11. Sins of the Father

The evening dragged on endlessly. It was hard to focus, Olivia's face lingering in Elliot's mind. William Lewis's too, his smiling mug shot standing out more clearly in his memories than most of the real faces he'd seen of late. He followed his routine as best he could, trying to nod and smile at the right time, doing his share of the housework on muscle memory alone.

He thought he'd done a passable job of acting normal, until he looked up to see Kathy watching him solemnly from across the room, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle held between her slender fingers. A two-thirds completed picture of mourning doves this time.

"Everything okay?"

"Fine," he said, his voice falsely bright.

"You shouldn't be," she pointed out. "Two of your closest friends died in the last month. I haven't seen you grieve at all, except to act out at the funeral."

He shrugged. "I hadn't seen them in three years," he managed. "Everyone deals with things in a different way. I'm okay."

There was silence for a long time, and Elliot thought she'd gone back to her work. Then she spoke again, bitterness tinting her words.

"You still won't talk to me, will you? Even after all that's happened, even after all these years, you never tell me what's on your mind."

"Kathy - "

"No. Don't start." There was no anger in her voice. Only sadness. "I know that's the kind of thing you used to tell Olivia. But she's gone now, and I find out that I'm not even your second choice."

"That's not true."

She ignored him. "I would have been well within my rights to hate her, I think. But I didn't. She was hard to hate. Half the time it was like she was trying out for sainthood. The other half... well, I knew you two never did anything technically improper. And it would be terrible to hate the woman who saved your child's life, even if your husband looked at her in a way that he never looked at you. I tried to accept that it was just the way things were.

"When you finally left your job, I couldn't help but be happy. I knew it was hard for you, I knew it wasn't what you wanted. But I thought things could finally change, that things could go back to the way they were. That you'd eventually stop feeling like you had to hide half of yourself from your family. But it never happened. Three years on and you still can't be honest with me."

Elliot felt a biting sense of shame, but he buried it beneath a flood of rage.

You want some honesty? he wanted to scream. You married a monster. I murdered a girl younger than Lizzie is now. I shot her on the worst day of her life and watched her bleed out in front of me, and now I think I'm going to murder someone else too. I'm going to kill a man in the worst way I can imagine, because I want to, because it's just the way I am.

With an effort, he calmed himself. It would be incredibly unfair to take his problems out on her. He'd been doing too much of that already.

"It's just not something I want to talk about, okay?" he said. "I'm sorry."

Her expression didn't change. "And if it had been me? If it had been my funeral all those weeks ago? Would you have talked to her? Would you have driven to her apartment in middle of the night? Cried on her shoulder? Talked about our ups and downs, our fights and our laughter? We both know you would. But we've been married most of our lives now, and you still won't talk to me."

Elliot stared at her, his throat working. He tried to find a denial, to find the words to talk her down, make things better. But nothing came.

The silence went on too long and Kathy's mouth twisted wryly. "That's about what I thought." She stood up. "I'm going to bed. If you ever decide you want a marriage in more than just name, let me know."

She was almost at the stairs when Elliot spoke again, his voice halting. "But I chose you. I know - I know I haven't always been a great husband. A lot of the time I haven't even been a good one. But I always fought to keep our family together."

She turned to look at him, and the sadness was still dark in her eyes. "Did you really choose me? When you spent the last three years moping around the house, going through the motions? I won't say I felt like a burden, but I certainly felt like a duty."

"I - "

"When I left you all those years ago, I was angry, and I wanted you to be angry too. But part of me thought that maybe I was setting you free. That maybe it would finally let you find whatever it was you were looking for. Sometimes I wonder why you didn't just take the chance. That's your problem, Elliot. You can never let things go."

With that, she turned away and kept walking.

Elliot waited a long time before heading upstairs. Kathy was already in bed, turned towards the wall, eyes closed, but the tension in her body told him she was awake. He said nothing and went to the bathroom, undressing and then brushing his teeth with a probably unnecessary degree of meticulousness. He finally emerged back into the bedroom with an apology on his lips, maybe even an explanation, a confession. But her false sleep had drifted into a real one, her breathing deep and even.

Elliot stared at her for several moments, grief rising in his throat. The soft lamplight smoothed the tiny lines on her face, bringing back an echo of the girl she'd been.

Your life would be better if you'd never met me.

The thought came without any sense of chest-beating or self-flagellation, as a flat, calm statement of truth. Kathy would have been happier if they'd never made a life together, if in that fateful night at the party all those years ago, their eyes had met and they'd both simply kept on walking. He hadn't deserved either woman in his life. He'd betrayed them both, one in thought and one in action.

And now he would betray them again, one final time. He would leave tonight to hunt down Lewis and kill him, he knew that for sure now. The first police commissioner could descend down from on high in a Greek toga to tell him to turn back, and he would shove him aside and continue. He'd sought this from the very beginning, ever since he'd seen Olivia's unnatural stillness in the morgue, perhaps even since those early summer days one year past, where he had seen the story of an abduction on the news and had forced himself to turn away.

He had spent three years trying to change himself, to make himself better, but perhaps all his years as a cop should have taught him better, taught him how rare or mythical true change really was. He'd seen hundreds of junkies or prostitutes promise to change as their voices trembled with emotion, as they swore they would better themselves, that they would get clean, make a different life. But most of the time, he knew they would be back to the same patterns within the month. He'd known it with the same certainty that Tucker had known that Elliot would one day go rogue, would stand before him disgraced.

Because ultimately, after all this time, Elliot was still the same man. A man who would kill anyone who hurt his partner. And that's what he intended to do.

He found his gym bag and emptied it out, then walked to the closet on silent feet. He grabbed some clothing, shoving it inside with no regard for neatness or wrinkles. He flicked off the lamp with a single delicate motion, then slipped out of the darkened bedroom without a sound.

He paused in front of Eli's room, heading inside with silent footsteps. His son was sprawled on his stomach across his blue sheets, his blankets already hopelessly tangled. If there could only be one reason this was a terrible idea, it was encapsulated in this single image of his child, sleeping peacefully in the faint moonlight. His duty to his children trumped everything else that he might want or need. Especially to Eli, who had yet to experience real pain or loss, who was light years from understanding rage or injustice, or that he lived in a world where good people could live alone and die in pain. Anything that could hurt his children should have been off limits, and this would definitely qualify. But yet...

He reached down, ruffling the boy's hair, and Eli shifted, muttering in his sleep.

"Be good," he whispered. "I'll see you in a bit."

Out in the living room, he chanced turning on a small lamp. He turned his phone on silent, hiding it below the laundry hamper. It would only be a hindrance where he was going - the GPS would give him away. He sat down on the arm of the couch, staring at nothing for a long time, before finally dialing his number with their landline, listening to his own voice on voicemail before speaking quietly.

"Kathy. You were right, what you said earlier. I haven't been dealing very well with... everything that's happening. I'm sorry. I need a couple of days - a week - to think things through, work things out. After that, we'll make a new start. I'll make things up to you, I swear. Love you."

He hung up the phone and stared at it for a while. She deserved better. But he couldn't find the words somehow. It would be enough to keep her from calling the police to report him missing, though he wouldn't be surprised if he returned to find the locks changed. It would be ironic, having finally irrevocably lost Olivia, if he lost Kathy now too. He'd deserve it, certainly. But he suspected their marriage would survive, that their relationship would only fracture, not shatter. Decades of comfortable inertia was hard to break - they'd learned that last time.

In any case, he found it difficult to worry about the consequences right now, with his head throbbing with reckless anticipation, his blood rushing hotly through his veins. He thought he'd dealt with his rage issues, he thought that two years away from the darkness of SVU had cooled his temper, but it had been there all along, roiling beneath the surface. A part of him reveled in it.

The sound of the garage door opening was agonizingly loud in the silence, but neither Kathy nor Eli stirred, and he threw his bag in the back seat before heading to the driver's side.

Olivia was waiting for him as he got in the car, her hair cropped short, wearing a blue shirt, too thick for the weather. "This is insane," she said without preamble.

He grinned a little, staring at the dashboard. "No. You wanna know what's insane? This. This conversation I'm having with you right here. Compared to that, the plan is pretty reasonable."

"I don't think you know what 'reasonable' means anymore. This guy's dangerous. You know nothing about where he is, who he might be with. You won't even have a gun. You can't do this to your family. You think it's right to make Eli grow up without a father? Visiting a grave, or prison? You think it's okay to let Kathy raise him by herself, the ex-wife of a murderer?"

"That'll only happen if I get caught. And I have no intention of being caught."

"I'd put the odds that the woman is just jerking you around at a million to one. Even if she really found out where Lewis is somehow, telling you could get her killed. I doubt she'd take that kind of risk"

"She's not lying."

"What makes you so sure?"

Elliot considered a long time before answering. "When I met her, I thought she seemed like someone who never had much control in her life. Things always happened to her, and she couldn't do much about it. But now she's sending an ex-cop halfway across the country to kill a man she hates. That's power."

"I think she expected you to tell the police. Wasting lots of government time and money is power too."

"You just don't like her. And speaking of which - " He turned to her with a frown. "What's this I hear about blackmailing a potential rape victim? Is that really the kind of thing that goes down at the precinct nowadays?"

She finally had the courtesy to look away. "You weren't there," she murmured. "It was a weak case - with a pretty obvious motive for a set up. If it were up to us, we never would have brought it to trial. The DA pushed it through because he was trying to make a name for himself."

"It was strong enough that you felt you couldn't just let the jury acquit him. I never thought you'd stand for something like this."

She glared at him. "I trusted Cassidy. I wanted to help him. I would have done the same for you."

"I don't remember you blackmailing Warner to change her report when it looked like I was going to go down for murder."

"We got carried away," she admitted, closing her eyes. "Cassidy was a guy who was easy to get carried away with. He puts on this face for the world like he doesn't care, like he just floats along. But sometimes he'd look at me like there was no one else in the world. And I wanted that, you know? I spent my whole life being second. I wanted something in my life that was just for me."

She sighed, a slumped silhouette in the shadows of the car. "How did we all end up here, do you think? How did we go wrong?"

"We lost faith," Elliot said quietly. "We stopped believing that if we played by the rules and did the right thing, things would turn out well in the end. And maybe it's not true. Hell, even kids know it's not true. But to be a good cop, you still have to pretend it is. Because when you decide that your own justice is better than everyone else's, you only make things worse. I learned that from watching my father. I used to tell myself every day that I'd never be like him. Then I turned around one day, and I realized I was worse."

She reached over to touch his face, phantom fingertips brushing his cheek. Elliot turned away. It was times like these where the unreality of the situation hit him most strongly. In truth, they'd never touched each other with such deliberate intimacy, always maintaining the appropriate distance for friends, partners. They'd only ever gone further in the heat of the moment, in an excess of emotion. But he'd be lying if he said that his heart hadn't pounded sometimes when she brushed by him, when they sat as closely as propriety would allow.

"You're not your father, Elliot." Even in the silence, her voice was nearly inaudible. "And you don't have to be. I don't understand how you can sit here, on your way to murder a man, yet still talk about what makes a good cop like you still believe it."

He raised an eyebrow, a smile playing on his lips. "But I'm not a cop anymore."

"You think that matters? You think not carrying a badge anymore changes the fact that you swore an oath? Turning in your papers doesn't change your duty to uphold the law."

"Yeah, I had a duty. To watch your back. I failed. Least I can do now is get the guy."

"You think I'd want this? For you to throw away your life on some stupid revenge?

"Maybe I'm not doing it for you. Maybe I'm doing it for me. Maybe I just want to see someone finally get what they deserve, for once in my life."

"All you're doing is making the same mistakes as me. As Cassidy. Once you decide that what you want puts you above the rules, you stop being one of the good guys. Do the right thing, Elliot."

"We spent fifteen years trying to do the right thing. Maybe it's time for something else."

Her voice was cutting, "Oh, you're tired of doing the right thing now? I don't see why. You got what you wanted."

He whirled around so fast that his neck creaked, but he barely noticed.

"What I wanted? How could you think - how could you even dream that I'd ever want anything like this?"

"Sure you did," she said, and her smile was harder than he remembered, tempered by years of hardship and responsibility. "Maybe it's not how you wanted it, but it's what you wanted. We're out of each other's lives for good now. No more temptations, no more obligations, no more laying awake at night wondering if maybe you should have taken a different path. You can finally make a clean break."

"I - I don't-"

She was watching him, her eyes clear and cold. "I was hurt when you left. Hurt when you wouldn't answer my phone calls, when you wouldn't even give me the courtesy of a real goodbye. But I understood. Maybe a lot of partners can stay friends, but we were never just friends, were we? We would never have been content with lunch every other Wednesday, with exchanging Christmas cards, with phone calls on birthdays. It wouldn't have been enough. And maybe you and Kathy never had the perfect marriage, but I bet it was better before I came along. It was better before there was another woman in your life you'd spent half your waking hours with, who'd saved your life as you saved hers, who'd stood by your side in your darkest hours. So you finally walked away. Cut me out of your life.

"And I could respect that. It's like you said, you chose your family. It was the right choice. It was the only choice" She looked at the floor, taking a slow breath. "But I think both of us thought about the other path one time or another. Wondered if things were different we could have... built something good. But it's too late now, Elliot. If you chase Lewis, all it means is he'll destroy you along with him."

Elliot paused for a long time. Then he smiled grimly and put the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life.

"If that's what it takes."

And with that, he pulled out of the garage and drove into the darkness.