shorted grimly. "How many times I've thought to myself God if I could just erase Sealview for her. If I could just make is so she just completely forgot ever having cared so much for that Arliss kid."

"And now it's all gone. All the pain, all the hurt, all the torture of where she came from and the crap she's been through…." turning away Elliot sniffed stoically. This was not usual for the two men, to talk this way. She had brought them together in the most unlikely circumstance.

"For now it is, but they said this shit could be temporary. A week, a month, maybe even a year. I mean they keep telling us to go steady. We've not got to overwhelm her, to flood her with memories and just let her take it slow. How slow? I mean sure she doesn't remember all that bad stuff but she doesn't remember any of the good either."

"I know…." and there was going to be so much more good, it had been almost in reaching distance thought Elliot sadly, he could have almost touched it.

"Hey? I see you lurking…."

"Who me?"

"No, no the other guy who's been wearing out the linoleum outside my door the past hour."

"I'm Elliot…." he smiled, wide, honest, with a full show of teeth and a sighing laugh of relief. She might not remember but she was still Benson.

"I'm Olivia…." twisting the corners of her mouth, she shrugged her good shoulder and added, "… or so they tell me."

"Can I come in?"

"Sure, sure why not. You're cuter than the last guy who came visiting."

"Cuter huh?" he wanted to flirt back, it was in his veins, it felt so natural to catch the ball and throw it right back to her. He couldn't though, because looking at her he realised for the first time that she wasn't looking back. That perfect mirror image they had come to be was gone. He was a stranger to her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't…." all too quickly the banter, the bravado, fell away and she seemed small to him for the first time since he'd known her, "… it's hard to know how to…."

"It's okay."

"Not really….." she said quietly, watching him as he took a seat gingerly beside her bed, "… not really it isn't. Is it?"

"You really don't remember anything?" he asked, and she stared at him. The piercing blue of his eyes burned straight through her skin. The broad stretch of his muscular shoulders, and the tense way he held himself lifted the hairs at the nape of her neck. His body was inclined to hers, and he leant his elbows on the bed presumptuously: urgently. "Nothing at all?"

"I…." she gasped, the breath leaving her lungs so quickly it roared in her ears.

"I'm sorry, God, so sorry. I'm being way too….." grabbing for her hand, and then dropping it suddenly as though it was hot to touch he staggered backwards. He couldn't do this, it was too much. Turning to leave he muttered, "I'm really sorry Liv I can't…."

"Wait?" she swallowed, her mouth open slightly and her breath a shaky pant. "Elliot? Right?"

"Stabler, Elliot Stabler."

"He did lie to me."

"Who did?" his heart was thundering and the blood rushing to his head.

They had to be careful. They had been drilled so carefully in how not to overwhelm her, how to be sensitive to the brain injury, how to facilitate memories organically. He cared so little for all of that now, because the way she was looking at him in that moment was nothing to do with her brain. It was muscle memory; it was hungry, and visceral and undeniable. It wasn't thought: it was felt.

"We're not friends….." she whispered hoarsely, her brown eyes pooling with unspeakable feeling, "…. are we?"

"It's….." chewing at the inside of his cheek, tasting the metallic regret of his cowardice Elliot grunted, "… complicated."

"Is it?" she asked, searching his face. "Because it doesn't feel that way. I don't remember who I am or how I got here, or whether to believe a single thing anyone who walks into this room says. I'm trying to piece together a whole life and everything about that is complicated. I'm in this all alone and I'm scared to death."

"Hey…."

"But the way you're looking at me right now?" finding a shy smile, stepping out onto the ledge she held her breath. "The way that it makes me feel?"

"Liv…."

"It doesn't feel so complicated Stabler, Elliot Stabler."

There was something exquisite, breath taking, in the way she allowed herself to be vulnerable. Blindfolded, feeling in the dark with fingertips tracing tantalizing memories held between heartbeats. He walked slowly back toward the bed, collapsed down into the chair and laid his hand out on the bed beside her, palm up and inviting.

"You always did have more courage than was good for you."

"You mean I shouldn't trust you? Everyone's a stranger, I have to trust someone."

"I'm not a stranger….." he choked, his hand still outstretched as his eyes met hers, "… I'm your friend. I promise you; I swear to God, you can trust me."

"Just my friend?" she asked, lifting her hand slightly, uncurling her fingers and playing them nervously on an invisible set of chords.

There were a million things he could've said, that he wanted to say. To fast forward, to move to the ending, to where they had come so close to being only a few days earlier. It felt to him, to his shattered heart, that they were right back at the start and beyond that. She remembered nothing: nothing at all. The magnitude of that was only just beginning to dawn on him. He couldn't pretend that everything was as it was. He wanted her so badly; he wanted them to be together so badly, but not like this.

"Yes, no, I…." tilting his head, softening his pained expression Elliot added gently, "… if you'll let me be? For now at least?"

"Okay." she said simply, because somehow she trusted him. It felt like the right thing. Moving her hand over his she felt her throat flush as his fingers closed around hers.

"You're not alone, Liv."