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"You're pensive."

Olivia starts and smiles guiltily at Alex. "Sorry, what?"

"Pay attention to me," Alex orders, batting her glass from hand to hand. If she gets much more nervous, Olivia figures, she'll start twirling on the barstool.

She doesn't want to make her old friend anxious, really she doesn't, but she has been trying to figure out what is so inherently awkward about their situation. Alex has come back into her life like a spring breeze, like the smell of her mother's perfume, like a dance tune from the eighties. She doesn't know why this is so.

"I'm sorry already," Alex says.

Olivia blinks at her. "For what?"

"For whatever." Alex shrugs and peers closely at her glass, as though it holds all the answers. "Not calling."

"Well," Olivia says.

"I don't know. You two seemed pretty thrown."

It takes her a moment to process the reference. "Well, yes," she concedes, "but could you not refer to me and Elliot as one person, thank you."

Alex lifts an eyebrow. "That's pretty much the way I remember it, Liv. You never minded before."

It is then that she realizes how very much Alex has missed. In five years things happened that they had never dreamed of. Kathy and Elliot split up, and so did she and Elliot, twice. Simon happened, and Eli, and Sealview. And here's Alex, a spring breeze, a living memento of happier times, before Gitano and Cooper and Lake, before the sheer madness pushed them all that much closer to the edge.

"Things change," Olivia mutters before realizing how very much she sounds like her partner.

Ever the prosecutor, Alex considers this, incorporates it into her worldview. "He said something funny today."

"Did he."

"He seems to think you've been unhappy lately."

Define lately, she wants to say. Define unhappy. Tell me exactly what he's thinking. But instead she says, "Elliot's weird."

"You sound twelve."

"Maybe because I just interviewed half a dozen twelve-year-olds. All of whom support our vic's story. You're welcome."

"Thank you," Alex says solemnly, and changes the subject. "Tell me a story."

"Now you sound five."

"That's how long I've been away and I'm sure I missed a lot of good stories." Suddenly her eyes light up. "Tell a Munch story. Those are always good."

They are, still, and so Olivia does tell the Munch stories. She mixes up a few of the times and tells a few that Alex already knows, but she doesn't seem to mind.

"Some things never change," Alex says happily at one point, still laughing.

Oh yes, Olivia thinks, but some things do. "So how does it feel to be back?"

"Back." Alex grins. "It feels like I never left."

This is what sets Alex apart, now: the rest of them are acutely aware that she left, and shit happened; and no matter how nice it is to let Alex help them forget, they can't ever go back.

Maybe if she hadn't spent three years avoiding them. But it's too late now. The rest of them know what Alex doesn't.

At least, Olivia does.

Sadly I cannot think of anywhere to go from here, nor do I have the time to figure it out. Thanks for reading anyway...please review!