"I called Elliot, of course I called. I called so many times I hated myself for it."

"I didn't…." he sighed, this was hard.

This was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Lifting his eyes he held her gaze. This was sand through the hour glass, and it felt like it was slipping faster. This was a ticking clock, stealing more than one beat per second. He had to make it right. Time was running out.

"What?"

"I wasn't really meaning literally."

"You've become a man of metaphor?" she quipped, and for a fraction of a heartbeat the light rushed back in. She teased a smile from one upturned corner of her mouth and her eyes dared a fleeting twinkle.

"Two sides…." he said quietly, "… that's all I'm saying."

"It doesn't matter; none of it matters, not anymore. We are so far past all of that, don't you see?" she was tired, tired of it all. The same old conversations going around and around in her mind, the same feelings dragging at her heart and tethering her to a past long lost. "I spent what feels like a lifetime chasing after something that died with Jenna Fox.

"I didn't come here just to bring up old pain. I never meant to cause you any in the first place…." and in a bold, sweeping statement that could so easily have seemed flippant but that she felt sincerely in her bones he sighed, "… that was the worst of it all. The worst part, of all of it, was leaving you."

"Why'd you do it?"

"Honestly?" the truth was he could never be anything but completely honest with her, and that was the knife twisting in his gut at that moment. He was concealing, even now.

"I think honesty is all we have at this point." She said simply, and he couldn't help but flash another diffident smile. She was thawing. He didn't deserve it but there was a little light behind her eyes again when she looked at him, and he could feel her warmth returning.

"For a long time I thought what happened was the end. The end of everything, and don't get me wrong in a lot of ways it was. I've known a lot of violence in my life…." lifting his gaze, eyes painfully blue, he trusted her implicitly, "… and I've been the perpetrator of a lot of it."

"You were a Marine."

"I was an animal."

"El…."

He had shocked her. That took a lot. Where was that pride? Where was that unconditional faith and honour?

"I'm not making excuses. That's not what this is. I don't really know how to explain to you what happened, or what happened to me. I guess the wheels came off. The glue, well, I came unstuck. It wasn't just the shooting. I knew that, I wanted to be honest about it but somehow it just broke the dam….." shrugging his shoulders, saying that which had been so many years in the making he sighed, "… and I was drowning. For a long time I just let it happen. At first I didn't want to swim, and then when I finally did I didn't know which way to go to find the surface."

"What changed?"

Deliberately throwing his eyes to the counter, running them along the sandwiches and cakes, the coffee machines, his heart clenched. He couldn't tell her. Not yet.

"You only get one life, right?" he finally managed.

"Right."

"I've got enough regrets, I…."

"Elliot you don't…." closing her eyes, squeezing them tight as she attempted to process everything that was being said she opened them and shrugged, "… you have done so much good. What's going on here? You were a decorated career cop, your time in the Marines used to be everything to you."

"I was wrong."

"No!" her voice cracked, "No…." shaking her head she just took a moment, desperate to understand. "Semper fidelis…." she whispered, and needing to reach out to him in that moment despite it all she reached across the table and laid her palm flat between them, "… right? Always faithful? Always loyal? Don't lose that…."

"The only thing, the only person who ever deserved that from me…." lifting his hand, lowering it slowly toward the table and then snatching it back and covering his face Elliot choked, "… was you."

"Oh Elliot…." she sighed, a tear sliding silently down her cheek as she ducked her head and found his eyes, lifting his head and nodding slowly.

"I messed up."

"Yeah, yeah you did…." and suddenly he laughed, blue eyes glittering with tears but finding a smile through them.

"I lost everything Liv."

"What?" he meant it, this was not hyperbole and she could see the brokenness in his face.

"Cathy, the kids, my home, my sanity for a while….."

"Give me your hand."

"I…."

"Give it to me!" she demanded, pushing her palm in his direction.

Nodding slowly, with a gratitude and relief he had never known before, Elliot lay his hand in hers and felt his stomach drop when she wrapped her fingers around it. Tightly, like she wouldn't let go. Biting hard on his lip, his jaw locked around the avalanche threatening, he just stared at her. His eyes said everything she needed to hear.

"Can we keep talking?" she asked quietly, then clearing her voice, "Will you meet me here the same time tomorrow?"

"Of course, of course, I…."

"I don't know where my head is at Elliot. I don't know what I think or feel; I haven't even begun to process but…." still clutching his hand she gave him her first genuine smile, "… but I'll see you tomorrow."

For so long Elliot Stabler had been a face from her past, now here he was in her present and she wanted to keep him there. Despite everything, she could feel herself peeling back the layers of the onion. She was letting him back in, slowly, cautiously, conditionally; mindful of what had gone before.

"That's it! That's it, good job brave boy!"

"He's so funny."

"I'm sorry I was late…" breezed Olivia, having been more than a little tardy in meeting Ed and Noah at the park for their post work playdate. "Work is just never ending at the moment, but I get Rollins back tomorrow so it should ease a little."

"Who you are kidding?" he chuckled, knowing that one squad member returning from holiday wouldn't make a dent in Olivia's time.

She would give as much as it took, and that was unquantifiable. She wouldn't stop until every rapist in the city was behind bars, and all future rapes prevented. The dark shadow that this cast on their personal life did not go unnoticed by Tucker. She would stop for Noah, he saw that, daily. When would she stop for him?

"Ed if you want to call time on this then…."

"Are you really asking me that?" she was, and she wasn't entirely sure why.

From the moment Elliot had stepped, both feet, back into her life it was as though everything was suddenly thrown into question. Not just because of him, but because of something that he reawakened in her. An awareness of possibility, of hope, of something that she had thought lost forever.

It was as if she had been living in some sort of strange fog, a kind of semi blindness, and he had reopened her eyes to the person she had been before he left. Detective Benson was still in there somewhere. Whether or not she ever truly forgave him, whether or not they had a salvageable friendship let alone anything else, one thing was breathtakingly clear: she had felt more alive in the few stolen hours with him that week, than she had in five years without.

"No, yes, I don't know….." she hesitated a moment, stealing her watchful gaze from Noah just long enough to look Ed in the eye, "… is it fair to you? This?"

"You're talking about our relationship like it's the overtime roster, Olivia. Do you even care?" he smarted, a little taken aback by how quickly she had moved to the severing of ties. "Are you even in this at all?"

"Ed…."

"Say it."

"What?"

"Whatever it is that is killing you right now." Flat, monotone, already suspecting where this was headed Ed heaved a sigh. "You've seen him again haven't you? I should've known."

"It's not about him, Ed. Not really. I'm a mess, I'm…." laughing at herself, how pathetic she sounded, how cruel she was being Olivia covered her face with her hands and allowed her hair to fall over them. She wanted to hide. She wanted to hide until the screaming, the whirling, the storm raging in her head subsided. "Struggling."

"And you think that you'd be better off without my being here?"

"Why do you make that sound like some kind of threat?" she bristled, not at all liking his tone. "I am trying to be fair here. I'm trying to explain to you that I'm really struggling to figure out what the hell is going on and I'm not sure that I can be what you need me to be right now."

"I don't need anything from you Olivia, beyond a willingness to try. Am I not doing everything you want? Am I not taking care of you and Noah? I'm giving everything to this thing and…."

"And that's the problem."

"You're not?"

"I don't have everything to give to this, to you, right now."

"Do you have it to give to him?" was the obvious, painful; bitterly twisting question that Ed Tucker couldn't help but ask. Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his overcoat he buried his chin into his high collar and closed his eyes in weary defeat.

"I didn't ask for him to show up."

"Not really the point, is it?"

"Can you even try and understand?" she said, knowing just how much she was asking of him. "He was a bigger part of my life than…."

"I know, I know and I'm sorry that this is so hard for you. I get it, I think…." he was struggling too, because had witnessed it, that strange and beautiful dance that was Benson and Stabler in their heyday, "… because I saw it. I was there, don't forget."

"I'm not saying not ever Ed. It just wouldn't be fair to you to say forever right now. I'm not there, I'm not anywhere. My head, my heart….." she owed him so much, and if nothing else her honesty, "… it's all just so confused right now."

"Were you in love with him? Back then?" he caught her a little off guard with the direct manner in which he asked such a profound question. One she had barely dared to ask herself. "Did you ever fall out of love with him?"

"I loved him very much…." she said simply, quietly, truthfully, "… and what that meant, or what it was or could've been I don't know. I'm even less sure now than ever."

"But were you in love with him?"

"We were never romantically involved if that's what you're asking. We were partners, he was married, he was my best friend…." locking his eyes, answering without shadow of doubt she spoke determinedly, "… we never crossed the line."

"Did you want to?"

They were over, he knew, her silence said it all. She had done the right thing, the fair thing; the irony of it all being that she had been more honest with him in that one interchange than she had with herself in the 12 years as Elliot Stabler's partner. With one look she broke Ed Tucker's heart because the answer they both realised, allowed to resonate in their bones, felt in every muscle and sinew in that moment: was yes.