Kinda excited about my ideas about where this story should go. But for now...

Rebound

They stopped at a red light. Olivia's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. How does she even begin to be there for him? There has never really been a need for her - she's always needed him. Now the tables have turned and she doesn't exactly know how to give him a stable ground to stand on. Or at least she didn't know how to do it on purpose; this would obviously take effort that she didn't need to apply before. Their mutual reliance was once so easy. Things are different now. He's not the same man she remembers from before she left. Before Gitano. Before everything that's ever caused a shift in their heavily linked worlds. He hasn't said a word the whole ride. She couldn't even hear him breathing. She glanced over at him; he was just looking out the windshield. His face was not one of a worried man but one of a disturbed man. It's like he'd been so emotional that his heart shut down. He seriously could no longer handle feeling. As if he ever could, though.

"No," he said in a still, raspy voice, "the cribs'll be fine."

She dropped her jaw. She'd driven him all the way to his home hoping he'd at least try to make amends with his wife. She felt like that's where he needed to be. "El, you need to go in there and figure it out," she said sternly but there was no response other than a quiet, dismissive sigh, "You need your family."

"They don't need me," he said.

God, she couldn't help thinking he sounded like an angsty teenager. Always him; always the world against him; always somebody leaving him; always him, him, him. She wouldn't so much mind his self-centeredness if he'd actually let her in. Instead she picks up on his bitterness through half-cocked remarks and angry outbursts. She sighed, annoyed and disappointed, and drove to the precinct. She followed him into the cribs and he laid down. She stood there a moment, peering at him through the dark and, though he couldn't see her vindiction, she knew he could feel it seering into his skin. So, he wanted to just be dropped off to sleep in the crib alone. He wanted to refuse any kind of support. He wanted to push everybody away. He wanted to push Olivia away. Because in his little world of despair his pain can't matter to anyone else. So when he pushes someone away it can't hurt them. He's wrong.

He got the shock of a lifetime when he heard Olivia's body ease itself down onto the lower bunk across from him. "Fine," she said, "if this is how it's gotta be."

"Go home." He rolled his eyes in the dark.

"You're my partner. For better or worse, that's what you said and I haven't forgotten. This isn't a one-way street. You sleep here, I sleep here."

Whaddya know. Someone does care. Here's Olivia, risking her lower back for him. He's trying, he's racking his brain but he can't recall another person ever making such a gesture. Has he really gone through all these years without unconditional love?

"You're not alone. Cause I won't let you be," she finally said. "Good night," and she flipped over, her back to him.

He wanted to reach out. That hug earlier did something to him. Once somebody shows you that they care and you feel it you want to keep feeling it. You don't want to go another minute of not feeling it. She'd wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. He wanted that. That's what he needed but he just couldn't for the life of him bring himself to seek it out. That's not how he conducts himself. He sighed softly. He felt worthless. Like he didn't deserve to be alive. He'd often thought about death at times when he was away from home. When his kids behaved as if they hated him. When his wife looked at him with those blue eyes and that face of contempt. Everytime his eyes met hers whether it was during an argument or some loveless evening he asked himself if he'd ruined her life so many years ago. He'd gotten her pregnant. Then left for the military. Then came back and made more responsibility for them. And joined the force, leaving her with much of the many daunting tasks of having bright, beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed burdens who took up his combative attitude. She's suffered for the love of him and they both suffered for the sake of the family. But they suffered separately. Olivia always shared in his suffering, though. They were attached in some supernatural way that couldn't be unplugged. When she left there was a gaping hole in his existence. It's a wonder he didn't eat his gun after that one call where the automated voice all but told him in front of his colleagues that Olivia was, like his wife and kids, done with him.

But here she was sticking by him when he thought he'd also had enough of himself. And he wanted to be nearer to her. She was so far away, resting silently a few feet away from him, a cold, painful, hard floor separating the two.

"Are you sleep," he asked in a quiet, careful voice. She answered no without stirring. "I can't sleep either."

She turned over onto her opposite side and tucked her hands under her head. She was facing him now in a way that was confrontational but timid. Her demeanor demanded and begged of him to just open up to her. She wanted to know what was going on in that head of his. If anybody should have that privelege, who other than her? "Then talk to me, El."

He mentally prepared himself under the guise of an annoyed sigh but anybody in the world could see that it was nothing other than a burdened down breath he expelled. And he'd never tell a soul that he was relieved that she was asking yet again for him to relieve his heart of his secret woes.

"Why'd you leave?"

She turned onto her back. "I told you already."

"Well, I didn't like the answer," he said, almost defensively.

"Then I don't know what to tell ya."

"Olivia. We're supposed to be closer than that. We're better than that."

"We were close... once. And we're not as good as you'd like to believe."

He sat up, bending so as not to hit his head on the top bunk. "What's that supposed to mean?" Still, she didn't stir. Her eyes just sweeped over and back to the bottom of the bunk over her.

"Something happened to us, Elliot. We cracked," she said, her voice weaking, "We were almost invincible. Then we found out that there's something that can break us. And we didn't react like partners. Now we're no better than the next two partners because we let ourselves get like that."

We didn't react like partners. What she really meant was HE didn't react like a partner.

He knew that she was talking about Gitano. They were a force until that boy died. Until Elliot messed up. Until Elliot blamed Olivia with the whole precinct as an audience. When he attacked her confidence and questioned her ability to do her job which she has always done exceptionally in front of their colleague's hungry eyes. Until Gitano stuck a shotgun to the back of his head and forced Olivia to choose between causing her partner's death and letting a little girl die. When he called them screw-ups it was stab to a fresh wound in her gut. A wound Elliot had served her. And Elliot tried to take it back then and there. He told he'd made that mistake on his own. He shouldn't have blamed her that he loved her so much. He told her to take the shot, risk getting his head blown off right before here eyes. Risk being the cause of his death, the reason his children would never see their father's face again, risk taking him from his wife all over again. She'd said sorry, struggling to will her hand to squeeze the trigger but she was never gonna be able to. Besides, how the hell would she get a good shot when everything looked as if she was peering through the lenses of her eyes underwater. He'd said it's okay. His own tears were wanting to escape. He could've been thinking about his family. Or that missing girl. But all he could comprehend was Olivia in front of him, trying not to cry. All he could think about was how he'd hurt her and he'd caused this. That his last act was that of hurting the most important woman in his life. That would be his departing gift: pain. All he could think about was the state he'd be leaving her in. And there with Gitano's steel in the back of his head, he wanted nothing more but to walk forward and wipe the tears from her cheeks. Of all the things he could've done outside of the hospital room to make amends he did the worst thing he could've possibly done to her. He pushed her away. He created distance when what they both needed was to know that they still cared. That they still had each other. He'd said that they chose each other over the job and it could never happen again or else they couldn't be partners. She told him she couldn't believe he was saying that. He said that the job was all he had anymore. And her. And he didn't know what he'd do if he wrecked it. Like he wrecks everything else. Then he got up and walked away. And he left her sitting in that chair trying to make sense of it all, fighting more tears like the fighter life has forced her to be. She needed him then. But he wanted none of that closeness anymore. He wanted distance and safety. But that didn't mean he didn't want her. She eventually sucked it up and decided that he was right. They were perhaps too close. So close that his words could penetrate her thick skin and cause her to feel like less than she was. So she left to protect herself and maybe salvage whatever was left of their friendship, knowing their partnership was likely dead.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.

"You didn't," she immediately lied. She refused to admit that he could affect her the way he did. She didn't want the pain that comes with loving someone, having them know that she does.

"Well," he said as he laid himself back down, "if it's all the same to you I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

They both lay on their backs. Elliot looked across to see the profile of her glorious body, her chest rising and falling gently. And the profile of her face. It looked like it could be either emotionless or stern. He always knew she put on like she was 100% tough 100% of the time but he'd seen the other side of her. He'd seen her on the verge of breaking down. She couldn't fool him. But he didn't think he was exactly allowed to poke and prod. They'd had this system that worked perfectly for them but it was only to maintain. Not to grow. Perhaps that's what killed their friendship and partnership.

Sorry for logging in practically empty-handed. Exams and shit coming up. Hang on... crying...

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Okay I'm back! Anyway, I hope y'all will accept this until I can decide how the plot will progress. I guess you can consider their relationship restored. Or at least back to square one *hint* *hint* Anyway, thanks for reading and sticking with this story. I have a lot of hope for it.

Happy reviewing!