Olivia found out about her sister a year ago, when an elderly relative let the truth slip out. A mysterious year in Texas as a child had never given Olivia a second's thought. She loved her grandparents and the year was pure heaven. They had a pool, a big backyard and a pink bicycle she rode around the cul-de-sac. They never called it a "dead end". A year of climbing the mimosa trees in the front yard came to an end when her mother re-emerged and carted Olivia back to New York on a Grayhound bus.

Monica was the product of a dalliance with a fellow professor. He was part Native American and studied the occult in his spare time. He died young in a plane crash right on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens. Monica was adopted at birth by a Mexican family and grew up there. She always knew something wasn't right. Sometimes she'd feel pains like a stinging slap across the face.

They were born under different signs but they shared many traits. Both wanted to serve and protect. Both struggled with a dark past, but due to her sunnier upbringing, Monica was slightly more upbeat than Olivia.

Munch was instrumental in getting the information to Olivia. He had ties to two of Monica's co-workers. One day he mysteriously turned up with a box of Monica's belongings...an old teddy bear, a photo album, a diary and a battered FBI badge. The edges were curled and burned and the laminate was scratched with sand. Munch wouldn't say where it all came from. Elliot didn't see much of Olivia that week, but he knew she slept with that teddy bear. There were many unfair things in his life, but thinking about Olivia and her sister broke his heart. He could only imagine how she felt.

Monica's partner was John Doggett. Elliot and John had briefly been partnered when they were just beat cops. They got along okay and their wives hit it off well. Elliot was a rookie and John could be a by-the-book pain in the ass. Then his son Luke died and the world fell apart. Elliot went to the funeral. He shook John's hand numbly but couldn't think of anything to say. John then joined the FBI, got divorced and moved to DC. When he got involved in some shadowy behind the scenes department, Monica came in and then they all just disappeared. They were all supposed to be dead, but as Stephen King said and Elliot was finding out, no true love ever dies.

Saddest part of it was an encounter they all had in upstate right before John and Monica went away with the breeze. It was in an old IGA. Elliot was sick, so he just jawed with John in parking lot as Monica and Olivia connected in the store. "Jee-zus, they could be twins," John said, watching the two of them walking through the doors. Elliot didn't think they looked alike, but the demeanor was there, the hand movements, the cackling laugh. Monica seemed more mischevious than Olivia, and a real heartbreaker. She also looked older, but John had mentioned it had been a rough year for the two of them.

The real shame was that it was four years later when Olivia found out about their ties. The relative blurted it out, then a DNA test confirmed it so that Olivia could be next of kin.

At that point it seemed she needed a sister more than she needed Elliot Stabler.

XXXXXXXXXX

Elliot woke up at 4am and walked out into the cool desert air. The stars were very bright and the purple sky seemed to stretch out endlessly.

"Where are you?" he asked, looking at the moon. A coyote answered from somewhere out in the night. He thought of his children, safe in New York with Kathy. "I'm losing here, Olivia. You've got to give me some kind of sign that you're okay. I don't know what the hell else to do."

The anger crept in slowly, like a muffled scream from the back of his brain. He went back into the hotel room and paced for about ten minutes, trying to put together some sort of game plan. What next? If Olivia doesn't turn up, or she does turn up and need serious medical care, or John and Monica take her back to wherever they hide and he loses all contact?

Elliot thought of Olivia back when they first met. There was an inherant sweetness about her that had eroded through the years. She became more like him all the time. He remembered her wobbling around on heels at the precinct Christmas party last year. Some of that sadness made her more appealing to Elliot. They didn't dance or exchange gifts. Instead, he watched her all night with growing horror. Oh, fuck, he thought. We weren't supposed to fall in love. This was never in the cards.

The walls of the hotel room seemed to close in. Elliot felt sick to his stomach just staring at the violently green carpet and waterstained sink. First he methodially broke a chair. Then he ripped the shower curtain off the rod. Seeing the check-in woman's impassive face, he shoved all the towels into the toilet and knocked over the bureau. It took some rummaging, but at the bottom of his suitase, Elliot found a Magic Marker and wrote "Fuck This Motel" in huge letters on all four walls.

Surveying the damage, he felt dizzy. Olivia would ream him out for this, just another example of his temper getting out of control. But it was fear and helplessness that sparked it this time. The thought of her getting mad was somehow comforting. Like the one time where she was calling him out on something and they both ended up laughing. Elliot had offered her a donut, thoughfully squeezing out the raspberry filling that she didn't like. Some of it squirted on her and Olivia just unloaded. Then she laughed.

The tears came freely. Elliot sat on the trashed bed and cried for what seemed like hours. Her face was everywhere. Elliot loves Olivia, the biggest mistake of his life. And he was sure deep in his heart that she loved him. Anyone that would put up with his onion breath, bad temper, undemonstrative self must have some feelings.

Say hello to the lovesick man in the trashed $25 room.

He cried again and eventually fell back asleep.

XXXXXX

Elliot decided to leave quickly. Checking to make sure the coast was clear, he ran to the car. He had fudged a little on the information card at check-in, mainly because he couldn't remember the tag number on the Taurus. He also checked in as Oliver Barnson, unable to come up with anything more creative. As the motel faded in the dust, he had to laugh for the first time in days.

In his haste, Elliot didn't notice the small white envelope tucked under the Taurus's windshield wipers. Pulling over at an abandoned gas station, he snagged it and recklessly ripped it open.

Stabler:

Indian reservation hospital

J.

He examined the envelope. How did they know? Did they see him praying at the moon?

"They are the people of the shadows," Munch said.

"Thank you," Elliot said to no one in particular. He checked the map and headed down the dusty ribbon of highway. Some small weight had been lifted off his heart. The heat of the desert didn't seem so oppressive.

There was no sign announcing the reservation, only the outpost of what looked like a battered trailer court. Elliot was expecting to get questioned when he drove in, but the little community seemed dead and abandoned. A battered basketball court ringed with empty Tokay bottles stood empty. What looked like an elementary school had most of its windows broken in, some with industrial curtains that now fluttered in the hot breeze. The playground was weedy and the monkey bars were rusty and jagged.

The hospital didn't look much different from the school, save for its windows being intact. A battered K car sat in the parking lot, surrounded by other relics of Detroit, their paint faded. The asphalt was cracked and the desert grass poked out of the fissures. It was grim, but Elliot found strength to run toward the long brick building, knowing who was inside.

Practically bursting through the door, Elliot looked frantically for a front desk receptionist. The lobby was painfully bare, just an old floor model black and white TV set with rabbit ears and a couch that looked like Rick James stomped all over it. No one was around. so he

The hall was long and dirty. Water had leaked through the acoustic tiles and many of the lights were out. He didn't really notice. His stomach flopped and churned as he passed room 10.

"Hey."

He kept going.

"HEY!"

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. It startled him so much he wheeled around, almost tripping. At the end of the hall stood a small woman with very pale skin. She was wearing a stethoscope.

"Who sent you here?" she asked. Elliot searched for a reply but couldn't do anything but look troubled.

"I need to see my partner," he finally said.

"Is that Olivia?"

Elliot just nodded as the woman came closer. There was a painting that Olivia showed him once, of Ophelia from Hamlet floating down a stream, her dress slowly fading into the muck. That same pale face was in front of him now. The woman had the look of someone that was two steps from that watercolored riverbank.

"I need to see Olivia," he said again. But instead of turning around (as he intended), Elliot found himself staring into the woman's eyes, almost mesmerized by the sadness and melancholy behind them.

"They told me you'd come," she said. The walked down the hall slowly. "She's still out. I've been giving her liquids and trying to keep her cool."

"Who are you?" Elliot asked. He was beginning to realize the hospital was completely abandoned.

"I'm Dana. John and Monica said we could trust you. They were good friends of mine until things changed," she frowned, staring up at the sagging tiles. "I know John Munch, too."

Elliot's eyes widened. She was Dana Scully, the fair redhead Munch would sometimes sigh about over beers.

"Before I take you in to see her, you have to understand. I've done the best I've can with her. My resources, as you can see, are very limited. But I understand what it's like to love someone and lose them. Then they come back and you want things to be right. Things change, though. You either love them more or you're angry because you weren't part of the equation for such a long time. You were the one left to clean up the mess," Dana said earnestly.

"I understand," Elliot said quietly, unconciously mimicking the hushed quality of her voice.

They came to the end of the hall. Dana opened the door to room 20 and let him go in first.

Olivia was in the bed. Her face was battered and misshapen. A bandage couldn't conceal the blood that had leaked from her temple. Every exposed inch of her skin was peeling with sunburn. "Oh God," escaped his lips in a shuddering sigh. "Olivia, what did they do to you?"

Elliot almost collapsed and would have hit the floor if it weren't for the steady hands of Dana Scully. She got him into a chair by the bed and put a cold hand on his shoulder. "Let her know you're here. Talk to her."

Dana slipped out of the room and left them alone. It took a long time for Elliot to find his voice.

"Liv?"

She didn't move.

"I'm here. I made it. I guess up until this point I never really believed in miracles, but the fact that I'm here and you're here is one. And I won't let you go again, even if you hate me for everything I've done in the past."

"I prayed for you, and I never pray for anyone anymore."

The soiled white curtains fluttered slowly in the dead wind. Through the window the only sound was a chain banging on a flagpole. It's insistent pinging made the land seem so much more lonely.

"We're surrounded by ghosts here. I wish you could see how blue the sky is. I wish you knew who it was who saved you...saved us."

He leaned over and kissed her lips lightly. Those brown eyes were beneath those swollen lids, and right then Elliot would have given anything to see them. Olivia's hands didn't look burnt, so he grasped one and held it to his face, kissing it. He let it rest on the bed and laid his head beside it, finally falling into a deep sleep for the first time in days. That's how Scully found him an hour later. She didn't have the heart to wake him up.

XXXXX

When Elliot finally did come around, Dana was shaking him gently on the shoulder. "How long have I been out?"

"About four hours," Dana said, checking her watch. "Do you want some coffee? I just made a fresh pot."

He got the vibe Dana wanted someone to talk to. So he followed her down to an office area that seemed cleaner than the rest of the building. "I'm surprised this place has power," he remarked, sitting down in a rickety office chair.

"It's more sophisticated than that. There's a full security system, too. Some friends rigged it up when they passed through," she said, pointing at a tiny camera mounted on the wall. "They're all over the perimeter."

"I won't pretend like I don't know who you are, or who might be here with you. John told us all about you guys one night, but I thought it was urban legend, until we found out about Olivia and Monica," Elliot said, taking a sip.

Dana looked a little lost and seemed to struggle for a moment. "This reservation was abandoned 15 years ago because the Native Americans said the ground went bad. The friends who rigged up all the equipment were using it as a hideout. When they moved on, we moved here. None of us can be in the same place at the same time."

"Where's Mulder? I swear, we all believed Munch made him up."

"He's over the border, trying to get us a new truck. It's the only place you can get something like that with cash no questions asked. When he gets back, we're leaving again."

Elliot knew better than to ask where they were going. "So Monica and John dropping Olivia off - "

"Was a big risk. But I would do anything for Monica and John. I really wanted to see them again. Monica was like a sister to me for the year we worked together, so having Olivia here is a little part of that."

"Dana, if there's anything we can ever do for you guys, say the word."

She shook her head. "The whole thing is something you'd never want to get involved with. I think of Monica and John sometimes, who could have had that pretty suburban house and a couple of kids. They live in a cabin up in God-Knows-Where, under assumed names. Our families believe we're all dead. That's not something I would wish on anyone," Dana said, a bitter smile crossing her face. "Let's check back in on Olivia. Someone who there is hope for."

Olivia was still out, but Elliot kissed her again. It cheered him to hear her strong breaths. Many questions still remained, but she was back. Scully checked Olivia's bandages an sighed a little bit. "Elliot, her head wound was cause by some blunt-force trauma, like a hit by a shovel. Monica was able to get it sterile. You'll need to watch it closely. If she wakes up a different person, that's cause for concern."

Elliot picked up her hand again. There were so many questions that needed to be answered. It would take awhile to learn what caused Olivia's wounds, but when he did, Elliot never looked at her the same way again.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

AN: More to come soon. Thanks for reading.