There is laughter, somewhere. Creeping through his dreams and sneaking up on him, until he is forced to open his eyes and search for the answers. There are none here, in this room that isn't his, but he is drawn outwards past dawn faded walls, and he finds them.
Morning has come. Another day, and he feels rested, which is a surprise to him. But not as much of a surprise to him as Olivia, sitting at the small kitchen table with the flush of a smile still lighting her face. He could watch her forever. The hint of colour that is new and soft against her skin. Her mouth, the corners raised, and now Don is slowing his story and both turn to look at him.
"Morning," Don says brightly, immediately standing to get coffee, and Elliot repeats his response back at him without even thinking, captivated. She looks at him, and a hint of who they had once been washes between them as she mouths a greeting, and there is no sound to her speech but he hears her anyway.
Only now does he take in the plate in front of her, scattered with crumbs, and Don places toast and coffee at a place for him. He slides in next to her, seeing her like he has never seen her before. She has dropped her gaze for a moment, turned to Don to decline anything further, and when she looks back he reads everything.
In her, bubbling still beneath, there is everything there. The depth of pain, the loss, the confusion and the shock, but she tells him without words. Tells him that, for now, there is calm surface. She can breathe, with a breeze that will not churn anything more than ripples in a deep pool. And, as she shoots a quick flick of her eyes to Don, and Elliot follows her look, more understanding comes.
Olivia is doing it for Don. He's happy here, bustling through the kitchen and wiping surfaces that have seen more activity that morning than – well - forever. She's helping him, and if that means she helps herself, then so be it.
It is a strange sort of domesticity, he thinks, as he takes a bite of toast and a sip of coffee that might be the best he's ever tasted. Maybe because Don, after all these years, should know good from bad. Maybe because his hand reaches to her, and squeezes until she turns hers up, and they match, palm to palm. Through her, he feels the rough edges to his skin, the effort it takes her now to be normal, and then she squeezes back.
Don watches, when he knows they don't see. Catches the glances she shoots Elliot's way, when unease begins to grow, and Elliot takes every one and moves to her with a simple rest of a hand against her shoulder, a whisper, a smile. Don won't tell them he sees, and as she moves through the house she is a newborn fawn, all legs and uncertainty fresh across her in tumbling innocence.
He thinks she looks younger than those years ago. That silence and darkness has wiped the taint of the job from the surface of her skin. She's so pale. It's What it has left, he thinks none of them understand, just yet.
When he starts to make home-made soup for lunch for them all, Elliot can contain himself no longer.
"All these years, Kathy's been bringing meals, and you're a domestic goddess?" He snorts with a smile, the sight of Don in an apron so incongruous he can't resist his chuckle.
"Your wife's cooking is vastly under-appreciated by you and your children, all of whom seem to think a hot-dog is the height of cuisine," Don retorts, and bubbles of laughter float into the air between them all.
"What can I say, I'm a New Yorker through and through," Elliot shrugs, unabashed, his smile wide, and turns to Olivia.
"Think we're safe to try it?"
"Safer than if you were cooking," she bites back, and suddenly it's all so excruciatingly easy, to be with her and tease and laugh and ignore the cloud still above, the threat of rain, the elephant in the room. Don's bark of laughter comes so suddenly it makes her jump and flinch, but then she looks at Elliot from beneath her lashes, and the smile on her face teases him to reply, to try and shoot her down, but he can't. He can't.
She hovers, in two pieces, and she knows what it is like to not feel whole. Mostly she has hated it, watching from afar as others seem more complete, with their families and their lives and the normality of it all, but now it is a relief. In the back of her mind, it all sits, but she has learnt from years and years of trying how to separate herself from it all. How to smile, when life stings with a slap. How to shrug your shoulders, and swallow the burn, and pretend even to yourself that nothing is wrong. She knows this dance.
So she does it today. With Don, very little comes out, and what a focus it gives her to be who he needs. To let him hand her food and drink and warmth and normality, and see him smile to himself as he does so. She shows something more to Elliot, the moment a pan slips in the kitchen and she starts at the sound. Shouts from outside, sneaking in when Don opens a window a crack, and it's only children playing and a dog barking furiously, but it may be sandpaper against her skin. Or not. Just the memory of such.
They eat, in the humid warmth of a kitchen full of cooking, and bread soaked in soup slides down easily and doesn't catch once in her throat as she tries to swallow. Even Elliot doesn't watch each mouthful, and is forced to bow to Don's cooking skills, though he contends that he could make anything else.
She beats them at Scrabble. Not once, but numerous times that afternoon, when the score ends up five games to her, and only one apiece to Don and Elliot, and there is just one single moment of pause, when she lays out 'zombify' for 76 and both look at her in astonishment, neither arguing it's existence as a word. He had let her have it as well. Had used it against her afterwards.
"Amazing what years locked up will do for your vocabulary," and it's a line crossed. The first time she has joked about what has happened, and there is a split second where she hears her own words, coarse and hard against the gentle day, and wishes she could take them back. But they save her with laughter, and Elliot grumbles under his breath at the unfairness of her hours of practice, joining her in it. Still, it hangs between them.
They sit in the evening with the two men watching sports and Olivia curled into her chair, observing them from beneath half resting eyelashes, so she catches just glimpses, like she's sneaking up on them from afar.
Don is more relaxed than Elliot, even though the latter gives a good appearance of being so. She knows him well enough though, despite it all, to see the line in his neck where tension rests and the shifting muscles of his shoulders that tell the truth. Next to him, Don is contained, quiet and still.
She's so strong. So hard, in all the right places. But how can they be the right places, because who should have to do what she does now. Who should have to sit and be so normal, press so far down the things inside of her. The walls she had before shouldn't have been needed, the ones against her mother and her father and her blood. Against the violence and the drunken nights and every single moment she knew she wasn't wanted. Against the job. Against herself. Against him.
And now she has built walls he doesn't have words for. That he doesn't know enough about to understand.
They are all seeing each other, out of the corners of their vision. They are all together, and apart.
When she thinks of the day, how it has gone, she can't help but be slightly proud of herself. She hasn't closed down much at all, and has fought losing herself in the false happiness of memories. Her head tells her it has to be false, because there is no way she could have felt that way, but the past feels ten times more normal and natural than today.
She is tired, and so she lets herself begin to close down now, as Elliot and Don quietly bicker like old women about who sleeps in the bed and who on the couch. She listens, and the image of them both curled together under sheets almost brings a smile to her, and then it hits. A heartbeat, next to hers. Warmth. Soft noises in the night. Her breath leaves her and she's plunged into ice cold water without warning.
Counting down from ten to one isn't enough time. Not nearly enough, so she does it again, and thankfully they are still so wrapped within their argument that they don't see yet. Thirty, forty, fifty comes and finally she has enough control to wrap a smile across her face and bid goodnight, firm enough that even if they don't believe she is okay, the cracks are not wide enough for them to force through and demand the truth.
Curled up in bed, she rests her hand on her own heart, feeling it beat, and hears his name without ever saying it out loud. She will not dare, for she will break. Jake. And then she dreams.
The last of Captain Price's detectives wraps on the door with knuckles and a wave that he is off, and she puts the book down thankfully and rubs her eyes tiredly. It can't possibly be evening already. She has been reading, searching for clues, all day. Every time she wants to stop, she reminds herself she is looking for where this guy is. That there might be answers here that even Olivia doesn't realise. It doesn't make it any easier.
""""""""""""
I'm going crazy here. Talking to myself. Perhaps this is more normal, writing stuff down, though I don't know how that works. No one will ever read it. Him maybe. It's not like I could stop him. Doesn't matter anyway, he can if he wants. What harm would it do?
Who knew my overriding problem would be boredom. Boredom and silence. There is so little noise here. I could scream all day and no one would here me. Doesn't seem much point but maybe I'll try it.
I list all the noises I am used to and don't hear. The hum of traffic, all the time. Even in the middle of the night. People. No people here. The building, but there are creaks here as well. Sirens. Air conditioning and heating. The fridge. Water. Planes overhead. There are a million and one noises I don't hear any more. I list them to go to sleep. People make a lot of noise, put together in a city.
My mind works too hard. There is nothing to wear it out. Don't think. Don't think. Perhaps if I write stuff down it will clear my head.
You think I'm crazy already? I'm so lonely it aches all the time. So quiet here and it makes the air feel heavy. I didn't know quiet could do that. It's an education, here in this basement on my own. I guess I should be figuring out how to escape but I've run out of ideas already. Great detective I am. The door opens inwards, and is so heavy that he only has to let go for it to slam shut. I don't know the code. He says he's not scared of death, so threatening him doesn't work. Tried that. Why am I telling myself all this? The weird thing is, I believed him before I tried, and it was true.
I don't think he's lied to me once. An honest rapist. I can't remember anyone ever not lying to me, at least once. He told me he's the rapist without me asking, even though my skills are still honed enough to figure that out. That he didn't know I was a cop and it makes sense. We weren't exactly close to catching him so why throw himself in my way? 'Of all the apartments, in all of the streets,' he said when he explained. Some sick love film, or the opposite of. I should hate him. How quickly does Stockholm kick in? In those first days I hated him, when he sat down and told me everything. How it had happened.
I tried to talk to him logically. Appeal to him. He called me out on everything I did. Now I don't talk much and he doesn't say much. It's so hard, not to talk. He's the only person I see. I told myself I need to keep hating him and now, already I don't. I feel sorry for him. He tries so hard and seems so sad.
Then again, I didn't always hate my father when I thought of him either. Ignore that. I did. I do. And I hate him. I will always hate him. Them both.
"""""""""""""
"It's New Year's Eve today," Don says in the morning, and Olivia can't tell whether his surprise is real or if he's pretending for Elliot and her, who clearly have no idea what day it might be. She doesn't anyway. Perhaps Elliot does.
"Another year older," Elliot winks at Don, and she can't get a handle on their relationship yet. She wonders, if she asked them, would they know how much they have changed? It's too much like father and son and they've gotten closer. They tease each other, like Dickie teases Elliot at home. This Don is someone she doesn't know. Laid-back and quiet and calm and … No, don't think it. Don't think better. Don't think happier.
An odd threesome they make, sitting that evening and watching cheesy TV that never seems to change. Who knew seeing in the year would be something that is the same, again and again. She closes her eyes as the ball drops.
"""""""
"Do you wish?", he asked the first New Year's, and wishing is something she'd already taught herself not to do by then. She'd told the truth - that, no, what would I wish for? It will never come true. And the exquisite sadness rolled over him then, and she couldn't tell when his pain ended and hers began.
"I wish." He said; she didn't ask, and he didn't tell. Not then. She had thought though, how silent all her relationships were, if that's what this could be described as. Maybe it had been her, always her that means people don't talk. She never talked to her mother, not properly. Rarely to Elliot. Never to boyfriends. And no one had talked to her, as she held them at arm's length.
Don't get close, and no one will get hurt.
Does Elliot talk to anyone now? Or is he as broken as she is. As the man opposite her is, on their first New Year's Eve.
"""""""""
When she opens her eyes again, nothing has changed. A new year brings nothing with it but the same old lives. They may as well just have stayed in the last one. All that celebration, all the energy and light and tacky words and it's just false promises, made between two people. A promise to change, to try harder, to be better. That will never happen, really.
Auld Lang Syne is here. The same old song. Dragging us back. Elliot hums it and Don whispers the words under his breath.
He had told her what it meant. Their first New Year's together. For old acquaintance. She hadn't gone to bed until dawn, and then with tears in her eyes, as she thought of old acquaintances. She won't cry now. She has them here, her old acquaintances. They feel new though, like repainted rooms. The same walls, but something different. What colour am I? She wants to ask, but they wouldn't understand.
Too melancholy tonight, for a New Year. A new life. Maybe it's the beer she's allowed herself to have, that she and Elliot drink in Don's house. Cruel, maybe, but he offered. He's in control now. She wishes she was.
"""""""""
The beginning comes as the end had, with no surprises except the one that reads: things should be different, but they're not. Elliot is asleep, stretched out on the sofa that is too small for him really, but he doesn't shift or fidget as she tiptoes past. She stands and watches Don's back yard, with trees at the end whose boughs bend and bow with snow. Birds are hopping, scattering footprints everywhere, in winding patterns. The dog she heard the day before barks again, but the birds don't leave, or even react. How do they know not to be scared? She thinks, and I'm scared, as her hands tighten momentarily into fists.
It's then that Elliot stretches, and she hears his small grunt that tells her he's awake and ready for the new day. The grunt he has always given, though perhaps he never notices it now, and wouldn't know what she was talking about if she mentioned it. She always knew when he woke up.
Elliot calls home during the day, and Kathy laughingly informs him that Dickie hasn't emerged from his room yet, despite Eli running round the house all morning, and the girls are all at friends houses. All three had text that morning to confirm they were still alive, but Kathy thinks they probably aren't feeling like they are. He chuckles.
"Are you coping?" He asks, and she assures him that she is, that Eli misses him, but that she's explained as best she can.
"How are you doing?" Kathy asks in reply, and he finds himself at a loss. He thinks she must hear it, across the distance, because she simply says "okay," to his silence. "Call me. Keep us up to date. Eli misses you," she repeats, and then "but we're all okay."
When he hangs up, he misses them. But he can't leave her. Not now.
"""""""""""""
Nightmares return that night, but when she wakes this time the scream is still in her throat and she can bite it back, swallow hard until it is a lump of iron in her stomach that pins her to the bed, scared to move. Her heart has stopped beating far sooner than her mind stops racing. She repeats over and over again that it is only a dream. Only a nightmare, not real. But it won't work now.
She feels in limbo. Unsettled. Trapped even, though how she can feel like that after only a few days, given the years, is strange. There is a mix of sensations, that she shouldn't want to leave here, but she does. It's warm and it's quiet and in some ways, it reminds her of there, and perhaps that is more the problem. That it's too close, and she could let herself fall into being here just like she had done there.
When Elliot gets up the next day, New Year +1, Olivia seems slightly on edge. Not as she had been before, but still not as settled as she had seemed the last couple of days and he's instantly on alert. It doesn't take her long, maybe half an hour, before she speaks off handedly in the way that tells him this is no big deal, even if he thinks it might be.
"Can you go to the apartment today?" She asks, and if he didn't know her better, he wouldn't see the effort the words had taken, and the minute hitch before 'the', when she had considered saying 'my'. He doesn't show he hears though.
"Sure. What do you need?"
"I wrote a list," she passes it over to him, ready made, and he scans down her clothes, a few books and other things. Nothing surprising, or that should make her be as tense as she is, and there must be something else coming. He's right. "Then, I'll need to start looking for a new place."
"So soon?"
"I've got to start...trying to get some kind of life back. Be normal, whatever that is. Though I don't know how I'll have a hope in hell of paying rent now."
She's trying to be offhand, to belay the seriousness of her worries, but it doesn't work and in the shrug she gives afterwards, he thinks he sees her acknowledgement of that. I know, but pretend, for me it says.
"Rent's not a problem," a voice comes from behind them, and Don has come in. "We've been paying rent on the apartment since...well, we can pay rent on a different one just as easily."
She looks at Elliot in stunned disbelief, and is shaking her head before Don even takes a breath at the end of his sentence. "No, absolutely not."
"Why not. Its easily manageable, between the four of us." And Don gestures to Elliot, who is sitting opposite Olivia and watching her, but not getting involved. Still, he doesn't opt out of being included either. If this is what it takes, he will do it, but for now he will let them argue it out.
"I cant ask you to do that for me." Before she looks down at the pen she's clicking in her hands, left over from the list, Elliot can see frustration, and annoyance, that she's not getting her own way. He hates that this feels like controlling her again, but Don has a point. She has no way of paying rent at the moment.
"You're not. We offered. And we'd be a damn sight happier paying it for you to live in, rather than just for your stuff."
"But you've got other things to spend your money on. Family, kids..." She fades off even before Don starts to shoot her down again.
"Not me. And not Fin," Don shrugs. "And I'm willing to bet the money we're talking on the fact John would shoot you down for refusing as well."
She bites down on her agitation. How to tell them, to throw back in their faces the gift that is so freely offered, and scream that it's tainted. It's wrong. It's the thought of being kept by someone else again, of being at someone else's whim, and hoping they won't change their minds.
They won't see it though, and she's not sure which is worse: feeling indebted or seeing their lack of understanding and the hurt they will feel at the comparison. They won't get it, that it doesn't matter that she trusts them. That it wouldn't be like that.
She's silent, fighting the words, and then quietly gives them something. "I'll think about it."
It seems enough, and Elliot picks up the list from the table, and says he'll go now. The list that she had written in the middle of the night, when she couldn't fall back to sleep.
"""""""""""""""""
Month two – I think.
Lists, lists, lists. They are such a friend now. I never had any patience before, for sitting down and making lists, even a grocery one. Now I make lists all the time, in my head. It started easily enough, trying to remember people's birthdays, or their badge numbers. Names of long forgotten friends from school. Who sat at the desk three from the door and four back?
There are rules to the lists now. They can't be written down, that's cheating. The ones I list the most get remembered in the same order, as much as I can. People I know spiral outwards, from the ones closest to me, to distant people like the woman in the coffee shop on Tuesdays and Fridays, whose name is Jan. It's amazing how many people you can get to know, in a lifetime.
I could list my lists here. That wouldn't break the rules. People. Perps. Victims – full names only or they don't count. Victim's families. Forms, procedures, laws. Names of streets and parks. What happened where. Which blocks we never went to on a call.
The mundane things have no order to them. They don't get recited in my head so much. Colours, from basic to extreme. Another word for red, for blue. Countries of the world. I don't know enough about them, about any of them. I never went. Now I won't. But I can list them. All the animals I can think of. Boys names. Girls names. Presidents (I should know more.)
I can list for hours. Until penguins and magenta and whether Hong Kong is a country or a city swirl round and round in my head and I can slip into the vortex and sleep.
I remember a boy at school who started a short lived craze of who could list the most numbers of pi. It didn't last for long, everyone else got bored and moved on, but he would walk the halls repeating them in a chant. I don't know how many he got to. I wonder if he was searching for an answer, or simply a calm within it all. I wonder what thoughts he was hiding from.
I've taught myself to mirandize backwards. First only the words in the wrong order, but then the sounds as well, so it is foreign in my head. Don't ask me why though.
You to read been have they as rights these understand you do? You to appointed be will one, attorney an afford cannot you if. Attorney an to right the have you. Law of court a in you against used be will and can say you anything. Silent remain to right the have you.
It makes sense to me.
""""""""""""
Elliot brings back a duffel bag of clothes, and she lays them out on the bed that isn't hers. She hasn't asked for anything difficult. No old work clothes, or dresses for dates, but things to slide into after a hard day. To relax in for too few hours before crashing into bed, except now she has too many hours. Still, she showers, and slips the most familiar on again, where they cling to her in the way they always had. Perhaps she's expecting something more from them, but she's disappointed. She doesn't feel like the person she was.
Captain Price turns up on the doorstep the next day, before the path has been swept after the night's snowfall. "These forms are for Olivia," she says, and hands a brown envelope to Don, who invites her in. He's just making her a drink when Olivia walks into the room, and Captain Price is surprised by how solid she looks. Somehow she'd brought to mind some kind of shadow. Maybe it's just because that's what she's been in the squad room for so long, a ghost drifting through. Now she's real again. It's the closest to Lazarus she's ever seen.
Not to mention she's been lost in the notebooks.
Olivia is cautious with the nod of her head in greeting, and slips round them both to pour herself a coffee before going to go, and she speaks up quickly.
"Detective Benson," and Olivia seems to stop in slow motion, the words taking an age before they settle, and when she turns back to face her, the envelope is already offered. "These are for you. They were brought to the squad room. Seems no one official was quite sure where you were staying."
Olivia takes them with a quizzical look and slips into the lounge area as the two captains, current and ex, start up a low conversation between themselves. The envelope is official, her name printed on the front, and its like falling back in time to a place she had forgotten, where paperwork ruled.
Sliding the sheets out, there is - as expected - a form to fill out, and a covering letter that she reads once, and again, and then stares at it without speaking. Since she's come back to her life, nothing has made sense really, and this makes even less.
She's still staring when Elliot walks in with the fresh smell of his morning shower following him, and he knows immediately that something is wrong.
"Olivia?" Barely offering a glance towards the kitchen area, where Don and Captain Price are still chatting over mugs of coffee, he comes closer and sits on the edge of the chair next to her, trying to see her face beneath her bowed head. "What's wrong?"
The panic is quickly setting into him, and it increases as she doesn't respond, but pushes the paper towards him. He takes it, scanning the letter quickly, and then doing as she did and reading again, slowly.
"Wow," he says under his breath, and looks at her again, a hint of confusion flashing in creases across his face, "this is good news."
"I can't take it." Her voice is low and soft with steel embedded through its core, and it's so her, so the Olivia of old when she was battling pain and coming out on top, letting no one in because she thought she needed no one, it aches.
"What do you mean? They're giving it to you. It's yours." He flicks a gaze across the paper again, certain he must be missing something. That her determination cannot be over what he understands. His slightly raised voice causes the voices coming from behind him to cease, and he knows without looking that they will be staring at Olivia as well.
"I didn't earn that money. They're only giving it to me out of pity."
"Not pity. It's sick pay, for every year you've been gone. It's exactly what you'd have gotten if we'd found you two days after you went missing and you couldn't work. But we didn't..."
Both captains come and stand behind Elliot's chair, where he's leaning towards her, and she sharply rises and spins away, turning to the window at the front of the house and looking out at the quiet neighbourhood before speaking.
"I wasn't sick. And I wasn't working. I don't deserve the money, whether One PP think I do or not." She turns her head at the last sentence, so she is staring at the carpet to her side and seeing nothing, as she talks to them without meeting their looks. Elliot has handed the paper over his shoulder to Don, who takes it in quickly as Elliot argues back.
"Liv, take it. It's not pity money, or even guilt money. It's their way of trying to look out for their own." He's insistent and indignant in his need for her to see the truth, but he knows even as he says the words that they don't make it through, instead hitting the barrier she has in place. Don walks round the chairs towards her.
"Olivia." And he waits, until finally she turns her body slightly, enough so that she can look at him over her shoulder. "We should have found you. And we didn't. This is the least you deserve for every cop who failed you. Including us," and he gestures behind him to Elliot, sitting on the chair, and Captain Price who is nodding slowly.
"You didn't fail me." Her voice is husky now, as she holds back everything, but her eyes are dry and there is no quiver to her lips. "How could you have known where to look?"
Don offers the paper towards her, and keeps pushing until her fingers close slowly over it and it creases as she grips, crinkling under her white knuckles. "Please, take it. For me." As he says it, and plays his final card that he knows he shouldn't, he sees her shoulders sag in defeat. It's emotional blackmail, it's unfair to use against her in her present state, but he doesn't care.
It's not about the money, as such, but about what it means. About her taking time, and being free to heal. About her having the chance she deserves to get the best possible help. He knows, all too well, what it's like for victims to fight through it all while trying to work, while having to fight each second to live a normal life and keep a roof over their heads. Maybe he's selfish, and a hypocrite, but he doesn't want her to have to do that. Not Olivia...
"Okay," she whispers under her breath, and while everyone else sighs a relief, Don catches a glimpse of sadness in her eyes. They have pushed her into this. It's for her own good rings through his head in sarcastic tones - he has heard in so many different situations over the years. He has told it to himself when he's had to be a captain instead of a friend. Now it weighs on him, that he has done it again.
When Olivia leaves the room and heads towards her bedroom, Captain Price follows, and when she reaches the door she raps lightly on it with the back of her knuckles, watching the woman sit on the edge of the bed. "May I speak with you for a second?" she asks, and is fully prepared for Olivia to deny her.
"Sure," Olivia says - with little conviction and no eye contact to break the monotone answer - but Captain Price goes in anyway. She has something she has to say.
"Olivia," and it's the first time she has used her first name rather than being formal, and it earns her the briefest glimpse into her eyes before Olivia drops them again. "CSI found your notebooks. And I've...well, I'm having to read them." The dark hair raises now, and Captain Price finds herself looking into a confused, almost fearful pair of brown, wide eyes. "I just wanted you to know that it was me doing so. And the contents of them will remain completely confidential, unless it relates to specific criminal acts, or the whereabouts of Hartman."
She doesn't know what she really means by the statement, because surely the whole contents relates to a crime. The crime of kidnapping, and holding against her will. The words, the sentences, all add colour to the black and white facts but there is something so personal within them that even she cannot bear the thought of a jury trawling through them, and analysing piece by piece what happened. If she finds anything vital, she will act, but so far it has only been the musings of a lost and lonely person, and in fact, the affirmation - so far anyway - that nothing has happened beyond the initial charges they seek to arrest Hartman on.
"I have to ask though. About the missing pages."
Olivia looks away, and if it was a perp or a suspect she was interviewing, she would count it as a distinct sign of guilt, but it's not. "Is there anything I should know about what was written on them? That would lead us to Hartman? Or about what happened to you?"
There is a long, long gap in between her question and Olivia's answer, and the professional in her knows there has to be some reason for their absence. Some reason the missing pages don't happen at the beginning but only occur as she has read further. That there is one whole notebook vanished, the timeline broken, and Olivia is looking away from her. The compassionate side of her, the human side of her says it doesn't matter. That she has been through enough.
"There's nothing. You wouldn't find him from any of it. They won't tell you anything. They were nothing. I just didn't want them any more."
The words are weaved with steel as they had been in the lounge, that tone that she recognises, despite not knowing this woman. That comes with all of the strong who battle against the odds, and grow weary with winning. It reminds her of the metal rope that holds up a bridge. That is sharp, thin lines against a sky, with a weight so immense beneath it. That could snap, but won't.
"Okay. I had to ask. I'm sorry," And she leaves Olivia then, to her thoughts.
Olivia is quiet for the rest of the day, and it makes Elliot and Don noisier for a while, to make up for her utter lack. It's not like she's made much noise before, she hasn't said much or done anything dramatic, but now there is the silence that tells them she's not really with them. She answers questions, responds and moves when she has to, but her thoughts are a million miles away and she seems less solid somehow. She floats, and both Don and Elliot find themselves clinging louder and harder in response, until she closes her eyes to each one of their attempts at conversation or jollity and escapes to bed early, leaving them looking at each other in fearful confusion.
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The next morning, they find her flicking through the previous day's letting section of Don's paper, and she waits while they go through their morning routine of bickering over the sports section and Don cleaning up toast crumbs after Elliot when she pushes yet another list towards him.
He takes it, and stares unknowingly as she speaks. "That's what I want to keep from the apartment. All the rest can go. I need to find a new place." She's quiet, solid, and doesn't look at either of them as thoughts spin through their heads. Elliot wants to argue, its too soon, too sudden, they're only a few days into the New Year and now she wants to find some kind of normal, but he doesn't say anything.
"Are you sure?" Don asks, leaning against the counter and holding a mug of tea he had been just about to take a sip of when she had spoken. Slowly, inch by inch, his arm has been lowering it without his knowledge and now it's nowhere near his mouth.
"Yeah, I'm sure." Both men look at each other, knowing that tone, and having nothing to say against it. She stands up, and only flinches slightly when she hears noise from outside. "I'm fine. It's time I moved on."
Olivia leaves them standing still, and goes back to the guest bedroom she has become too comfortable, too accustomed to. It had been that morning, when she hadn't flinched in the darkness of the night as she heard Don go to the bathroom, that she knew she couldn't stay here. Or this is where she would always be. Already she loses the fight to step outside, and lets the noises of another outside world, another life drift past her while she stays within the safety of four walls. It's too easy to stay. Perhaps, back in the city, she can find herself again.
Elliot takes her into the city, to the bank, where her muscles scream through her whole meeting and she noticeably jumps at every slammed door as they accept she is who she says she is, and activate her account again. As soon as they are done, they flee back to Don's again, and Elliot knows she won't be able to look for a place. She is not strong enough. She shook for an hour after they made it indoors.
Instead, he gets details that she looks through, chooses a short-list, and Elliot takes John and Rebecca with him to look at them, while Don stays with her. Not baby-sitting her. None of them will admit to that.
They settle on a quiet third floor apartment on the Upper East Side, across the park from her previous neighbourhood. In distance it's slim, a breeze through trees away from who she used to be, but the people are different, and so are the stores and the streets and the side of Manhattan. There is light in the rooms, and he hopes it's what she needs.
Olivia signs the lease without seeing it, or caring. Elliot and Don tell her things: that the belongings she wants have been moved in, and is she sure she wants nothing else, and a hundred and one different words that don't matter. She responds to the ones they push at her the hardest, and the rest dissipate into nothing when she doesn't answer.
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This morning there has been no new snowfall for a few days and the path from Don's front door is clear as he puts her bag in the car, and she stands looking at him, with Don next to her. She hasn't stepped out, has kept saying silent goodbyes until Elliot gets back to the door and Don wraps her in a quick, fierce hug.
"Call me. I'll come by in a couple days. And you're welcome here, any time. You know that." He waits until she nods before he lets go of her shoulders and she turns to face the outside world. She follows Elliot's back, watching as his hairline brushes against the dark fabric of his collar, and only blinks when he stops and opens the door for her. When he shuts it behind her, she looks at nothing, and wonders if car doors is something she can't do for herself now. So far, everyone opens them for her.
Elliot is worried, as they drive back into the city. She is as unresponsive as she had been on the way out, though he thinks she would talk, if he forced the issue. He won't. Fin came round the previous day - with his partner - to tell her that they have nothing new on where Hartman might be, and that the Feds will keep looking but the squad are scaling back their involvement until something new happens. She acknowledged them, and their news, in the same way she has been since she decided to leave Don's. There is a low tiredness that scrapes against her aims of a new start and reminds Elliot, so clearly, of all the moments in the squad room when things went wrong, and she went quiet to hold herself in.
The street is quiet, as quiet as the city ever is, and she doesn't properly look at the building before she gets out of the car and walks towards it, where the doorman opens it with eyes that flash in recognition of Elliot, not her. He is the right age for a doorman, mature with the beginnings of grey hair, and as she passes him he nods to her and she thinks how pointless he is. Not big or strong enough to stop someone, if they forced themselves in. But they all mean well, they're looking out for her, and even trapped in her glass box, she can recognise it.
The door to the apartment, her apartment she reminds herself, has a newly installed deadbolt as well, but still she forces her muscles to stay relaxed as Elliot opens both locks and steps inside. When she follows him, it requires the same force to not look behind the door as it closes. Instead, she makes herself look at the apartment.
He had thought it had looked bare when he had finished with sorting the furniture and making sure she had everything she needed, but he has kept what she asked for and nothing else. When he and Don had tried to ask her further questions, she'd simply faded away, and they had resorted to asking Rebecca for help, who had picked out basic curtains, a rug for the floor, linen for the bed.
It had still looked stark, empty, but he remembered what Fin had said and their descriptions of where she had been and tries to see it through her eyes. In fact, he thinks with a wry smile, it is ten times better than his place had been, in those days when he had had one.
Now they're in and she walks slowly through the living area, glances briefly at the bedroom and bathroom, and remains for much longer at the window, arms wrapped round her. He is left standing, awkward in his place and role, and suddenly wishes he hadn't put away the groceries he had got for her beforehand. It would be something to do, now.
He makes coffee. It's his defence mechanism.
She takes it from him without moving and she's still looking, but to one side, like she doesn't want to be seen. He looks as well, and sees what he had seen when he looked round. A tree lined street. People. Buildings. He wonders what she sees.
It's later. A lot later, when he is sitting doing the crossword on her new kitchen counter and she has prowled the apartment and looked out of every window, that she speaks. She's back where she had started, and her voice surprises him. He hasn't heard it for hours, and it sounds alien in the silence.
"When I was a teenager, and things got bad..." she starts, and there is no emotion to any of her words, "I used to imagine being picked up, and put into a new life. Starting again, without any of my history mattering. Being able to cut everything off. A new life, a different person."
She hasn't looked at him, hasn't changed her gaze, and she's watching a kid dance down the street in front of his father as she hears Elliot flick his pen against the paper. The boy doesn't resemble her at all; she'd never do the things he does. He jumps cracks in the side-walk for a second and then stops and spins, laughs at his father who is carrying bags of groceries, and then sprints out of sight for a second before running back to the man again. He's nothing like she had been. Perhaps that's the point.
Watching her, he doesn't know what to say. Whether the new life is this one, coming back, or the previous one. "This is all going to take time, Liv. But you're the same person you were before. We've all changed. It's just going to take time."
When he gets no response after a minute, he goes back to the crossword. There are blank spaces and clues in front of him. He's only ever done them before while waiting and bored, in doctor's offices, waiting for the kids to be done at the dentist. Now, it seems important that he fills in all the gaps, while she stands and stares.
Time – she thinks. How can he understand time? Know what it means? She watches until dusk begins to settle and she doesn't want to see shadows any more, and she makes toast because she's supposed to eat, and because she can. There is no one stopping her, and she makes it for Elliot as well, and the smile he gives her when she slides it in front of him almost feels like a start, at the end of a day.
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Today he told me its been over three months since he took me. Those are the words he used 'I took you' and it's almost a surprise to remember I'm here against my will. I guess, since I tried to escape, it's been easier to make myself forget. Because I don't think I've ever been so scared. Not for so long anyway. When I hit him and he fell and I couldn't catch the door in time, and it took him so long to wake up again. I don't know how long, but it felt like an eternity.
All I could think was how I was going to die of dehydration, of unquenched thirst. How I was going to fade away, and that's not how a cop is supposed to die. But I'd failed, I'd tried and I'd failed and he lay there with the code to the lock in his head and he looked dead. I've never been so scared. I won't try again.
It doesn't feel like three months. Three days or three years maybe. I've watched summer go past the window, what little I can see, and I know I'll begin to feel Fall in the air soon. It's never been hot down here, but his hands and arms and face have been more tan each time he comes in. Some days I want the sun so bad, and others I walk round the patch like I don't want it to see me.
I don't understand time here. Each minute feels so long and then I blink and a whole day has passed and he's bringing me dinner, that I eat because I haven't got anything else to do. I've read ten books since I've been down here. I don't think I've read that many in a year before.
If I let myself think of them, I miss them all so much it paralyses me and I have to lie still and not feel. He brought me an Ipod. Said he didn't know what music I liked so he'd put all sorts on it and I just had to let him know what I wanted on there. I don't care at the moment. I don't want to listen to anything from before. I turn it up so loud I only hear the music and nothing else. It helps.
How can three months have gone already. Fourteen weeks. I asked. Ninety-nine days today. Tomorrow will be a hundred days. I'm really tired today, but I don't know why. I don't do anything, five strides across, six strides towards the window. I was too tired today.
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They're playing Uno now, in this apartment she doesn't feel comfortable in. Elliot is thrashing her. He's spent years playing against his kids, and they never had Uno in the basement. She wants to argue with him for doing it, but instead she watches the lines of his face and reads him like a book. There are moments he realises he is close to winning, and has to decide whether he's going to take the advantage, or let her off.
He doesn't know she sees all this, and she smiles inside. Maybe they haven't changed so much, after all. They could compete and compete, and then sometimes she'd let him win, and other times he'd let her. She surprises herself each time laughter trickles from her, as he begins to fill her in on years of stories, and he feels alive again. Alive and amazed that so much has happened that has been amusing, because if he'd been asked, he'd say he's been numb for all these years.
Olivia stretches at one a.m with her hands high above her head and yawns. "Guess I should go to bed," she says, and Elliot tries not to see the hint of something that hits her just after she drops her arms. It's a mixture of apprehension, fear and dread and when it touches her, he feels it as well. She stands up and goes towards the bedroom, where the bedside light guides her in. Elliot had flicked it on when he got up to go to the bathroom earlier. He hadn't wanted her to go into the dark, on her own.
When she reaches the door to the bedroom, he stands up and at the noise of his chair scraping sharply against the floor, she freezes against the light, her back turned to him. "Don't go." There is an unspoken word at the end, a please she will not admit, and he goes to sit on her couch and turns the TV on.
"Wasn't going to."
She curls into her bed, her old bed with new sheets and covers, and she hasn't shut the door so she can faintly hear the tinny sound of the TV and see the dancing light coming in. She can turn her own light off, as long as that is there.
Wish I were with you but I couldn't stay. Every direction leads me away.
With her eyes closed, and the sounds of him filtering through, she can hear lyrics in her head, of the song she played whenever she wanted to think of him. And, for a moment, in this strange building with weird noises that make her tense, she can relax, and just listen. Perhaps she's hearing him, and perhaps she's hearing other sounds of the life that she misses, so so much. But its always been mixed up in her head, even then, in that dark. He's always been there.
Pray for tomorrow but for today. And all I want is to be home.
A/N - The lyrics at the end are from "Home - by Foo Fighters" It's a gorgeous song. Go listen on youtube or something :)